[Wikimedia-l] Wiki Travel Guide

[Yaroslav M. Blanter]

On Wed, 11 Apr 2012 13:30:45 -0600, James Heilman wrote:
> @Yaroslov
> 1) A merger within a WMF project  is supported by admins from both WT 
> and
> WV. WV is going to be meeting on the possibility of merging June 9th 
> in
> Germany
>
> 2) Wikimedia's mission is to provide freely available educational 
> content I
> am not sure which "WMF principles" you do not see such a site as 
> being
> compatible with? You mention that a good travel guide selects 
> information.
> A good encyclopedia sections information as well. I am not sure why 
> we
> would encounter any differences? We deal with spam here on Wikipedia 
> all
> the time.
>
> 2a) Not catering to a specific audience is one of the criticisms of
> Wikipedia. The proposed travel guide would write for a general 
> audience.
> Wikipedia has written for a general audience with some success.

I actually do not have an opinion on whether Wikitravel should or 
should not be accepted as a WMF prtoject (I am currently leaning to the 
opinion it should). I just pointed out obvious problems. I maintain a 
travel guide website since 2004, and I know the issues are not so easy 
to resolve, especially the audience. This is why they have so many 
printed guidebook series IRL, and this is why I only used two or three 
of these series in my life (and other travelers use something else and 
under no circumstances would use what I use). These issues should be 
analyzed very carefully before the actual decision has been made.

Cheers
Yaroslav