User talk:Zacwill16

Welcome

Thanks for the note on the spam article: spam does get zapped pretty quickly usually.

I should have taken the time to welcome you to Wikishire earlier. Contributions are always welcome and we are all glad of assistance. On Wikishire we are producing something new and while certainly we borrow a great deal of basic material from a certain, ubiquitous American project, Wikishire is not quite the same place.

One thing that makes us different is strict use of traditional counties, as you have seen. Another is the use of more expressive language: that other project has a rule about being strictly 'encyclopaedic' without flowery language, but if you can't describe Lavenham as pretty or Edinburgh as magnificent then you are not describing them at all. A poetic frame of mind and an occasional wry aside may be what is needed to make an article come alive. (I try to avoid being nasty about anywhere, though the circumlocution then required then to describe places like Luton makes that a challenge, so bluntness is welcome.)

It is a never-ending task building Wikishire, but already we have a resource which can readily be used as a reference whenever needed: the Association of British Counties and other enthusiasts link to it. For example, the recently launched Cambridgeshire Flag Competition could hardly link to W-pedia's idea of Cambridgeshire, so it goes to Wikishire's.

The interactive map was a recent addition, and I am in awe of Owain for doing that. (This week he also produced from it SVG outlines of every county, which have already proven invaluable for the ABC and others for forthcoming projects.)

It has been hard work getting this far, and there is a lot more work to be done, but I wouldn't have it any other way.

Root 20:21, 10 May 2014 (UTC)

Hi, and thanks for the welcome. I'm happy to be a part of a project like Wikishire; the counties of Britain are some of our oldest institutions and I think it's a great shame that the government have muddled with them in the way they've done. I hope I can improve this site with my (somewhat limited) knowledge of British geography. Zacwill16 14:12, 11 May 2014 (UTC)