Talk:Berkhamsted

Berkhamsted Article

This article is obviously a direct lift from the Wikipedia article on the same town. However, it appears to have been tarted up with flowery Americanised tourist language by someone who seems knows very little about the town or her history.

As one of the original contributors to the Wikipedia entry about 15 years ago I am willing to go through the entire article to correct all the historical errors. But that would not produce the collaborative achievement of the original article which is far more interesting that our poor attempts in the late 1990s.

Would a better approach be to delete this article completely and replace it with a copy of the Wikipedia article which contains not only factual, verified entries but also some interesting illustrations and graphics. I have no axe to grind nor any pride to be titled at. I just want Berko to be represented accurately. She's worth it.

Let me know what you think folks.

SoB....

Thank you for contributing: it's a good resource we are building, and local knowledge and input with breathe life into it.

The Berkhamsted article has largely been lifted from W-pedia, as you say, supplemented with some local knowledge. The 'borrowed' material has been rewritten to make it a little more interesting (and in part to get rid of those historical howlers which abound on W-pedia). One problem with that American site is that it insists on blandness as a principle of writing, which may suffice to describe the strip-mall towns of the American Midwest, but not the delights of British villages: if a place is pretty then say so, or you're not describing it at all! If I got a bit too skittish, I'm sure I will be forgiven. A bit of poetic imagination and the odd wry aside are fine on Wikishire.

Berkhamsted is a lovely little town, so I wrote with a smile on the face, but it is not my home, so do fix whatever I got wrong. In the effort to cover every town and village in the county, I am sure there is a great deal that could be improved. It is a town worth more loving attention than I could spend on it, and my only plea is not to be so factual as to lose fair description. RB 12:51, 27 May 2014 (UTC)