for bigger cities with lots to do BigCity A city is, in reality, the unit of travel guide geography. It's where you arrive to, where you go see sights, where you find a hotel, where you eat in restaurants, where you move on from when you're done. Wikitravel's definition of a city is flexible: they may be literal incorporated cities, but they can also be larger metropolitan areas with suburbs and satellite cities, like Los Angeles or Paris, or they can be smaller towns or villages, like Zermatt or Panmunjeom. Where suburbs, satellite cities, and villages deserve their own Wikitravel entries is a matter of judgement -- probably depending on the amount of information about those places. We have different templates to deal with cities of different sizes and complexity. City A section is a division of a continent into a logical travel part. Classic examples are Southeast Asia or Northern Europe. Sometimes sections may not make sense, or may be equivalent to national boundaries. For example, it's natural to divide North America into Canada, the United States of America, Mexico, and Central America. ContinentalSection Continents are big sections of the globe. We've started with Asia, Africa, North America, etc., and a separate pseudo-continent of Island nations. There's not actually much practical travel information that can be given on, say, Asia, but it does provide a convenient container for the next level of hierarchy. Continent A country is a recognized state territory on the globe, like Djibouti, France, or Brazil. Countries tend to be the level where information about currency, immigration, language, culture, etc. get described. This level cannot be skipped. Country A region that matches exactly with an official county, in those countries with counties (e.g. UK, USA). County A region that matches exactly with an official department, in those countries with counties (e.g. France). Department Some cities are just so big and so diverse that there's too much information to keep in one Wikitravel article. It'd make sense, then, to divide the city again into districts, so that practical info -- hotel listings, restaurants, bars, sightseeing attractions -- can get their due. Examples of districts in San Francisco would be San Francisco/Marina, San Francisco/Tenderloin, and San Francisco/Mission. The article would be helpful for the average traveler, such as offering alternatives for where to stay and eat, what to see and do, how to get in and out, etc. and provide enough information for at least a few days there. But at least a few things are missing to make this a star article. It follows the manual of style in spirit if not in detail. Guide A travel guide describing a particular location, including places to eat and sleep, nightlife, and things to do and see in the location. Typically a travel guide also includes some light history and description of the location appropriate for a traveler. Guide for cities so big that they must be broken up into districts HugeCity A temporal description for things to see in a particular location or for a trip from point A to point B. Whereas a guide will give descriptions of things to do and see in a location, an itinerary will give specific durations and order for seeing and doing them. Itinerary Has at least an introduction and a template outline laid out for the article, but not much more. Some of the sections may have content, but others are empty. You can tell what this article is going to be about, but it doesn't have enough information to be useful (e.g. get you to a destination and keep you alive there). Outline A national park or other undeveloped area big enough to merit its own article. A brief introduction to a language, including a gloss of the grammar and pronunciation of the language, and a list of phrases in the language with translations in the 'host' language. A phrasebook typically does not teach grammar rules in details, but prepares the reader to deal with constrained situations (like travel) with rote memorization of key phrases applicable to the domain. Phrasebook Superclass of all levels of the geographical hierarchy Place A region that matches exactly with an official province, in those countries with provinces (e.g. Canada. Province A region is a subnational division that is climatically, culturally, geographically, or politically coherent. Regions may lie along subnational borders -- like states in the USA, provinces in Canada, or departements in France -- but more often they are above this level. One could divide Vietnam, for example, into the North (Hanoi and environs), the Central Coast (Danang, Hoi An, Nha Trang), the Central Highlands (Dalat and nearby) and the South (Saigon and the Mekong Delta). Region for villages or towns, and cities without a lot of tourist attractions SmallCity A stage of development of articles Stage The article is essentially complete. It meets all of the above criteria. It follows the manual of style exactly or is the exception that proves the rule. Prose is not only near-perfect grammatically but also tight, effective, and enjoyable. It has appropriate illustrations, such as photos and a map. Enough breadth and depth of material is presented that anyone familiar with the subject of the article would have little to point out as absent. Future changes to this kind of article would reflect changes in the subject (e.g. a museum closes, a hotel price changes, a new airport is built) more than they'd require improvements in the coverage. Star A region that matches exactly with an official state, in those countries with states (Australia, USA, Mexico). State An article with little or no information in it, or not formatted even close to the manual of style. An article with no template or a former copyright violation would have this status. Stub An essay or instructional document about a particular topic pertinent to travelers. TravelTopic An adventurous person could use the article without recourse to other information sources. For most articles, this means they could probably get to the destination, eat, and sleep with just this information. It would probably enable them to find at least the most prominent attraction there. Usable A docent is a person who's volunteered to answer questions about a place. hasDocent Stage of development of the article, also known as article status. Five-level home-brewed system used by Wikitravel. stage Evan Prodromou 2007-06-11T17:25:38Z text/html en Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 1.0 Wikitravel:Schema