Talk:Dragons in Middle-earth/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: AryKun (talk · contribs) 15:08, 23 December 2022 (UTC)

Many thanks for taking this on. Chiswick Chap (talk) 16:54, 23 December 2022 (UTC)

Good Article review progress box Criteria: 1a. prose () 1b. MoS () 2a. ref layout () 2b. cites WP:RS () 2c. no WP:OR () 2d. no WP:CV () 3a. broadness () 3b. focus () 4. neutral () 5. stable () 6a. free or tagged images () 6b. pics relevant () Note: this represents where the article stands relative to the Good Article criteria. Criteria marked are unassessed

• The lead here seems a bit short to me; you could expand it a bit, especially concerning their development, legacy, and role in stories.

• Extended.

• Lots of duplinks, detected using the usual tool.

• Removed several per tool.

• Overall, this article's wording seems to assume that the reader is already a pretty thorough reader of Tokien; you use phrases like "Durin's folk" instead of dwarves, and you also mention many characters like Morgoth, Ancalagon, Dain, and For without explaining who they are or how they're relevant to what's being discussed. This would be really hard to follow for someone who hasn't read LOTR and the Silmarillion.

• Said and linked 'Dwarves'; added glosses. Ancalagon is introduced as a dragon in the context of this article.

• " Legendarium" Link

• Linked.

• "coeval" seems like an unnecessarily obscure word to use.

• Reworded.

• "The first winged...Grey Mountains." This part doesn't belong in Development; it's in-universe lore and has nothing to do with the actual development of dragons by Tolkien. Honestly, I don't think it needs to be in the article at all, since it's more something I would expect on a Fandom wiki.

• Um, this is an article about "Dragons in Middle-earth", so it seems reasonable to say when they appeared and where they lived.

• Link: Christopher Tolkien, Glaurung, Dáin I, Fror. Also many things (link Middle-earth and Morgoth) are linked at second instead of first mention.

• Linked CT. Glaurung is described here and we don't cross-ref within an article. Dain doesn't have his own article; nor does Fror. Have linked several first instances, well spotted.

• The Ancalagon part is written in excessively flowery language; we're describing the character encyclopedically, not writing LOTR. Examples are "He arose like a storm of wind and fire from the infernal pits", "The Blessed" (a fictional title that I don't see any reason for using), "powerfully hallowed", "At length Eärendil prevailed", "With his last and mightiest defender slain", and "With his last and mightiest defender slain".

• Reworded.

• You could explain that the Eotheod are the predecessors of the Rohirrim, which at least somewhat more people would remember.

• Done.

• "The Tolkien scholar...Tolkien names draconitas." This section is a bit disjunct; you could first define what Tolkien meant by draco and draconitas, then mention how he preferred draco, and finally end with how the use of allegorical dragons subsisted into the 20th century.

• Reordered and edited.

• The images that are there are relevant and have the appropriate copyright statuses; I think that File:BlalockAncalagontheBlack.jpg could also be used to illustrate Ancalagon's section.

• It's borderline usable/fan art; let's give it a go and see what happens to it.

• The references are mostly well-formatted, but "Ancalagon minor" in ref 12 should be italicized.

• We can't use markup in a citation's "title" field.

• Spot-checks (ref numbers from this revision):
  • T13: supports claims made

• Noted.

• • Ref 7: supports claim made

• Noted.

• • Ref 10: Supports the existence of Drogoth in The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth II, but doesn't support "swayed to Sauron's side when the Mouth of Sauron brought the rescued Fire-Drakes to him" as that's a play-through guide and doesn't describe the plot.

• Removed.

• • Ref 11: Similar to above, supports presence of Urgost, but not "must ally with him against Agandaûr"

• Removed.

• • Ref 12: Link is broken

• Updated URL.

• • Refs 14, 15, 16, 17, and 19 support the claims made.

• Noted.

• • Minor note: Ref 16 supports Tolkien being born in Free State, but not specifically Bloemfontein (although that's true, but you have to cite it regardless or change the article wording for source-text integrity).

• Fixed.

• • I haven't read the Silmarillion, but based on my memory of LOTR, I don't see anything wrong with the plot summaries.

• Noted.

• The article looks good to go now, nothing else I can really criticise; I've made some minor edits, like links, changing the birthplace description to "Free State, South Africa" as I feel like that's the most true to the original source, and italicizing Ancalagon minor in the ref title (since every species name in ref titles is italicized afaik, regardless of whether the original source did that). AryKun (talk) 15:46, 27 December 2022 (UTC)