Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Backpacking/Archive 2

Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

Archive 4

Trails.com has purchased Topozone.com

Trails.com has purchased Topozone.com, so Topozone is now subscription-only. If you've edited any articles that reference or link to Topozone, I recommend replacing these links with a free topographic service. Bms4880 (talk) 20:48, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Terminology - is Trekking a better alternative?

I'm surprised not to see a discussion on this issue here yet, but different people have different definitions of the words 'backpacking' and 'hiking'. To me, the latter is what this project is about and the former is travelling with a backpack. To illustrate this, I just noticed that the hostel article mentions backpackers' hostels just in the passing and even suggests that they originated in the US. (In reality, they originated in Australasia and have there and pretty much the rest of the world (except the US) pushed youth hostels to the brink of extinction.) Now I'm afraid that any such discussion will result in lots of bickering over what different terms really mean. I've seen this in discussions over America, western hemisphere, football and such. Now any article can be modified to include all the different definitons (which is often already a difficult process), but here we need a good neutral term as a header for the project and the different articles. There should be a naming convention throughout the articles that doesn't confuse people too much. So what terminology would be good? Let's start with the name for this project.
'Backpacking', one might say say, is rather self-explanatory. It's doing things with a backpack, which could be hiking but also travelling with a backpack. Wiktionary indeed gives both definitions. Alas, in the US the former definition is used and the rest of the world (afaik) uses the latter definition. (Note that I base this on several years of backpacking and hiking experience - just look for the word 'travel' on my user page.) So a different word would be preferable? I thought 'hiking' covered it, but both the Wikipedia and the Wiktionary articles define it as doing day-hikes. Which I would call day-hikes. :) Tramping is eally a Kiwi word, so that won't do. Trekking, however, does seem to agree with both the Wikipedia article and Wiktionary. There's hardly a confusing alternate meaning. So might that be a better general name? Which leaves the rest, but I'll first wait for any comments on this. DirkvdM (talk) 18:32, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Well, except that in American English trekking means or at least has the connotation of long, probably slow, difficult mountain hikes generally in the Himalayas, possibly with pack animals. Not your general pick up a pack and go for a weekend in the woods kind of hiking. In South Africa it means any travel by ox-cart.[1]. Rmhermen (talk) 16:09, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Wilderness Diarrhea Article Getting Killed

A couple of zealots are merging Wilderness Diarrhea into Travelers Diarrhea for obscure reasons. The article is comprehensive and dull, and useful to those interested in the topic.

After a couple of weeks of calm discussion, I went ballistic and no longer wish to participate. It might be helpful if there were some reasonable voices arguing in favor of a backpacking-related perspective. Calamitybrook (talk) 17:24, 24 September 2008 (UTC)