Talk:Travels

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New Obscure places section

What do people think? I offer the "Boggle rule" as a fun way to limit one section of this article to really obscure places by an objective and easily enforced rule. Credit for the idea goes to Zach McArthur, who left me an IM opining, "obscure places should only be listed if you're the ONLY williams kid to have gone there." By this, we can make a little game of this page.

Also, I formatted the section to remove the subheadings for places. This shortens the TOC, which could be good or bad. It makes it easier to later group places by area (continent, etc) if we want to do that. Opinions?

Also, can anyone think of a good guidline for place scale? Cities in North America, countries elsewhere? Cities in countries over XXX million people, otherwise countries?--Jonathan 19:09, 19 May 2006 (EDT)

What's Obscure?

What counts as obscure? I wouldn't consider Beijing to be obscure, but would consider Urumqi and Kashgar (also in China) to be obscure.

I'm hoping people will list specific places they've been, rather than entire countries. The overall goal of the page is to encourage people to think about going to places other than Western Europe for research, study abroad, etc. I agree that major metropolises are not obscure (btw is there a better term that should be used - "obscure" sounds Orientalist - perhaps "out-of-the-way" or "unusual"?)

How about less-travelled?

I'm not even convinced that "less-travelled" is a good description for some of these places...I mean, Canada? Mexico? Just to name a few. --06mea 17:29, 17 May 2006 (EDT)

A specific place should be considered obscure by Williams standards if nobody in the undergraduate population was born there or lived there. That would eliminate some of the capitals (Honolulu) and big metropolises (Beijing, Hong Kong). Come on...the capital of Greece is not obscure.

In my neverending quest to make articles that won't fall into fast disuse due to weird titles, I am thinking why don't we reconceive this one under a title "Traveling" or "Travels". I welcome a similar shortie name, but this one ought to change, especially since we aren't listing students primarily, but rather places and then students, so it's more like "Obscure places students have been". The title change is more than cosmetic -- we can have sections for traditional Williams destinations, like Montreal and Hiltonhead (though I'd say Hiltonhead should be its own article). We would title a section in a "Travels" article "Obscure places" or the like, and another section for more common places. Opinions?--Jonathan 00:28, 18 May 2006 (EDT)

I support a change to "Travels." This will encourage talking more about the destinations, which I'd like to read about. --Evan 23:43, 18 May 2006 (EDT)

I'll third that opinion - I admit that the title I came up with was too subjective for what I hoped would be a Williams Thorn Tree. --06arc 2 23:53, 18 May 2006 (EDT)

I'm going to try the move, and reorganize things into some sections to work with. A chance comment by a friend on IM last night gave me an idea . . .--Jonathan 18:06, 19 May 2006 (EDT)