Suggested mandate of Wikivoyage links

Question

Since the community from Wikitravel has mostly migrated to Wikivoyage, I'm suggesting we mandate that if you see a new answer with a Wikitravel link in it, we alter it to the equivalent Wikivoyage link.

Thoughts, comments?

@Gilles Wikitravel vs Wikivoyage - what's going to be the difference? — gerrit, Feb 13, 2013 at 22:20
What evidence do we have that it has mostly migrated, really? — gerrit, Feb 13, 2013 at 22:25
@gerrit there are quite a few news articles around if you look. They took the entire database. Sure some new stuff will be on wikitravel from casual editors, but for the most part, they've moved across to work on wikivoyage. It's also been taken under the wikimedia foundation, which lends it more credence. — Mark Mayo, Feb 13, 2013 at 22:27
@MarkMayo I've seen the news articles about the administrators deciding to move, and that they took the database. I think currently, wikitravel is still much more known that wikivoyage, google points more to wikitravel, etc. What do real edit statistics for the past month look like, for example? — gerrit, Feb 13, 2013 at 22:33
@Gilles More info here meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikivoyage/Why — gerrit, Feb 13, 2013 at 22:37
Of course Google points more to Wikitravel, there's so many links around the net that have built up over years that point to it. But it will decrease as Wikivoyage builds up more content, I'm sure. — Mark Mayo, Feb 13, 2013 at 22:43
The question is worth asking hence my upvote, but I feel that doing this would be too political really. I'm in favour of supporting Wikivoyage explicitly and in more ways, but this sounds more like proselytising - if people want to link to Wikitravel that's their business. — hippietrail, Feb 14, 2013 at 3:08

gerrit · Accepted Answer · 2013-02-13 22:57:39Z

5

I sincerely hope and expect that Wikivoyage will soon take over Wikitravel as the dominant user-contributed travel guide.

However, I think that for deciding whether to link to Wikivoyage or Wikitravel, we should decide on a per-case basis what article is better. Now I would suspect that in most cases, the Wikivoyage article is going to be better, in particular since the free license guarantees that any good material added to Wikitravel can be copied over to Wikivoyage. But before mandating this, I propose we collect some evidence that Wikivoyage really is better for the end user.

answered Feb 13, 2013 at 22:57

gerrit

54.9k12 silver badges22 bronze badges

Wikitravel stats and Wikivoyage stats - if you'd like to peruse. Already more articles on Wikivoyage.
– Mark Mayo
Feb 13, 2013 at 23:00
2

Ok. I don't really oppose, am just a tad cautious because I suspect many of the active users on Travel SE are also among those moderators who migrated from Wikitravel to Wikivoyage. But I do acknowledge that there is neutral evidence as well, and I just realised that a lot of new user influx will probably come via Wikipedia.
– gerrit
Feb 13, 2013 at 23:06
For sure, good to be cautious!
– Mark Mayo
Feb 13, 2013 at 23:22

Add a comment |

score 4 · Accepted Answer · 2013-02-15 07:42:30Z

4

Systematically deleting links to one site and replacing them by links to another site would be a very tough measure.

If I post an answer, and I add a link to a site A, then I probably have a good reason to do so. I believe that this link conveys useful and relevant information. I would be irritated if this link was deleted and replaced by a link to a site B, just because of some "private" or "ideological" reasons.

If some users think that a link is not appropriate they can either add a comment and post an alternative, or downvote they answer if they don't agree. And in really severe cases the answer could be flagged for moderation.

edited Feb 15, 2013 at 7:42

answered Feb 14, 2013 at 21:25

user3470

I do agree, but it's also worth reminding ourselves that all Q's and A's are wikis open for all to edit to keep up-to-date and relevant and are not "owned" by their OP's. So if at some point the WikiTravel pages rot and the WikiVoyage pages soar then it could be a good thing... but yeah not at this point even though I dislike WikiTravel (-;
– hippietrail
Feb 17, 2013 at 10:25
1

Agreed. If pages rot, replace them by better references. But only then.
– user3470
Feb 17, 2013 at 18:23

Add a comment |

Community · Accepted Answer · 2017-04-13 12:52:10Z

1

Seems like a political move. I cannot support this.

And certain circumstances, it would not even make sense, like this user has already done here:

https://travel.stackexchange.com/posts/7995/revisions

It makes it sound like the edit in question was ripped off from Wikivoyage, whereas it was actually ripped off from Wikitravel, where the original edit was made (apparently by the same user?). There wasn't even an english language version of wikivoyage when that edit was made! Just confusing as all heckfire.

I say no.

edited Apr 13, 2017 at 12:52

CommunityBot

1

answered Mar 14, 2013 at 22:12

Gunter

412 bronze badges

1

Agreed. It should be the prerogative of the OP to choose whether to link to WT or WV, and they could change it themselves if they so choose. Exceptions should be made when the content from WT somehow gets missing (does that actually happens?) and only WV has relevant (at the time of edit) information.
– mindcorrosive
Mar 14, 2013 at 23:08

Add a comment |

nic · Accepted Answer · 2013-05-29 03:56:40Z

WikiVoyage has far less spam.
As an "open"-oriented community, I think we should support consensus-based WikiVoyage, and not dictatorial WikiTravel which sues editors.
Case-by-case would be unnecessary overhead. Please show me ANY article that is better on WikiTravel than on WikiVoyage.
WikiVoyage already has more edits, of better quality, and this trend won't reverse, so we are bound to migrate them all eventually.
Advertising ruins the reading experience at WikiTravel, to the point that linking to it smells like touting. Let's send our readers to ad-free WikiVoyage, they will have a better time and trust our QA site more.

For these reasons, we should migrate links from WikiTravel to WikiVoyage.

3 revs · Accepted Answer · 2017-04-13 12:52:13Z

^{Please keep this answer's score at -1 so that new answers are not eclipsed when sorting by votes.}

In order to make it easier to compare the quality of Wikitravel and Wikivoyage, and to edit links if warranted, here is a list of all the links to Wikitravel on the main site as of 2012-02-10. (I hope I got it right, I was surprised to find only 209 posts including tag wikis.)

^{Obtained through SEDE and Python}

A–L (continued in M–Z)

4 revs, 2 users 67% · Accepted Answer · 2017-04-13 12:52:10Z

^{Please keep this answer's score at -2 so that it's displayed below the first part.}

M–Z (continued from A-L)

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