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Mark Mayo

04:01

4

Being from a big country like Australia I'm fascinated with tiny countries. Most people wouldn't visit Liechtenstein while touring Europe since it doesn't have any of the spots Europe is most famous for, but I would specifically go there. If I only do one thing in Liechtenstein to make the most...

@hippietr - just wondering your specific reasons for posting this, given our FAQ says no requests for tips ;) Given you're a very ardent identifier of posts like this ;)

@VMAtm @Ankur would love your thoughts on this too ;)

@MartinTapankov We're in and out of the room - I for one am travelling at present, so not online all the time ;)

@Roflcoptr Loving the popularity of the vodka question on twitter ;)

Roflcoptr

07:12

@MarkMayo I'm loving the popularity too, but I couldn't found out who posted in on twitter

@MarkMayo For this Liechtenstein question there is an objective answer. I already know one, but I still hadn't time to post it

Mark Mayo

07:48

twitter.com/#!/search/how%20to%20avoid%20drinking%20vodka will show the posts of who have tweeted it. Quite a few!

twitter.com/#!/StackTravel - there's an automated tweeter for Travel.SE now, it would appear! (or someone cherry picking them at least!)

Mark Mayo

08:03

Aside: a raccoon tried to take a bite of my shoe today (foot still inside)! Sneaky critters...

hippietrail

08:46

@MarkMayo, @VMAtm, @Ankur: would you rather i pig headedly stick to my own version of the rules or join in with the accepted rules? the accepted rules have become "specific enough advice/tip/recommendation questions are acceptable". But mainly liechtenstein being so tiny it's special in that it's not really easy to have a broad question about it. also it's a long tail question since not many travel sites have much to say about the country and most travellers haven't been there

but my reasoning was that we were brainstorming ideas for more questions and we have a liechtenstein specialist with no questions to answer and i also have an answer that i'll sit on for a while (although you can see it over to the right if you have a look), but i won't add my answer till there are some others first

Martin Tapankov

omg Jeff Atwood retweeted the infamous vodka question..

hippietrail

how many views now?

Martin Tapankov

2800 almost

hippietrail

3k

oh where did you get the exact number?

Martin Tapankov

just open the question page and it's on the top right

easy to miss

hippietrail

08:53

aha

hey did any of you see my meta.SO question? the dudes there seem to be trigger happily closing it without reading it

Martin Tapankov

which one was that?

hippietrail

3

Q: There is a UI bug when trying to edit meta tag wikis

When I try to edit a tag wiki on a meta site I cannot, rather I get what seems to be an error message which doesn't reflect reality: There is no tag wiki for this tag … yet! Tag wikis help introduce newcomers to the tag. They contain an overview of the topic defined by the tag, along wit...

bug editing user-interface meta tag-wiki

the one where the UI tells you that you can edit meta tag wikis but is lying

Martin Tapankov

seems they misunderstood what you meant

hippietrail

too much caffeine and speed reading

Martin Tapankov

story of my life..

hippietrail

09:03

i made more typos and thinkos in questions here the past couple of days. i blame the caffeine.... of which i need more right now

Martin Tapankov

then again, the meta.SO people can be quite unforgiving sometimes in voting to close or downvoting

hippietrail

yep even the jeffjoel was complaining about them on the latest podcast

i guess i'm admitting i'm a geek when i say i listen to the podcast (-:

so when are you planning the safari?

Martin Tapankov

what do you mean -- I listen to the podcast as well

hippietrail

geek! d-;

Martin Tapankov

and proud of it!

hippietrail

09:09

i seem to be the only person here who thinks nude urls are ugly...

not to mention the ones wearing nothing but a skimpy "click here"

Martin Tapankov

I was hoping to do this in the spring -- the days are getting shorter and shorter, and I won't be able to do this until mid-November at the earliest

the one suggested is only one hour or so, and is not on foot, so that kind of doesn't work for me

I'd rather hike in the forest and shoot stuff for a whole day or even two

ahem, with a camera, that is

hippietrail

(-:

i hereby volunteer you to write the safari tag wiki

i also pondered adding a wildlife tag, the two wouldn't really be synonyms though

Martin Tapankov

oh man.. you can bet your upside-down sneakers it will be full of puns and innuendos

yay, aussie jokes.. do you get these a lot?

hippietrail

i only know three good aussie jokes. all others are recycled jokes that could apply to anywhere

wow we only just got a stop-over tag after all this time!

grr how do we still get some plural tags redirecting to singular tags? it should only be the other way round

wow we got some drivebys on the vodka question even

Martin Tapankov

09:25

you have something like a mild OCD about naked links, huh?

but it's all good -- I get annoyed by the smallest spelling mistakes :-)

hippietrail

i need a t-shirt that says "naked girls good -- naked urls bad"

well we are supposed to edit to make the site look more professional and putting links behind relevant text is better for searching, benefits the site and the searchers

Martin Tapankov

Or one with a picture of a dead baby seal and caption: "Every time you post a naked URL, a cute baby seal is shot."

hippietrail

sometimes they're ok if a company's name is actually their url or when pointing out the difference between say the us and uk site of the same company

i might post a rant about good linking

Martin Tapankov

yeah, but not those monstrosities with a lot of %$#&^#, usually generated by PHP devs from the 2000's, or IIS "admins"

hippietrail

the urls or the girls?

hey that would actually make a good t-shirt. i should typoize it this way for best effect: "naked gurls good -- naked urls bad"

3

hippietrail

09:43

0

Q: Tags should be plurals (with a few caveats)

Hey travellers I'd just like to revisit an old issue: Plural tags should be the lead tag in a set of tag synonyms. At least that's what we seemed to decide from the clickvoting back then. Somehow at least one reversal has slipped through the cracks: airports redirects to airport. Can a friend...

discussion support tagging tag-synonyms

this is a little rant. i'll save the nude urls rant for later

Martin Tapankov

s/noobs/new users

hippietrail

feel free

Martin Tapankov

not enough rep yet.. somebody needs to ask another stereotypical question about Eastern Europe, and then I'd be able to do it myself

hippietrail

10:00

you must have enough rep to suggest edits

Martin Tapankov

Not on meta, it seems

but on the main site -- yes

hippietrail

ah of course

hippietrail

10:19

any diamonds around to swap airport and airports?

hippietrail

11:03

woah bug!!!

> Creating the new tag [airport] is not allowed since the tag [airports] already exists. If you think this new tag should be allowed, raise it on meta.

i'm not changing the tags at all, just editing a typo in the question body

ferry and ferries should also be swapped

- technology is a terrible synonym for online-resources! for instance it could cover all kinds of stuff like gear, wifi, gps, ...

Roflcoptr

17:52

that's really weird

i hope tonight I have time to answer your question ;)

Mark Mayo

18:10

I agree with the 'click here' being awful

and I understand why some people dislike naked URLs

but maybe it's just the geek in me, but I prefer to see the URL before I click it (yes I know I can hover and check in the status bar, but that takes precious millisecs ;))

hippietrail

they're ugly and hard to read and make our lovely site less google-able

maybe i was brainwashed by very occasionally visiting our sister "user experience" site though d-;

Mark Mayo

yeah I know, it's probably even in Nielsen's heuristics somewhere, and heck our lecturer beat the 'click here' out of us years ago, but it's a bad habit I also possess occasionally ;)

hippietrail

lucky i seem to like copyediting (-: must be from my years working in a print shop

Mark Mayo

haha

like Martin I'm a pedant when it comes to spelling and grammar, however, so that's something ;)

hippietrail

i am too but i also like to break my own rules when i want to d-;

which is fine because my other hobby is being a descriptive linguist

Roflcoptr

18:19

i'm the only one that prefers naked urls and naked girls

but i also want to see where a url ponts

and tinyurls are just crap

Mark Mayo

haha

you 'prefer' naked URLS? ;)

distracted by the girls I see ;)

yeah tinyurls are annoying

hippietrail

I <3 NAKED GURLS. I Ɛ> NAKED URLS

tiny urls are so tiny you can't see nothin'

now which of our users is the one from liechtenstein?

Mark Mayo

vodka question is up to 3122 now

um, no idea?

Martin Tapankov

Roflcoptr

Mark Mayo

I get the whole 'it's a tiny country'

hippietrail

18:29

/me prods @Roflcoptr ... OI!

Mark Mayo

my only worry is that others may see it and think that style is ok for other countries ;)

but we can throw the 'broad' statement at them ;)

hippietrail

hey i'm just following the beaten track

Mark Mayo

oi, @Roflcoptr, you awake? It's not that late where you are.

hippietrail

maybe i didn't use enough @'s

Mark Mayo

clearly :)

hippietrail

18:31

maybe he's out researching überspezialliechtensteindingsbums

Mark Mayo

@MartinTapankov is lurking as well

Martin Tapankov

you think?

hippietrail

since there's a diamond around there are some tag yuckies i spotted earlier. let me find them and whinge about them to you

Mark Mayo

awesome :)

Ugh, it's 11.30am and I'm in a coffee shop, tired. Friend arrives at YVR in 3.5 hours, so aside from a walk there's not a lot of sightseeing I can shove in today

Travel.SE it is :)

plus apartment researching

hippietrail

why on earth does money redirect to currency?

Martin Tapankov

18:33

@MarkMayo are you back home

hippietrail

money is the generic, currency means cash money only right?

Mark Mayo

nope, I'm sightseeing in Vancouver

on the 10th I fly to NZ, then I'll be 'home', although I've not lived there for 4 years, so home is a relative term :)

@hippietrail gold

Roflcoptr

i'm eating ;)

and playing with my girldfriend

as soons as this is done

Mark Mayo

bearer bonds

Roflcoptr

ill answer your question

hippietrail

18:35

in vancouver i love that huge park and i do the rounds of all the awesome bookshops and i rollerblade everywhere and if it's hot and sunny of course i spend all day at wreck beach

Mark Mayo

what goes on in roflcopter land stays in roflcopter land ;)

Martin Tapankov

oh man.. I miss the sunny weather

Mark Mayo

Stanley Park - yeah done a lot of it, that's where a raccoon tried to eat my shoe yesterday!

hippietrail

it sounds like playing with roflcopter's girlfriend is one of the best things to do in the little principality d-;

Mark Mayo

wreck beach? lol, I'm aware of that one

@hippietrail we could turn this into a community wiki, I feel

;)

hippietrail

18:36

i took one of my best ever photos of a raccoon in stanley park. i did suffer for my art though no blood

Mark Mayo

haha

they're brave little critters!

hippietrail

wreck beach is totally famous dude! you have to climb down like 110 stairs behind the university and there's a secret wonderland

they know the have a secret weapon when they need it... tetanus

Mark Mayo

by secret wonderland, you refer of course to naked, er, urls ;)

Martin Tapankov

"where no man has ever been before"

hippietrail

tips is a synonym of tipping but sooner or later people will start using it for all these travel tips questions now that we kinda allow them sorta a bit

Mark Mayo

18:39

haha

hippietrail

yes urls running around without their um underscores or what have you but also stuff for sale including naughty stuff i don't buy but general hippiness and happiness

think nimbin plus a beach but minus feral kids

Martin Tapankov

@hippietrail: I see you are short on punctuation. Here are some free commas and full stops: ,,,,...,,

Mark Mayo

Think I'll save it for when I'm here when it's warmer :) Don't want my exclamation to be a comma... ;)

Roflcoptr

so

hippietrail

!@#$%^&*()_ thanks man -=[]\{}|:;'"<>?

Roflcoptr

18:41

i'm done

just have to clean up

then your question has to be answered

hippietrail

clean up the country? that could take all evning!

Martin Tapankov

hahahah

Mark Mayo

you guys are missing the all important interrobang: ‽‽‽‽‽‽

hippietrail

ah yes here we are. online-resources is totally broken

we have the not necessarily online resources redirecting to it

either we separate online and offline resources or the lead tag should be the more general one

i din't forget it it's just a pain to google for. took me long enough to find the Ɛ

Martin Tapankov

do we really need to consider offline resources at all?

hippietrail

18:44

books!

Martin Tapankov

I mean, when was the last time you looked at a printed travel guide?

ahh

good point

Mark Mayo

Lonely Planet ;)

used one for the first time in Central Asia - was very useful (and very NOT useful at times too)

hippietrail

maybe it would cover maps and brochurs and pamphlets and studies and i dunno

i touched one yesterday but didn't open the albania section

Mark Mayo

@VMAtm added the synonym

Martin Tapankov

reminds me of one short story by Jerome K. Jerome, where he ranted about the accuracy of travel guides

Mark Mayo

18:46

I guess it's because people just type 'resource' even when they mean online resource for say, wiki

hippietrail

i have a shelf of the things at home from the time before i was weened

Mark Mayo

although it should pop up in the suggestions

Roflcoptr

yes I always use resource because i don't know other english words :D

hippietrail

that's what tag excerpts are for

Roflcoptr

and no not liechtenstein. i'm not there atm. but the kitchen ;)

hippietrail

18:46

but depending on your rep you can't type in just any old tag

Mark Mayo

YYeah

but see rofl's comment there

hippietrail

liechtenstein is so small your kitchen is in austria??

san marino is so small their gran prix is in italy but you've taken it one further!

Roflcoptr

yes i'm living very close to the border :D

hippietrail

it looks like singapore airlines is still redirecting to sq

Roflcoptr

but i'm working in switzerland and officially living in liechtenstein. that's way better for the taxes

hippietrail

18:48

i think i rollerbladed between your living room and your kitchen

Mark Mayo

killed the synonym between the resources

hippietrail

i live on a disused offshore oil drilling platform for tax purposes

Mark Mayo

looking at the sq one now, what's your whinge about that?

Martin Tapankov

@MarkMayo: Sorry for the ignorance, but what are you referring to in the Delhi belly question?

Mark Mayo

oh no 2 letter airlines

hippietrail

18:50

oh yeah here's a horrible one: technology redirecting to online-resources?? don't make synonyms while ingesting mexican cactus extract! d-;

Mark Mayo

@Martin, in 20-50% of travellers, depending on the study and country, they end up with the runs - diarrhea if you will

Martin Tapankov

ahh, indeed

Mark Mayo

LOL

Roflcoptr

so

hippietrail

iphones and gps are technology for gawzache

Roflcoptr

18:50

does anybody of you guys knows german?

Mark Mayo

Ankur made that one

I know German people

hippietrail

ich kann ein bisschen deutsch sprechen, warum?

Roflcoptr

do you know what besteigen means in english?

Mark Mayo

pero solo un poco Espanol, 'n klein bietjie Afrikaans, and some Japanese ( can't type the characters)

Roflcoptr

i'm looking for a verb that can be used as "climbing a mountain" and as well as "making love"

Mark Mayo

18:51

ROFL

hippietrail

maybe i have it the wrong way around and doing a bit of tag mis-synonymizing gives a bit of a high so you can go out dancing d-;

Roflcoptr

in german its besteigen

Mark Mayo

possible 'to mount'

Martin Tapankov

should we set the 18+ flag?

Roflcoptr

not really but i need it for my answer ;)

thanks

now i can start :D

Mark Mayo

18:52

oh dear

hippietrail

i don't but google is positive it means "climb"

Roflcoptr

btw...

hippietrail

what are you besteigening? context is king

Roflcoptr

i think it would be good if one could save a draft of a response

especially if i'm typing a very long answer

it would be great to save an ansewr

hippietrail

we just have to careful not to say anything objectionable like "underpants"

Roflcoptr

18:53

to work on it later

hippietrail

well you can work on it in place. answers are kinda your personal wiki

Martin Tapankov

@Roflcoptr: it kind of works like that now -- if you leave the page while writing the question, when you come back, it will still be there to continue typing. But this is not an official "feature", so don't count on it

hippietrail

don't be embarassed by your mistakes. look at the ones we made in our tags without feeling the slightest tinge of abashment

Roflcoptr

maybe ill post a feature request on meta if there wasn0t such a question before

hippietrail

i should spamvertise you all with my bug request on meta.so

Roflcoptr

18:55

;)

hippietrail

4

Q: There is a UI bug when trying to edit meta tag wikis

Possible Duplicate: Proposing tag wiki creation does not work on meta sites When I try to edit a tag wiki on a meta site I cannot, rather I get what seems to be an error message which doesn't reflect reality: There is no tag wiki for this tag … yet! Tag wikis help introduce ne...

bug editing user-interface meta tag-wiki

Martin Tapankov

ironic, isn't it

hippietrail

on the bright side i just found a bug in google chrome's url cut and paste

Mark Mayo

sigh,@hippietrail, I'm wading through all the discussion on IATA codes, what was our eventual solution? I thought we decided ua was bad? because it's back in as a synonym for united-airlines

hippietrail

@Jeff! @Joel! "exact duplicate" doesn't mean what you think it means d-:

airport or airline iata codes @MarkMayo ?

Mark Mayo

18:57

airline

hippietrail

for airlines we decided to go by full names in tags but iata codes are fine if they are mere synonyms

Martin Tapankov

isn't scandinavia the same as nordic-countries?

hippietrail

basically because unlike the airport tags people really don't know them even though they're in your flight number. but also because they're likely to collide with stuff like "us" maybe

@MartinTapankov: no but people often confuse them. that's why i put in tag wiki excerpts telling you exactly what they are

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