Wikitravel:Itineraries

From Wikitravel

Route map from Three days in Singapore

An itinerary is an article that describes a path through several destinations or attractions, giving suggestions of where to stop, what to see, how to prepare, etc. If you think of our destination guides as dots on a map, an itinerary describes a line that connects those dots.

Some itineraries may be on a formal, or relatively well-defined route, such as the Oodnadatta Track, the Appalachian Trail or Route 66. Others may be more informal — One month in Southeast Asia, Across Canada by train, or others.

Itineraries are a meta-view of the destination guides. They're another way of seeing travel — not by where you go, but by how you get there.

See also List of itineraries.

[edit] Article content

Itinerary articles should concentrate on the process of traveling between destinations and making suggestions about what to see along the way, while leaving the nitty-gritty details for the destination articles. Start with Wikitravel's itinerary article template as an outline.

A special case is an itinerary that covers sights within a single large destination, like One day in Tokyo or Three days in Singapore. The intention here is to provide a 'self-guided tour' of a destination, picking out worthwhile attractions and how to best connect the dots.

For any type of itinerary, a map is very, very useful for planning and visualizing. See Wikitravel:How to draw a map for details on how to draw one yourself.

[edit] Article titles

There are no hard-and-fast rules for making article titles for itineraries. The following are some guidelines for naming itinerary articles.

• Use the traditional or legal name for a route if one exists. For example, the Annapurna Circuit, Route 66, Transcanada Highway.
• If the itinerary lies in a particular part of our geographical hierarchy -- a country, region, city, etc. -- use "Amount of time in name of destination". For example, One month in Southeast Asia.
• If the itinerary covers getting from one point to another, use "Point A to Point B in amount of time". For example, New York to Los Angeles in two weeks, Capetown to Cairo in three months.
• If the itinerary specifically covers one form of transportation (rail, car, foot, bike), add in "by rail", "on foot", "by car", "by bike" to the article name. For example, Two months in Europe by rail, San Francisco to Los Angeles by bike.
• Articles on historical routes can use titles like On the trail of Marco Polo, but where the route has a name, such as Lewis and Clark Trail, use that instead.

The closer article titles come to these guidelines, the more likely readers and contributors will recognize them as itineraries.

[edit] Alternative routes

In many instances it will be hard for contributors to agree on what exactly is the best way to get from Point A to Point B, or what are the must-see attractions in Region C or City D. We're thus caught between two undesirable extremes:

1. Each contributor makes their own personal itinerary for a place or region. You write your New York to Los Angeles in two weeks, I write my New York to Los Angeles in two weeks, and we both maintain them separately. We lose a lot of the reliability advantages of Wiki this way -- not to mention the confusion for other contributors and readers.
2. There's just one New York to Los Angeles in two weeks, with all possible variations of route and schedule. It might read like this: Day 1. Start in New York, and go north to New England, or south to Baltimore, or west to Philadelphia. See the Liberty Bell or (if you went to New England) Cape Cod or (if you went to Baltimore) the Washington Monument. Day 2. Drive north 3 hours or south 2 hours or west one hour or back east four hours. Stop for lunch. [...] This kind of tangled mess is completely unreadable -- nobody will be able to follow it, nor be able to figure out how to contribute to it.

In order to keep itineraries actually useful to travelers, we try to strike a happy medium between these two extremes.

First, we try to use consensus and collaboration to come up with just one route, if possible. Second, if there are small, reasonable, understandable variations on a route, we include them on a single page. For example, a few side-roads or paths that tend to regroup at the end of a few days. Third, if there are two or more good routes that are tangling up together on a page, we put them on separate pages -- assuming they can support their own pages.

See also: List of itineraries