Talk:Romkerhall

Revisions undone
@ Bermicourt: You undid my revisions saying "rv good faith but presumably speculative edits since no sources are cited. I have at least been there."

Can you please, instead of just undoing my whole edit, be more specific about your criticism?

For instance, what exactly do you consider wrong about adding a "citation needed" tag for an unsourced superlative? What exactly do you consider "speculative" about taking out advertising language or working on grammar, style, and wording of an article without changing the meaning? Where exactly have I changed the meaning of anything in my edit and should have added sources?

As far as I am aware, having been somewhere is not considered to be a source on Wikipedia. And the real problem of this article is certainly not my edit. The real problem is that there never were any sources for anything at all in the first place. I have been the first to add any kind of a valid source.

So, please explain in detail what exactly was wrong with my edit. --Josy (talk) 19:14, 28 October 2016 (UTC)


 * Hi Josy, you made several changes which, having been to Romkerhall, its waterfall and the surrounding crags, were slightly misleading, although I accept you were just trying to clean the article up. Anyway, thank you for prompting me to look at this again. I have updated and referenced it from the German Wiki article which has clearly been much improved since I first translated it. HTH and sorry for ruffling feathers. Cheers. --Bermicourt (talk) 20:21, 28 October 2016 (UTC)
 * I am more than willing to accept a "sorry" and say thank you for that, but I would still like to know what exactly in my edit you consider misleading. Sorry to insist, but I have only just gotten my account and would just like to understand what is going on. If I have made mistakes, I'd like to understand what they are so I can avoid having my edits undone in the future. --Josy (talk) 20:40, 28 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Okay, so Romkerhall is not really a "hotel and restaurant tourist site" i.e. people don't go there mainly to visit the hotel. There is a large hiker's car park nearby which attracts a lot of people who want to go hiking, playing in the river, walking up to the waterfall, etc. The German article doesn't say the river walk is "popular" with rock climbers, just that the rocks are used by climbers mainly at weekends. "Trail head" is not a term we would use in Europe, but that's more a regional language issue. Some of your other changes were reasonable though, especially the hatnote and tag on citations being needed. That prompted me to look at the German article and I saw they had expanded it significantly and referenced it well. So I decided to start a complete re-translation. In hindsight, I probably should have just got on with the retranslation rather than starting with an "undo", but it happened in stages. Anyway, thanks again for prompting me and if you're relatively new to Wikipedia, I'm more than happy to answer questions. Thanks. Bermicourt (talk) 07:37, 29 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Okay, thanks for your explanation. I'll try to explain my motivation for these changes then, though I don't of course insist on them now that you have completely overhauled the article.
 * The term "tourist site" just seemed too vague to me. It doesn't really say much about what the whole thing is, does it? And to be honest, I suspected an advertising tone in there (trying to avoid the impression that it's all about the hotel/restaurant) which the company itself might have sneaked in there at some point.
 * The rock climbing part, on the other hand, seemed way too specific. If rock climbers are there on the weekends, that is saying the same thing as that it is generally popular with rock climbers, isn't it? When else should they go there except on their time off? And since the German article does not cite a source for that weekend emphasis anyway, I don't really see any point in transferring that to the English version. You might as well add that the trails are busiest on the weekend, or that the restaurant has most visitors during the summer.
 * "Trail head" is the term that is perfectly familiar to me from American English. As the whole article showed traces of German grammar, I was assuming that this part was translated by some German editor who simply didn't know this commonly used term.
 * --Josy (talk) 08:25, 29 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Yes, I think you're right, the original German article sounded a bit like an advertisement in places. When I translate these articles, I try to stay reasonably faithful to the original meaning; if I don't, I could just be adding another layer of editorial guesswork. However, I accept that may sometimes result in traces of German style coming through. I remember laughing when an Englishman who was also a fluent German speaker translated Doppelhaus as "double house" and pointed out to him that we normally call them "semis" in [British] English! It happens. "Trail head" though is probably an American term which, as a keen hiker, I've not heard over here and I've just discovered that first 30 hits for the phrase on Google Books are all about places in the US or Canada, so it seems a very regional term. Take care. Bermicourt (talk) 09:26, 29 October 2016 (UTC)

Translation detail
I just found the term "Birken valleys" in the article. That doesn't seem to make much sense. Either we treat the whole thing as a proper name, in which case it should be "Birkentäler", or we treat it as a description, in which case it should be "birch valleys". From the German article, it is not quite clear which it is meant to be. --Josy (talk) 09:55, 29 October 2016 (UTC)
 * I agree; I've been thinking about that one. I'm not sure what they mean exactly - is it a proper name or a description of valleys full of birch trees? I'll see if I can find out. --Bermicourt (talk) 11:49, 29 October 2016 (UTC)
 * PS Looking online it looks as if it just means "birch valleys"; there doesn't seem to be a place anywhere, let alone in the Harz, called Birkentäler. But I've kept the translation in brackets so folk can see where it came from. --Bermicourt (talk) 11:54, 29 October 2016 (UTC)