Mary’s Blog
Working with Wikipedia
Aug 27th
What’s the deal with Wikipedia? We all use it. We all know what it is. But does anyone really know how confusing it is?!?!
Over the last two weeks, I have been working to make Global Traveler a Wikipedia article. When I started, I figured I would just need to do some research about the company, add in the things I knew and then put in the finishing touches. I was mistaken.
First of all, Wikipedia has a ton of rules. Rules that you never thought would matter but that Wikipedia thinks is super important. There are rules about making lists and including people’s names. One large rule is the “Point of View” rule. You have to be unbiased and present your article from a completely neutral point of view. That tends to be incredibly difficult when you are making a page about a company that you work for. One of my favorite obstacles is that you cannot have a user name that is a company name. Despite reading hundreds of pages about Wikipedia and articles, I never came across this rule. I learned this the hard way when trying to find out something on a help chat. The person in the chat was so serious about this rule that he would not help me until I filed a “name change request.” Wikipedia is not for those people just playing around.
Wikipedia has its own language. Everyday tasks done on the word processor become difficult and bothersome. Pressing ctrl and “B” no longer makes something bold. The Wikipedia user has to use apostrophes (‘’’) to initiate the bold and then another set of three apostrophes to end it. Similar programming techniques are used to get italics, bullets, lists and headings. I would tell you how to underline, but I don’t even know if that is possible in Wikipedia world.
So after you master the rules and the language, there is one more problem. People and robots continually check the site to make sure that people are posting things fairly and legally. I tried to upload the GT logo and immediately two people were leaving messages on my “MyTalk.” If only they knew I had no idea what was going on and didn’t even know how to find their messages! Right now I have my page up for feedback. We shall see how that works out.
Working with Wikipedia has given me a new-found respect for the articles that people put up. Every link is the result of hard work, and every picture is the result of an intense copyright law. It has been fascinating learning the ins and outs of the Wikipedia world, and by the end of the process I hope to be so knowledgeable that I can call others out on their mistakes. My interaction and work with Wikipedia has confirmed my opinion that teachers and professors should count it as a reliable source. If they only knew how hard it was to get information published on it!
– Mary Carpenter, intern
Final Glimpses
Jul 27th
This is my 108th blog here, and my last. I’ve been providing your weekend reading for the last 13 months, and if I’ve given you anything to think about, enlighten you, or make you smile, I’m glad.
A couple of months ago I was reading the farewell blog of a writer for Techcrunch who was moving on to greener pastures, and he did a great roundup of the favorite tech sites he’d covered during his tenure. I thought about doing something like that, but I’ve already explained how I’d answer the question “What’s Your Favorite Place?” And I told my favorite travel anecdote in my very first blog.
Looking back over the last year, I suppose I wish I’d used this bully pulpit to discuss a bit more the issues that handicapped travelers face. I addressed it early on, in The Elephant Parade, but like most handicapped travelers it’s actually such a small part of who we are overall that it just doesn’t usually pop into mind.
In my experience, kudos need to go to American airports in general for dealing with travelers who need wheelchairs. This is often people like me who can walk, but can’t walk far. Unlike me, they are often elderly. At most U.S. airports, porters who most often handle luggage are also the ones who push the chairs. Since this is America, capitalism rules, and like waiters the good ones–which in my experience is most of them–work hard for a good tip. The airports where I’ve felt the most like left luggage are those run by the British Airport Authority in the U.K., and I had a good four hours in Gatwick recently to explore why. It seems to be a budgetary issue; the B.A.A. hires subcontractors and there are simply nowhere near enough porters, or chairs. I’ve been left sitting on planes, in gates, and in various hallways for up to an hour while they scramble to find someone to push–at Heathrow, at Gatwick, at Manchester. This is no particular airline’s fault, but there’s also not much we can do except to complain (nicely) and write letters to both the airlines and the B.A.A. Plus, if England isn’t your destination, I can strongly suggest that if you need a wheelchair, find another country in which to change planes.
I hate to leave you on a down note, so I’m going to leave you with some nice pictures instead. I recently stayed at the Jan III Sobienski Hotel in Warsaw, which will be the subject of the review in the July 30 edition of eFlyer, and here are some images from that trip.
Bon voyage, and au revoir,
- Mary Hunt, editor (through July 30), eFlyer
Adventure Travel Is One Thing, But…
Jul 26th
I’m always scanning the travel news, and this week I came across two items that I’d have to call “Extreme Adventure Travel.”
One of them was about a group of Danish tourists visiting the glaciers in Uummannaq, on Greenland’s western coast. While they were taking pictures, some big chunks of ice fell of the glaciers into the water, creating a wave so big that two of the tourists drowned.
My condolences to the two men’s families, but–hello! Global warming anyone? Seeing the glaciers before they disappear could be a noble adventure, but wasn’t the proximity to open water a clue? I mean, I live in Florida on the Gulf coast and after Katrina most of us keep life vests just in case. Adventure travel usually means a certain amount of risk; we can’t just run around the planet without taking some care.
And talk about a noble effort: I just read an article about tourism to Afghanistan‘s Grand Canyon, which comprises that country’s first national park. It takes “eight bone-shaking hours” to drive there from Kabul, but it’s a popular picnic spot for Afghanis, and you can even tour the lake by swan boat for $8. The views are breathtaking, as is the serenity – which is notable because there are so few people. That’s attributed to the “deteriorating security situation in the surrounding provinces.” As the author says, “This beautiful and peaceful part of a violent country has huge potential to make Afghanistan a lot of money, but only when the majority of foreign visitors here aren’t carrying guns.”
That’s an understatement. There’s a big difference between being an intrepid traveler and being a foolish one. If there’s an advantage to our foreign policy of recent years, it’s that news coverage has conveyed the fact that the world is not an especially safe place right alongside the fact that Americans aren’t totally welcome and beloved everywhere. Caution is warranted, and adventure requires a certain amount of common sense.
I applaud the fact that people don’t let their fears get in the way of their travels. By all means, go off the beaten path. But before you go to a war zone, or a place in the process of being reclaimed by the sea, think about going in a context where you can be an instrument of change rather than another strain on the infrastructure. As the saying goes, “If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.”
- Mary Hunt, editor, eFlyer
Stop Speculating and Fly
Jul 20th
If you’re on an airline mailing list, chances are you received an email from a CEO last week. The heads of AirTran, Alaska Airlines, American Airlines, Continental Airlines, Delta Air Lines, Hawaiian Airlines, JetBlue, Midwest Airlines, Northwest Airlines, Southwest, United and US Airways jointly sent out “An open letter to All Airline Customers†decrying the high price of fuel and pinning it on unnecessary speculation in the commodity.
Congress held hearings on the same subject. However, most economists agree that it is global demand, and not speculation, that is driving up fuel costs, in combination with the weakness of the U.S. dollar, which happens to be the currency in which oil is denominated.
The real purpose of the letter seems to be a valid one, nonetheless: To remind travelers that airlines aren’t to blame for higher airfares. The airline industry is one of the few that simply can’t pass on increased costs to its customers. The price of airfare has gone up less than the cost of a quart of milk, percentagewise, and when you think of how much more fuel it takes to fly an airplane than to run a milk truck, you know that the airlines are taking it on the chin.
That’s because price resistance is a fact of life with leisure travelers. I’ve said this before: When fares aren’t low, people look for vacations closer to home. So if your business depends on air travel, other than stopping all that speculating in oil that you’ve been doing (LOL), what you can really do is fly for your vacation this summer. And not with your airline miles, either.
- Mary Hunt, editor, eFlyer
