User talk:(WT-en) Markverma71

Herrnhut

Thanks for you contributions to the Herrnhut article. I have made some changes to the article for the second time (you undid them the first time) to make the article conform more closely to our manual of style.

• Individual listings should be in listing format, not in prose.
• Listings go in alphabetical order.
• Certain things were in the wrong section. For example, tours and walking trails go under Do, supermarkets go under See, clinics go under Stay healthy, etc. If you are unsure where something belongs, please check out Project:Where you can stick it.
• Sections don't need to be broken into subsections unless they start getting up around 10 items or more.

I see that no one has given you our standard welcome message yet, so I'm going to add it below as well. Please read through the policy pages links there, and if you have any questions, you can send me a message on my talk page. Thanks! (WT-en) texugo 00:14, 24 May 2011 (EDT)

Welcome message

Hello, Markverma71! Welcome to Wikivoyage.

To help get you started contributing, we've created a tips for new contributors page, full of helpful links about policies and guidelines and style, as well as some important information on copyleft and basic stuff like how to edit a page. If you need help, check out Project:Help, or post a message in the travellers' pub.--(WT-en) texugo 00:14, 24 May 2011 (EDT)

Addresses and phone numbers

Hi again. As you probably noticed, I added a few phone numbers, addresses and so on to some listings on the Herrnhut article. Noticing the changes you made just now, I have a question. On most of the German websites I checked to get the info, the phone numbers contain a slash "/" in them. Looking at how they were formatted, like 035873/33604, I assumed that you have to dial all the numbers there to get through, and the slash was just the typical German way of indicating that. When we use the slash in English, XXXX/YYYY, it means either XXXX or YYYY but not both, so I changed it to a hyphen "-" instead. So, my question is, in these phone numbers, do you have to dial all the numbers, or is it an either/or situation? If you must dial all of them, I think it is better to use a hyphen to avoid confusion. (WT-en) texugo 12:57, 24 May 2011 (EDT)

Hi, yes the Germans list numbers with the slash but you have to dial all of them. I guess if this is for English/non-Germans however, the dash is less confusing (e.g. I only found out that you had to dial all numbers after arriving in Germany).—The preceding comment was added by (WT-en) Markverma71 (talk • contribs)

One more tip: On talk pages such as this one, you should sign your posts by typing ~~~~, and it will automatically fill in your name and the date, etc. We can also thread the conversations to make them easier to use by starting each new post with one more colon at the beginning than the post before, so that it indents, making it easier to read. Thanks! (WT-en) texugo 13:13, 24 May 2011 (EDT)

Thanks

Hi. I just want to let you know that I've noticed and appreciated your contributions. All the best, (WT-en) Ikan Kekek 19:55, 24 May 2011 (EDT)

No worries - I've just discovered Wiki editing and it's great fun...and a little, can I say, addictive :-)(WT-en) Markverma71 20:00, 24 May 2011 (EDT)

Awesomeness, and a couple of questions

Wow, you are really turning Herrnhut into a kick-ass article-- thanks again for your contributions! I've upgraded it from outline to usable statues but I'd say it's getting close to guide status. A few questions/comments:

• Maybe you haven't (or maybe you have) noticed that you (consciously or unconsciously) use a lot of parentheticals in your writing (and I do mean a lot). In most of those cases, the parentheses are unnecessary so I removed them and/or adapted the syntax to make smoother prose.
• Be sure not to include any links to Facebook, blogs, or Wikipedia. There is already a link to the Wikipedia Herrnhut page in the lefthand toolbar. Incidentally this article is, awesomely, already more informative than the Wikipedia article.
• Is the situation with English speakers considerably different from other towns in the area? If not, I'd suggest that the Talk section is not needed.
• Have you considered writing an Understand section? It sounds like an interesting enough place that you might want to give a kind of overview at the beginning.
• The Get in/By train section is dominated with instructions for how to get to Löbau, which has no article. Perhaps you know enough about Löbau to start an article for it so we can move a lot of this information there?
• Similarly the Get in/By bus section could benefit from moving some of that info to articles for Varnsdorf and Liberec and simplifying what is written here to reflect travel from those places.
• Are there any pubs/bars?
• Are there any regular hotels? Other places to stay?
• The Get out section looks to be full of potential articles. Maybe you could start some of those articles and then shorten the blurbs here a bit? (I am secretly trying to get you hooked on Wikivoyage editing by suggesting more places where we need your help!)

Seriously, keep up the great work! (WT-en) texugo 09:39, 25 May 2011 (EDT)

Texugo,

I've always been a parentheses freak for some reason (all the way back to school)...I agree wholeheartedly with you (as I did with my English Lit. teacher back in the day)...Very hard to break the habit of a lifetime - but I guess that's what objective oversight editors such as yourself are for...

Thx for tip re: Facebook - learning each step of the way.

Re: other towns...well, I suspect the English level of this town is higher (and significantly so) than other towns. This is a pretty rural area and arguably the least-touched by Western cosmopolitanism thus far (in the former East Germany). While younger people (under 30) are generally English speakers to some degree, many older people have very little English as they were not allowed to learn it under Communism and had to learn Russian instead. This town, because it a) draws large numbers of foreign religious pilgrims (esp. from the USA) and b) has a foreign missions agency base in a neighbouring village filled with anywhere from 150-250 mostly North American or else English as second language speakers (who frequent local businesses like the Kebab restaurant - arguably they keep the Kebab restaurant afloat), means visitors to the town can be assured they will swim not sink due to lack of German skills. So, happy to remove it but wanted to explain my reasoning for putting it in.

Re: Löbau - just today I thought of moving on to other regional towns (as I added links to the Get Out section)...so it is on the cards (I added more towns to the Upper Lusatia section to begin the process)...

Re: pubs/bars - arguably due to the strong Moravian ascetic influence, the only booze in town is either the liquor store, supermarkets or else bar areas of the restaurants...closest actual bar is the one I listed (part of the cultural centre in the nieghbouring village)...Similarly, there are a couple of other places to stay in neighbouring villages (e.g. a camping one) but I wasn't sure where to draw the line with including these (the boundaries of villages are a little amorphous and Herrnhut only just got responsibility for a couple of these neighbouring villages in terms of local government [e.g. Großhennersdorf] at the start of this year). I figured I'd focus on the places to stay in Herrnhut proper and, maybe later, expand to include the 2-3 other ones a little farther out in those other villages...

(WT-en) Markverma71 11:21, 25 May 2011 (EDT)

OK. If it's unique, it's unique, but I do think the Talk section looks quite weird in its place without an Understand section above it. If there are other places to stay not far away that are not religion-affiliated, I would go ahead and list them. I as a traveller would not stay at those, so that means there is only one option for me. Bars, well.., if there aren't any there aren't any-- in a town with so many sights, it might be good to state explicitly that there aren't many watering holes, or people may think the article is simply incomplete. Or, if the adjacent villages have pubs, you might go into those. And yeah! Please plunge forward with any other articles you can. Thanks! (WT-en) texugo 11:42, 25 May 2011 (EDT)

Fair points re: places to stay...I think while most of the clientele who come to these places are religious, some are not...should I put something to that effect in the entries (so people understand they can stay in said places without fear of someone attempting to Bible bash them)?

Just added an Understand section. Trying to convey a sense of the town's history and culture without getting too 'preachy' or anything like that...but that's the town in a nutshell, in all honesty...it does have a bit of a different feel to other local villages and one has to credit the Moravian movement for that...