User talk:(WT-en) BradSpencer243

Hi and Welcome to Wikivoyage.

Thanks for your edits to Beijing and around China.

You may care to look at the tips for new contributors page, and the links about policies and guidelines and style.

If you need help, check out Project:Help, or post a message in the travellers' pub.

Although I agree that some of the sections of the Bejing and Great Wall articles needed some tidy up, there are bits of information (like that museums being free, and advance tickets, or the great wall being reconstructed in parts), that may be of interest to travellers, and I think need to be expressed better, rather than jst removed. Unless, of course, you have reason to doubt their veracity?

What do you think? -- (WT-en) inas 03:56, 1 June 2009 (EDT)

Quite a large amount of information I removed are unreferenced (if many museums and places are free, list which one; they are all free?) and repetitive. The museum section's first paragraph was written like a commentary, that is why I removed it; I found simply list the museums as matter of fact is more helpful. The article overall was rather poorly written, and I removed some statements that almost has nothing to do with its paragraph, or statements that are simply opinions rather than useful travel information.--(WT-en) BradSpencer243 04:12, 1 June 2009 (EDT)

I agree there was poor wording, that needed improvement. We just need to be careful we don't go don't go too far down the Wikipedia path. We don't require references, we rely on travellers to build on, update and correct info. Knowing that some museums are free if reserved three days in advance may be of some interest to travellers, even if only a cue to go and seek more information on the subject. Have a look at Project:Welcome,_Wikipedians and Project:Tone. In addition to these style differences between Wikivoyage and Wikipedia, there are many articles here that are quite poorly developed, and applying a poor wording rule globally, could leave us with considerably less info. Anyway, don't let me discourage you, I'm just chiming in bits of information that may help you get started. --(WT-en) inas 04:50, 1 June 2009 (EDT)

Also welcome from me, and thank you for your help on improving Beijing, which is highly needed as content has been put into the article (and the district articles) quite fast over the last few months. Please see the Beijing Talk Page for my suggestions in relation to the above discussions. Comments or suggestions for further improvements are welcome. --(WT-en) ClausHansen 13:47, 1 June 2009 (EDT)

If you find prose that is poorly written, by all means please clean it up and re-write it. Don't just delete the content. Also keep in mind that unreferenced POV commentary is what constitutes travel writing. Replacing informative text like:

"The museums in Beijing are still not up to the standard seen in other major capitals around the world. But the government is determined to change this fact and has put a lot of money into the development of museums and has also made most of them free to visit (but for some, tickets must be reserved three days in advance)."

with a bland information-less statement like

"The city contains a number of museums, some of the most well-known are:"

is undesirable. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 17:21, 1 June 2009 (EDT)

Also see Project:Consensus. Please stop edit warring—we can discuss how to move forward. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 17:24, 1 June 2009 (EDT)

As a suggestion, perhaps you could try adding content, like good restaurants, nightclubs, etc., to the Beijing district pages with which you are familiar? This might be a better way to get your feet wet in learning how to contribute to a travel guide. If travel prose is your thing, perhaps you could take a little break, pop in to the local bookstore, and thumb through a few travel guides to get a better idea of how it is usually done. In any rate, please stop neutering the text. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 17:57, 1 June 2009 (EDT)