Creating a CW checklist of prep tasks that apply to any international trip, regardless of destination

Question

EDIT: I have edited the question severely so that it better conforms to the format of a more successful CW question: What problems and solutions arise with data access when travelling through multiple countries?

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When I travel, I find that there are certain things I always have to do, regardless of where I'm going.

Some examples include notifying my credit/debit card issuers of my travel plans, learning specific phrases in the local language, writing down key pieces of information in my notebook, etc.

When I talk to other travelers, I find that many of these same things apply when they travel as well — regardless of where they are traveling, they run through these same "preflight" preparations as well.

In an effort to come up with the bare-minimum list that is as widely-applicable as possible, I posted What tasks would I need to complete to prepare for any international trip, regardless of destination?... which was closed almost immediately (and fairly, let's be honest) as being too broad.

I think this would be an excellent community wiki question — it's something that would make a great reference for travelers across the board, and quite frankly it's hard to find a list like this on the internet (the closest that I've found is on wikihow.com, but even this is mostly tips rather than checklist items).

How can I improve the question to make it relevant/answerable for this community?

Also, if you agree that this would make a valuable addition to the Travel.SE community, would you visit the question and submit a reopen vote, please? (:

Answer 1

I think we can give this a chance. It's not what we usually do on Travel-SE, but I can see this being quite helpful to myself and others. I'll reopen and wikify the question, and see how it goes from there. From experience, it's usually the case that the OP is the greatest contributor to such questions, so it's better to get something substantial started yourself and rely on others to provide information afterwards. The other way around usually doesn't work all that well. It's a psychological thing, and I've seen plenty of examples on SE sites.

If the question doesn't get good traction in the first few hours or days, it's going to be difficult to get it going afterwards. I'd suggest you get started as soon as you can.

Answer 2

For starters, I think we need to make it clear on the question that there should be only one answer. I can't find it right now, if anyone else can help, but there was an epic one on mobile providers, I believe, with one giant answer.

Perhaps starting your own answer with some fleshed out titles, like wikivoyage does, and then we can get people filling in the gaps?

edit found it - What problems and solutions arise with data access when travelling through multiple countries? - although he's done it as multiple answers, which is really not the way to go.