

Wikimedia Launches WikiVoyage - noahtkoch
http://www.wikivoyage.org/

======
ricardobeat
Explanation: WikiTravel fell into the hands of a company called Internet
Brands, users got dissatisfied, they forked the wiki on August 2012 and
created WikiVoyage under Wikimedia's wing. It offers the same content as
WikiTravel up to that date.

Long story: [http://gyrovague.com/2012/07/12/wikitravel-editors-
abandon-i...](http://gyrovague.com/2012/07/12/wikitravel-editors-abandon-
internet-brands-join-up-with-wikipedia/)

------
creamyhorror
I occasionally check in on and modify the WikiTravel page for Singapore (e.g.
to warn about scammy shops here), and when I heard about the impending launch
of WikiVoyage, I switched over right away. It seemed odd to me that an open,
collaborative resource like WikiTravel should be owned by a profit-driven
entity that had acquired it and was trying to monetise it. The lawsuit from
that entity was the rotten cherry on the top.

Congratulations to Wikimedia, the WikiVoyage team, and jpatokal (and thanks
for making the Singapore article so comprehensive and accurate). I hope the
migration is smooth and the SEO quickly works itself out in WV's favour. I for
one will be linking to it whenever I have the opportunity.

~~~
jpatokal
Open, collaborative resources and being commercial aren't necessarily mutually
exclusive. Fundamentally, open content isn't that different from open source,
and while it's not _easy_ to monetize free things without being evil, it's
certainly possible: see eg. Red Hat. And WikiHow
(<http://www.wikihow.com/Main-Page>) is a great example of how you can run a
for-profit wiki without selling out to the dark side, see eg. their About
page: <http://www.wikihow.com/wikiHow:About-wikiHow>

But you do need a long-term perspective and a genuine rapport with the
community, which is why 'traditional' companies taking over open source
projects and adopting corporate command-and-conquer strategies to run them
tend to crash and burn. Oracle and the trail of devastation they've wreaked
with OpenOffice and MySQL is probably the canonical example, and Internet
Brands is their open content equivalent.

And oh, thanks for the thanks ;)

~~~
creamyhorror
It's certainly possible, as you said, but it takes a philosophically aligned
company to do it, and those are a rare breed indeed - very much the exception
to the norm. By default I'd assume any traditional profit-oriented company
that _acquires_ an open resource to be likely to mess things up as it tries to
extract revenue. (This is directed at @mmahemoff too - StackOverflow is a good
counterexample, but again an exception.)

I look forward to location-enabled WV guides/maps on mobile, if that ever
becomes available - that would be amazingly useful. I'm often tempted to look
towards tourist-oriented functionality in my own web/app project, but would
like it if the market winner turned out to be an open resource rather than a
crowdsourced-yet-profit-driven one.

'welcome :)

------
timjstewart
From: <http://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Compton>

WARNING: Compton suffers from a very high crime rate due to the gang violence,
which is well-documented. It is recommended to stay no more than as long as
necessary. Danger increases during the night time.

Helpful!

~~~
jpatokal
Well, it _is_ helpful, if you didn't grow up in the US listening to NWA and
thus eren't aware that Compton's synonymous with "inner city ghetto".

But yes, there's a fair bit of useless "advice" on the site. It's human nature
to try to be helpful, even when much of the advice offered is common sense.
Hence this policy:

[http://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Wikivoyage:No_advice_from_Capt...](http://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Wikivoyage:No_advice_from_Captain_Obvious)

------
tommorris
Wikivoyage is already working out great. Most of the contributors have moved
over to the site including Evan (one of the co-founders).

But one of the real benefits of the change has been that there is now
integration with the other Wikimedia sites: the same login that one uses to
edit Wikipedia works to edit Wikivoyage, and a fair few Wikipedia admins and
regulars have jumped in to help Wikivoyage out.

In addition, Wikivoyage now has direct inclusion of images from Wikimedia
Commons, so if you are writing a travel guide, you can just hop over to
Commons and find an image, rather than having to upload your own like you did
on Wikitravel. And there is an international community of people who curate
that image collection.

Now that the contributors have mostly moved over, Wikitravel are now just
descending into spammy oblivion, while Wikivoyage adds new and fresh content,
fixes mistakes and so on.

All the while Wikitravel employees seem to be going around spamming blog posts
and posting about how this is all an "anti-capitalist" conspiracy against
them. Well, sorry, it's pure capitalism: if your service sucks, people will go
to another provider. That your service sucks so much that you are being beaten
by a non-profit... well, just the free market at work.

------
ecspike
Perhaps I'm missing something. How is this different from WikiTravel?

~~~
saryant
WikiTravel was purchased by Internet Brands, the same company that owns FitDay
and FlyerTalk. The community clashed with the new owners and the Wikimedia
Foundation agreed to maintain a fork.

~~~
lominming
Too bad. I really prefer the name WikiTravel. Clearer and simpler.

------
cvursache
It works surprisingly good. Tried it out for my hometown "Suceava", a small
forgotten city from northern Romania. The information one gets is really
useful and seems to be mostly accurate.

~~~
baliex
_mostly_ accurate?

~~~
morsch
In the world of travel guides, _mostly accurate_ is pretty much the gold
standard.

------
chrismorgan
I can't help it.

It's Wikivoyage, not WikiVoyage.

