[Wikimedia-l] Travel Guide Wiki

[Mark Jaroski]

Hi all,

I'm a long-standing editor/admin/etc. at Wikitravel, though I've been less
active in recent years, mainly due to work and family.

I have, however, been participating in discussions among Wikitravel admins
about our dissatisfaction with our current hosting provider, and what we're
going to do about it. As you know, one of the ideas which has been floated
is to attempt to join WMF. One of the parties to that discussion started a
new Wiki proposal on Meta, and a discussion here.

I'm glad to have the chance to jump in before the discussion gets very far
along. There are some important points to be made:

First, NPOV would probably be a deal-breaker. The travel wiki community
(usually working at Wikitravel) have long used Traveller's Point of View.
This point of view is not neutral at all, but favours the traveller.
Hoteliers, restaurateurs, etc. have different points of view, but for us
it's the traveller's that counts. We're under the impression that there are
other Wikimedia foundation projects which don't use NPOV, and so those of
us favouring approaching WMF have been able to argue that we wouldn't be
forced to use it. If that's wrong then we should probably just give up this
line of exploration and go find another solution.

I personally don't think that a creative interpretation of the concept of
NPOV to make it look like TPOV would do, but of course I'm just one voice.
Still there are others who feel even more strongly on this point.

Second, this is a fairly old and established community, with its own
habits, mores, etc. As with other communities it makes some sense perhaps
to learn about ours a bit before visiting. I think some of our fellow
travellers are a bit concerned about being swamped by the shear size of the
communities involved in other WMF projects (Wikipedia) and rightly so. They
worry that the travel guide community runs a chance of quickly losing
editorial control, and that this will lead not to the desired
consolidation, but rather more unhealthy splintering in the collaborative
travel guide space.

All in all I think there's a pretty good chance that a WMF travel guide
Wiki would stand a good chance at attracting a large part of the community
under the right circumstances. But - it's important to recognize that that
community already exists if one wants to attract it.

thanks!

-mark