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Lessons From The Dramatic Slow-Motion Death Of Wikitravel

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Re: Lessons From The Dramatic Slow-Motion Death Of Wikitravel

#21

Post by mitjak »

srunni wrote: post #13
haberman wrote: post #5

I spent a few weeks in Europe last month and was really struck by how much room for improvement there is in travel guides. The #1 thing you want to know about travel information is where everything is. If you read a blurb about some attraction and decide it sounds cool, are we talking a five-minute detour from your existing plans or a day-trip? Something that only mildly interests you might be worth a quick stop if i…

> One awesome thing this would allow is for people to create and curate special-interest travel guides. I think there's HUGE potential in an online service that takes care of all the aspects of a trip. Right now you have the choice of either doing everything manually (which is a big time sink) or going on a package tour (which is bland and one-size-fits-all). In between you've got a few options like Expedia and Trave…

I have to ask:

Why is there so much emphasis on planning a trip? What happened to mapping out a few attractions and spending the rest of the time stumbling around letting your feet and eyes be your guide? All my favourite trips have resulted from pure serendipity and the rewarding experience of discovering something purel by accident.

Re: Lessons From The Dramatic Slow-Motion Death Of Wikitravel

#22

Post by chris_wot »

tnuc wrote: post #16

Wikitravel suffered from having ads (commercial) while internet brands did just enough to keep the site running. For some reason applying innovation or new features to wikitravel just didn't happen. Wikipedia suffers from a lot of issues in terms of the constant edit wars, politics and rules. People who once edited on Wikitravel may run away from the politics of wikipedia. Wikipedia articles will no longer link to Wi…

Your entire post is invalidated by the following facts:

1. Wikipedia doesn't own squat. It is the WikiMedia Foundation that's involved here, not the English Wikipedia.

2. The WMF haven't purchased or taken over WikiTravel. WikiVoyage have voluntarily merged into a new travel project started by the WMF.

Re: Lessons From The Dramatic Slow-Motion Death Of Wikitravel

#23

Post by listic »

haberman wrote: post #5

I spent a few weeks in Europe last month and was really struck by how much room for improvement there is in travel guides. The #1 thing you want to know about travel information is where everything is. If you read a blurb about some attraction and decide it sounds cool, are we talking a five-minute detour from your existing plans or a day-trip? Something that only mildly interests you might be worth a quick stop if i…

I understand your frustration with how the travel guides under-utilize potential of new media.

I would like to ask you, though: do you find electronic renditions of Lonely Planet (for either e-ink reader or tablet computer) an adequate substitute for the paper version? I understand that they could be much better in theory, but are they at least not worse? I am going to go on a tour around Europe and I seriously consider buying an iPad or a e-ink reader in part for Lonely Planet, because they should be easier to carry around than even a single travel guide.

Re: Lessons From The Dramatic Slow-Motion Death Of Wikitravel

#24

Post by listic »

_delirium wrote: post #2

I tend to be wary of contributing to crowdsourced projects run by for-profit companies for this reason, because they seem to have a tendency to go rogue once the benevolent management gets changed out, or it's sold to someone else. Many of us in the '90s were burned by the CDDB/Gracenote debacle, which was my first unpleasant encounter with the problem. My experience contributing lyrics to songmeanings.net, which use…

The sad thing is, even non-profits are not guaranteed to stay that way indefinitely.

See how CouchSurfing turned into B-Corporation after being denied their 501(c)(3) charity status: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CouchSurfing#2011_incorporation

They were a non-profit, for the first 8 years.

Re: Lessons From The Dramatic Slow-Motion Death Of Wikitravel

#25

Post by _delirium »

listic wrote: post #24
_delirium wrote: post #2

I tend to be wary of contributing to crowdsourced projects run by for-profit companies for this reason, because they seem to have a tendency to go rogue once the benevolent management gets changed out, or it's sold to someone else. Many of us in the '90s were burned by the CDDB/Gracenote debacle, which was my first unpleasant encounter with the problem. My experience contributing lyrics to songmeanings.net, which use…

The sad thing is, even non-profits are not guaranteed to stay that way indefinitely. See how CouchSurfing turned into B-Corporation after being denied their 501(c)(3) charity status: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CouchSurfing#2011_incorporation They were a non-profit, for the first 8 years.

Huh, I didn't even realize that was possible. Seems like quite a bait-and-switch to build up a community under the guise of a nonprofit, and then take it for-profit afterwards.

Re: Lessons From The Dramatic Slow-Motion Death Of Wikitravel

#26

Post by jvdh »

Wow, that's some bit of linkbaiting in that article, pointing to other techcrunch articles and a lot of pointing towards skift.com, nytimes and some other sites.

The entire article talks about three different websites, and it contains 0 links to any of them. http://wikitravel.org is the old one, http://wikivoyage.org is the newer one, and the last one is not decided upon yet, but the definitive source about that is: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Travel_Guide

Re: Lessons From The Dramatic Slow-Motion Death Of Wikitravel

#27

Post by jzwinck »

listic wrote: post #23
haberman wrote: post #5

I spent a few weeks in Europe last month and was really struck by how much room for improvement there is in travel guides. The #1 thing you want to know about travel information is where everything is. If you read a blurb about some attraction and decide it sounds cool, are we talking a five-minute detour from your existing plans or a day-trip? Something that only mildly interests you might be worth a quick stop if i…

I understand your frustration with how the travel guides under-utilize potential of new media. I would like to ask you, though: do you find electronic renditions of Lonely Planet (for either e-ink reader or tablet computer) an adequate substitute for the paper version? I understand that they could be much better in theory, but are they at least not worse? I am going to go on a tour around Europe and I seriously consi…

I've used Lonely Planet guides extensively in paperback and somewhat in Kindle form. The Kindle versions are worse in terms of usability. This is partly because the maps are usable in paper form, where it is easy to flip between the map and the legend, or indeed where they are sometimes on facing pages visible at once. The way they make the electronic versions, the maps often have a low-res overview and legible sections on separate pages. Want to move north on the map? Go forward two pages! That's just silly, a UI worse than MapQuest ten years ago.

What's good about LP on Kindle? If you happen to be travelling very light to several first-world destinations which are not covered in any single book, you can definitely save space and weight. Also if you buy the book more for the prose than the maps, it could be all right (with an iPad and a local SIM card this could work well enough, again assuming you don't travel where people are very poor).

Re: Lessons From The Dramatic Slow-Motion Death Of Wikitravel

#28

Post by jzwinck »

srunni wrote: post #20
schackbrian wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://plnnr.com/

This seems quite nice. It has a solid UI and is certainly heading in the right direction, but lots of work remains to be done. For example, flight booking needs to be integrated, and a smartphone app isn't available. They say the service is completely free, which IMO is a big mistake - the right approach is to be responsible for all the payments and then charge the user just one time, which not only allows you to add…

Wouldn't that require having arrangements with all the carriers?

Also, I probably wouldn't give several thousand dollars to an intermediary, especially when some airlines have "special" policies that apply to tickets booked by proxy (e.g. the proxy needs to request changes, not the end user).

Travelers not willing to do some legwork should not be surprised if they find themselves confined to proven tourist trails. And in fact that's what many people want.

Re: Lessons From The Dramatic Slow-Motion Death Of Wikitravel

#29

Post by infinite8s »

dikbrouwer wrote: post #7
haberman wrote: post #5

I spent a few weeks in Europe last month and was really struck by how much room for improvement there is in travel guides. The #1 thing you want to know about travel information is where everything is. If you read a blurb about some attraction and decide it sounds cool, are we talking a five-minute detour from your existing plans or a day-trip? Something that only mildly interests you might be worth a quick stop if i…

We tried to do something along these lines with journly.com. We've since pivoted away and are working on something else, but I agree it's still a problem that needs to be solved.

Care to share why you pivoted away from that idea?

Re: Lessons From The Dramatic Slow-Motion Death Of Wikitravel

#30

Post by songmeanings »

duskwuff wrote: post #15
_delirium wrote: post #2

I tend to be wary of contributing to crowdsourced projects run by for-profit companies for this reason, because they seem to have a tendency to go rogue once the benevolent management gets changed out, or it's sold to someone else. Many of us in the '90s were burned by the CDDB/Gracenote debacle, which was my first unpleasant encounter with the problem. My experience contributing lyrics to songmeanings.net, which use…

> My experience contributing lyrics to songmeanings.net, which used to be a community-run/crowdsourced lyrics repository, not full of pop-up ringtone ads, was similarly negative. What is it with lyric sites and ringtone ads? LyricWiki went the same way.

Running a lyrics site is a tricky thing. Yes, there is a ton of traffic because it's essentially built for SEO. But think about the demographics who view lyrics. Typically very young and without a credit card. Translation: advertising == lower CPMs than other demographics.

So lyric sites have to supplement traditional banners with, well, those ringtone ads.

In the case of SongMeanings, we're doing ringtone ads because our licensing agreements are very expensive. It's not cheap doing what we're doing. We're proud to be licensed, sure, but again, it's very expensive.

Heads up -- if you become a member at SongMeanings, you'll actually see fewer advertisements. It's our way of saying thanks to loyal users.

I'm certainly open ears to suggestions on how to pay for licensing while not doing ringtone adverts. Or any other suggestions on how to improve SM, too.

Mike SongMeanings

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