Talk:Wikitravel

Press coverage

I removed this line: Press coverage of the project includes a mention in the North Adams Tanscript as part of an article about wiki projects [1]. Press coverage of Wikitravel includes the New York Times, Times of London, CBC and BBC, and other media. I don't think a comprehensive list of press clippings is necessary for an encyclopedia article, and there's no point in having just one. --ESP 23:15, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Gangtok

I don't know how Wikitravel works, but I would like to add Gangtok to whatever list there is, if any. Nichalp 19:57, Feb 2, 2005 (UTC)

It's a separate website, so you'll have to edit the corresponding article there. jdb ❋ 21:07, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Wikitravel is indeed a separate Wiki site. It uses the same MediaWiki software as Wikipedia, so from a technical pov it looks and behaves very like Wikipedia. However it is not one of the Wikipedia Foundation family of wikis, and does have its own conventions, manual of style and (compared to Wikipedia) standardised article format. Your best bet is to go to wikitravel.org and take a look at a few featured articles from their main page, or browse their manual of style (via the help link). The people there are friendly and happy to get contributions on new places, so give it a go. -- Chris j wood 12:27, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Down

Wikitravel appears to be down right now. --Kenyon 15:43, May 14, 2005 (UTC)

No, it's just the redirect from the / page which is broken. Try [2]. Jpatokal 02:48, 15 May 2005 (UTC)

Now it is down. I'm getting blank pages all the time.--87.162.17.164 21:24, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

Wikitravel posing?

Is anyone else concerned about the appearance of Wikitravel-related templates on Wikipedia that try to make it look like Wikitravel is a Wikimedia sister project? See e.g. Template:Move to Wikitravel (currently up for deletion) and Template:Wikitravel. Wikitravel's content is essentially the same as the big wikis, but it's not under a compatible license, and these templates seem like a way to encourage people to break the law. I have no problem with Template:Imdb-style templates that go in the "External links" section, for example as in article Akihabara. Should the sister-project-alikes be replaced with imdb-style templates? Where do I find the people who care about these templates? --Quuxplusone 21:37, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

This has been discussed before and the Wikimedia-looklike template has been reverted back into a one-liner before... and I just reverted it again. Jpatokal 13:42, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)

They've also got one at template:wikitravelpar, and right now that's making a box that looks exactly like the ones for commons, 'books, ect. I also think the instructions on how to link to wikitravel should be removed from the article, as that's not encyclopedic, but is simply fishing for link spam. Gentgeen 16:40, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I think the current situation is fine — imdb-style templates. But usage instructions for the templates definitely belong near this page, if not on it; I've added them below. Please update the instructions as necessary. --Quuxplusone 22:00, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Actually, never mind. How's this? I copied it from Talk:IMDb. --Quuxplusone 22:05, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I think this is a trick to lure people into working for a commercial project without being fully aware of it. This kind of business is not a good style and should be clearly denounced as often and as clearly as possible.--Klauspeter 13:52, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

A trick? The people who take the most care to avoid confusion -- by ensuring that a Wikimedia lookalike template is not used -- are people who are contributors to Wikitravel. I'm unclear where this whole "wikitravel is an evil commercial site" nonsense has come from, but it appears you may have misunderstood the concept of a free license whether it be the GFDL or the CC-bySA. The site is hosted by a commercial company just like Wikia hosts various wikis. It is not demonstrably more or less evil than Wikia. Do you complain about Wikia too? -- Cjensen 09:19, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

CC-by-sa < > GFDL

"Wikitravel is not a Wikimedia project, and unlike Wikipedia it uses the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike license rather than the GNU Free Documentation License. ... because of the incompatible licenses content can not be easily copied between them."

So, the obvious newbie question: Just what is the difference between these?

Both licenses are so-called copyleft licenses, meaning that modified versions of works available under the license must also be under the license. The idea being that you can't take a Wikipedia page, add a few images, and publish that modified version without a transparent copy and license notification and so forth. In short, copyleft means that the author's work will always be Free.

The problem is that neither license "knows" about the other, so you can't take parts of a cc-by-sa work and parts of a GFDL work and mash them up into a new work.

The differences between the two licenses are mostly cosmetic; Wikitravel uses the cc-by-sa because the GFDL is so cumbersome and unwieldy (see wikitravel:Wikitravel:Why Wikitravel isn't GFDL for details). Dual licensing can make some of the discrepancies easier to deal with. --ESP 20:28, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

Also, it seems slightly odd to say "content can not be easily copied between them." As far as I can tell, it would be extremely simple to copy content between them. It's just that doing so creates licensing problems. -- Writtenonsand 21:23, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

How about "it's difficult to copy content between them legally"? --ESP 20:28, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

Moving content to Wikitravel

Is there an existing policy regarding moving travel guide-type (but nonencyclopedic) content that has been entered into Wikipedia to Wikitravel, given that it is not actually a Wikimedia undertaking? --DMG413 03:03, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

• The main issue is the license: GFDL (Wikipedia) is not compatible with CC by-sa (Wikitravel). In practice this means that you can only copy your own contributions. Jpatokal 09:21, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

• • I fail to understand why it would be necessary to do more than simply add a citation such as, "This Wikitravel article is based on material from an English Wikipedia article", or some such. I mean, they're both free licenses, right? What's the issue so long as there's a citation given? --Elipongo 18:57, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

power like

I rolled back the addition of the words "power like" between "it uses" and "the Creative Commons ... License". It didn't make sense to me. --ESP 00:31, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

Milestones

After a bit of confusion, I added back in the September milestone. I'm not particular about it, just didn't want to lose the information. --ESP 16:10, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

Commercial Site

Wikitravel is a purely commercial site made by a company selling cars and real estate. Wikitravel is intended to be the basis for a commercial printed travel guide. Links to Wikitravel should not be inserted into Wikipedia. -- Unsigned comment by User:Doris060602 at 10:45, 19 November 2006.

I hate to say this, but that just is not true. For most of its life, Wikitravel has been an contributor led open wiki, very much modelled on Wikipedia and sharing many contributors. Indeed I first came to Wikipedia because I was a contributor on Wikitravel, and a lot of the discussion on talk pages there was comparing and contrasting the two sites, so I visited to see.

As it happened, I came to prefer WP and I havn't contributed much to Wikitravel in the last couple of years, but I've just visited it and it doesn't seem much different to what it was, my account is still active and it still seems to soliciting open contributions, which are still published under the CC licence. I am aware that there has been some commercial tie-up, but as yet I can see no sign of adverts for cars, real estate or anything else on the site.

I could say: Oh, and wasn't Wikipedia originally made by a company selling soft porn on the web?. Perhaps we shouldn't insert links to Wikipedia either ;-). See how easy it is to throw unjustified allegations, especially if they have just a grain of truth in them.

I suggest that we judge whether a site is commercial or not based on its actual actions, and not rumours and urban myths. If Wikitravel does eventually become an advertising site, then by all means we should discuss dropping our links. But there is no sign of that happening yet, and so no reason not to link to it. -- Chris j wood 17:55, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

Let me cite Wikipedia: 'Although it uses a wiki model to create the guide and to deliver it on the World Wide Web, the project is also aimed towards production of printed guides.' And, please, read the Wikipedia artical on Wikitravel and InternetBrands, which indeed IS a car seller, real estate company, and travel agency. Thus the commercial purpose is very clear and open to the community. The company seems to be collecting information for a commercial travel book for free. Everyone has to decide whether he is interested in cooperating. Of course, there is nothing unethical in this. BUT: As a commercial site, there should definitely be no links from Wikipedia. There must be some stakeholders of the company Internet Brands within the Wikipedia community, otherwise this would never have been a controversial subject. --Klauspeter 09:44, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

The guides for various cities and communities at WikiTravel use the Creative Commons license, so they can be printed out and used by anyone—individual travelers, travel agents, visitors bureaus, etc. Because of the CC license, the information can even be copied and used on other websites that follow the CC license.

Then take a look at the WikiTravel pages themselves. On their best pages, they are better written, more informative, and less commercial than practically any other travel website on the internet. I see no reason why there should be links to well-written WikiTravel articles.

If you want to propose a Wikipedia policy that there shouldn't be any links to WikiTravel articles, I suggest that you start on the talk page for Wikipedia's External links policy page. ^BlankVerse 12:03, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Sorry that you did not disclose you name. Concerning Wikitravel, have a look at the "Partnersite" [World66]. The travel agency running both sites earns money by attracting advertisement. That is ok., as long as everyone who contributes agrees with it and knows it. But Wikitravel's outlook is like Wikipedia, suggesting that is noncommercial. This is not ok., because it gets people working for a commercial project without explicite knowledge. No good style. Again: Do not link to Wikitravel! Beware the beginnings.--Klauspeter 13:45, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

You are aware that Wikipedia also links to IMDB, which is a commercial site, and many others? And unlike Wikitravel, you cannot copy stuff from IMDB to your own website as, for example, http://www.insidertourist.com has done. Check out the external links policy as BlankVerse suggests to understand when and where Wikipedia links to other sites. Secondly, he did disclose his name. Click on the funny-colored "BlankVerse" thingie there and it will take you to his user page where you can learn all about this prolific Wikipedia contributor. -- Cjensen 09:26, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

Hi Klauspeter. I'm afraid your objections are based on a misunderstanding of both Wikitravel and Wikipedia. Dealing with what I see as your principal objections seperately:

• The project is also aimed towards production of printed guides. Absolutely true; always has been, ever since the start of the project and long before the involvement of Internet Brands. The reason is quite obvious and nothing to do with your conspiracy theories. Travel guides need to be consulted by people on the move, and printed guides are a good way of doing this (along with versions for PDAs etc). WP has no policy against the printed word that I'm aware of, and there is (or was) a project for a printed copy of WP.

• Internet Brands are collecting information for a printed book on the free. They may well be, but they certainly don't need to own Wikitravel to do that; the CC license allows anybody to do that. And so does the GFDL that WP uses. If you are concerned about people collecting information for free and then gaining commercial benefit from it, then you should seriously consider whether you want to contribute to WP.

• Wikitravel is an advertising site. If this was true, it would certainly be a disincentive to linking, although there is no absolute WP policy against this. But if there are adverts on Wikitravel, they are very well hidden. It certainly is not a site whose principal purpose is advertising.

• Wikitravel is a commercial site. It does appear that the brand and the infrastructure is now commercially owned (although the CC licence should ensure that the content remains owned by the contributors, just as the GFDL does for WP). So what. In its early years, WP was hosted on servers owned by a commercial company called Bomis, which mostly operated in the internet soft porn business. I suggest you read the section in WP:NOT that explains that WP is not an experiment in radical politics. WP does not care about the ownership of the web sites it links to; just the content.

--chris_j_wood 12:15, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Wikitravel's plan is to become advertiser-supported, but they apparently haven't done so yet - so it's hard to call them a "spam" web-site. However any trademarks or other promotional content they include in their articles will be subject to the copyleft provisions of their Creative Commons license! Therefore any potential trademarks or promotional content will be freely available to anyone to use anyway they want - like to run a spoofing web-site for example. However those uses will still be copyrighted under a Creative Commons copyright license.--Chrisbak 01:08, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

With all due respect, you are rather confused. Copyright and trademark are not the same thing. I can write the words "Microsoft sucks" and grant you the right to use them under the GFDL, but the word Microsoft™ is still a trademark of the Microsoft Corporation, and their lawyers will strike me down with great anger if, say, I try to sell my own software called "Microsoft Doors" — no matter how copylefted the software is. Jpatokal 03:22, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Reliability of Wikitravel

Last time I was using Wikitravel, there were no reliable sources for important matters such as health and safety in pretty much all of the articles. Worth adding this to the Wikipedia article on the site?--HisSpaceResearch 19:22, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

I guess I don't understand the question. Were you expecting Wikipedia-style references in a travel guide? Or just the sections containing important safety tips? Do you think the average reader of Lonely Planet expects its safety tips to be referenced? I'm not being sarcastic or anything, just trying to understand your expectations. I agree that if a Wikitravel is deviating from what a reader might expect, then I word or two about that might reasonably be profitably added to this article. -- Cjensen 00:01, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

No, I don't expect the average user of a paper travel guide to want references, but that's different as not anyone can edit a travel book, whereas there is generally no warranting of the reliability of what is said on Wikitravel at all, it being a wiki.--h i s s p a c e r e s e a r c h 03:12, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Do you really have a travel guide with a warranty? Or do you mean that as some kind of figure of speech? If it does have one, what does the warrantee promise you if the book contains errors?

Michellin just introduced a guide to Northern California restaurants which included some information which was already five years out of date. Part of the motivation of the Wikitravel founders was that while they were traveling, they went to an establishment listed in their guidebook which did not in fact exist. Besides such obvious errors in actual guides, consider that guides are filled with facts, and there are just too many facts to realistically check with any frequency. A wiki can, in theory, allow a traveller who discovers an error to immediately correct it for the next traveler. -- Cjensen 05:15, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Well as far as I know. WT is a poorly annoted/maintained webpage. I have spoted many incorrect entries on this webpage and I certainly would not consider to plan a holiday based on the information derived from this webpage. Plus Wikitravel is sailing under the "Wiki" umbrella, but is wholly owned by Internet Brands(a company doing business with advertising. Guess wht the are doing here Cherity work???). So don't expect to get some indepentdent advice on this webpage. I certainly prefer a professional webpage that tells the truce about its interests (selling trips/hotel etc), but not a slimmy webpage based on poorly annotated information. -- Wikitravel makes broad claims on the number of articels, but obviously many, or should I say the majority of articels are just skeletons without any useful or not much usefull information. I will provide some links for my claims in the near future (tomorrow, when I have time to insert some links). -- 88.105.0.7 17:23, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

Actually, the content of Wikitravel (which is all that really matters) is not owned by Internet Brands, any more than the content of Wikipedia is owned by the Wikimedia foundation, Bomis or Jimbo Wales. In both cases any individual piece of content is owned by the actual contributor of that bit of content, but licensed for use by others. Also it is considered bad etiquette not to sign comments on talk pages. You can do this by adding -- ~~~~ at the end of your comment. -- Chris j wood 17:45, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

Just to be clear, if when 88.105.0.7 writes above 'I will provide some links for my claims', these will need to be links to reputable sources critiquing Wikitravel. Providing your own links direct to what you perceive as inaccuracies in Wikitravel would count as 'original research' and hence be disallowed as Wikipedia content. -- Chris j wood 09:41, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

German Wikitravel

Concerning this: DerFussi is still an admin, but not an active contributor. Although he contributes to an other project, he still has an eye on the German Wikitravel to limit the damage and check his own articles. The German Wikitravel does suffer from loss of content and vandalism. -- DerFussi 10:19, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Today an user of the English Wikitravel asked me to resign as an admin of German Wikitravel. If I do so Jpatokal should reconsider his reverting of the article. But that is not just the point. I do not want to be used for your discussion. -- DerFussi 15:25, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Victor12 suggested I ask you to consider my article on PERU. It's a travel piece but with a much broader scope and mandate. It takes issue with the guide books that counsel against renting a car in Peru. My position is that if millions of Peruvians can successfully negotiate their passage from point A to point B everyday, why can't the tourist be among those millions. My article dispells the myths and fears re driving in Peru. Here's the link and Victor's suggestion:: http://www.artsandopinion.com/2006_v5_n2/lewis-21.htm Thanking you in advance for the consideration.

   You do realize Wikipedia is not a travel guide, right? You should try Wikitravel instead. --Victor12 (talk) 17:46, 13 January 2008 (UTC) 

Artsandopinion (talk) 17:06, 14 January 2008 (UTC)Robert Lewis

Wikitravel Press

I added a line about Wikitravel Press, a new company started by the wikitravel founders to sell printed guides using material from wikitravel. At first blush, it appears that the guidebooks are essentially a print run of material that is on the wikitravel site indicating that the proceeds are probably ploughed back into maintaining the site. Can someone confirm this and add appropriate text to the article. Thanks! --RegentsPark (talk) 19:14, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Yes, that's basically correct: to be a little more precise, the Press and the site are legally separate entities, but the Press has a licensing agreement and that's how the proceeds get ploughed back. I've tweaked your additions a bit and noted that the first books were officially launched today. WP:COI disclaimer: I'm one of the founders of the Press. Jpatokal (talk) 04:30, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

It's offline

What's going on there? Maikel (talk) 19:50, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Huh? Working fine for me. Jpatokal (talk) 06:50, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

OK, it's back online for me as well. On May 1 it was offline for several hours. Maikel (talk) 16:49, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

Wikitravel Blocking Other External Links?

Some time ago, I had placed a link to my website, into one of the external links listings for a Chinese province, (which my website is based on). It stayed there for quite some time, along with several other useful websites. I had switched my website from a .net to .com listing recently, so I went in to go and update my link, and noticed that it was missing, replaced with the wikitravel website. Well, I added my link to the list again, only to have it disappear in a few days time. No matter how many times I've added my site in, it's been taken off, and 90% of the time, the culprit has been wikitravel, and in particular, a user named Krypt0fish. I decided to look into this a little more, and took a look at the list of Chinese Provinces on wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Province_%28China%29

Clicking on the links to the individual provinces, you will see that nearly all of them have had their external links erased, so there is only a link to the government website, and to wikitravel.

I find this behavior to be somewhat unethical and dishonest on the part of the wikitravel people. I don't see why they should have some sort of monopoly on the external links listings, (especially given the fact that most of their China-related articles are seriously lacking in detail). I've only really researched this for China, but I wouldn't be surprised if they did it elsewhere, as well. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 117.9.53.49 (talk) 05:59, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

This has nothing to do with Wikitravel and everything to do with Wikipedia policy: see Wikipedia:External links. I also don't see why you're blaming "Wikitravel" for removing your link, as there isn't even a user called "Krypt0fish" on Wikitravel. Jpatokal (talk) 06:47, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

For-profit

I've reverted the addition of "for-profit" because it's misleading... the opening paragraph already stated the whole truth and nothing but the truth... Wikitravel is "a Web-based project "to create a free, complete, up-to-date, and reliable worldwide travel guide." (it's owned by thousands of users who are doing nothing but that). The servers and trademark were sold to Internet Brands, who beyond that, have no real part in Wikitravel. They have introduced ads to the site, which at some point in the distant future may see some income. That covers it. Calling it a "for-profit" site paints a different picture, one that doesn't need painting since all of the actual facts are already covered in the opening paragraph as it read before – cacahuate ^talk 16:59, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

No worries. More or less what I thought. --Regents Park (paddle with the ducks) 22:06, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

No. The more signficant facts first. The most significant fact is that wikitravel is a for profit business. The original self serving paragraph does not conveny the essential fact that this is a for profit business. Plain and simple.

No, that's factually incorrect. Wikitravel is not a for-profit business, because legally speaking, there is no entity called "Wikitravel". Like the article clearly states, the domain, servers and trademark are owned by Internet Brands (which is a for-profit corporation), but the important part, the content, is freely licensed and can be used by anybody without paying a cent.

The History section also already explains that Wikitravel is not a Wikimedia project. Jpatokal (talk) 05:09, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps the wikimedia part can be pulled out of the history section and put into the Description section. Also, perhaps the different stakeholders can be better delineated somehow. I don't agree with jpatokal that because the content is free the undertaking cannot be characterized as for-profit (many a business model gives away content or allows freely licensed user-generated content with profits as their main focus - google, facebook, myspace come to mind) and if IB decides to shut down wikitravel, they can, so they are the owners and most likely want to make money off their investment. However, it is better if the for-profit nature is implicit in the description rather than explicitly stated (WP:POINT??). For example, a simple statement of the form "Wikitravel is owned by Internet Brands, a public corporation, ...." would make the underlying profit motive clear to the meanest intelligence.--Regents Park (paddle with the ducks) 17:03, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

I wish Jpatokal would quit playing games. That Wikitravel is for profit is significant fact. The for profit motive needs to be stated explicitly. The content is used for profit, by wikitravel, and thus it is a for profit entity. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.204.175.236 (talk) 18:31, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Once again: Wikitravel is a website, not a legal entity. The term "for-profit" implies (and redirects to) a business, but Wikitravel is not a registered corporation and it does not file profit and loss statements.

Now, Wikitravel is owned by a for-profit corporation, Internet Brands. This ownership is already stated in the introductory paragraph, in the infobox, and once more in the History section, but if it's still not clear enough, then I'm open to clarifying it.

Strictly speaking, the license of the content is irrelevant to all this, but I do think it should be emphasized because it's unusual: lots of "Web 2.0" companies like Facebook, Google, Myspace etc take user contributions, but very few license them as Free content (free as in speech that is, not beer). Jpatokal (talk) 19:02, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

It is obvious that Facebook, Google and Myspace are for profit. It is NOT clear (and it should be) that Wikitravel.org is part of a for profit business. It's that simple. If you want to restate that this is not a for profit business, but a web site that is run for the sake of making a profit, I would be fine with that - so long is this is clear an prominent. Frankly, with the wiki part of the name, the .org domain suffix, and just about everything else said this wikitravel article gives the WRONG impression. -- Jeff Trent —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.204.175.236 (talk) 22:26, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

I do think it should be emphasized because it's unusual Ah, if only we were all as special as our parents imagine us to be! As far as I'm concerned, IB owns wikitravel and IB is a public corporation and as long as that is clear in the text nothing more needs to be said. Perhaps the .org extension is a bit out of tune with the goals of the owners but I don't see how that concerns us in wikipedia.--Regents Park (paddle with the ducks) 02:25, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

No, the license really is pretty significant. If I type something into a service owned by Google, Facebook, MySpace, whatever, it becomes their property and they can sue me if I, or somebody else, tries to use it elsewhere. But anything entered into Wikitravel does not become the property of IB, which is why there are hundreds of sites out there reusing WT content quite legally, and why WT can (and has been) forked if people aren't happy with IB. Jpatokal (talk) 05:02, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

There isn't really anything to clarify... what's clear to me is that Jefftrent has the wrong idea of what's going on at WT and isn't all that familiar with what it's about. First and foremost (and by a loooooong mile at that) Wikitravel is a website with thousands of users committed to making a free travel guide. THAT'S IT. It was once owned by the founders who pretty much had those goals in mind, but sadly decided to sell it to IB and become their employees, to help relieve the burden of operating costs. IB have introduced ads to the site, after much discussion with the community, and after a long while may start to see a bit of profit through Google AdSense. But calling Wikitravel a "for-profit" endeavor is GROSSLY misleading. It should also be noted here that Jefftrent has now resorted to trying to add that line to Wikitravel's main page – cacahuate ^talk 04:49, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

(outdent) I agree that there isn't much to clarify. I would move the wikimedia foundation sentence to the description though (it isn't history) and make the text clearer (it is confusing). However, I think you're overstating the special-ness of wikitravel. The 'just the facts ma'am' are as follows:

1. IB is a public company
2. the goal of IB (or any public company) is to maximize return to shareholders
3. companies maximize return to shareholders through products (soap, search engines, travel websites)
4. and create brands around these products (Dove, Google Search, World66, Wikitravel)
5. these brands have different characteristics (Dove - cream soap; World66 - review based; Wikitravel - user generated and freely licensed content)
6. these brands generate a stream of revenue either today or in the future (Dove - you pay cash, World66 - through ads and ?; wikitravel - through ads and ?)
7. this stream of future revenues feeds back into the stock price providing shareholder value

Seen objectively, wikitravel is as much a product brand as is Dove soap or say NBC Nightly News since the objectives of all these is to maximize shareholder value whatever the differentiating characteristics of the brand may be. Wikitravel appears to be different because of its history but looking at it today from a purely business viewpoint, it is pretty much what I've described above. However, this discussion is fairly pointless because it makes little sense to me to throw terms like 'for-profit' into the lead or to underline the fact that it is now a business venture. A clear statement that wikitravel is owned by a publicly traded corporation is, IMHO, all that is necessary.--Regents Park (paddle with the ducks) 12:24, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

I understand the point you're trying to make, but I think you're putting the cart before the horse. What I'm describing Wikitravel as is what it is and was from the beginning... long after it was up and running, the trademark and domain were sold. With that, IB can add Google AdSense to the site. That's their only potential income direct from the site, ever. And my main point is that that is a teensy weensy insignificant part of the picture, whereas calling it a "for-profit" site gives the impression that our goals are very different from what they actually are. None of the community that is Wikitravel will ever see revenue from it. We're simply building a free travel guide. I agree with your above solution, that is indeed stating the facts as they are :) – cacahuate ^talk 16:36, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

I think we all agree that for-profit is not an appropriate term. Whatever the reality behind wikitravel, we hardly go around calling Dove a 'for-profit soap'! Making the organizational relationships clear is all that wikipedia needs to do. That said, the article does seem to be a bit of a hodge-podge and does need a bit of a rewrite (some stuff - mostly to do with what the site is today - in the history section should rightly be in the description section; perhaps a new section on awards; certainly a section on wikitravel press which does not seem to have its own article). Also some photos - not sure what (have any wikitravel photos won awards?, perhaps a wikitravel press guide book?) - would be good. Given the enthusiasm some of you have for wikitravel, this article seems a bit down and out! --Regents Park (paddle with the ducks) 18:23, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

I'm a former contributor to Wikitravel, who moved on long before the IB purchase for quite unrelated reasons (I found I preferred writing encyclopedia articles about places to writing travel guides to them). However my contributions mean that I'm still a part-owner of the freely licensed content of Wikitravel, just as I'm a part-owner of the freely licensed content of Wikipedia. I absolutely agree with Cacahute and Jpatokal; the ownership of the brand and servers is a trivial issue compared to the ownership of the content (for both Wikitravel and Wikipedia) and from an ownership point of view there is much more in common between Wikitravel and Wikipedia than there is difference. Claiming that Wikitravel is for profit obscures that fact. And just for fairness, if we do say that Wikitravel is 'for profit', we probably also ought to say that Wikipedia is 'formerly for profit' because there is little difference between the ralationship Wikitravel has with IB and the relationship Wikipedia had with Jimbo Wales and Bomis in the days before the Wikimedia foundation was created to own our brand and servers. -- Chris j wood (talk) 17:26, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

I cleaned up the article a while ago so I noticed this disagreement. After reading through, I agree with the removal of "for profit" on both the non-business grounds and the status of the ownership of the content. "For profit" in the lead paints an incorrect picture of Wikitravel is - a free licensed wiki with an owner making profit by placing ads next to the free licensed material. No more than this should be stated or implied. Sillyfolkboy (talk) 18:51, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

This is my first ever wiki post so sorry if its formatted wrong. Feel free to fix. But it is important that wikitravel is a for profit. This can be clearly seen from their refusal to provide database dumps. See this page http://wikitravel.org/en/Wikitravel:Database_dump and in particular the discussion behind that page. I don't believe you would find a non-profit operating in this same manner. It may have a sharing licence but its no use if they choose what to share with you. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.209.23.250 (talk) 04:43, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Your first-ever wiki post was to come on Wikipedia to discuss the for-profitness of Wikitravel??? For reals? Anyway, I share your dislike of the withholding of the dumps. But regarding this article, it pretty accurately covers what needs covering, all in the opening paragraph – cacahuate ^talk 05:33, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Update

The part aboutmilestones needs help. 20,000 articles have been made and 30,000 members have been created in the past month. That needs to be changed. Keep smiling, guess? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.34.90.175 (talk) 00:36, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

Wikitravel press (redux!)

A quick question about wikitravel press. I looked over the wikitravel site and it seems to me that ccbysa allows anyone to use the material on wikitravel for profit. Which seems to imply that the only specific relationship between wikitravel press and wikitravel is that wikitravel press guidebooks can use the brand. If that is the case, then highlighting wikitravel press in the lead is undue and perhaps that information can be moved somewhere else. (I assume wikitravel press is a for profit entity with goals that are different from wikitravel's goals.) --RegentsPark (talk) 19:57, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

Note that part of the confusion arises from the referenced gadling blog post (the danger of using blog posts as references) which says 'wikitravel publishes ...'. However, the text in the article says the opposite (that wikitravel is owned by IB but wikitravel press has no connection other than the name with IB). --RegentsPark (talk) 20:01, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

WTP's only connection to Internet Brands is the trademark license, but it's quite closely connected to Wikitravel the website: the company's founders and editors are all Wikitravel users and a portion of profits goes back to the site. Jpatokal (talk) 00:17, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

When you say 'a portion of the profits goes back to the site' do you mean to wikitravel (site specific use) or to IB? Also, if possible, a better reference for information about wikitravel press may be helpful.--RegentsPark (talk) 02:12, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

A portion goes to IB (per the trademark license), but what they do with any proceeds is a question mark. The more significant bit is that some WTP revenue goes as royalties to the site users who acts as editors. And the authoritative source of WTP info is, naturally, the WTP site. Jpatokal (talk) 06:20, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

Moving Tourist Authority of Thailand content to Wikitravel

Many if not most WP articles have information added by members of the Tourist Authority of Thailand. The information generally is useful, but is never sourced or otherwise up to WP standards. Write now I'm leaving such entries alone, but would like to politely recommend to such editors that they post such information to Wikitravel, instead, with a link from WP's external reading section, but don't want to stir up trouble. --Pawyilee (talk) 16:46, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

Can you give an example? In general, Wikitravel doesn't want unreliable, low quality information either. Powers ^T 17:57, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

Plus, where are you going to post this recommendation anyway? If the information is unsourced and appears unreliable, just delete it. --regentspark (comment) 19:35, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

FWIW, the same dump of information has already been posted up on Wikitravel as well several years ago. Jpatokal (talk) 10:54, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

NYT: "Travel Site Built on Wiki Ethos Now Bedevils Its Owner"

Some very interesting information in here: Travel Site Built on Wiki Ethos Now Bedevils Its Owner (sorry, ATM I can't be bothered to deal with editing the article).

Links

Hey, no offense here but Wikitravel as linked to here, other articles about countries and cities are virtually dead, and the only activity on the site come from bots/advertising/ pam. Should we still link to it in the articles, as before, despite the problems? After the annexation of the Wikimedia hope I will be taken care and pushed, lives in prjojektet again. --80.161.143.239 (talk) 22:34, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

We should probably discuss that at Template talk:Wikitravel, or at the Village Pump. Powers ^T 20:57, 17 September 2012 (UTC)

Discussed here: Wikipedia:Templates_for_discussion/Log/2012_November_10#Template:Wikitravel, vote was to delete and substitute {{wikivoyage-inline}} using a 'bot. Similar templates have also been deleted on fr: and simple: K7L (talk) 21:58, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

SLAPP, SLAPP, SLAPP

OK, I get it. Wikimedia Foundation considers the suit by Internet Brands to be an example of a SLAPP, a suit "intended to deter and frustrate lawful conduct." But does it have to be stated three times in nearly identical language, including once in the lede? It makes the article sound strident and defensive. — ℜob C. alias ÀLAROB 14:38, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

The introductory paragraph is just a summary. It is not unusual for information mentioned briefly there to be expanded in more detail in the main body of the article. K7L (talk) 15:25, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

Need more third-party reliable sources

I've tagged the article since most of the refs link to Wikitravel or Wikivoyage. There needs to be more citations from third-party reliable sources. - M0rphzone (talk) 04:29, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

Lawsuits

The end of the article talks about a lawsuit that was filed in August 2012. It doesn't mention where, but the source says the suit was filed in California Superior Court. Indeed, the source says two lawsuits were filed in state court. The first was filed by Internet brands in Los Angeles, and the second was filed by the WMF in San Francisco. The article, never mentions anti-SLAPP. We just make that up based on WP:OR. Then, out of nowhere, we say that the claims by Internet Brands were dismissed in federal court (we don't even get that right, it's the Central District - there's no such thing as the "United States District Court of California"). And for that last assertion, we cite to a primary source, a minute order from the court. I removed that last sentence because we need secondary sources. We're not supposed to be interpreting court documents. According to the WMF blog, which, of course, we can't cite to, the action in Los Angeles County was removed to federal court, but we gloss over all of this with a paragraph that makes no sense.

Another editor has restored the material. I'm not going to touch it for now, although I should just remove it altogether because it's senseless and misleading - and doesn't comply with policy.--Bbb23 (talk) 15:11, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

It may be worth contacting WMF as their lawyers would know where the court records could be found? Pretending the litigation never happened is not the answer. K7L (talk) 15:42, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

First, we shouldn't be contacting the WMF. Second, we don't want to find court records. We need secondary sources. Third, by removing the material, we are not "pretending" that nothing happened; we are just not reporting it until we can do so in an accurate, policy-compliant manner. We do have the one source (the NYT), but it isn't up-to-date. We would need to find more sources that update what has happened since the filing of the two lawsuits in California. If they don't exist, it's probably because it's not all that noteworthy. We could still leave in the material, adjusted for source compliance, about the filings themselves.--Bbb23 (talk) 15:53, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

I don't want to get too involved in this discussion since I was a party to the litigation, but this edit is inaccurate - James and I were not parties to the San Francisco lawsuit, which was solely filed for purposes of declaring that Wikimedia had the right to start a travel wiki site. I wrote up an overview of my experience in the Los Angeles litigation at [3] which might help to provide some clarifications, and it includes links to Wikimedia blog posts and some posts at Gyrovague which provide further details. -- Wrh2 (talk) 17:38, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

There are plenty of court documents at wmf:Special:ListFiles if you go sufficiently far back in time, but using those documents may violate WP:OR (see WP:PSTS). There were several posts about about this at the Foundation's blog, but I would advise against using that blog as a source as the Foundation was a party to some of the court proceedings and may be argued to be biased and violate WP:NPOV. Also, the blog is partially a primary source about the lawsuits. I don't know whether the blog posts contain links to external sources, though. That might be worth investigating. --Stefan2 (talk) 20:30, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

We can use court documents (primary sources) only if they supplement a secondary source and we get support for our assertions from the secondary source. We can't generally use blogs, and we certainly can't use WMF blogs. As for Ryan's point about what the article now says, it does not say that he and James were parties, only that the suit was filed "on their behalf", which comes directly from the NYT. However, I could elide that phrase from our article, and it still would be correct. The "on behalf of" phrase isn't necessary.--Bbb23 (talk) 20:43, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

I've now skimmed the first amended complaint filed in San Francisco by the WMF. Although clearly the only plaintiff is the WMF, most people reading it would probably infer that part of the motive in filing it was to protect Ryan and James. That said, I'm still happy to remove the "on the behalf of" phrase if it makes anyone uncomfortable. I don't see that as problematic, so someone just needs to let me know whether they want me to do that now that I've explained a little more.--Bbb23 (talk) 20:50, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

• A rewrite is currently discussed at User talk:Jimbo Wales#Internet Brands. --Francis Schonken (talk) 07:50, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

cookie banner

About a year ago I tried to get to the site, but I got the cookie banner with header text "We value your privacy", and it did not go away. I just tried again and it still has the banner and it still won't go away. It has "Reject All" and "Accept All" buttons, but clicking either does nothing. Is it just my problem or is it something universal? 109.240.131.161 (talk) 03:31, 10 September 2021 (UTC)

Thas was with Chrome, and testing with Edge and Internet Explorer gives the same result. As does Chrome and Opera on my mobile phone, too. 109.240.131.161 (talk) 04:09, 10 September 2021 (UTC)