Talk:Travel news

This is a good idea, but surely newer news should come first, and older stuff is then moved into the archives later? Compare WikiPedia:Current events.

Also, should we adopt Wikipedia's style and have daily headings, or keep 'threads' together? The daily heading style has the major advantage of being easier to maintain, but it's a little harder to follow (esp. without links into full articles). (WT-en) Jpatokal 09:18, 3 Jan 2005 (EST)

China celebrates 60th anniversary of "Communism"?

On the main page, this isn't quite true. They are not celebrating the 60th anniversary of Communism, but rather the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China. First, it is the country/republic that is being celebrated, and second, Communism was not founded 60 years ago. 18.62.16.50 13:49, 21 October 2009 (EDT)

Wikinews?

Please check Wikinews for international news stories; and contribute ones you don't see there. Content on Wikinews is currently all public domain. (WT-en) Sj 14:49, 11 Feb 2005 (EST)

Venezuela riots

The Venezual didn't actually censor RCTV. It is not closed down. It can still broadcast on other ways (cable, internet). Its licence to transmit over the air has just not been renewed because it didn't fill its contract (and broke a few laws, participated in the coup against Chavez, used subliminal images, etc...). Not renew a licence has already been done in countries said to be democratic in European Union for instance, and no one claimed it was censorship. Anyway the whole thing is quite political, it does not have to be argued here. However, replacing "censor" by "not renew the license" would be much more neutral.

I don't know if this information is even useful. I don't live there and I don't have any idea wether there actually is any risk. See the comment below about French riots exagerated in the medias (they were completely overstated, that's true). It's likely that the private medias in Venezuela export a lot of images of protests, for their own benefits. However I would avoid being caught in such a protest. Not only because I disagree with the reason, but during the coup against Chavez, the opposition had sharpshooter killing a few protesters to blame it on the government. Anyway any riot is dangerous, but appart from very edgy situations, like the coup d'état, they can easily be avoided, like the french so-called riots for instance.

Is this a slippery slope?

I'm wondering -- is publishing daily travel news really part of our goals? I don't know if it's really helping us create a travel guide. Could someone put me straight? --(WT-en) Evan 18:46, 11 Feb 2005 (EST)

I don't think it does any harm... cf. also LP's Travel Ticker. But I think the news here should be kept short, with links to Google News or Wikinews or whatever for the full scoop. (WT-en) Jpatokal 21:17, 11 Feb 2005 (EST)

The sort of news that I see as going here seem to be news items that would affect travel and tourism directly or be of significant interest to travelers, but isn't covered by Wikivoyage in other ways. Natural and man-made events that cause unexpected travel disruptions could be candidates as well as stories that affect the traveler's experience. What is there so far is probably the range of things that should be covered.

Although I wouldn't expect a daily news story. I would also like to see positive or good news stories like Tourists Wanted:Thailand tourist industry has recovered from Tsunami and other such news that says the disaster in the other month's news has been overcome and travel is not disrupted any more. These sorts of we're baaaack stories are not carried by other news outlets. -- (WT-en) Huttite 22:37, 11 Feb 2005 (EST)

France riots overstated in English Language press

Hey, I see that news of the riots in French public housing have been added to our travel news section, as it should be. I think though that we would be doing a service to travellers to point out that the impact on travellers is pretty much nil, and that the reports on English language media have been vastly overstated. I was in Paris the nights of the very worst riots, and saw nothing. And I was on a terrace in the 11th, which is in the quarter of the city toward the suburbs where the riots were.

I'm having trouble figuring out a tone for expressing this in the necessarily tiny main page blurb though. How's this: "State of Emergency in France over youth riots in remote public housing sites. Eng.-lang press goes berserk." -- (WT-en) Mark 06:46, 9 Nov 2005 (EST)

"Travellers not affected" for the last bit would be more informative, no? (WT-en) Jpatokal 07:51, 9 Nov 2005 (EST)

OK, so let's either do this or not

I've just updated the Travel News with a couple of stories today which were not huge gigantic headline stories and covered ad infinitum everywhere else. I would like to suggest that tomorrow somebody follow in my footsteps. It's easy: use the google news search to find stories of general travel interest. Read some of them. If it seems fairly important put it on the travel page.

I think that this could be an interesting and useful feature, but it absolutely needs to be updated more often.

If in a couple of days the stories I've just posted are still the most recent stories then I will yank the Travel News section off of the main page simply because there is nothing worse for a website than out-of-date "news".

So travel news supporters: get busy. -- (WT-en) Mark 10:35, 1 Dec 2005 (EST)

I've suggested this before, but it has to be made easier to update the news somehow, the code is a horrible mess and you need to be quite the Wiki-guru to manage it. Only problem is that templating it will be tough because of the three-column format... (WT-en) Jpatokal 11:40, 1 Dec 2005 (EST)

Another option would be to re-use Wikinews content... but alas, they've recently switched from PD to CC by-sa 2.5. Sigh. Of course, it might not be that bad to have the travel news under a mildly different license, because they're highly unlikely to be included in actual printed guides. (WT-en) Jpatokal 11:49, 1 Dec 2005 (EST)

I have to say I took a short-lived stab at adding news everyday, needless to say after breaking the main page 3 or 4 times I actually gave up. I'm happy to keep adding stuff to the travel news page if someone else adds it to the main page (and bumps the old). I dont think getting / writing the news is the problem at all, just the adding to the main page. I'll have another go at it... (WT-en) Majnoona 14:17, 1 Dec 2005 (EST)

I've added stuff here, but I am scared to add it to the main page. Bad things happened to me the last time I tried. --(WT-en) Ravikiran 12:44, 4 Dec 2005 (EST)

I've updated some more, but if others aren't interested, I think we are better off yanking it. It is not a good idea to rely on the sporadic enthusiasm of 1 or 2 people. At least, we should de-emphasise it on the main page. Just link to the headlines or something. --(WT-en) Ravikiran 13:05, 7 Dec 2005 (EST)

I really think the key is making the news easier to update -- but it would need a bot of some sort to automatically rotate out the older stuff, and this really isn't very high on my list of priorities right now.

As a first step, I've outsourced the hairy table formatting stuff into Template:News{left,mid,right}divider, which makes the Main Page a little more user-friendly. And as a second step I just wrote Project:How to add travel news. (WT-en) Jpatokal 21:29, 7 Dec 2005 (EST)

Templates and one bug

So I've now changed the Main Page to use the templated news item form for consistency, please let me know if you want to change something, find the instructions unclear or difficult, etc.

One odd bug: hitting [edit] for a Template:Newsitem-item results in editing the template, not the section. I'm not sure if this is a bug in MediaWiki or somehow done intentionally. Edit buttons for higher-level headers like "December 2005" still work OK. (WT-en) Jpatokal

Another bug . The presence of an external link seems to break the news. I don't know why the other items aren't giving this problem though. --(WT-en) Ravikiran 06:37, 12 Dec 2005 (EST)

Could my Web site qualify as travel news?

swept in from User talk:(WT-en) Evan by (WT-en) Evan

Some high school friends and I have created a travel networking site at www.travbuddy.com Could I write a news article about the site, its growth, and our goals? Or would that be considered a form of advertising?

Please advise derek AT travbuddy.com or write back here... if thats how this works :)

Thanks!

I think this sounds fine. Any comments on this idea? --(WT-en) Evan 22:52, 26 Jan 2006 (EST)

I think this sounds like a dangerously slippery slope, it's free advertising for an unrelated site . (WT-en) Jpatokal 03:26, 27 Jan 2006 (EST)

Like SAS ? -- (WT-en) Mark 05:16, 27 Jan 2006 (EST)

I'm not sure wildcat strikes are the kind of publicity SAS wants... and yeah, I was thinking of a way to qualify my earlier statement, but there's a difference between an actual(tm) travel service provider like an airline and some random Website like, well, Wikivoyage. (WT-en) Jpatokal 06:32, 27 Jan 2006 (EST)

Maybe, but still it is travel related information, and so there should be someplace for it. What better than to put it in Travel News where it will get cycled through eventually? -- (WT-en) Mark 07:20, 27 Jan 2006 (EST)

I've since looked at their web site, and think that there is no reason why it should not be mentioned on the travel news page. Surely, our fundemental aim is to provide a service that helps travelers. We don't allow links to other travel sites, not out of a competitive mind set, but because it would weaken the quality of the Witravel site if the information were not concentrated here, but instead scattered across many web sites - i.e. it would not, in the long term, be in the travelers interest. However, I don't believe that mentioning a new travel guide coming into existance will delute the information on the Wikivoyage articles in any way. To the contrary, I think that by offering information that may prove useful to readers will actually be more in accordance with our basic principle: 'traveler first' - just my humble opinion. (WT-en) WindHorse 27 Jan 06

I think this is a slippery slope we ought not decend. Let's restrain Travel News to news of the world that affects travellers. -- (WT-en) Colin 10:31, 27 Jan 2006 (EST)

It seems that the main objection to giving this site space on Wikivoyage is less to do with its specific value to travelers, but more to do with the possibility of getting overwhelmed by similar requests, which in many cases may be little more than blogs or advertisements. In that case, each request would need to be reviewed and a criteria established on what is acceptable and what is not. I guess (WT-en) Jpatokal and (WT-en) Colin feel this would be overwhelming. Am I correct? I like the idea of informing contributors/readers of the existance of another site that may be helpful in their travels, but I also agree that Jpatokal and Cjensen have a good point. (WT-en) WindHorse 27 Jan 06

Hey guys.. thanks for the input.. although it seems pretty split. I am going to go ahead and write a sort of "seed" article for the news section. If anyone wants to go in and make it more of a third-party "review" I would actually welcome that. Perhaps that would ease some of the concerns. I think TravBuddy is a pretty cool resource for travellers.. and I hope you will agree. -Derek

Me, I welcome any writing for the travel news section as long as it still exists. I hate it when the newest thing is more than 2 weeks old, sometimes 3 weeks. If people want to use it to promote their travels sites great! Newspapers do that sort of thing all the time. At least we'll have something more current. -- (WT-en) Mark 15:24, 27 Jan 2006 (EST)

Posted the news item (WT-en) Dlazzaro 19:50, 27 Jan 2006 (EST)

Taiwan High Speed Train

Removed headline because the inauguration of this service has been delayed until late Spring. See article dated Oct 25: High Speed Train

Deutschebahn strike?

Deutschebahn train drivers going on strike

Deutschebahn train drivers have already gone on strike Friday(I was affected by it) and may resume the strike as early as tomorrow, which could cancel many local trains in Germany, and possibly even some long distance ones. Would this count as news? I would suggest that anyone planning to catch a flight in Germany next week check the news and try to make alternate arrangements to get to the airport if possible....

The Szechuan Earthquake

Apologies for failure to bring this up early enough, but shouldn't the earthquake be featured as a news item too? It has quite a bit of impact on tourism too (the restoration works plus its proximity to Tibet) and most likely to linger on for quite a while before things get back to normal again. I think it would be good to have it updated and featured irregardless of it happening a weeks back.

Holidays

Swept in from the pub:

So I discovered how to go about adding travel news today and I was going to ask if we could include large national holidays as news. Anyways, I am reminded of how Wikipedia has an "On this day..." section. While it would certainly be too much of a hassle to update something like that on a daily basis, I was thinking that maybe we could add a section on the main page with the current month's worth of holidays (well, major holidays at least). Wikipedia articles for the months list holidays, so the hard work has been done for us! We could list the holidays on the main page, with a separate page listing both the holiday and description (just a few sentences, as seen below). So for instance:

July Holidays

• July 1 Canada Day, Canada. Canada Day is marked by...blah blah.
• July 1 Hong Kong SAR Establishment Day, Hong Kong. Establishment day is marked by...blah blah.
• July 4 Independence Day, United States. In the United States, Independence Day (or also the "Forth of July") is a national holiday on which most workers receive a day off. Many Americans celebrate the day with picnics, grilling foods (such as hamburgers, hot dogs, ribs), heading to the beach/shore, and casual events with friends and families. From major cities to towns of 10,000, many municipalities in the United States host a parade and the vast majority host a fireworks display after dusk. The day is filled with patriotic music and images and flags are certainly not in short supply. If the holiday lies on a weekend, many workers will take the adjacent day off to create a long weekend. For travelers renting a vehicle, expect inter-city highways to be crowded on the days surrounding July 4th and for police vehicles to be blatant and numerous along roads. Additionally, hotels in coastal cities may charge higher-than-normal rates around this day and may have few, if any, vacancies. Nevertheless, the Forth of July is a great day for travelers to experience the patriotic spirit and enjoy free festivities no matter where in the US you may be.
• July 6-14 San Fermín, Spain. Most notable for the running of the bulls, this festival...blah blah.
• July 10 Independence Day, Bahamas. In the Bahamas, Independence Day is celebrated by...blah blah.
• July 12 Battle of the Boyne, Ireland & Northern Ireland. The Battle of the Boyne is remembered on this day by...blah blah.
• July 13-16 Bon Festival, Japan (dates vary by region). Bon Festival is celebrated in Japan by...blah blah.
• July 14 Bastille Day, France. Also known as Le quatorze juillet, this holiday marks...
• etcetera

Of course, we needn't list every holiday, but at least the major ones in which there are events/festivities of note for travelers. So for the US (which, being an American, is what I can relate to), we wouldn't need to list "Presidents Day" or "Flag Day", but the culture surrounding the 4th of July or Thanksgiving(and maybe even Black Friday) would be of interest to travelers. If a holiday spans more than 1 country (mostly religious holidays, like Christmas or Ramadan) or is specific to one but also celebrated in places worldwide (Chinese New Year, St.Patrick's Day) listing would look like:

• December 25 Christmas, Christians/others. Note that Armenians celebrate Christmas on Jan 6, Orthodox Christians (mostly in Eastern Europe & the Middle East) on Jan 7. Christmas is celebrated with varying customs by region. This is a day spent mostly in the home with family, and as a result is the least busy day (commercially) of the year. In western nations, many non-Christians celebrate the day as a secular, cultural festival...leading to even higher numbers of people celebrating the holiday (96% in the US for instance). For the tourist, the fact that Christmas day is celebrated by so many means that the day will be spent inactive, as nearly all businesses and tourist attractions will be closed.
• August 22-Sep 20 Ramadan(dates vary annually), Muslims. The month of Ramadan in the Muslim world is marked by dawn to dusk fasting. Visitors to predominately Muslim countries should note that, while not expected to fast themselves, restaurants open during daylight are almost nonexistent. However, in many cities, this month lends to bustling restaurant/nightlife scene for a few hours after dusk...blah blah.
• March 17 St.Patrick's Day, Ireland & Irish communities worldwide. St.Patrick's Day is celebrated in Ireland by...blah blah. Outside of Ireland, festivities may include...blah blah.

So the point is that 2 things would need to be mentioned in a holiday's description: what the holiday celebrates(ie. the independence of [country] on [date]), what happens on the holiday/how is it celebrated(ie. picnics, fireworks, parades, etc), and what are its implications to the traveler(ie. on Christmas, most businesses are closed throughout predominately Christian nations, however airfare is considerably cheaper than surrounding days in the US). I think this would be a great idea for Wikivoyage as a means to celebrate culture and guide Wikivoyageers. Of course, there are potential problems and policies would need to be created regarding: 1) establishing a line between holidays and festivals (to keep the clutter down), 2) keeping up with refreshing holidays on he main page, 3) do we list by date or by region then date, and 3)the line between which holidays should be included and which should be excluded (every nation celebrates its independence day, but is that day in every nation notable for travelers?). The holidays could be kept as separate articles (ie June holidays, July holidays, etc) so that they would only need to be updated every year for holidays with various start-dates. I don't know how to make a template for holiday listings, nor how to rework the main page...but I would certainly be willing to work on the articles (with what I know, with Wikipedia's help) So what's everyone's opinion? Feedback? (WT-en) AHeneen 10:30, 26 November 2008 (EST)

I think you might be on to a neat idea, but why focus solely on the big holidays most people have heard of? It might be more interesting to feature a selection of random interesting things from whatever location that people might not have heard of. Then it could be different every year too. (WT-en) Texugo 07:32, 28 November 2008 (EST)

Maybe we could do the same thing as destinations, and divide holidays into major ones(like DotM) and minor ones worth noting(like OtBP).(WT-en) AHeneen 22:41, 28 November 2008 (EST)

Personally, I don't see any reason to remind everyone of the obvious big ones like Christmas, Easter, New Year's.. Unless.... Well, thinking about it more, perhaps the items featured should not be the holidays themselves but, rather, a particular destination's celebration of a given holiday. So rather than featuring US Independence day as a whole (which is more wikipedia-like), we select a city that has a unique or pronounced way of celebrating it; i.e. what is there for a traveller to do and see on Independence day in, say, New York City? (daytime events in Central Park, massive fireworks display at the Statue of Liberty, etc.). What would a tourist not want to miss seeing in Bangkok during Songkram? What about Carnaval in Olinda? Obon in Kyoto? Easter in Rome? What do you think? (WT-en) Texugo 02:31, 29 November 2008 (EST)

In my belief:

• most holiday info should be destination-centric (i.e. traveler first chooses a destination, and for it he finds out what's special about how the specific holiday is celebrated in the destination chosen). An example I have is New Year holidays in Hungary (pitifully the most important part "Local traditions" is still empty)
• at the same time, some holiday-centric info can make sense; I have early drafts on New Year travel in general, see Talk:Travel topics#New Year Travel and User:(WT-en) DenisYurkin/New Year Travel as the first steps to implement the idea.

Overall, I believe some info on holidays would be really useful; great to find out I'm not alone here :-) --(WT-en) DenisYurkin 17:11, 20 December 2008 (EST)

Is there a spam filter for links?

It seems that every third or fourth time I insert a link in the body of a newsitem (which I always try to do), it turns out as {{{3}}}. Usually this happens when I try to insert 2 links in one newsitem, but sometimes (like tonight) it does that when I insert just 1. What is this? Today when inserting the article about the new Canadian citizenship, I tried to insert the link to a corny YouTube clip and a WSJ article at the end. Whether inserting both or just one of those, it returns as {{{3}}}. It's very random with this error and it really pisses me off. (WT-en) AHeneen 01:36, 18 April 2009 (EDT)

It's not a spam filter. {{{3}}} is a reference used in templates to refer to the third passed parameter. Looks like a quirk in the template code, but a quick look didn't reveal any obvious errors. Might want to drop a note to User:(WT-en) JYolkowski about it; I think he played with it last. (WT-en) LtPowers 11:23, 18 April 2009 (EDT)

Havana Misinformation in RSS Feed?

RSS feed entry (4th from the top) contains following line under "Discover: Havana"

For an "authentic" experience in getting around Havana via public transportation, try El Camello, a split-level bus pulled by a semi-truck, and resembling a 2-humped camel.

I don't know how long it's been since the person who wrote that have been to Havana, but El Camello were discontinued years ago. Havana is served by modern buses from China and school buses that were donated to Cuba by Canadian government (often carrying Canadian labels still). El Camellos are hard to stumble across nowadays. Last time I saw one it was in Manicaragua, small town across the mountain from Trinidad on the way to Santa Clara. One will definitely not take a ride on one in Havana.

Read more about it here --> http://www.cubatourism.ca/havana-guide/havana-transport-options/

Figure Skating Movie

I don't normally follow the travel news page very closely, but this edit about a figure skating movie seems like a subject for reversion since it doesn't have any relevance to travel that I can see. If anyone else agrees please revert, although I'm hesitant to do so personally since I'm not 100% clear on what is considered appropriate content for this page. -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 21:04, 2 January 2011 (EST)

People travel far from home all the time to go to events, and this isn't all too different. After all, it says so precisely that this is a one-time event and that it will be available in only a few select locations. On the other hand, if this were to be a nationwide release shown in every single theater in the country for weeks, then it wouldn't be worthy of inclusion. That's just my opinion. :) (WT-en) Jonathan 784 20:37, 3 January 2011 (EST)

We don't usually put things on the news feed that are merely events someone might want to travel to. We only put events that actually have some relation to travel (and I don't think a documentary about a plane crash is enough to qualify). (WT-en) LtPowers 21:19, 3 January 2011 (EST)

Restart

Should we?

Any plans to start again travel news project? I would try to contribute to this section on regular basis. --Saqib (talk) 21:53, 25 October 2012 (CEST)

I too noted a few minutes ago that this section was "missing" on the Main page. At least I think it would be useful to put urgent travel alerts in a box on the Main page, maybe even with a stop hand or triangle. Ypsilon (talk) 16:07, 25 December 2012 (UTC)

Proposal 1

The problem with Travel News had been that there were too few news/events to feature. As a result, some of the things listed were 6-12 months old and no longer relevant. Have a look at the last Main Page revision before the move. A part of the problem was that the section was formatted so that there were an equal number of travel alerts & upcoming events. If the travel news section is to be re-added to the main page here, then perhaps editor discretion should be allowed as to which items remain and how many items remain in each section (with a limit of, say, 2-10). The sections could be split so that, for styling purposes, it looks good whether there are 2 travel alerts & 6 upcoming events or 4 of each.

We could also re-style the Travel News page so that it is easier for less-experienced users to add a blurb about news/events and for those of us updating the content on the Main Page to discern which news events should be featured when. This can be accomplished by more detailed instructions for how to add to travel news (for less-experienced users) and a better template for items listed in travel news. The best example would be the Destination of the month candidates page, where there are clear instructions/guidelines at the top for nominating (which for travel news would be "adding items", with no upcoming/schedule needed) and a template to aid those updating the main page. For travel news, the template would be more simple...the headline, date, blurb, image (if applicable/available), preferably a good reference/external site (a news article, official announcement/press release, relevant official website, Wikinews, or Wikipedia), and length of time or to feature. The time to feature would be general, such as a range of months before a festival/events or something like "1 week or more" for travel alerts about natural disasters (varies for cyclones/hurricanes/typhoons, earthquakes, winter storms, heat waves/cold snaps, volcanic eruptions, etc.) and maybe 1-2 days for events like transport/general strikes. Tags could be added (optionally) to allow a search feature sometime in the future (if travel news becomes active, hopefully!) or add to destinations as a sidebar link ("Travel news") or in understand or at the bottom ("Wikivoyage has travel news for South Africa"). An explanation/example would be:

• {{newsitem|Title|Date|Time to feature|Website (optional:official website, press release, new article/reference, Wikinews, relevant Wikipedia page)|Photo (optional)|Photo caption(option)|Blurb/prose|tags (optional)}}

• {{newsitem|Solomon Islands Host Quadrennial Festival of Pacific Arts|1 July 2012|April to mid-July 2012|http://www.festivalofpacificarts.com/index.html Official website|The [[Solomon Islands]] will host the largest cultural festival in the Pacific Island region, the quadrennial '''[[:w:Festival of Pacific Arts|]]''', which runs from July 1-14. The festival, held every 4 years since 1972, brings together artisans from 27 [[Islands of the Pacific Ocean|Pacific nations]] and territories to showcase crafts, music, dance, literature, and more. The theme for this festival is "Culture in Harmony With Nature". Delegates are selected by their home country/territory and attend the festival to showcase their home rather than compete—a rare cultural exchange between somewhat similar cultures that are separated by long distances and few transport options. Events will be held in purpose built a purpose-built village near [[Honiara]], with some festivities held in other locations. The Solomon Islands claim this to be their biggest tourism event ever and are improving tourist facilities and cleaning up the image of Honiara. National airline Solomons Airlines is adding extra flights between Honiara-[[Brisbane]], [[Australia]] around the festival. The next FoPA won't be held until 2016 in [[Guam]].|Oceania, Solomon Islands, Festival of Pacific Arts, festival, arts, culture, Pacific, South Pacific, islands, Guam}}

Another change to make TN more organized/visually appealing would be to add content to a new-created page by year, for example "2013 Travel news", rather than all on the Travel news page. This would also make archiving simple (no real need, maybe just add a disclaimerbox at top to not add anything more) and also make it easy to insert inter-wiki links for news items into pages (since link would remain same when archiving isn't done). For example: Travel times around the country have been greatly reduced since the [[2011 Travel news#Wikivoyagia Opens New High-Speed Rail Line|opening of the New City-Wikiland high-speed rail line]] in late 2011. The "Year Travel news" page would function as our repository of travel news and events. If the need arises in the future, this can be changed to separate Travel alerts & Upcoming events. To update what's listed on the main page, we would have a page called "Template:MPTN" (for Main Page Travel news), not editable by new users, which would be a list of travel news selected from the "Year Travel news" page to be viewed from the main page. Sound complicated? This is very similar to how we handle DotM/OtBP/FTT on the main page: nominees (or for TN, items) are already in templates on one page (for TN, items in "Year Travel news") along with instructions for updating (for TN, on the separate "WV:Travel news" page), with a "Template:dotm/otbp/ftt" page (for TN, "Template:MPTN", not editable by new users) that controls what is displayed on the main page. After the list of items, it would read "Read more 2012 and 2013 travel news and upcoming events." with 2012/13 being links to "2012 Travel news" and "2013 Travel news".

To sum things up: Travel news is moved to "Wikivoyage:Travel news" and becomes a project page on the scope of Travel news, how to add new items, and criteria/instructions for featuring news items on the Main Page. "Template:MPTN" (for Main Page Travel news) is a page that is updated with a list of travel news items that gets featured on the Main Page (the MP would just have the mptn template inserted, not be constantly edited with new items). "Year Travel news" functions as the repository for items, since Main Page real estate is limited, and has instructions on how to add new items using a travelnews template (which will now include a time to feature plus optional images & tags). Not all items on this page would be featured on the main page, so the Main Page would have a link to the current year's travel news and either the preceding (Jan-Jun) or upcoming (Jul-Dec) year's news. AHeneen (talk) 23:09, 25 December 2012 (UTC)

Sorry, I'm far too busy to read what is probably a great proposal, but if we were considering working with Wikinews (which I think is the way to go), we'd have to get the Wikinews Importer Bot which I requested weeks ago here to no response. Someone else might want to give that user a nudge. JamesA ^>talk 06:54, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

James, As Ypsilon said much of WN stuff not that relevant for travelers, so the importer bot is not that necessary right now. Let's kick start this section as soon as possible. --Saqib (talk) 18:34, 5 January 2013 (UTC)