[Wikimedia-l] Wiki Travel Guide

[Andrew Gray]

On 10 April 2012 12:59, Thomas Morton <morton.thomas at googlemail.com> wrote:

> I use it a lot and many of the pages ramble excessively and complain about
> issues without any form of sourcing. In fact most articles lack even the
> most basic sourcing; if they came onboard I don't think that state of
> affairs could continue, and I'd be cautious of importing content without
> any form of review.
>
> The other issue is one of advertising and promotion, which is rather
> delicate. Many pages have recommendations for accommodation, restaurants,
> bars, etc. that read either as promotional, or very subjective. They tend
> to be quite out of date too.

To be fair, we could make exactly the same criticisms were we debating
about whether or not WMF should adopt a certain high-profile
encyclopedia project - lots of rambling, badly written, unsourced
pages; lots of blatantly promotional (or excessively negative)
content... ;-)

I really don't see any real problem with WMF running a "travel guide"
site; it fills a niche not adequately covered by our other projects,
and while it does involve a different style of writing, it's basically
still documenting the world, as factually as possible, for the benefit
of readers. The main reason we haven't ever started one ourselves, I
suspect, is just that Wikitravel has been there all along!

-- 
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk