User talk:Harald Hansen

Hey Harold, thanks so much for all the awesome contributions. You are making wikiOverland the resource I always dreamed it could be.

Just one thing to note, I think we should limit WikiOverland to only the information you can't find elsewhere online, and mostly just the essentials needed to get across countries/continents. For example, visa information for people can so easily be found on other sites, and changes often, so I'd rather just link to it so others have to keep it up to date.

I know that stuff like People of Overlanding, detailed vehicle mods, etc. is all interesting stuff, but I feel there are already so many other sites out there actively maintaining that info, there is no reason to duplicate it. I really want to avoid WikiOverland turning into a "Land Rover" vs. "Toyota" discussion - again there are just so many other sites doing that, let's leave it to them.

If we put too much extra stuff into WO, it will be an enormous amount of work to keep it even remotely up-to-date. WikiOverland is unique with it's country information like process at the border and gas prices in any currency, so that's where I'd like to focus. Getting a page up for (virtually) every country would be fantastic, with as much information as possible from the Country template. Adding more Popular Overland Routes is high on my list when we have more country information too.

I'd like to hear your thoughts on this. The last thing I want to do is discourage anyone from contributing. WikiOverland is of course for the community, and I'm just one person, so maybe I don't know what I'm talking about and the community wants to take it in a different direction. Thanks again, -Dan 07:04, 10 December 2011 (GMT-13)

Hi, Dan! I can see where you come from re: technical information, but as those pages were established when I showed up here I figured they were part of what you intended the wiki to cover. So I put in a bit of balanced (I hope!) info to start things off on the right track. I'm not terribly attached to those few technical pages, so just bury them if they're outside the "wiki charter", so to speak.

Maybe you could put a little bit more information in "What's not included" on the front page?

As you can see I had stab at filling in the country template for Norway, where I live. It's a fair bit of work to complete all the entries, but I'll give it a shot.

I think one of your main challenges, except attracting contributors, will be establishing a system for handling subjective information. I.e. user A states that "route X has the greatest views on the continent" and user B deletes this and writes "route X has scenic portions, but hardly world-class". These kinds of situations sometimes devolve into edit wars. But we'll see.

Good work on establishing the wiki; it'll be interesting to see how it plays out! Harald Hansen 02:17, 13 December 2011 (GMT-13)

Hey Harald, HAHA, you figured out pretty quickly I'm an Engineer :) I need to come up with more pages regarding "what's the purpose of WO and what's our focus". I spent so many hours on the content already there, I really wanted to open it up to others to see what the community thought about it all.

Thanks for the Norway content - that's fantastic. I know there are a lot of sections, but my hope is the majority of it won't need updating often once it's actually been entered. I suspect only "process at the border" and "gas prices" will need updating often. I sincerely hope others' will take the time to include information about their home country, or countries they have traveled to.

Subjective information will be tricky, that's why my suggested headings in the country template don't allow too much wiggle room. Hopefully people will stay more-or-less on track and we won't have an issue.

The number one thing I want to avoid is discouraging people from contributing - every time I contribute to WikiTravel or Wikipedia I get the run around where my content is deleted and I'm told "put it in this other place" - which is repeated 10 times until I give up. I really want people to feel welcome and encouraged to contribute to WikiOverland, so I aim to avoid editing wars or "content police".

Thanks again for all your contributions! -Dan 07:38, 13 December 2011 (GMT-13)