Hypertext

Wikitravel

URL	wikitravel.org
Type of site	Wiki
Available language(s)	21 languages
Owner	Internet Brands
Created by	Evan Prodromou Michele Ann Jenkins
Launched	July 2003
Alexa rank	2,788 (May 2012)
Current status	Active

Wikitravel is a web-based collaborative travel guide project, based upon the wiki model, launched by Evan Prodromou and Michele Ann Jenkins in 2003. In 2006, Internet Brands bought the trademark and servers and later introduced advertising to the website. Wikitravel received a Webby Award for Best Travel Website in 2007. That same year, Wikitravel's founders began Wikitravel Press, which publishes printed travel guides based on the Web site's content. The first print guides were released on February 1, 2008.

Description

Using a wiki model, Wikitravel is built through collaboration of Wikitravellers from around the globe. Articles can cover any level of geographic specificity, from continents to districts of a city. These are logically connected in a hierarchy, by specifying that the location covered in one article "is in" the larger location described by another. The project also includes articles on travel-related topics, phrasebooks for travelers, and suggested itineraries.

Wikitravel is a multilingual project available in 21 languages, with each language-specific project developed independently. The English language version leads in terms of number of articles with over 24,500 in April 2011. While the project uses the MediaWiki software, Wikitravel is not a Wikimedia project; it was begun and is operated independently.

Wikitravel travel guides are available under a free content license; while Internet Brands owns the web site and associated trademarks, contributors own the content they contribute and they agree to license that content for free use.

Content

Wikitravel content is broadly categorised as Destinations, Itineraries, Phrasebooks, and Travel topics.

Destinations

Geographical units within the geographical hierarch may be described in articles, base on the criterion "can you sleep there?"

The hierarchy includes:

• Continents
• Continental sections (like Southeast Asia)
• Countries
• Regions within countries (provinces, counties, states, groups of states etc.)
• Cities of any size, including fairly small villages if they are tourist destinations
• Districts within large cities
• National parks provided they have accommodation for the traveller

Attractions such as hotels, restaurants, bars, stores, nightclubs, tour operators, museums, statues or other works of art, city parks, town squares or streets, festivals or events, transport systems or stations, bodies of water and uninhabited islands are listed in the article for the place they're located.

Itineraries

An itinerary describes a group of destinations according to a temporal division rather than a spatial one and will list destinations and attractions to visit during a given amount of time, with recommended durations of stay and routes to follow.

Itineraries may cross geographical regions, but will usually have a well-defined path.

Phrasebooks

A phrasebook will comprise:

1. An overview of the language, giving a brief history, scope (where it's spoken, how many speakers), alphabet or symbol set, and any other general info on the language.
2. A pronunciation guide, with a description of each written symbol in the language (that is, its alphabet), and a pronunciation note for each symbol.
3. A phrase list. Each entry in the phrase list should include the word or phrase being translated, the spelling in the local language symbol set as it would be seen written down, and a pronunciation cue.

Travel topics

Travel topics are articles that deal with a specific topic of interest to travellers that is too large or detailed to go in a specific travel guide destination page, travel tips that are so general that they apply to nearly all destinations and don't need to be in each specific travel guide, major events that occur in different places, and specialist travel information such as regional guides to Scuba diving sites.

History

Annotated map of the 1st arrondissement of Paris generated for a guide to travel of Wikitravel from OpenStreetMap data

Wikitravel was started in July 2003 by Evan Prodromou and Michele Ann Jenkins, inspired in part by Wikipedia. To allow individuals, tourism agencies, and so on to make free reprints of individual pages more easily than permitted by the GNU Free Documentation License (used by Wikipedia at that time) it used the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike license. Since both Wikipedia and Wikitravel are now licensed under the Attribution ShareAlike license, appropriate content can be shared between the two so long as licensing requirements are met.

Wikitravel does not have a neutral-point-of-view requirement, as it is written from the point of view of a traveler and, instead, encourages editors to "be fair".

Wikitravel encourages original research in its content, and therefore does not generally require citation, but it does require contributions to comply with its Manual of Style, to provide an easily recognised and consistent layout and appearance, and to avoid touting.

On April 20, 2006, Wikitravel announced that it and World66 – another open-content travel guide – had been acquired by Internet Brands, a publicly traded corporation. The new owner hired Prodromou and Jenkins to continue managing Wikitravel as a consensus-based project. They explained that Internet Brands' long-term plan was for Wikitravel to continue to focus on collaborative, objective guides, while World66 would focus more on personal experiences and reviews. In response, many authors of the German language community chose to fork the German Wikitravel, which was released on December 10, 2006, as Wikivoyage. The German language Wikitravel remains active. On April 1, 2008, Internet Brands added Google advertising to Wikitravel, with an opt-out procedure for registered users.

On May 1, 2007, Wikitravel received the Webby Award for Best Travel Website. On June 16, 2008, Wikitravel was named one of the "50 Best Websites of 2008" by Time magazine.

On August 3, 2007, Prodromou, Jenkins, and long-time contributor Jani Patokallio started Wikitravel Press, a company that produces and sells print guidebooks based on material contributed to Wikitravel. The first Wikitravel Press guides, Chicago and Singapore, were officially launched on February 1, 2008. Content in these guidebooks is available under the same Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike license that Wikitravel material is licensed under. The Wikitravel trademarks are licensed to Wikitravel Press, but there is otherwise no connection to Internet Brands.

On January 1, 2010, the content of Wikitravel was migrated to the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 license.

Milestones

• December 23, 2005: 10,000 articles across all versions.
• June 11, 2006: 10,000 articles on the English version.
• September 29, 2006: 20,000 articles across all versions.
• May 1, 2007: Wikitravel wins Webby Award for Best Travel Website.
• February 1, 2008: publication of first printed Wikitravel Press guides.
• June 16, 2008: Time magazine names Wikitravel one of the "50 Best Websites of 2008".
• November 22, 2008: 20,000 articles on the English version.
• August 21, 2009: 50,000 articles and 50,000 users across all versions.

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Wikitravel

• Wikitravel (English version)
• Wikitravel Press