From Wikitravel

External Links Policy

Would it be bad for the site to have it linked in two places? Or at least have the Manual of Style cross-ref'ed from the P&G page? I put it here because I couldn't find it when I was looking for it and there are lots of references to the External Links Policy when removing extlinks from pages, reverting changes, etc. It was difficult for (at least) one person to find, it has probably been difficult for other people to find. As with all policies, if you want someone to read them, you need to make them easy to find. -- Rob (Payne) 22:45, 10 Sep 2005 (EDT)

I don't think it could hurt to link to the policy in more than one place. The external links policy is probably cited more often than any other when reverting or changing edits, so it seems sensible to explicitly link to it from the policy page. -- Ryan 01:16, 11 Sep 2005 (EDT)

I vaguely remembered reading something about why more policies weren't listed on this page, and found the discussion at Wikitravel talk:Manual of style#Rollback. It was a rather heated discussion, and while I do disagree with Evan and feel that it's more important that information be easy to find instead of hierarchically organized, it looks like an issue that may be just as polarizing as heading changes, so I'll back away slowly now and leave it for others to hash out if they want to. -- Ryan 04:15, 11 Sep 2005 (EDT)

I'll go learn from history and read that discussion. Thanks for the pointer, Ryan. -- Rob (Payne) 08:30, 11 Sep 2005 (EDT)

I've added the External links policy to the page. Here's hoping Evan is too distracted by crying babies to notice ;) Jpatokal 09:40, 11 Sep 2005 (EDT)

I see Evan's gone and reverted it again. Will you please explain to me why choosing what links are allowed and what are not is a matter of style, not policy? And why is it a Bad Thing to link to the page from more than one place? Jpatokal 20:33, 15 Sep 2005 (EDT)

No he didn't. Now be quiet and don't disturb the parental bonding. -- Colin 21:10, 15 Sep 2005 (EDT)

Did too ([1]), I just reverted it back. And let's keep innocent little babies out of grown men's edit wars... Jpatokal 21:30, 15 Sep 2005 (EDT)

That was four days ago -- you've only reverted once so far. Evan has only made one edit since then, and that was the pub. Jet lag? :-) -- Colin 21:38, 15 Sep 2005 (EDT)

D'oh! Jpatokal 22:29, 15 Sep 2005 (EDT)

We have a Wikitravel:Utilities page that lists all the Wikitravel: namespace articles. I think there's some value in further subdividing the space for navigational reasons, rather than copying all the links in the utilities page to P&G, MoS, and Help, as well as everywhere else. Will it help if I outline what I think is "policy", what I think is "style", and what I think is "help"? I'm not sure if the problem we have here is that you don't understand why I think there's a difference, or if you don't agree with me. --Evan 22:59, 15 Sep 2005 (EDT)

I can't speak for Jpatokal, but my argument for linking to Wikitravel:External links on both the policy page and the Wikitravel:Manual of style is that it encompasses both style and policy - it describes how to handle external links on a page (style) and what is an acceptable external link (policy). Users looking for the rules about external links would seem (in my opinion) equally likely to look in either place. Additionally, I don't think it hurts to link relevant topics from two different places; we count on common sense to prevail when including the most important cities on region pages (for example, the Bay Area (California) has a link to San Francisco but not to Dublin (California)) so it doesn't seem unreasonable to count on using common sense to prevent clutter on policy and style indexes. That said, at this point I would rather have you busy experiencing what it's like to be a new parent instead of arguing of the minutiae of Wikitravel linking policies, so this definitely isn't a point that needs to be discussed at length right now.

Also, I started trying to sub-divide everything in the Wikitravel namespace a while back but didn't finish. The current page is at User:Wrh2/Help and may be useful as a starting point if you do plan on subdividing Wikitravel:Utilities. -- Wrh2 02:03, 16 Sep 2005 (EDT)

I think it'd make a good replacement for Wikitravel:Utilities. I'm not a big fan of hierarchical lists (I like page sections and separate pages better), but it should probably just be moved there soon.

Also, I disagree that Wikitravel:External links is both style and policy. I've always thought of "policy" as "collaboration and behavior rules and processes", like how we pick new administrators and how we delete articles. I've thought of "style guidelines" as "rules about content". In other words, policy is about people, and guidelines are about text and pictures.

Maybe I'm being too persnickety, but I really think that rules about how we interact should be called out, and have more gravity, than rules about content.

HOWEVER, I also think that the policies, guidelines, and help pages need to be accessible. If we need to have other kinds of indices -- ways of pointing at the same pages -- I'm all for it. I'm even up for re-aligning the triumvirate of policies, style guidelines, and help pages, if we need to. But I'd like to have it done with some forethought, and with better reasoning than "maybe someone looking at page X could benefit from the information at page Y". If we go that route, we just link every page from every other page and everyone gets lost in the noise. --Evan 09:37, 17 Sep 2005 (EDT)

It makes complete sense to divide policies and guidelines into non-article policies ("collaboration and behavior rules and processes") vs. article style/content guidelines ("rules about content"). I think the problem is that an index with a title of "Wikitravel:Policies and guidelines" is an obvious place to put ALL policies and guidelines -- changing the names to something like "Wikitravel:Content policies" and "Wikitravel:Administration policies" (not great suggestions, but you get the idea) would go a long way to making the organizational structure clearer. If others agree that the naming isn't all that clear then I'm sure a someone could come up with an alternative that made the purpose clear. Ditto for "Wikitravel:Utilities" - when I think of a utility I think of a tool, not a namespace index ("Wikitravel:Namespace Index" maybe?). -- Wrh2 12:21, 19 Sep 2005 (EDT)

I didn't understand the distinction before this explaination. Maybe either article name changes (as Ryan suggests) or a bit more explainatory text in each article detailing the types of stuff mentioned and where to go for other types of stuff (e.g. "This Policies and guidelines page details our consensus about how we go about writing Wikitravel. For consensus regarding the content of articles (what should be in an article, not be in an article, and so forth), please see the Manual of Style"). Or something more ingenious. -- Colin 12:43, 19 Sep 2005 (EDT)

What about "Community policies" and "Content guidelines"? I prefer the name "Manual of style" rather than "Content guidelines", but I'm totally willing to bend on it. I also like that "policies" sounds stronger than "guidelines", which I think is the message we want. And, yes, the name of this page is misleading -- it's copied from Wikipedia back in the day. It doesn't actually have any "guidelines" listed! --Evan 13:10, 19 Sep 2005 (EDT)

Works for me. I also rather like "Manual of Style" - perhaps just set up Wikitravel:Content guidelines as a redirect to Wikitravel:Manual of style? Moving Wikitravel:Policies and guidelines to "Wikitravel:Community policies" is (in my opinion) the more helpful change, although it is nice to have a counter-balance. -- Wrh2 13:27, 19 Sep 2005 (EDT)

This has been sitting here for four days now without further comment -- if no one has any objections I'd like to move the current page to Wikitravel:Community policies, and create a redirect for Wikitravel:Content guidelines that redirects to the MOS. Any objections? -- Ryan 00:52, 23 Sep 2005 (EDT)

I'll set this up so someone else can knock it down: I was thinking that perhaps "community policies" sounds like policies made by the community, and that folks won't understand that they're polices about the community. Other than that, I think this is a good way to go. --Evan 08:07, 23 Sep 2005 (EDT)

Since there has been no knockdown, page moved. -- Ryan 02:07, 6 Oct 2005 (EDT)

I agree with everything Ryan says, but as I'd already written the below before I saw his response... so as for which one I think is the problem, the answer is both and then some. I'll enumerate:

1. I don't understand your distinction in general, as previously discussed here.
2. I don't understand why we can't link to pages from multiple places. Policies and guidelines are for online use, so links are good.
3. I don't understand why this page in specific is filed under style, not policy. Only a small part of the page concerns how to format external links, the bulk of the page — and the subject of constant squabbles — is what links are permissible and which ones aren't. Note that Google finds 13 uses of "external links policy" and 8 uses of "external link policy" (exact string searches) on Wikitravel, so evidently people do think of this as a policy, not a guideline. Jpatokal 20:03, 17 Sep 2005 (EDT)