Wikivoyage:WMF FAQ

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What is this project?

Wikivoyage is a Wikimedia Foundation project focused on travel and destinations. It exists with the goal of giving you an unbiased idea about locations, and some places you might choose to stay or eat while traveling. It is not a travel booking site, and it can’t help you with reservations or disputes with vendors. But if you want a good idea about what to do while you’re there, it can help with that. The content on the Wikivoyage website is licensed under a free license: the Creative Commons Share-Alike 3.0 License.

Who are the key players?

The Wikimedia Foundation is the host for the travel project. It is the same organization that hosts Wikipedia and its sister sites. Its role is to provide for the technical and social infrastructure (software development, legal defense, communications support, etc) necessary for the site to thrive.

The Wikivoyage Association is the organization that formerly hosted the WikiVoyage project. Members of the Wikivoyage Association voted to donate the domain name and trademarks to the Wikimedia Foundation and to migrate the content of Wikivoyage to Wikimedia Foundation servers.

The Wikivoyage Association will continue as an independent non-profit entity in Germany to help build and maintain the travel community and contribute to the overall Wikimedia movement.

Who is behind this effort?

A group of administrators, from various travel wikis (including Wikivoyage and WIkipedia) have joined together and will be working on the Wikivoyage project going forward. They asked the Wikimedia Foundation, which is the non-profit that hosts Wikipedia and several other major wikis, to host and maintain the Wikivoyage project going forward. Initially, the content of Wikivoyage will basically be the same, the core users (hopefully!) will be the same, and all of contribution histories and article histories will be preserved in full.

What does a migration to the Wikimedia Foundation actually mean? In short, it means that Wikivoyage domain name and all of its content that previously were hosted by Wikivoyage Association is now being hosted on the Wikimedia Foundation servers. Content from the Wikivoyage site will simply be moved to the Wikimedia Foundation servers and going forward the Wikimedia Foundation policies such as the Privacy Policy and Terms of Use will govern the travel project.

Why? What is the reason for starting a new site?

The main reason for moving to the Wikimedia Foundation is to try and create the best experience for the community of contributors and readers.

How can I get involved?

You can edit! This wiki, like all others hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation, encourages community contribution. You’re welcome to begin by hitting the "edit" button at the top of the page, and joining us.