Talk:Berchem

Welcome, every one!

Last week I have been expanding this article about my hometown from a stub. I am pleased with the result. I would ask every Berchem-minded visitor to help me expanding this article and to correct eventual errors I might have made in writing (spelling, wrong dates, ...). By this article, we can put Berchem again on the map.

Why County Council instead of District Council (districtsraad)?

--> In Anglo-Saxon countries a 'district' is always a 'county'. Within a county, they are quarters. Within a quarter they may be 'districts'. --> In Berchem : ex 1 : Zurenborg is a district within Oud-Berchem within Berchem. ex 2 : Pulhof is a district within Nieuw Kwartier within Berchem. --> So please do not change 'county' in 'district'. It makes it harder to read and more difficult to understand by our Anglo-Saxon readers.

Greetz, Berchemboy.
 * Ah, yes, well, but Belgium isn't an Anglo-Saxon country.
 * I think we'd better use "district council". No need to create confusion where that isn't needed. See also: district.


 * Another point : Berchem (Antwerp) isn't the only locality in the world with that name. I know of at least two others : St.-Agatha-Berchem (in the Brussels region) and Berchem in Luxembourg. I suggest we change the name of this article according to wikipedia conventions, and create a disambiguation page under "Berchem". --LucVerhelst 17:55, 17 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Allright, because of the existing article "district" on Wikipedia (I did not know the existence of this), I have no problem at all by changing it. The only problem we'll have by doing this is the name we have to give to e.g. Zurenborg or Pulhof. On Wikipedia Zurenborg already exists and Zurenborg is mentioned as a 'district' in Berchem. How will we name it than? Also on Fons Borginon's article on Wikipedia, County Council has been used instead of District Council. If we change it here, we'll have to change it on several locations. As soon as we have found an equivalent name for Zurenborg (we can't use 'quarter' because officially Berchem only has three quarters/wijken), I have no problem by changing it. I can't find an equivalent for it at the moment. If you would know one? please be my guest ... (--Berchemboy)


 * Allright, let's change the name of the page and create a disambiguation page. I don't know whether it's necessary cause no article about the other Berchems exist. But if you find this better, no prob. (--Berchemboy)

I'm sorry I cannot agree with the above. A county is a graafschap and is the Norman equivalent to a shire, which is a large tract of land, governed by a count or at an earlier stage by an earl or a sheriff. Should you really insist on using a term other than district, may I suggest borough? I am a professional translator approved both by the British Embassy and the Court of 1st Instance at Antwerp. If it is all to turn on the question of the local areas 'or quartiers', why not simply use the term area, eg the Zurenborg area. The term quarter has an archaic sound. It's acceptable in Latin quarter but hardly in anything else. Augusta2 18:08, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Direct Elections as from 2006??
I presumed that as from the oktober 2006 elections, every Belgian mayor was to be directly elected by the people. Am I mistaken about this? I thought the liberals passed that reform in the Federal Parliament. Berchemboy
 * As far as I know, this change didn't make it.
 * Furthermore, even if mayors would be elected directly, it wouldn't apply to the district chair, because that isn't a mayor, just the first person on the list of aldermen. --LucVerhelst 08:25, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

Pulhof
There are also many other schools in Berchem, who also merit being mentionned. Because that would lead us too far and turn the article in something too huge and too difficult to read, I have erased the part on Pulhof, as well as their external link. Berchemboy 11:51, 3 November 2006 (UTC)
 * If there comes more info on those schools, then we can make an article "Education in Berchem". The Pulhof had a separate article, which was too much honour for the amount of info it contained, so the logical place to merge it was this article. The image can go, as far as I am concerned, but I don't think the line of text and the external link are too much though. This is in line with the guideline Places of local interest, which encourages the addition of such material to articles about a town, and suggests splitting of subarticles (like Education in Berchem) when the article becomes too long. Fram 13:11, 3 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Schools - Pulhof is not mainly a "point of local interest" but a local "school". Wikipedia guidelines do not encourage editors to start articles on small schools. Mainly universities and other post-secondary institutions are meant. Berchemboy 11:19, 5 November 2006 (UTC)
 * WP:SCHOOL is a proposed guideline which does not have consensus, which will most probably never get consensus in its current form, and which I don't agree with. But anyway, it does not support your position, as it says that

''Articles about schools that do not meet the above criterion may be unexpandable save for demographic data. As well, Wikipedia is neither a directory nor a phonebook. School articles should not merely list upcoming events, phone numbers, schedules etc. Such articles should likely be merged into an article about their parent community. '' (Bold mine). So it is perfect for regular schools to be mentioned in the article about the locality (i.e. Berchem), instead of having their own article (which would indeed be overkill). Fram 21:20, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Points of interest not in Berchem
The article claims that several things are in Berchem, but they aren't: I've deleted these. Eimai 17:14, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
 * University: the UA Middelheim campus is just outside Berchem and in the Antwerp district. The address is Middelheimlaan 1, B-2020 Antwerpen, see for example.
 * Jazz Middelheim: park Den Brandt (and Middelheim park as well), the place where it is held, isn't in Berchem, but in Antwerp district.
 * "one of the most renowned children hospitals in Belgium": I think the Koningin Paola Children hospital near Middelheim hospital is meant here? In that case, it's also in Antwerp district and not in Berchem

Thalys - TGV
From the Thalys website (retrieved 14 Feb 08) : "Stationsinformatie: Antwerpen-Centraal

Op 9 december 2007 verlaat Thalys Antwerpen Berchem en stopt voortaan in het volledig gerenoveerde station van Antwerpen Centraal.

De Thalys-treinen tussen Amsterdam en Parijs nemen u opnieuw mee naar het hartje van de Antwerpse metropool en stoppen niet meer in Antwerpen Berchem, aan de rand van de stad."

Since 9 December 2007, Thalys/TGV doesn't stop in Berchem anymore. Therefor, the article should be changed : no TGV-connections with Paris, London, etc. anymore.--193.190.154.22 (talk) 09:14, 14 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Oops, you're right. Thanks for catching this. Fram (talk) 09:32, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Neutrality - Reference of Sources
Since the person who added these two labels to the article, did not start a discussion on the talk page or told us about the reason of labelling the article in that way, I have erased both labels. Berchemboy (talk) 13:04, 26 February 2008 (UTC)
 * You have removed a tag saying that an article needs sources from an article without any sources (just two external links)... I should have discussed the POV tag: it refers to many adjectives ("wonderful location"), unsourced descriptions ("The stringent rule, inhuman treatment, and the fondness for war of his successors", "legal pillage", "a freehaven for rich and wealthy Catholics": were other catholics not allowed?, "Berchem suffered for four years under German occupation", ...). All these unsourced statements are written with a POV which at least needs to be reliably sourced, or needs to be toned down drastically. I have already removed some of the earlier, more extreme ones ("Berchem's sons and daughters fought and died in almost every main battle of that era, while their relatives at home were suffering under the tyranny.", "Berchem's population again was terrorized by religious inspired hatred and economical boycott by the Dutch ruling class"), but this page still doesn't read like a neutral, factual description of the history of Berchem, but like a highly personal interpretation of it. So could you please rectify these problems, or reinstall the tags? Fram (talk) 14:12, 26 February 2008 (UTC)
 * These adjectives are literally translations of the corresponding Dutch Wikipedia article. Berchemboy (talk) 13:15, 28 February 2008 (UTC)
 * ...Which isn't a reliable source. If the Dutch article has POV problems, we shouldn't be copying them. Fram (talk) 14:08, 28 February 2008 (UTC)
 * The Dutch Wikipedia article on Berchem does not have POV problems, and since Berchem is a Flemish district, it might be the case that the Dutch/Flemish editors know more on the topic than the English ones on this Wikipedia version... Berchemboy (talk) 18:23, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
 * This is getting bizarre. The Dutch article on Berchem has currently no history section, it was removed last year because it was a copyvio. But that text did not, contrary to what you claim, contain any of the POV sentences given in the English Wikipedia article. And I'm a Flemish editor as well, so that argument is invalid as well. So what do we do? Readd the POV and unsourced tags, seriously clean up the history section, or altogether remove it (like the Dutch Wikipedia did)? Fram (talk) 08:43, 4 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Remove it Berchemboy (talk) 14:25, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

Zurenborg
I have to remove the references to UNESCO for Zurenborg and to Horta. These have been here since the earliest major edits on this article, and have spread across the web as Wikipedia tends to do. I'll happily re-add Horta if I can find that he did, indeed, design at least one house in the area, but I don't know of one. And I have looked and looked through the lists of UNESCO and unfortunately Zurenborg is not even yet on the consideration list. Horta's houses in Brussels are on the World Heritage list (fully accepted), though. --Stomme (talk) 21:05, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

The map
Hi, the little map displaying Antwerp in Belgium is inaccurate. It displays the city of Antwerp on the dutch border. That is quite incorrect. I reccomend one of the other maps on this site to be used. Regards, Robin.lemstra (talk) 18:47, 11 October 2010 (UTC)