Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Middle-earth/archive2

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• Archive 2
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Community

Role calls

April

Sign your name below and comments are optional.

1. Mirlen – Random jobs here and there...Currently focusing on improving character articles from The Silmarillion, as well as M-E WikiProject's Standards page. 21:22, 5 April 2006 (UTC)
2. Ted87- I'm just working on random articles at this point, but I'm going to clean up Saruman's article soon.
3. CBDunkerson 22:50, 5 April 2006 (UTC) - Watching recent changes for vandalism/errors/POV and planning to work on filling out lists more.
4. ASchmoo 16:54, 6 April 2006 (UTC) battling grammar orcs and spelling trolls in the lower anduin
5. Carcharoth 09:18, 7 April 2006 (UTC) Trying to find the time to work on Tolkien-related categories.
6. Eluchil404 19:29, 10 April 2006 (UTC) New and looking to help out. I'l try to list some articles I think are A status.
7. SorryGuy 04:23, 14 April 2006 (UTC) is planning on copyeditting.
8. —Cuiviénen, Tuesday, 18 April 2006 @ 02:29 UTC Just fixing up and expanding random articles when I can.

Poll

The result of the poll has been to leave the name of the WikiProject as Middle-earth WikiProject. Please do not edit the poll.

There has been a proposal to rename this WikiProject (which includes the Portal) as either Tolkien WikiProject or Tolkien and Middle-earth WikiProject. As a participant, please vote and add your opinion to the respective sections.

Tolkien Wikiproject

1. Second choice. --CBDunkerson 16:15, 15 April 2006 (UTC)
2. First choice. SorryGuy 19:41, 16 April 2006 (UTC)
3. Third choice. Ted87 05:59, 17 April 2006 (UTC)
4. First choice - or conditional second choice, as discussed in my vote for 'Middle-earth Wikiproject'. Carcharoth 15:01, 17 April 2006 (UTC)
5. First choice. Eluchil404 01:44, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
6. Second choice. —Cuiviénen, Tuesday, 18 April 2006 @ 02:31 UTC
7. First choice ASchmoo 20:57, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
8. Second choice Bryan 11:27, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
9. Second choice Sotakeit 20:38, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

Tolkien and Middle-earth Wikiproject

1. Third choice. --CBDunkerson 16:15, 15 April 2006 (UTC)
2. Third choice. SorryGuy 19:41, 16 April 2006 (UTC)
3. Second choice. Ted87 05:59, 17 April 2006 (UTC)
4. Third choice. Carcharoth 15:01, 17 April 2006 (UTC)
5. Third choice. Eluchil404 01:44, 18 April 2006 (UTC) - cf. Tolkien's discussion of the Department of English Language and Litterature in his Valedictory Address
6. Third choice. —Cuiviénen, Tuesday, 18 April 2006 @ 02:31 UTC - Too lengthy a title.
7. Second Choice ASchmoo 20:57, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
8. Third choice Bryan 11:27, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
9. Third choice Sotakeit 20:38, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

Middle-earth Wikiproject

1. First choice. --CBDunkerson 16:15, 15 April 2006 (UTC)
2. Second choice. SorryGuy 19:41, 16 April 2006 (UTC)
3. First choice. Ted87 05:59, 17 April 2006 (UTC)
4. Second choice - or conditional first choice, if it is made clear that the focus is not exclusively Middle-earth, and there is a "Tolkien" or "Other Tolkien subjects" area at Portal:Middle-earth. Carcharoth 15:01, 17 April 2006 (UTC)
5. First Choice - I agree with Charcharoth on the "Tolkien area" --Bryan 16:55, 17 April 2006 (UTC)
6. Second choice. Eluchil404 01:44, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
7. First choice. —Cuiviénen, Tuesday, 18 April 2006 @ 02:31 UTC
8. Third choice ASchmoo 20:57, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
9. First choice Sotakeit 20:38, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

Other (Please list preference)

Issues

Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team cooperation

The formal message:

Hello. I'm a member of the Version 1.0 Editorial Team, which is looking to identify quality articles in Wikipedia for future publication on CD or paper. We recently began assessing articles using these criteria, and we are are asking for your help. As you are most aware of the issues surrounding your focus area, we are wondering if you could provide us with a list of the articles that fall within the scope of your WikiProject, and that are either featured, A-class, B-class, or Good articles, with no POV or copyright problems. Do you have any recommendations? If you do, please post your suggestions at the listing of all active Arts WikiProjects, and if you have any questions, ask me in the Work Via WikiProjects talk page or directly in my talk page. Thanks a lot!

The informal message:

As a member of the project, I can contact them myself, but I think that we should definately send in the following F.A. articles:

• Middle-earth
• J. R. R. Tolkien

However, if there are any A-class, B-class, or Good articles, with no POV or copyright problems that you'd like to reccomend, please do — I, for one, would like to see some Tolkien in Wikipedia: Version 1.0. —Mirlen 13:16, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

---

Here's the list of articles to be submitted or needed to be improved for WP:1.0. We should submit at least 5-7 articles in. Criteria can be found here.

F.A. status

• Middle-earth
• J. R. R. Tolkien

A-class

• Gondor
• Shire (Middle-earth)
• Dwarf (Middle-earth)
• Gandalf
• Hobbit
• Anduin
• Misty Mountains
• Maedhros

B-class

• Arnor
• Gondolin
• Sauron
• Túrin Turambar
• Frodo Baggins
• Boromir

Improvement

• The Hobbit
• The Lord of the Rings
• The Silmarillion

General Discussion of Tolkien articles on Wikipedia Version 1.0

First, is there a comprehensive list anywhere of the Tolkien-related articles on Wikipedia? Is the category system likely to generate the most comprehensive listing? The best lists I could find were List of Middle-earth articles by category and the extremely long List of Middle-earth articles. Not sure whether _all_ the non-ME articles are included in those lists.

Second, I agree that the J. R. R. Tolkien article is of a good standard, but I would like to see more specific references in the Middle-earth article, in the same style as in the biographical article.

Third, apart from these two articles, which other ones would provide a rounded and complete view of Tolkien and his works? I would suggest that at least the articles on The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion should be improved for inclusion, plus all the works in the bibliographical section at J. R. R. Tolkien#Bibliography should be improved to a minimum level beyond stub status (where needed). Even with just the three major works, and the two above, that is 5 articles already. Maybe there is a need for a summary-style article that summarises the three major works (is it fair to call those three his major works - or should the Silmarillion article be a general article about the Silmarillion material and the history of its composition and publication, with the 1977 book being a mere section of the article?), while pointing to the main articles for each book? That would cover his "works" in one article.

Other: apart from (1) The biographical article; (2) a bibliographical "works" article; (3) an article about the fictional "universe" he created; what else would cover Tolkien and Tolkien-related subjects? Maybe (4) a summary style article about the influence of Tolkien? That would briefly touch on areas like: his influence on later fiction, the many books about Tolkien and his works, Tolkien fandom, adaptations and other works inspired by Tolkien (radio, plays, musical, films, artworks, music). This could be summarised from sources like: Works inspired by J. R. R. Tolkien and Tolkien fandom and Category:Middle-earth adaptations.

Also: Even with four articles summarising "biography", "bibliography", "Middle-earth" and "influence", what else needs covering? Are there any articles from each area good enough or important enough to aim to get included in Wikipedia 1.0? Maybe Languages of Arda, or a Middle-earth character or place article?

General question: if articles are not good enough for inclusion in Wikipedia 1.0, what is the point of having links to those articles? There seems little point in including J. R. R. Tolkien and Middle-earth in Wikipedia 1.0 if many of the "internal" links to other Wikipedia articles do not work. I guess this is a general point about Wikipedia 1.0, so what is the answer? Do all the non-CD links appear as "external" links back to the online Wikipedia? If so, we need all the links _from_ the Wikipedia 1.0 articles to point to articles of reasonable standards.

Should this discussion have its own page? :-) Carcharoth 05:41, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

I've added some articles to the A and B lists for consideration. They are on the longer and general side but obviously they can't all be sent within the ambit of 5-7. Mercilessly edit away.Eluchil404 20:57, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for those. I think the Maedhros article has most potential. Should we all concentrate on one article, or split the workload? Carcharoth 22:03, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

Oh, I'm glad. I tried not to go overboard with the details in the biography like I did with Faramir's article — I'm happy to hear that the Maedhros article is an improvement and has an approval. :) (Also thanks to Eluchil for those edits). I think we should all focus on all the articles in general. Although, I would be more of an expert on the fictional articles as opposed to the real-world Tolkien articles, so perhaps Carcharoth, you could focus on those?

Going back on the Maedhros article, I'd like to get it peer reviewed so we get up it up to G.A. status. After editing now and then, perhaps we should decide as a concensus whether or not if it's ready for PR? —Mirlen 23:07, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

My previous comment disapeared in a database update. If we are looking for articles to improve for inclusion, I'd like to nominate the 'species' ones Elf (Middle-earth), Men (Middle-earth), Dwarf (Middle-earth), Orc (Middle-earth),and Hobbit. Some need a fair amount of work but I think that they are an important set to have availible. On the other hand, if we consider what we have now, my opinion is that the main geography articles Gondor, Shire (Middle-earth) etc. are in better shape. Eluchil404 19:14, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

Many of the points you mention like broken links on an offline version of Wikipedia apply to all subject areas. I suspect that in an early release of a couple of thousand articles we would just want to have the really major topics covered like the author himself, but as the project expands we would want to expand the coverage to include complete blocks of information, so don't feel you have to limit yourself. A UK charity released a CD for kids with around 2000 English articles on it, and I think the 1.0 team will be releasing more similar-sized test CDs later this year. Working to improve your most important articles is always good for the project anyway! Feel free to update your project's listing. Thanks for your careful consideration of the issues, we will be contacting you guys again soon. For WP1.0, Walkerma 17:37, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Timetable

One thing I forgot to ask: what sort of timetable are the Wikipedia 1.0 team working with? Is there a deadline by which we need to submit articles to them? We would need time, after improving articles, to go through some forms of peer review and maybe even the Featured Article process. Carcharoth 07:10, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

For now, there isn't a deadline. When there is though, I'll let you know. --Mirlen 17:19, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

Category work

Some of the non-Middle-earth Tolkien category structure worked on at User:Carcharoth/Tolkien categories. Comments and additions would be welcomed either there, here or at Wikipedia:WikiProject Middle-earth/things to do.

The next stage is to decide on names for new categories. I have also been struggling to find a suitable place to discuss this. Would it be OK to set up Wikipedia:WikiProject Middle-earth/Categorization? Carcharoth 07:21, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

I was thinking of creating categories for works published in Tolkien's lifetime, and works published posthumously. Would this be useful as a category distinction, or would it be best to draw up a list based on this distinction?

The above relates mostly to Category:Middle-earth_books. I guess categories could be done for books as opposed to texts and essays, and it would be nice to distinguish fiction from essays, and also the "fictional" books mentioned in his works of fiction (eg. Red Book). I think this category lumps together far too much disparate material at the moment. I suggest moving the non-fiction up a level to the correct Category:Texts by J. R. R. Tolkien, and creating several new categories to make clear the differences between all these texts. Carcharoth 10:13, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

It'll be highly useful if there was Category:Tolkien lists or Category:Middle-earth lists. —Mirlen 00:00, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

I've just been thinking about that! I have been trying to get stuff on the categories finished before a short break, but won't be able to restart work on this until the beginning of May. I think I will create these two though... Carcharoth 07:38, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

Great minds think alike? :P ;) —Mirlen

Dodgy articles?

I found some articles that reference David Day's Bestiary. This is known to be a dodgy reference work, sometimes getting things completely wrong or making things up. Can anyone confirm whether these articles are dodgy?

• Mewlips- Done. I ate up the Dayian references, and made a shorter but more reliable stub based on the Adventures of Tom Bombadil.
• Gorcrows

Is there any way of finding all the articles that use David Day's books as a reference? I'd like to make sure that people aren't adding from, and referencing, dodgy sources like this. Carcharoth 09:55, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

For now, I looked at the history for these two articles. Both were created by User:Spawn Man on 5 January 2006. He also added one or both of these creatures to the Bestiary_of_Middle-earth list. Now, I know these creatures exist, but the references should be to the original Tolkien writings, rather than David Day's bestiary. Also, I am uncertain as to whether they are in fact Middle-earth creatures. In my opinion, the article for each should rather say that they only appear once, in a minor work by Tolkien. This prevents readers from thinking that they appear in LotR or any of Tolkien's major works. Similarly for Kirinki, which should reference the relevant volume of HoME (or maybe they are mentioned in UT), and a clear distinction can then be drawn between creatures mentioned in published writings and post-humously published writings. Carcharoth 10:05, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

With the referencing to Tolkien, I agree with. I don't know David Day or the quality of his bestiary, but it's best to reference towards Tolkien and his son's books. Also, I am going to standardize the Bestiary of Middle-earth to a standardized list format — following that, will come merging. :) —Mirlen 23:24, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

Nice use of references

While looking through the list given above, I came across some nice uses of references in the Maedhros article. This is the sort of referencing I would like to see in all the Middle-earth and Tolkien articles, and is what we should be aiming towards. Even though this is the general standard required for Wikipedia articles, should references to the sources in Tolkien's writings be emphasised as a standard for articles that fall within the scope of this WikiProject? Carcharoth 09:55, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

I was worried that I'd perhaps referenced a bit too much with the quotes, but I see that it's not a problem. If anyone wants to correct me on that quote about Ambarussa and Ambarto, feel free. I agree, I think that the Tolkien related articles should have a lot more references, especially articles that're tagged with the {{mecanon}} template. For example, Amrod and Amras. Also, I'm pretty sure that it was Amrod who was burned in the ships of the Teleri, not Amras. Amrod was the younger one of the twin, and it was he who was called Ambarto. —Mirlen 23:20, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

Some more stuff done

(1) The list at User:Carcharoth/Tolkien categories now has notes on what categories to create. I'm going to wait until around Sunday for more feedback and comments, and will then start implementing some of the changes, unless there are objections. Please discuss on the talk page for that page. I will also move it all to a Categorisation subpage of this WikiProject at some point.

(2) I added some stuff from that list to Wikipedia:WikiProject_Middle-earth/things_to_do#Creation and also added some comments to some of the sections.

(3) There are some comments above on some dodgy articles. Well, I think they are dodgy. Does anyone have the Tolkien (not David Day) references for Mewlips and Gorcrows handy?

(4) I almost missed some of the discussions on the Standards page. The page I check most often is this one. Is there an easy way to add all the pages of this Wikiproject to my watchlist?

Otherwise, I'll check back here for changes and discussions. Carcharoth 21:36, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

3 - Day 'extrapolates' the details of his books, but always from some grain that actually exists in Tolkien's work. The 'mewlips' and 'gorcrows' both are mentioned in a short poem in The Adventures of Tom Bombadil titled, 'The Mewlips'. However, many of the details in the current articles are inventions not stated in the poem.

4 - There is no way to 'add all' that I know of, but this link will show a list of all sub-pages for the Wikiproject so that you can quickly add each to your watchlist. --CBDunkerson 21:59, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

Using "What links here"

I've been trawling through the 1460 (as of 12/04/2006) Wikipedia articles that have links to the J. R. R. Tolkien article, and it has been extremely interesting! I would recommend that this is a regular thing that people do, both for general interest, and to check editors in other articles are not misrepresenting Tolkien. Is there a schedule for this WikiProject to which such a check could be added?

The list can be obtained by clicking "What links here", but it is more convenient to get the list ordered alphabetically, and by namespace (so you can ignore talk pages and the like). To do this, go to this link here.

While browsing that list, I discovered the following:

• Fan elite - paints some Tolkien fans in a poor light, and misrepresents film opinions.
• Ex_protestants#T - says Tolkien was an ex-protestant, and while this might technically be correct, I believe it was his mother who took herself and her two sons from the Protestant faith to the Roman Catholic faith. I think it is missing the point entirely to list Tolkien as an "ex-Protestant".

I also discovered some more Tolkien artists and some Tolkien translators who have Wikipedia articles. Doing similar "What links here" searches for articles like Middle-earth might yield some other articles that could either be categorised or put in a list (there are 1161 links from article namespace to Middle-earth). Regardless of how they are catalogued, they should all be accessible somehow from this WikiProject and the Middle-earth Portal.

Ideally, we should go through the list and carefully sort and categorise everything (most of the stuff should be categorised already). But the "What links here" lists will grow as more editors add references to Tolkien, so should we add a link to the current listing? For editors, the full list is OK, but for readers, we want a dynamically generated list that is restricted to article namespace, and to put a link to that on the Portal. Does anyone know how to do this? Carcharoth 10:39, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

I did this a few weeks ago with the J. R. R. Tolkien, Middle-earth, The Lord of the Rings, Gandalf, et cetera. I was adding all the pages to my watchlist and it came out to ~3000 (including redirects) as I recall. I want to separate out the things on my watchlist that aren't Tolkien related and then use that to update the list of Tolkien articles. However, as you say, new pages will be added all the time and it is good to do these reviews. I think that the List of Middle-earth articles should be moved to a sub-page of this project and then reformatted to match the layout of the watchlist summary. That would make it easier to compare the current article list against a watchlist and identify unlisted pages. --CBDunkerson 12:11, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

Do you have to click through to each article and then click "watch"? That seems tedious for 3000 articles! Could you expand a bit more on what you mean by "reformatted to the layout of the watchlist summary"? And isn't it possible to have a page with all the articles listed, and then do a "Recent Changes" thing on that, rather than add to a watchlist? I guess I don't really fully understand watchlists or Recent Changes yet, so I think I'm failing to understand something here. I'm also not quite understanding your technique to identify unlisted pages. Surely the only way to find unlisted pages is to hope that the article contains a link to Tolkien or Middle-earth, or some other keyword in a list (that is assuming, the article is even wikified). Maybe you don't mean update the current article list (which would be a separate process)? Instead, you mean update the watchlist from the current article list, after the current article list is updated (probably by re-running several broad "What links here" scans)? Carcharoth 14:42, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

Yes, it takes a while to click 'watch' on every article. The reformatting I was talking about would be to make List of Middle-earth articles look more like Special:Watchlist/edit. There is a Watchlist link at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Middle-earth#Lists which lets you check 'Recent changes' for all the articles listed on the List of Middle-earth articles page... as you describe above. However, if that list were put in the same order as the watchlists then you could use any automated comparison tool to identify differences between a user's watchlist and the list of Middle-earth articles. So it would be easier to identify any Tolkien related items on a user's watchlist which aren't in the list of articles. --CBDunkerson 16:47, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

Prizes for weirdest Tolkien links in articles

• Epic Pooh - essay by Michael Moorcock attacking Tolkien among other fantasy writers
• El_Goonish_Shive - webcomic with character called Justin Tolkiberry
• Beorn_leggi - yet another bored biologist turns to the books for inspiration...

Just had a thought - could these oddments be featured on the Middle-earth portal? Or should there be a Tolkien Portal? And where should discussion of the portal(s) go? Here at the WikiProject, or over at the Portal pages? Carcharoth 11:22, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

If people want it would be pretty easy to relocate this project to 'Wikiproject Tolkien' and the portal to 'Portal:Tolkien'. I don't think it makes sense to have separate projects/portals for the two subjects and the issue keeps coming up. The 'Middle-earth' versions weren't meant to be exclusive of Tolkien, just acknowledgement that the creation holds more interest for most fans than the creator himself. As to discussion of the portal - it was meant to be connected to this project so either place should be ok. The project currently has more active participants than the portal so I'd suggest here for now. The above, and the 'Ava Gardner' meeting we were talking about seem like they might be good for a 'Did you know' type section. --CBDunkerson 12:21, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

I agree that one portal for everything does make sense, but it would also be nice to have separate subportals (if that is possible). There will be those who just want the Middle-earth stuff, and there will be those who want more. Can portals redirect? Would the portal need redesigning, or would you just squeeze a box for the "Tolkien" area into the current design? I would say have the portal residing at "Tolkien" so the visible name is a broad umbrella, but have the "Middle-earth" one redirect there (or be a subportal of the Tolkien portal), and have the front portal design focused on Middle-earth - as you say, that is the area of primary interest. I don't know how to do any of this, so I'll leave it up to you and others to decide what is best. Carcharoth 13:10, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

Suggestion for portal and project name

How about "Tolkien and Middle-earth WikiProject/Portal"? Or is that too wordy? Carcharoth 09:27, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

Works for me. --CBDunkerson 10:32, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

On the other hand, would this be a lot of work to update templates and stuff...? Carcharoth 06:30, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

I'd just prefer Tolkien WikiProject/Portal. But that's just me (actualy I'd prefer just Middle-earth WikiProject/Portal, but I know that isn't the consensus). Ted87 07:26, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

I agree that the "Middle-earth WikiProject/Portal" links should remain active somehow, possibly by redirects if those are possible. I can certainly see cases where some pages would be more suitable for a link advertising the "Middle-earth" portal/wikiproject, it is just that the "Tolkien" pages (anything that refers to stuff to do with Tolkien that is more than just M-e), need to link to something with a better name, IMO. Carcharoth 08:39, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps Tolkien and Middle-earth WikiProject is too wordy, perhaps just as Ted says, Tolkien WikiProject/Portal. —Mirlen 11:48, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

I can see the merits of both approaches, but I tend to think the simpler "Tolkien WikiProject/Portal" is clear enough that it would encompass all M-e stuff as well. That would be my vote, with the old links being redirected or whatever. ASchmoo 19:30, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

More comments on "references" standards

I've added a few comments to the debate over the standards to use for references. Carcharoth 08:36, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

Discussion at Middle-earth Portal

I've made a comment, here, at the talk page for the Middle-earth portal on the Wikiquote link, and standards for external links in general (well, insofar as another Wikimedia project is "external"). Any comments would be appreciated. I also added a banner advertising the Wikiproject on the Portal talk page. Carcharoth 15:26, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

Announcement: Standards

I've finally completed WP:ME's Standards (Manual of Style guide)! However, it is still far from being 100% complete, because there are things that still must be decided as a concensus. Any questions or concerns concerning Standards for Tolkien related articles/lists/categories should be addressed in the Standards talk page. --Mirlen 18:05, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

Category

I was thinking, to make things easier, how about creating Category:Tolkien articles with unsourced statements and use a template {{ME-fact}} instead of {{fact}}? —Mirlen 18:23, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

It sounds like a good idea but don't you think that this category would be a bit narrow in scope and content? --Siva1979^{Talk to me} 19:33, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

Well, it's really for organisational purposes as opposed to catogrising a character into a category like, Middle-earth men for pure categorising purposes. After all, there are categories like, Category:Tolkien lists, or Category:WikiProject Middle-earth, or for other WikiProjects Category:Star Wars templates. Otherwise, I'm not sure what you mean. If you put the template {{fact}} on an article, the article immediately gets placed in a category called Category:Articles with unsourced statements — would that be narrow in scope and content? (Sorry, I don't think I'm getting your point). —Mirlen 20:06, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

I think this is a good idea, but (and sorry to bring this up again) the label "ME-fact" would only work for Middle-earth articles. Though actually, I suppose the only visible thing would be "citation needed", and the name of the category mentions Tolkien, so that is OK!

After that rambling, I'll cut the rest short and simply confirm that I'll gladly support the creation of such a template. Carcharoth 08:41, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

I just want to know if there're any more objections before I create the templates. (And no, that does not mean that you shouldn't be objecting). Also, I think there should be a Category:Realms of Aman. I dislike how Aman is categorisied within Category:Realms of Middle-earth when that is inaccurate, even if there's a note explaining the inaccuracy of the name of the category. Aman is a continent like Middle-earth, not a realm within it. —Mirlen 00:25, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Hmm. Yes. The whole Arda/Aman/Middle-earth/Ea thing needs a lot of clarification within the geographical groupings of the category system. It is not helped by the top-level category being "Middle-earth". Maybe we need a "Legendarium" category within which we can lump "Ea", "Arda", "Aman", "Numenor", "Middle-earth" and other categories? On the other hand, the use of "Middle-earth" ans an 'adjective' in category names to mean the whole fictional creation is now widespread. We need to think about this carefully. Carcharoth 16:55, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

For the record, I personally have no problem with there being two common and acceptable meanings of "Middle-earth": the precise "specific continent" meaning and the broad "Tolkien's subcreated universe" meaning. In particular, I don't know that there's any better term to use for the second of these (even "Ea" is insufficiently general, as it wouldn't include the Timeless Halls where the Ainulindale took place), and the meaning is generally quite clear from context. The term "legendarium" is great, but it refers to the stories themselves rather than their setting and it's also awfully close to jargon. "Middle-earth" conveys the right idea to a very broad range of people (apart from the truly pedantic among us :) ).--Steuard 04:53, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

I'm now leaning towards the term Tolkien's Middle-earth legendarium, with the reasoning that the addition of the term Middle-earth makes it clearer than the phrase Tolkien's legendarium. Middle-earth is still being used in the sense of the whole creation, but the term legendarium sort of encompasses the creation myths and legends and whatnot. Have a look at the organisation of Category:Texts by J. R. R. Tolkien and the subcategory Category:Middle-earth books to see how you could also say that these are all things from Tolkien's Middle-earth books (if legendarium is too obscure - but then that is why things are linked).

As for the category business, I think that the category blurb (the bit at the top of a category page) should make clear what should go in a category, and what Middle-earth means in the context of a particular category. The important thing is keep things clear. And to think about names carefully. Carcharoth 07:44, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

Interesting discussion from 2002

Found an interesting discussion from 2002 at Talk:Mithril. It's instructive to see how the article has improved since then. Also, compare it with Kryptonite (also has its own article) and Cavorite (part of a list - can't link to it directly). Carcharoth 16:02, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

Some more category work

I've been tidying up and categorising some stray articles about Tolkien's writings. Have a look at Category:Texts by J. R. R. Tolkien and the subcategories. I've also been using pipe-sorting in the category tags to tweak the appearance and order of items. I've mostly tried to get books in publication order and subsections of books in the order they appear in. It's not totally finished, but it gives an idea of the structure I'm aiming for. Comments and advice would be great. Carcharoth 22:05, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

Discussion at Maedhros page

I've started a discussion at the Maedhros page, following the failed "good article" nomination, on how to improve such articles. The discussion is here. Please add any comments there. Carcharoth 15:11, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Obscure Tolkien writings - book introductions

Over at the bibliography in the Tolkien article (see here), I've listed two introductions that I know Tolkien wrote for his books:

• 1964 Introduction to Tree and Leaf, with details of the composition and history of Leaf by Niggle and On Fairy-Stories.
• 1966 Foreword to the Second Edition of The Lord of the Rings, with Tolkien's comments on the varied reaction to his work, his motivation for writing the work, and his opinion of allegory.

Are there any others that people know of? Was there a Foreword to the First Edition of The Lord of the Rings? Carcharoth 14:18, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

There was a foreword to LOTR ed1, which was later rejected by Tolkien because it confused his personal life with the development of the LOTR. Traces of it survive in the Prologue and Appendices of the second edition and later.

The Adventures of Tom Bombadil also contains an (in-world) Foreword. -- Jordi·✆ 15:53, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

That sounds promising. By "in-world" do you mean in our world or in Middle-earth? I'm really only trying to find ones he wrote as a real-world author, giving his opinion on things, or details of the history of composition of a work, as he does in his Letters. Carcharoth 16:16, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

The ‘Bombadil’ foreword is written in the pretext of it being discovered by a later author from the Red Book, so in Middle-earth.

I may be mistaken, but the only forewords actually written by Tolkien are in LOTR and Bombadil: the ‘Tree and Leaf’ foreword was written by his son Christopher (who also contributed forewords to other works). -- Jordi·✆ 21:57, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

Where does it say that Christopher Tolkien wrote the introduction to Tree and Leaf? In my copy, it is signed (printed, not handwritten) "J. R. R. Tolkien", and it certainly sounds like him! Carcharoth 07:00, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

The Hobbit had an introductory note by Tolkien introduced in 1951 which was then updated in 1961 and 1966... and then replaced by a new note later in 1966. There are also the short end-notes of FotR and TTT, various sections of the appendixes (where he refers to 'our world'), and the 'Guide to Names' (aka 'Nomenclature of The Lord of the Rings'). Not sure if all of these match the criteria you are thinking of... just various small sections Tolkien wrote 'as author' rather than within the framework of the stories. --CBDunkerson 22:44, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

Can't believe I forgot the guide, it is a good example, as would possibly be "The Road Goes Ever On". "Hobbit" doesn't contain much info on the textual history, its foreword is "in-world".

As far as bibliographies go, this list is quite complete and has notes. -- Jordi·✆ 22:53, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

The final foreword in The Hobbit is presented as 'commentary on the tales of long ago' and thus might be considered 'in world', but the three earlier versions were more clearly 'external'. --CBDunkerson 00:02, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for all this. Should the bibliography at the Tolkien article aim to be as complete as the one at the link given above? I note that that website doesn't give the Foreword to the Second Edition of LotR, which I think is important to give and date separately. The other concerns seem to be small bits published elsewhere (letters to newspapers, posthumous fragments in various books) - how should we treat those? The current posthumous section already points to a larger list. I think the "during his lifetime" list should be as complete as possible, and everything else drastically cut down or moved elsewhere. The "Guide to names" is a big omission from the current list (though I did put a request for an article on it somewhere in this WikiProject). I believe it was published in 1975, and then again later in revised form (revised by Christopher Tolkien). But it was written much earlier and used by translators, which should be noted somewhere. Carcharoth 07:00, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Re-reading the above, I see that there might still be some slight confusion over "real-world" and "Middle-earth" introductions. What I am really after is dates and details for the first publication of new material at the front or end of a book (as opposed to small rewrites and edits of the material in a book - the only exception to this being the rather significant rewrite of The Hobbit). Regardless of whether the introduction, or other 'framing' material is real-world or Middle-earth, I am after any new material that was added later (ie. that is not available in all editions of a work). The introduction to Tree and Leaf and the greatly rewritten Foreword included in the Second Edition of LotR, both fall in this category. What doesn't fall under these criteria is any framing material that appeared in the original edition of a work (these would be covered by the entry for each original edition in the bibliography - eg. The first edition volumes of The Lord of the Rings). In other words, I am after the extra 'framing' and introductory texts added to later editions or reprints or collections of Tolkien's works, but not in the detail that you'd find in the Descriptive Bibliography. Another example of such material, added in this case by Christopher Tolkien, is the Foreward that appeared in some printings of the Second Edition of The Silmarillion - this foreword included a letter by J. R. R. Tolkien. I hope this makes things clearer - though a listing of all the framing texts, including those in the original editions, would also be good to see recorded somewhere. Carcharoth 08:50, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

If you can get hold of a copy of J.R.R. Tolkien - A Descriptive Bibliography it is a great resource for this kind of info. Wayne has been promising a revised version for a few years now, but has been side-tracked by other projects. I believe the forthcoming Companion and Guide is supposed to contain some similar information. From that I can tell you that the Tree and Leaf introduction by JRRT was in the original edition and apparently copied from his earlier introduction to Essays Presented to Charles Williams (first published in 1947) with numerous alterations (listed in the Descriptive Bibliography). This was then changed in the second edition of 1975 to include the introduction by CJRT, which quotes the text of JRRT's original introduction on pages v & vi. --CBDunkerson 23:05, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Urgh! That sounds even more complicated than before! I've been meaning to get hold of a copy of the "Descriptive Bibliography" for years. Thanks for the info. Carcharoth 00:07, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

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