The Featured collaboration is a way to get many contributors working on one project at once, either a specific article to get it ready for an upcoming event or a nomination for destination of the month, or on a type of correction or improvement across a range of article. While anyone can edit any article at any time, this provides a way to highlight specific projects in Wikivoyage allowing many contributors to work on them together.
A collaboration to improve region articles by making sure that the most interesting places in each region are mentioned in each region article, with links to full listings in the relevant local guides. Adding other missing information, such as "Understand ", "Get in" and Get around" is helpful too. When you've done as much as you can on an article, move it to the "Improved articles" section further down the page.
Articles needing improvement
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- Abov - Only 2 blue links, let alone information about individual sights.
- Achaea - Almost no content. Should it be merged and redirected to Patras?
- Adygea - nothing in "See," one thing in "Do". Only two blue links. I will propose a merge and redirect to Krasnodar Krai, which should be renamed Krasnodar Krai and Adygea. However, that article has blank "See" and "Do" sections. Redirected to the new article, but still needs more work.
- Agreste (Pernambuco) – no content outside Cities/OD
- Ahal Province and all other region articles in Turkmenistan totally suck. I'm proposing merging and redirecting them all to the country article. – partially improved. I've filled out the See section of this specific article, "Do", "Eat" and "Drink" are still empty, though I don't consider the latter two crucial for a region article. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 12:49, 18 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
- Ambala Division – minimal content outside "Cities" section
- Ancona (province) – minimal content outside "Cities" and "Other destinations" sections
- Antequera Region – 1 blue link, empty past "Get in"
- Bahr el Ghazal – minimal content in most sections
- Baraboo River Valley – empty past "Cities" section
- Bekaa – mostly empty past "Cities"
- Belluno (province) – 3 blue links in "Cities", minimal content otherwise
- Bhopal-Narmadapuram Division – 6 blue links, minimal get in info; all other sections are empty
- Bikaner Division – 3 blue links, minimal content otherwise
- Carabobo – 1 blue link, many sections empty
- Caspian Basin – minimal content past "Cities" section
- Central Angola – 3 blue links, no content elsewhere
- Central Bosnia – 3 blue links, no content elsewhere
- Central Croatia – minimal content outside "Cities" and "Understand" sections
- Central East (Rio Grande do Sul) – has 3 blue links, an awful amount of red links and that's about it
- Central Idaho – empty Get in and See sections
- Central Isaan – empty See/Do sections
- Central Leningrad Oblast – 1 blue link, no content elsewhere
- Central Plains (Liaoning) – no content outside "Cities" section
- Central São Paulo (state) – minimal content
- Central South (Bahia) – minimal content outside "Cities" and "Other destinations" sections
- Central Sudan – minimal content outside "Cities" and "Other destinations" sections
- Central Tanzania – minimal content outside "Cities" and "Other destinations" sections
- Central Uganda – many sections empty
- Central Yunnan – minimal content outside "Cities" section
- Chaco (Argentina) – empty after "Get around"
- Crete Senese – minimal content
- Cumberland County (Maine) – 3 blue links, contains mapshape; all other sections are empty
- Deep East Texas – minimal content outside "Cities" and "Other destinations" sections
- Dohuk Governorate – minimal content outside "Cities" and "Other destinations" sections
- Eastern Cambodia minimal content outside the "Cities" and "Other destinations" sections
- Eastern Madhya Pradesh – as above
- Eastern Plantations – 2 blue links, minimal get in info, all other sections are empty
- Eastern Uganda – no content outside "Cities" and "Other destinations"
- Essex County (New Jersey) – no content outside "Cities" section
- Foggia (province) – no content outside "Cities" and "Other destinations"
- Greater Geelong – most sections past "Get in" are empty
- Greater Hobart – has see listings which should be moved to the relevant city article
- Grundy County (Illinois) – 1 blue link, empty elsewhere
- Inner Eastern Thailand – 5 blue links with all other sections empty
- Kalahari – 3 blue links with all other sections empty
- Loyalty Islands – one blue link, limited content in other sections. Could Ouvéa possibly be merged with the current region article to form a rural area article?
- Massa-Carrara (province) – only contains 3 blue links and a few images
- Northeastern Bosnia – only contains 3 blue links
- Northeastern Tamil Nadu – 2 blue links, otherwise abysmal in content
- Northern Sierra (Peru) – no content outside "Regions" and "Cities" section. Partly done, except for "Get in".
- Northwest (Espírito Santo) – 2 blue links, otherwise abysmal in content
- Pistoia (province) – 3 blue links, no content outside "Cities" section
- Sagadahoc County – 4 blue links, little to no content outside "Cities" and "Other destinations" sections
- Sertão (Pernambuco) – 2 blue links, no content outside "Cities" section
- Sikasso (region) – 1 blue link, no content outside "Cities" section
- South Sichuan – 2 blue links, minimal get in info; all other sections are empty
- Val di Elsa
- Verona (province)
- Western Coal Fields – 3 blue links, no content outside "Cities" section
- Western Highlands (Liaoning)
- Yazd (province) – 1 blue link, minimal understand and get in info
- Yemeni Coastal Plains
- Yemeni Highlands – minimal content overall
Articles that need more links
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- Abia State has substantial information in "See" and "Do" but needs more of the attractions to be linked to local articles.
- Abruzzo - "See" and "Do" need links.
- Acadiana - Pretty good region article, but "Do" needs links to city articles.
- Aceh - See and Do need more links. See has what's arguably an overly long list, but what's most important is to say what cities each attraction is in, with relevant links.
- Acadia is an extra-region with individual listings that have markers instead of links to city articles.
- The boundaries between Andean Northwest (Argentina) and Chaco (Argentina) is not well-defined, both on the map and in our region structure – see Argentina
- East Estonia is a region with plenty of travel content, but it contains many listings for places that do not have articles.
- 24 Parganas - Empty "See and Do" section.
- Aba (prefecture) - Nothing in "See."
- Abitibi-Témiscamingue - "See" and "Do" need links. -- Done. Ground Zero (talk) 22:55, 14 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
- Abu Dhabi (emirate) - Nothing in "See."
- Acadian Coast - See" and "Do" need links. Improved. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 11:36, 26 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
- Acre (Brazil) - Very little content: every section after "Get in" is empty. Should that, Rondônia and Roraima, also almost contentless articles, be combined with Amazonas (Brazil), so that that article is about four states?
- Adams County (Pennsylvania) – region article with only one blue link; "See" section contains listings -- merged into higher-level region. Ground Zero (talk) 19:56, 31 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
- Adelaide Region - nothing specific in "See" or "Do". Improved --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 03:28, 20 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
- Agrigento (province) - virtually no content.
- Ajmer Division and all other region articles of Rajasthan have virtually no content. Rajasthan is very large in area, so I'm concerned about the ramifications of merging and redirecting all region articles, but we will have to consider the possibility. I (Ikan Kekek) don't want to write up another deregionalization proposal right now and add it to requests for comment, so I'll come back to this.
- Altai (Kazakhstan) – minimal content outside "Cities" and "Other destinations" sections; potential Wikivoyage:Image policy violations, too. Improved. Ground Zero (talk) 20:18, 3 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
- Amapá - Almost no content. Should it and the slightly less sparse Tocantins article be merged with Pará (Brazil) to form a 3-state article that will still need a bit more fleshing out?
- Antananarivo Province – 2 blue links, minimal information in see, abysmal elsewhere -- Improved. Ground Zero (talk) 19:14, 26 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
- Barletta-Andria-Trani – empty outside "Cities" section
- Blaauwberg Coast – no content outside "Cities" section
- Broome County – minimal content
- Capiz – minimal content outside "Cities" and "Other destinations" sections
- Central Greece - subregion articles merged.
- Cagliari (province) – contains a single link and no content elsewhere. Redirect to Cagliari?
- Cape Karoo – 2 blue links, minimal content outside "Cities" and "Other destinations" sections — merged into Western Cape Karoo
- Central Senegal – only contains 7 blue links in "Cities" section
- Central Zambia – minimal content outside "Cities", "Other destinations" and "Talk" sections. Improved Ground Zero (talk) 21:24, 21 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
- Cornwall County – 3 blue links, a few points about the county's parishes, no content elsewhere. Ground Zero (talk) 03:26, 16 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
- Cuvette – minimal content. Merger proposed at Republic of the Congo
- Eastern Kenya – 4 blue links, 1 red-linked OD; all other sections are empty Improved Ground Zero (talk) 11:42, 16 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
- Entre Rios – content is abysmal beyond "Other destinations" Improved. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 12:52, 30 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
- Eritrea has two region articles that absolutely suck – merged with Eritrea --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 03:58, 3 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
- Evrytania – merged
- Gemer – many empty sections. Improved. Ground Zero (talk) 11:24, 26 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
- Great Lakes (South Dakota) – 2 blue links, minimal get in info; all other sections are empty -- proposal made to turn this into a rural area and merge in four towns.
- Isfahan (province) – 7 blue links with most other sections empty
- Lara (Venezuela) – only contains one blue link -- merger proposed at Northwest (Venezuela)
- All of Maranhão's subregions are abysmal, many of which have minimal to no content outside the "Cities" or "Other destinations" sections: Central Maranhão, Eastern Maranhão, Northern Maranhão, Western Maranhão and Southern Maranhão. Southern Maranhão has 1 blue link, 6 red links, no content outside "Cities" section -- merged. Ground Zero (talk)
- North Aegean Islands – no content outside "Regions" section. -- Improved. Ground Zero (talk) 01:40, 26 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
- North Central Wisconsin – 9 blue links; empty otherwise
- North (Minas Gerais) and Northwest (Minas Gerais) – both are abysmal. The latter has 0 blue links and no content outside lede -- reorganization proposed at Northwest (Venezuela)
- North (Paraná) – only contains 1 blue link
- Northern Senegal – 2 blue links, limited content in the "See" section, no content in other sections
- North Western Province (Sri Lanka) – minimal information in "Understand", 4 blue links, and a bunch of spurious empty section headers in "Do"
- Nuoro (province) – little to no content outside "Cities" and "Other destinations" sections
- Pando – 0 blue links, no content outside "Understand" and "Cities" section -- Improved, as much as is feasible from Wiki sources. Ground Zero (talk) 01:21, 19 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
- Phocis – 3 blue links, no content outside "Cities" section – merged
- Pisa (province) – 5 blue links, no content outside "Cities" section
- San Juan (province, Argentina) – little to no content outside "Cities" and "Other destinations" sections Improved –SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 13:16, 19 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
- Many of Tajikistan's regions suck – I've (SHB2000) made a proposal to revise the region structure on Tajikistan
- Tambacounda Region – 4 blue links, a little bit of content in "See", but otherwise empty - Improved Ground Zero (talk) 12:31, 18 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
- Tarn-et-Garonne – 2 blue links, no content outside "Cities" section - Improved Ground Zero (talk) 21:30, 19 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
- Toliara Province – little to no content outside "Cities" and "Other destinations" sections- Improved Ground Zero (talk) 12:26, 19 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
- Val di Chiana - Improved Ground Zero (talk) 17:20, 16 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
- Volta Delta – 3 blue links, no content outside of the "Cities" and "Other destinations" sections
- Yaracuy – 0 blue links, minimal content in Understand-- merger proposed at Northwest (Venezuela)
A collaboration does not have a maximum time limit — a collaboration is featured for at least one month until another collaboration is featured.
Any user can propose a featured collaboration, which is discussed for a minimum of two weeks.
- If after two weeks, there are no major objections, the proposed collaboration is featured for a minimum of a month.
- After one month, it van be replaced by a new collaboration that has been discussed on the talk page for at least two weeks.
If a collaboration is completed without a new one being proposed, it will be removed and there would be no featured collaboration.
Think carefully before making a nomination. Nominations most likely to be collaborative successes are those that have clearly defined areas for improvement, are of interest to a wide range of people, and that are already pretty well developed. Particularly good choices for nomination are articles that could quickly become options for the Destination of the Month, or Off the Beaten Path featured articles.
When nominating, describe exactly what you hope would come of a Collaboration. Explain why you think it would be a successful collaboration. (Not why you would like it improved!) Then leave a list of several bullet points detailing exactly how other contributors can help with the collaboration. The bullet points should be very concrete, and should detail basic tasks that anyone can help with.
Take pains to avoid listing tasks that require either a significant committal of time or in-depth knowledge of the destination from individual contributors:
- research beyond basic information (like contact information for a listing),
- original writing,
- map making (aside from more simple region maps),
- devising new districts.
These are tasks for contributors with a special interest in a particular destination, not for contributors simply interested in devoting a small amount of time in support of the collaboration. If these types of tasks are to work, the nominator will have to volunteer to do them, or find someone beforehand who is willing.
After nominated entries have been a featured collaboration, move the original nomination and other comments to Project:Previous collaborations and add title to tabled list.
Accomplished goals mark with {{Wy/si/Done}} or {{Wy/si/Partly done}}, failed goals with {{Wy/si/Not done}} or keep with {{Wy/si/To do}}.
Move unsuccessful nominations to the Project:Featured collaboration/Slush pile.
First as a general point, any nomination should have a prominent early line "How travellers will benefit: - ". This keeps our minds focussed on the public readership.
My proposal is to populate "Connect" with mobile coverage, for all areas where this can be swiftly done using info from Nperf. A sample entry might read: "As of July 2023, Strelsau and its approach roads have 4G from all Ruritanian carriers. 5G has not reached this area".
The benefit to travellers is that many use their mobiles to get around abroad, and indeed may have to: railway timetables and the like nowadays are often online-only. Connection coverage is therefore mission-critical, but many existing WV pages either have no Connect info, or obsolete stuff about an internet cafe that closed years ago.
This task is well-suited to collaboration because updating a city takes only a couple of minutes, a single contributor can knock off an entire region in 20 minutes, but thereafter it feels like drudgery and is better as a shared task. One approach would be to pick country by country in turn where Nperf is a reliable source (ignore the others), post the regions, and let editing commence - let's say France first up. Some simple rules on pre-existing content are wanted if this proposal goes ahead. Grahamsands (talk) 14:59, 24 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
- Convenience link: Nperf.com. –LPfi (talk) 10:35, 25 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
- A more direct link is by country, eg Nperf France. Grahamsands (talk) 09:53, 26 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
- I'd be willing to contribute to this effort. What are those "simple rules on pre-existing content" that you have in mind? We should keep in mind that Nperf is not necessarily a reliable source for areas like small towns in rural areas because there's simply not many people there likely to be testing their connections. Mrkstvns (talk) 14:09, 26 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
- Agreed, I suppose Nperf can be helpful to confirm that "Strelsau has 4G", but I would be very careful about "Fluppingen has no mobile network coverage" (absence of evidence is not evidence of absence). China, for example, has excellent mobile coverage, but looks like a blank spot on the Nperf map ... El Grafo (talk) 08:40, 27 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
- ... And Finland has coverage only along the roads, according to Nperf. One person driving around gets a lot more points than a hundred people measuring connections at home. –LPfi (talk) 10:27, 27 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
- Important point this. Any area where we are not confident of Nperf (or positively sceptical, as for China), let's just leave it alone and skip on to one of the many areas where we are confident, and cover as much ground as possible in a short time. However rural areas may be mapped in enough detail for the limited granularity of WV. Thus for Rovaniemi in the far north of Finland, does it not suffice to say 5G in town and 4G along the main road from Kemi, and leave it at that? We can't describe every back-woods or moor around it any more than we'd describe signal in individual city streets. Grahamsands (talk) 12:24, 27 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
- I'd say that you have 5G in some parts of any Finnish city and 4G along most highways. You will probably have at least 3G off the roads also unless you go into the backwoods (where you do find areas without any coverage). I don't think the Nperf reports add anything to that unless you do a careful analysis of them. So: probably useful where there are lots of people and relatively weak coverage, but not somewhere like Finland, where it is the other way around. –LPfi (talk) 17:18, 28 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
- GSMA is another site that shows mobile coverage. On the downside they only show GSM, 3G and 4G (LTE) coverage. Ypsilon (talk) 13:11, 27 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
- Yes, I sometimes refer to that where Nperf is unhelpful. But it's less informative or user-friendly, so I recommend sticking with Nperf alone, a standardised approach.
- Examples of editing rules of thumb might be: be inclined to include coverage even for poor outline pages, but if it's near empty just skip it. A single entry will suffice for most metropolises. If existing content is dated 2021 or later, leave it be, but be inclined to delete anything undated. Thus for Rovaniemi I'd certainly delete the hotel lobby, they must be fed up with freeloader non-residents, but I'd look to see if the library was still available, since I guess you could print. "Wifi is widely available in public places" covers the rest of it.
- Not to assume your sign-up, but perhaps the rest of you are sufficiently curious to give this a go, then we take stock? Then within France, Hauts-de-France has 18 cities, Lower Normandy 19, Upper Normandy 7, and Brittany 30. Try these? If France is completed I'd propose somewhere in another continent then another, to avoid bias. Grahamsands (talk) 17:29, 27 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
- 3.5 days later, no edits have been made in the suggested regions, so this project looks stalled. If folk find the task tedious, daunting or low-value it would help to state those reasons. I only proposed it as a quick win; timing myself over Bouches-du-Rhone averaged 3 min per page, half of which was squinting at a sea of purple and brown on the Nperf map to find the villages. As it stands, WV has a credibility problem: visitors in Normandy are being directed to the post office and those in Rovaniemi to try to cadge a connection at the Santa Claus Hotel. Grahamsands (talk) 10:48, 31 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Adding Understand section headings
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When wandering from article to article looking for interesting things to add to WV:Discover, I every now and then see that the Understand heading is missing from destination articles. The heading is part of the standard template for all types of destination articles (except city districts), and most other types of articles too, so these articles should have it.
Interestingly, the destination articles where the heading is missing often have a quite long lead section, which makes it look like there was once an Understand section heading but someone removed it and merged the content with the text in the lead section. Ypsilon (talk) 09:53, 27 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
- Seems probable. I was in the belief that the heading was indeed missing for small cities, although I myself has tried to include it when creating articles (and it seems it was in the template already when I joined). –LPfi (talk) 10:32, 27 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
- Understand was added to the small city template in 2009, so any cities created in the first 5 years only have it if it was added manually. It has been part of the big city template since 2004. AlasdairW (talk) 22:12, 27 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
- Another interesting thing; when you notice one article without the Understand heading, go up one level to the bottom-level region and then check out all the other articles listed in the region and you may find some more articles that need this fix. I just did it for cities in Mississippi Delta and Go next places in Odense, and found a great deal of them. --Ypsilon (talk) 15:19, 27 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
- From memory, this was tackled about 4 years ago, or rather there were three intertwined initiatives:
- - that each city page should state its population, rather than use vague terms like "large".
- - that any city over 10,000 population, and any higher-level region, should have an Understand section. This became embedded in the page templates.
- - that any city of usable or better quality should have a lede of more than 100 characters, and is the preferred place to state the population.
- Any city with a bulky lede but no Understand probably predates these initiatives; the obvious fix is to divide the content. Grahamsands (talk) 17:43, 27 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Template:Wy/si/Ping your proposal sounds like a worthy project, but I should caution you that my attempt to revive collaborations has not had much success. Since posting the above collaboration here, I don't know if anyone other than me has worked on this articles. Consequently, I don't have any problem replacing it with a new collaboration. Group projects always seem like a good idea, but my experience with here and in Wikipedia is that there is usually more interest in defining the project and determining how to do the work than in doing the work. I don't want to discourage you from this, but prepare you for the likelihood that if you want something done, you should plan to do it yourself. Ground Zero (talk) 11:59, 30 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
- I reached that conclusion long ago for life in general as well as for WV, but wanted to support the revival of CoTM. I can think of other proposals but conceive no reason why they wouldn't likewise flop. Yet WV has in the past run collaborations, expeditions and the like, so I don't know if any change in the contributor base is working against this. Grahamsands (talk) 21:16, 30 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
- It's probably worth swapping the Featured Collaboration out with your proposal as an experiment to see if a different project will attract more interest. If it doesn't, then I think we should shut down this page. If it does, then it's so much the better for Wikivoyage. Let's hope it works. Ground Zero (talk) 22:29, 30 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
- I usually do take a look at this kind of collaborations and check a number of articles for the weaknesses suggested. In that way the projects aren't totally wasted on me. I suppose I should tell about such efforts to encourage those who suggest the projects. However, I usually don't make them my focus for any longer time, just pick some low-hanging fruit from the closest trees. –LPfi (talk) 06:42, 31 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
To update the featured collaboration you should:
- Remove the current collaboration from this page and move the next one up.
- Move the current collaboration to the Previous collaborations page.
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