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I'd like to call your attention to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Old South Road. Thank you. -- Fang Aili talk 17:27, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
Non-canonical stuff. Uthanc 00:48, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
Dab page which includes a Hobbit reference. -- Fang Aili talk 16:58, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
Artist. Debate relisted Feb 15. -- Mereda 17:35, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
See Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2007_January_25#Category:Actors_by_series.
Are there any more categories like this? -- Fang Aili talk 19:13, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
Listed by Carcharoth 01:59, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
Update: See Category:The Lord of the Rings actors for the "redirect to cast lists" compromise solution I set up. Carcharoth 02:30, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
This category was just nominated for deletion as part of a large batch: Wikipedia:User categories for discussion. IronGargoyle 02:17, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
Please add to Roads of Middle-earth, created as suggested at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Old South Road. Personally I don't know much about the roads, but I got the article going. Thanks, Fang Aili talk 17:18, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
Much of the info looks non-canonical to me... Uthanc 23:58, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
We should keep an eye on The Hobbit (2009 film). I've categorised it, and assessed it as high-importance. Let's keep it accurate and under control. Carcharoth 19:48, 20 January 2007 (UTC)
While wondering around Wikipedia, I came across alliterative verse, an old featured article from 2003. I was shocked to find only passing reference to Tolkien's extensive use of this verse form, so I added something to the talk page. More input there would be appreciated. See Talk:Alliterative verse#Tolkien and alliterative verse. A whole article on Tolkien's alliterative verse would be easily possible. Carcharoth 23:16, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
Lots of things wrong with this article IMO, take note; in here we find charges of phallic symbolism (seriously) and ripping off from Wagner's Ring Cycle. We also find racism, which had its own article some time ago. Uthanc 09:06, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
Recently (re)found these articles, which had either lost their categories, or never had them and/or did not have their {{ ME-project}} assessment tags on their talk pages:
The last one is actually from the 1978 film - probably needs renaming (please remember to categorise the redirect and add the new title and new talk page to Portal:Middle-earth/Pages, or leave a note at Portal talk:Middle-earth/Pages. Also, maybe turn what would then be a redirect at The Lord of the Rings (soundtrack) into a disambiguation page for LotR soundtracks, though as there are only two at the moment (1978 film and 2001-3 films) maybe don't bother just yet. Unless the The Return of the King (1980 film) had a soundtrack? Carcharoth 02:13, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
Not really a new article, but I created a new navbox today. Have a look at {{ LotR casts navbox}} and see what you think. Carcharoth 02:13, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
An article to keep an eye on: The History of The Hobbit. Carcharoth 19:49, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
The poll for templates, as of last count, was in favor of Fixed-pitch graphics. Uthanc 04:03, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
We have this article listing individual weapons, and then going into general stuff. Should we keep individual weapon articles (some are notable enough, I guess), or just stick with listifying?
Same goes for Stewards of Gondor and Chieftains of the Dúnedain - most of whom are just names and dates (the Kings of Rohan were more developed). Thus, should we just put info about the individual, less notable ones under their names? Uthanc 04:03, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
There still hasn't been a consensus on terminology, as seen last page.
In short:
Using " Middle-earth" indiscriminately to describe a Tolkien setting is wrong and should not be done in articles.
Blanket phrase: "In Tolkien's legendarium" or "In Tolkien's Middle-earth legendarium"
Breakdown of geography of Tolkien's legendarium:
Blanket phrases | Specific phrases |
...fictional universe of Middle-earth... | ...fictional universe of Eä... |
...fictional world of Middle-earth... | ...fictional world of Arda... |
...fictional world/universe of Middle-earth... | ...fictional continent of Middle-earth... |
...fictional world/universe of Middle-earth | ...fictional continent of Aman... |
* "To be ultra nit-picky... 'Arda' might more accurately be called the 'earth system' than 'Earth'. It is the Earth plus everything which orbits it... in the mythology that'd include the sun, the moon, and the stars. The Earth alone is 'Ambar'." -- CBD 15:51, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
Is this greenlighted already? Can this be on the Standards page? Uthanc 04:26, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
Please exaplain the differences (in usage) between "blanket phrases" and "specific phrases". Are you attempting to "phase out" the blanket phrases? If so, I oppose. I think that we should be specific in an article when talking about specific locations as locations. but "Middle-earth" is nearly a genre of it's own, and it's certainly the most commonly known/accepted way to refer to the legendarium ( Wikipedia:Naming conventions (common names)). - jc37 15:03, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
As studiously and sincerely as I can ask: How is this conversation not entering the realm of WP:OR? - jc37 20:25, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
We have some; see Tolkien's legendarium and its Talk page.
I agree with Mirlen that "Middle-earth legendarium" (proposed by CBD) still leaves us with blanket term usage, which we are trying to abolish. How about " J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy legendarium"?
[[J. R. R. Tolkien]]'s [[fantasy]] [[Tolkien's legendarium|legendarium]]
Because there are legendariums about the real world, "fantasy" legendarium indicates it's fictional. "Fictional legendariums", however, would refer to Hobbit folklore including Oliphaunts, Mewlips, Gorcrows... or is " J. R. R. Tolkien's legendarium" enough? Uthanc 11:49, 23 December 2006 (UTC)
Carcharoth wrote (previous talk page):
Best not to go beyond saying that some areas can be identified with some areas of our universe. In terms of names for categories and articles, I would say use the specific phrases, but not to worry about the names of templates (renaming widely-used ones can be a nightmare). I would then say that our terminology in articles should use the specific terms, but that we should have a standard footnote to add to quotes of usages of ME as a blanket term (nice article to link to!). This would include Tolkien and Christopher Tolkien's own usages of ME as a blanket term, as well as others using it in the same sense.
So should we rename Elf (Middle-earth) to Elf (Arda), and Category:Middle-earth Men to Category:Men of Arda? Is this approved already?
As jc37 points out, Wikipedia:Naming conventions says:
Generally, article naming should give priority to what the majority of English speakers would most easily recognize, with a reasonable minimum of ambiguity, while at the same time making linking to those articles easy and second nature.
So perhaps we should leave the names alone (but not the text). Uthanc 01:14, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
From Ted Nasmith:
Howe and Lee already did the Jackson films; besides Nasmith's the only one of the three who gave permission. In addition to these we have a Gandalf/Balrog image, a Tirion image, and a Silmarillion cover. Uthanc 23:15, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
Could someone more experience then me try to find a picture (the one I have in mind is the one from the movie with Gandalf knocking down the bridge at Kahzad-dum and the big glowing of light) for the Magic (Middle-earth) page? It seems too monotonous and needs some visuals. I would do it but I'm not that experienced witht the copyright stuff and getting images.-- Ran da l l l in 00:29, 24 December 2006 (UTC)
The WitchKing image is very well outdated because an accurate appearance to the Fellbeast was already created. Realistic, I might add, due to the creature's anatomy. I realise the pictures were made before the movies, but I find that putting them directly in an article can cause confusion regarding the Fellbeast's true appearance. I am happy you found a piece of history, however. I also ask if it is copyright infringement if I take a picture directly from the Return of the King movie or another media source and post it on Wikipedia as a new picture. Eiyuu Kou 04:09, 28 December 2006 (UTC)
One I uploaded - Image:NasmithWitchKing.JPG - is currently marked with a "possible copyright violation" tag thanks to my formatting mistakes. It would help if we knew the precise nature of his permission (See my Talk page). I asked User:Dhawk1964 for Nasmith's precise conditions of use, but if he/she's deleted the e-mails, as is likely, we'll just have to contact him again. In the discussion with User:Csernica, he wrote that we can't justify fair use with what is currently written on the Dolfen, Eissmann and Nasmith images - in shot, we'll (I'll?) have to contact them. Sorry... Uthanc 19:21, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
See Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2006-12-11/Technology_report - where the long-awaited 'redirects to sections' feature has been implemented. This makes lists, in particular, a lot more functional, and allows categorisation of redirects so listed items can appear in the category pages. As an example, I've added Aeglos to Category:Middle-earth weapons. The lists of various minor characters can all be treated the same way. Carcharoth 13:48, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
Keep the articles "out of universe". Just a few phrases like "Tolkien wrote", etc. helps. Uthanc 14:36, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
I've started the process of standardization and improvement for the Weapons of Middle-earth article. So far I've re-written the intro to be more helpful and "introductory" and I'm in the process of looking up references for various weapons. I'm curious if anyone has an opinion on the organization of the list. So far, its sorted by weapon "status" (i.e., the canonical status of a particular weapon) as well as "genericity" (i.e., is it a specific, named weapon or a generic weapon type). I discussed various other methods of organization in the new Intro, and I'd like to hear what people think about future modifications.
Also, I would like to hear what people think about the possibility of re-naming this article "Weapons of Arda", or something to that effect. This would be much more accurate and, if memory serves, indisputably so (I can't think of any weapons from the legendarium that existed or were used outside of Arda). Furthermore, I don't think that we would have too much of a problem with confusion due to this rename, especially if we re-directed "Weapons of Middle-earth" to the new page. Just a thought. -- Alataristarion 23:32, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
I successfully merged Cirth with the Dwarf (Middle-Earth) pages. I haven't applied the changes yet because I want to make sure I am posting it in the right article. I also want others to watch me apply the changes and point out any flaws. I will wait until 12:00 PM Pacific time (Est. 45 minutes from now) and then I will apply the changes. If it works out, the Cirth individual article can be deleted and removing Dwarven Runes from the to-do list. -- Eiyuu Kou 19:14, 28 December 2006 (UTC)
To my knowledge, the three volumes are never marketed separately as The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. While meant to be helpful, the titles of the film articles just add to the misinformation and confusion. I've asked this on the films' talk pages. Should we change these? A lot of links would have to be changed, though. Uthanc 17:42, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
See Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Middle-earth/Standards#External links and WP:SPAM (alternately I could remove it and have the discussion here). Uthanc 03:14, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
How's this? It's pretty basic, based on the Star of the Dúnedain:
Uthanc 14:14, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
The Middle-earth WikiProject Award, a.k.a. " Barnstar of the Dúnedain", may be awarded to any user for his or her contributions regarding Tolkien-related articles and/or to the WikiProject itself. Designed by User:Uthanc (using graphics by User:Aranel which were released to the public domain).
Hello, all. It was initially my hope to try to have this done as part of Esperanza's proposal for an appreciation week to end on Wikipedia Day, January 15. However, several people have once again proposed the entirety of Esperanza for deletion, so that might not work. It was the intention of the Appreciation Week proposal to set aside a given time when the various individuals who have made significant, valuable contributions to the encyclopedia would be recognized and honored. I believe that, with some effort, this could still be done. My proposal is to, with luck, try to organize the various WikiProjects and other entities of wikipedia to take part in a larger celebrartion of its contributors to take place in January, probably beginning January 15, 2007. I have created yet another new subpage for myself (a weakness of mine, I'm afraid) at User talk:Badbilltucker/Appreciation Week where I would greatly appreciate any indications from the members of this project as to whether and how they might be willing and/or able to assist in recognizing the contributions of our editors. Thank you for your attention. Badbilltucker 17:40, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
Misc is spelled wrong(i think) and it should not be their because Minor places in Middle-earth does not have misc. I think the article should be moved to Minor places in Arda and need consensus and help on this.- Ran da l l l in 17:10, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
In case anyone was interested, I added a bunch of userboxes to The WP:BABEL section on constructed languages. I hadn't seen any of the ones that were already there mentioned at the project either. Irongargoyle 23:36, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
Is there anw website with a list of tolkien's unpublished work? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 201.253.141.76 ( talk) 00:10, 9 January 2007 (UTC).
I was busy looking for wrong LCCNs, and I found some. The Two Towers and Return of the King have bad Library of Congress Catalog Numbers. (The LOC doesn't return anything when you do a search). If I replace these bad numbers with modern ISBNs, that will probably cause a newer edition of each book to be returned as well. Does anyone object? If not, I'll edit {{ ME-ref/TT}} and {{ ME-ref/ROTK}}, and make a corresponding update to Template_talk:ME-ref to show what was changed. If anyone wants a specific edition used, let me know. EdJohnston 03:47, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
Another point, the change was made to point to the latest US editions. Why not the latest UK editions? I think the solution is to have the reference template refer to one edition only, and to give US and UK publishing details. As for page numbers, a switch to using book and chapter references is long overdue. I still think that the template should be stripped down, and people will have to put in their own publishing, ISBN and page number details for their text. The most we can reliably supply is a general template for the first edition of each book he published, and the major secondary literature, plus specially written templates for the major editions. Carcharoth 22:27, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
regarding the above, I suggested a merge based on Rivers of Middle-earth and other "Rivers of" articles. Fang Aili then pointed out that some rivers have their own articles. Since we plan to merge those dozens (hundreds?) of articles that should be merged (see what CBD wrote on Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Amdir) eventually, perhaps we could get these done, at least. I'd keep at least Anduin and Baranduin (Brandywine), or at the very least Anduin. Or not. As Carcharoth has pointed out, redirects to sections now work...
For that matter, shouldn't some of the contents of the subcategories (and sub-sub-categories) of Category:Middle-earth places be merged ? Irongargoyle's templates wouldn't be made obsolete as long as we have at least one individual article along with a list. Uthanc 23:36, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
The category for unassessed Tolkien articles (1,351 articles) is currently number 524 on the list of "Most linked categories": [1]. Not as bad as the Living people category (over 150,000), but still something we should get going on. Particularly given the recent AfD nominations. Should we start in the gutter and work upwards, or start at the top and work downwards? Assessing and cleaning up as we go? I hope to put together some statistics about the articles soon, and update the category tree/structure. Hopefully that will help. Carcharoth 03:49, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
back to left Ok, well in the meantime I have been working on the "A"s, and cleared out Q, Y, and Z. :) -- Fang Aili talk 17:22, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
Just had a look at our list of images used on Tolkien-related pages. We use a lot of fair use images (mainly from the Jackson films), and they often get deleted if there is anything wrong with the licence it was uploaded with, or if someone doesn't like the way it was used. See Wikipedia:WikiProject_Middle-earth/Images and the large number of redlinks that have appeared since I expanded that page. Any ideas what to do? Carcharoth 16:36, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
Have a look at Portal talk:Middle-earth/Pages for two attempts to generate comprehensive listings of the articles (and other pages) covered by this WikiProject. For more thematic groupings, see the categories and subcategories of the root categories Category:Tolkien and Category:WikiProject Middle-earth. Early results indicate that there are just over 3000 pages in total (that includes templates and category pages, but not images), and around 1300 actual articles. Carcharoth 05:49, 20 January 2007 (UTC)
Some of those 1300 articles are not exclusively WikiProject Middle-earth stuff (eg. film actors, computer games, and so on). Those that are exclusively WP-ME should have been labelled with the WP-ME tag on their talk page, putting them in Category:Unassessed Tolkien articles. There are around 1460 of those, so it looks like at least 150, probably more, are redirects that need to have the WP-ME tag removed from their talk page, and to be put in Category:Middle-earth redirects. Either that, or they are real articles that are missing from the category structure. What is needed is to find the articles that are in the unassessed category, but not in the category structure. Most of those will probably be redirects, and there should be around 150 of them. Carcharoth 05:49, 20 January 2007 (UTC)
Following on from the above, please see Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Tolkien articles by quality statistics. That hasn't been updated fully with all the work from yesterday, but by tomorrow (Monday) it should have the correct numbers. A manual counting of Category:Unassessed Tolkien articles shows that there are now only 984 unassessed articles. We are below the 1000 articles figure! Let's make 700 unassessed articles the next target. Please start by working on the unassessed articles in the articles in Category:Tolkien articles by importance that already have an importance rating (ie. those are the priority ones anyway). As of the time of writing, there are 22 top importance, 112 high importance, and 188 mid importance articles. That is 322 articles to assess. If you use the importance category to pick an article to assess, you might pick one that has already been assessed. So to combine both the importance and assessment category, to show unassessed articles in a particular category, use the links I've provided at the top of that category. Carcharoth 15:51, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
Very important - please use the criteria at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Middle-earth/Assessment#Quality to do assessments. That way we shouldn't disagree too much over the assessments. Carcharoth 16:36, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
Current work list is at Wikipedia:WikiProject Middle-earth/Assessment/Current work. Please help out with assessing those articles as a priority. Thanks. Carcharoth 17:32, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
Lots more assessment has been done. Look at the assessment stats box at the top right of the page, and follow the links to see what articles are in which categories. Now that the initial backlog is cleared, I think it is best to decide what to do with the ~750 unassessed ones before trying to assess them for importance or quality. Frankly, some of them, are perma-stubs that will need merging (even some of the current mid-importance ones may eventually end up being merged into another article). I want the WikiProject to try an identify these candidates for merging before going any further. What do people think the best merging plan is? Use the models of Weapons of Middle-earth and Ruling Queens of Numenor and Horses of Middle-earth?
There is still a small backlog of start and stub articles that have been rated, but not assigned any importance. If anyone wants do assign them importance, please look through the importance categories to get an idea of how I did that for the majority that have been assigned so far. I'd like to reserve the top importance category for ones that need to be worked on right now. Dwarf got bumped up to top, but there are too many ME-race articles to go there fr the moment, so I ruthlessly limited myself to the major characters and books, plus the author and Middle-earth article. I've bumped the dwarf one back down for now.
How does this plan sound? We work on the top-importance articles, trying to improve them as much as possible, and then, once that is done, we bring groups of articles up from high to top until we can all agree that the top category is complete. We can work on articles using the models of the current FA and A-class articles. I have picked out 9 articles as A-class. They might not be fully A-class, but I think they are the best we have. I reserved B-class for articles with some references and organisation, but needing more work. I ignored GA-class, as that should be a target for the B-class articles. The A-class articles can either be consolidated, put up for GA-class, or improved and put forward to FAC. I think getting the A-class articles peer reviewed would also be a good step. Carcharoth 01:35, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
CBD recently (see a few sections above) completed work on an updated list of all (well, hopefully all) pages relevant to this WikiProject. Can I urge everyone to regularly review the recent changes to the pages on that list, and keep an eye out for vandalism or unintended mistakes. Some recent edits lost the bottom bits of articles, including the categories and interwiki links. this edit is an example of an edit that went unreverted for nearly a week. this edit added some good stuff, but let a category slip through the net, leaving the article uncategorised for over two weeks. Something to watch out for. Thanks. Carcharoth 23:08, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
Ooh. I actually found a mess and tidied it up using that random page link. See here. It seems like it will be useful for more than just compulsively browsing at random. Carcharoth 00:58, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
I was meandering thorough the articles, assessing them, and I had a pleasant surprise when I discovered that The Lord of the Rings (1978 film) is now featured!! (It was promoted on 20/01/2007). See Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/The Lord of the Rings (1978 film) (which we totally missed). We should congratulate User:Ibaranoff24 for getting this to featured status. I'm going to drop a note off at that user's talk page and see if the other film articles can be similarly worked up to Featured status. Carcharoth 23:33, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
I agree with Carcharoth that we need to combine some of the stub articles, especially the ones that are unlikely to expand much further. Perhaps we can start with List of Kings of Rohan. Most of the kings have decent stubs, but are unlikely to expand further. Of course, I advocate keeping Theoden and Eomer's articles as-is, but perhaps there's a way to combine the lesser-known kings' information into the list. Thoughts? -- Fang Aili talk 15:36, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
After looking around a bit more, we need to be sure the groupings are logical before going ahead too fast. I just found I should have been merging to Minor places in Beleriand. In fact, I really think we should have Geography of Beleriand as an offshoot of Beleriand, rather than an endless set of "minor places" lists. Similarly, Geography of Middle-earth (with Geography of Beleriand as an offshoot of that), and so on. Planning will save a lot of hassle, so I'm going to concentrate on setting out a scheme before doing any more merging. Carcharoth 00:14, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
I agree, with the caveat that we keep the nice table/timeline that is on the page at the moment, and put the sub-sections above or below the table. One problem with overview articles like this is that they end up being perilously close to just representing all the material found in the Rohan section of Appendix A of LotR, which is unsurprising really, as those appendices are pretty much like an encyclopedia of Middle-earth history. What we have to do to make it more than just an excessive rehash of that material, is add stuff like real-world connections, what is recorded of how and when Tolkien wrote the material in relation to the other material, add any quotes he made about specific kings from his letters, and add what people have written in books and papers about the Kings of Rohan, plus stuff from Tolkien's later, posthumously published materials (the story behind Baldor's death, for example). Some further thoughts. Where would Léod go? Here or in the List of Middle-earth Men article? Actually, Fram and Frumgar make up the known Éothéod rulers, so we could work in a list of those three. Getting back to the actual rulers, Eorl (definitely) and Helm Hammerhand (possibly) might also deserve separate articles. We would also want to merge in the family tree at House of Eorl. I also notice the family tree has a red-link Éofor. We need to make sure that redirects for those names without articles are created, and those with sections are linked from the tree, but not those without. Once some of these lists are done, some of the template bloat can be tackled as well, or at least the templates can be restricted to the appropriate places. Carcharoth 16:33, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
Ive started up the article on the artist/illustrator Catherine Karinia Chmiel (needs improving im getting some info form the person) and added a few things to Peoples of Middle-Earth and Northmen (Middle-earth)
No on seems to b very active atm :( le Dan 19:53, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
Shouldn't the roll call for mid-January to February be up now? MacGuy( contact me) 23:56, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
Uploaded by our new member Tommy9281, who understandably has only signed up in front (changing instructions there). See if there's any tagging problems... Also, the page really needs updating... might do it myself... Uthanc 14:24, 20 February 2007 (UTC)
![]() | This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Sign your name below and comments are optional.
I'd like to call your attention to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Old South Road. Thank you. -- Fang Aili talk 17:27, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
Non-canonical stuff. Uthanc 00:48, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
Dab page which includes a Hobbit reference. -- Fang Aili talk 16:58, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
Artist. Debate relisted Feb 15. -- Mereda 17:35, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
See Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2007_January_25#Category:Actors_by_series.
Are there any more categories like this? -- Fang Aili talk 19:13, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
Listed by Carcharoth 01:59, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
Update: See Category:The Lord of the Rings actors for the "redirect to cast lists" compromise solution I set up. Carcharoth 02:30, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
This category was just nominated for deletion as part of a large batch: Wikipedia:User categories for discussion. IronGargoyle 02:17, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
Please add to Roads of Middle-earth, created as suggested at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Old South Road. Personally I don't know much about the roads, but I got the article going. Thanks, Fang Aili talk 17:18, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
Much of the info looks non-canonical to me... Uthanc 23:58, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
We should keep an eye on The Hobbit (2009 film). I've categorised it, and assessed it as high-importance. Let's keep it accurate and under control. Carcharoth 19:48, 20 January 2007 (UTC)
While wondering around Wikipedia, I came across alliterative verse, an old featured article from 2003. I was shocked to find only passing reference to Tolkien's extensive use of this verse form, so I added something to the talk page. More input there would be appreciated. See Talk:Alliterative verse#Tolkien and alliterative verse. A whole article on Tolkien's alliterative verse would be easily possible. Carcharoth 23:16, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
Lots of things wrong with this article IMO, take note; in here we find charges of phallic symbolism (seriously) and ripping off from Wagner's Ring Cycle. We also find racism, which had its own article some time ago. Uthanc 09:06, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
Recently (re)found these articles, which had either lost their categories, or never had them and/or did not have their {{ ME-project}} assessment tags on their talk pages:
The last one is actually from the 1978 film - probably needs renaming (please remember to categorise the redirect and add the new title and new talk page to Portal:Middle-earth/Pages, or leave a note at Portal talk:Middle-earth/Pages. Also, maybe turn what would then be a redirect at The Lord of the Rings (soundtrack) into a disambiguation page for LotR soundtracks, though as there are only two at the moment (1978 film and 2001-3 films) maybe don't bother just yet. Unless the The Return of the King (1980 film) had a soundtrack? Carcharoth 02:13, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
Not really a new article, but I created a new navbox today. Have a look at {{ LotR casts navbox}} and see what you think. Carcharoth 02:13, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
An article to keep an eye on: The History of The Hobbit. Carcharoth 19:49, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
The poll for templates, as of last count, was in favor of Fixed-pitch graphics. Uthanc 04:03, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
We have this article listing individual weapons, and then going into general stuff. Should we keep individual weapon articles (some are notable enough, I guess), or just stick with listifying?
Same goes for Stewards of Gondor and Chieftains of the Dúnedain - most of whom are just names and dates (the Kings of Rohan were more developed). Thus, should we just put info about the individual, less notable ones under their names? Uthanc 04:03, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
There still hasn't been a consensus on terminology, as seen last page.
In short:
Using " Middle-earth" indiscriminately to describe a Tolkien setting is wrong and should not be done in articles.
Blanket phrase: "In Tolkien's legendarium" or "In Tolkien's Middle-earth legendarium"
Breakdown of geography of Tolkien's legendarium:
Blanket phrases | Specific phrases |
...fictional universe of Middle-earth... | ...fictional universe of Eä... |
...fictional world of Middle-earth... | ...fictional world of Arda... |
...fictional world/universe of Middle-earth... | ...fictional continent of Middle-earth... |
...fictional world/universe of Middle-earth | ...fictional continent of Aman... |
* "To be ultra nit-picky... 'Arda' might more accurately be called the 'earth system' than 'Earth'. It is the Earth plus everything which orbits it... in the mythology that'd include the sun, the moon, and the stars. The Earth alone is 'Ambar'." -- CBD 15:51, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
Is this greenlighted already? Can this be on the Standards page? Uthanc 04:26, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
Please exaplain the differences (in usage) between "blanket phrases" and "specific phrases". Are you attempting to "phase out" the blanket phrases? If so, I oppose. I think that we should be specific in an article when talking about specific locations as locations. but "Middle-earth" is nearly a genre of it's own, and it's certainly the most commonly known/accepted way to refer to the legendarium ( Wikipedia:Naming conventions (common names)). - jc37 15:03, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
As studiously and sincerely as I can ask: How is this conversation not entering the realm of WP:OR? - jc37 20:25, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
We have some; see Tolkien's legendarium and its Talk page.
I agree with Mirlen that "Middle-earth legendarium" (proposed by CBD) still leaves us with blanket term usage, which we are trying to abolish. How about " J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy legendarium"?
[[J. R. R. Tolkien]]'s [[fantasy]] [[Tolkien's legendarium|legendarium]]
Because there are legendariums about the real world, "fantasy" legendarium indicates it's fictional. "Fictional legendariums", however, would refer to Hobbit folklore including Oliphaunts, Mewlips, Gorcrows... or is " J. R. R. Tolkien's legendarium" enough? Uthanc 11:49, 23 December 2006 (UTC)
Carcharoth wrote (previous talk page):
Best not to go beyond saying that some areas can be identified with some areas of our universe. In terms of names for categories and articles, I would say use the specific phrases, but not to worry about the names of templates (renaming widely-used ones can be a nightmare). I would then say that our terminology in articles should use the specific terms, but that we should have a standard footnote to add to quotes of usages of ME as a blanket term (nice article to link to!). This would include Tolkien and Christopher Tolkien's own usages of ME as a blanket term, as well as others using it in the same sense.
So should we rename Elf (Middle-earth) to Elf (Arda), and Category:Middle-earth Men to Category:Men of Arda? Is this approved already?
As jc37 points out, Wikipedia:Naming conventions says:
Generally, article naming should give priority to what the majority of English speakers would most easily recognize, with a reasonable minimum of ambiguity, while at the same time making linking to those articles easy and second nature.
So perhaps we should leave the names alone (but not the text). Uthanc 01:14, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
From Ted Nasmith:
Howe and Lee already did the Jackson films; besides Nasmith's the only one of the three who gave permission. In addition to these we have a Gandalf/Balrog image, a Tirion image, and a Silmarillion cover. Uthanc 23:15, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
Could someone more experience then me try to find a picture (the one I have in mind is the one from the movie with Gandalf knocking down the bridge at Kahzad-dum and the big glowing of light) for the Magic (Middle-earth) page? It seems too monotonous and needs some visuals. I would do it but I'm not that experienced witht the copyright stuff and getting images.-- Ran da l l l in 00:29, 24 December 2006 (UTC)
The WitchKing image is very well outdated because an accurate appearance to the Fellbeast was already created. Realistic, I might add, due to the creature's anatomy. I realise the pictures were made before the movies, but I find that putting them directly in an article can cause confusion regarding the Fellbeast's true appearance. I am happy you found a piece of history, however. I also ask if it is copyright infringement if I take a picture directly from the Return of the King movie or another media source and post it on Wikipedia as a new picture. Eiyuu Kou 04:09, 28 December 2006 (UTC)
One I uploaded - Image:NasmithWitchKing.JPG - is currently marked with a "possible copyright violation" tag thanks to my formatting mistakes. It would help if we knew the precise nature of his permission (See my Talk page). I asked User:Dhawk1964 for Nasmith's precise conditions of use, but if he/she's deleted the e-mails, as is likely, we'll just have to contact him again. In the discussion with User:Csernica, he wrote that we can't justify fair use with what is currently written on the Dolfen, Eissmann and Nasmith images - in shot, we'll (I'll?) have to contact them. Sorry... Uthanc 19:21, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
See Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2006-12-11/Technology_report - where the long-awaited 'redirects to sections' feature has been implemented. This makes lists, in particular, a lot more functional, and allows categorisation of redirects so listed items can appear in the category pages. As an example, I've added Aeglos to Category:Middle-earth weapons. The lists of various minor characters can all be treated the same way. Carcharoth 13:48, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
Keep the articles "out of universe". Just a few phrases like "Tolkien wrote", etc. helps. Uthanc 14:36, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
I've started the process of standardization and improvement for the Weapons of Middle-earth article. So far I've re-written the intro to be more helpful and "introductory" and I'm in the process of looking up references for various weapons. I'm curious if anyone has an opinion on the organization of the list. So far, its sorted by weapon "status" (i.e., the canonical status of a particular weapon) as well as "genericity" (i.e., is it a specific, named weapon or a generic weapon type). I discussed various other methods of organization in the new Intro, and I'd like to hear what people think about future modifications.
Also, I would like to hear what people think about the possibility of re-naming this article "Weapons of Arda", or something to that effect. This would be much more accurate and, if memory serves, indisputably so (I can't think of any weapons from the legendarium that existed or were used outside of Arda). Furthermore, I don't think that we would have too much of a problem with confusion due to this rename, especially if we re-directed "Weapons of Middle-earth" to the new page. Just a thought. -- Alataristarion 23:32, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
I successfully merged Cirth with the Dwarf (Middle-Earth) pages. I haven't applied the changes yet because I want to make sure I am posting it in the right article. I also want others to watch me apply the changes and point out any flaws. I will wait until 12:00 PM Pacific time (Est. 45 minutes from now) and then I will apply the changes. If it works out, the Cirth individual article can be deleted and removing Dwarven Runes from the to-do list. -- Eiyuu Kou 19:14, 28 December 2006 (UTC)
To my knowledge, the three volumes are never marketed separately as The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. While meant to be helpful, the titles of the film articles just add to the misinformation and confusion. I've asked this on the films' talk pages. Should we change these? A lot of links would have to be changed, though. Uthanc 17:42, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
See Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Middle-earth/Standards#External links and WP:SPAM (alternately I could remove it and have the discussion here). Uthanc 03:14, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
How's this? It's pretty basic, based on the Star of the Dúnedain:
Uthanc 14:14, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
The Middle-earth WikiProject Award, a.k.a. " Barnstar of the Dúnedain", may be awarded to any user for his or her contributions regarding Tolkien-related articles and/or to the WikiProject itself. Designed by User:Uthanc (using graphics by User:Aranel which were released to the public domain).
Hello, all. It was initially my hope to try to have this done as part of Esperanza's proposal for an appreciation week to end on Wikipedia Day, January 15. However, several people have once again proposed the entirety of Esperanza for deletion, so that might not work. It was the intention of the Appreciation Week proposal to set aside a given time when the various individuals who have made significant, valuable contributions to the encyclopedia would be recognized and honored. I believe that, with some effort, this could still be done. My proposal is to, with luck, try to organize the various WikiProjects and other entities of wikipedia to take part in a larger celebrartion of its contributors to take place in January, probably beginning January 15, 2007. I have created yet another new subpage for myself (a weakness of mine, I'm afraid) at User talk:Badbilltucker/Appreciation Week where I would greatly appreciate any indications from the members of this project as to whether and how they might be willing and/or able to assist in recognizing the contributions of our editors. Thank you for your attention. Badbilltucker 17:40, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
Misc is spelled wrong(i think) and it should not be their because Minor places in Middle-earth does not have misc. I think the article should be moved to Minor places in Arda and need consensus and help on this.- Ran da l l l in 17:10, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
In case anyone was interested, I added a bunch of userboxes to The WP:BABEL section on constructed languages. I hadn't seen any of the ones that were already there mentioned at the project either. Irongargoyle 23:36, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
Is there anw website with a list of tolkien's unpublished work? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 201.253.141.76 ( talk) 00:10, 9 January 2007 (UTC).
I was busy looking for wrong LCCNs, and I found some. The Two Towers and Return of the King have bad Library of Congress Catalog Numbers. (The LOC doesn't return anything when you do a search). If I replace these bad numbers with modern ISBNs, that will probably cause a newer edition of each book to be returned as well. Does anyone object? If not, I'll edit {{ ME-ref/TT}} and {{ ME-ref/ROTK}}, and make a corresponding update to Template_talk:ME-ref to show what was changed. If anyone wants a specific edition used, let me know. EdJohnston 03:47, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
Another point, the change was made to point to the latest US editions. Why not the latest UK editions? I think the solution is to have the reference template refer to one edition only, and to give US and UK publishing details. As for page numbers, a switch to using book and chapter references is long overdue. I still think that the template should be stripped down, and people will have to put in their own publishing, ISBN and page number details for their text. The most we can reliably supply is a general template for the first edition of each book he published, and the major secondary literature, plus specially written templates for the major editions. Carcharoth 22:27, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
regarding the above, I suggested a merge based on Rivers of Middle-earth and other "Rivers of" articles. Fang Aili then pointed out that some rivers have their own articles. Since we plan to merge those dozens (hundreds?) of articles that should be merged (see what CBD wrote on Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Amdir) eventually, perhaps we could get these done, at least. I'd keep at least Anduin and Baranduin (Brandywine), or at the very least Anduin. Or not. As Carcharoth has pointed out, redirects to sections now work...
For that matter, shouldn't some of the contents of the subcategories (and sub-sub-categories) of Category:Middle-earth places be merged ? Irongargoyle's templates wouldn't be made obsolete as long as we have at least one individual article along with a list. Uthanc 23:36, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
The category for unassessed Tolkien articles (1,351 articles) is currently number 524 on the list of "Most linked categories": [1]. Not as bad as the Living people category (over 150,000), but still something we should get going on. Particularly given the recent AfD nominations. Should we start in the gutter and work upwards, or start at the top and work downwards? Assessing and cleaning up as we go? I hope to put together some statistics about the articles soon, and update the category tree/structure. Hopefully that will help. Carcharoth 03:49, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
back to left Ok, well in the meantime I have been working on the "A"s, and cleared out Q, Y, and Z. :) -- Fang Aili talk 17:22, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
Just had a look at our list of images used on Tolkien-related pages. We use a lot of fair use images (mainly from the Jackson films), and they often get deleted if there is anything wrong with the licence it was uploaded with, or if someone doesn't like the way it was used. See Wikipedia:WikiProject_Middle-earth/Images and the large number of redlinks that have appeared since I expanded that page. Any ideas what to do? Carcharoth 16:36, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
Have a look at Portal talk:Middle-earth/Pages for two attempts to generate comprehensive listings of the articles (and other pages) covered by this WikiProject. For more thematic groupings, see the categories and subcategories of the root categories Category:Tolkien and Category:WikiProject Middle-earth. Early results indicate that there are just over 3000 pages in total (that includes templates and category pages, but not images), and around 1300 actual articles. Carcharoth 05:49, 20 January 2007 (UTC)
Some of those 1300 articles are not exclusively WikiProject Middle-earth stuff (eg. film actors, computer games, and so on). Those that are exclusively WP-ME should have been labelled with the WP-ME tag on their talk page, putting them in Category:Unassessed Tolkien articles. There are around 1460 of those, so it looks like at least 150, probably more, are redirects that need to have the WP-ME tag removed from their talk page, and to be put in Category:Middle-earth redirects. Either that, or they are real articles that are missing from the category structure. What is needed is to find the articles that are in the unassessed category, but not in the category structure. Most of those will probably be redirects, and there should be around 150 of them. Carcharoth 05:49, 20 January 2007 (UTC)
Following on from the above, please see Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Tolkien articles by quality statistics. That hasn't been updated fully with all the work from yesterday, but by tomorrow (Monday) it should have the correct numbers. A manual counting of Category:Unassessed Tolkien articles shows that there are now only 984 unassessed articles. We are below the 1000 articles figure! Let's make 700 unassessed articles the next target. Please start by working on the unassessed articles in the articles in Category:Tolkien articles by importance that already have an importance rating (ie. those are the priority ones anyway). As of the time of writing, there are 22 top importance, 112 high importance, and 188 mid importance articles. That is 322 articles to assess. If you use the importance category to pick an article to assess, you might pick one that has already been assessed. So to combine both the importance and assessment category, to show unassessed articles in a particular category, use the links I've provided at the top of that category. Carcharoth 15:51, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
Very important - please use the criteria at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Middle-earth/Assessment#Quality to do assessments. That way we shouldn't disagree too much over the assessments. Carcharoth 16:36, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
Current work list is at Wikipedia:WikiProject Middle-earth/Assessment/Current work. Please help out with assessing those articles as a priority. Thanks. Carcharoth 17:32, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
Lots more assessment has been done. Look at the assessment stats box at the top right of the page, and follow the links to see what articles are in which categories. Now that the initial backlog is cleared, I think it is best to decide what to do with the ~750 unassessed ones before trying to assess them for importance or quality. Frankly, some of them, are perma-stubs that will need merging (even some of the current mid-importance ones may eventually end up being merged into another article). I want the WikiProject to try an identify these candidates for merging before going any further. What do people think the best merging plan is? Use the models of Weapons of Middle-earth and Ruling Queens of Numenor and Horses of Middle-earth?
There is still a small backlog of start and stub articles that have been rated, but not assigned any importance. If anyone wants do assign them importance, please look through the importance categories to get an idea of how I did that for the majority that have been assigned so far. I'd like to reserve the top importance category for ones that need to be worked on right now. Dwarf got bumped up to top, but there are too many ME-race articles to go there fr the moment, so I ruthlessly limited myself to the major characters and books, plus the author and Middle-earth article. I've bumped the dwarf one back down for now.
How does this plan sound? We work on the top-importance articles, trying to improve them as much as possible, and then, once that is done, we bring groups of articles up from high to top until we can all agree that the top category is complete. We can work on articles using the models of the current FA and A-class articles. I have picked out 9 articles as A-class. They might not be fully A-class, but I think they are the best we have. I reserved B-class for articles with some references and organisation, but needing more work. I ignored GA-class, as that should be a target for the B-class articles. The A-class articles can either be consolidated, put up for GA-class, or improved and put forward to FAC. I think getting the A-class articles peer reviewed would also be a good step. Carcharoth 01:35, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
CBD recently (see a few sections above) completed work on an updated list of all (well, hopefully all) pages relevant to this WikiProject. Can I urge everyone to regularly review the recent changes to the pages on that list, and keep an eye out for vandalism or unintended mistakes. Some recent edits lost the bottom bits of articles, including the categories and interwiki links. this edit is an example of an edit that went unreverted for nearly a week. this edit added some good stuff, but let a category slip through the net, leaving the article uncategorised for over two weeks. Something to watch out for. Thanks. Carcharoth 23:08, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
Ooh. I actually found a mess and tidied it up using that random page link. See here. It seems like it will be useful for more than just compulsively browsing at random. Carcharoth 00:58, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
I was meandering thorough the articles, assessing them, and I had a pleasant surprise when I discovered that The Lord of the Rings (1978 film) is now featured!! (It was promoted on 20/01/2007). See Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/The Lord of the Rings (1978 film) (which we totally missed). We should congratulate User:Ibaranoff24 for getting this to featured status. I'm going to drop a note off at that user's talk page and see if the other film articles can be similarly worked up to Featured status. Carcharoth 23:33, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
I agree with Carcharoth that we need to combine some of the stub articles, especially the ones that are unlikely to expand much further. Perhaps we can start with List of Kings of Rohan. Most of the kings have decent stubs, but are unlikely to expand further. Of course, I advocate keeping Theoden and Eomer's articles as-is, but perhaps there's a way to combine the lesser-known kings' information into the list. Thoughts? -- Fang Aili talk 15:36, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
After looking around a bit more, we need to be sure the groupings are logical before going ahead too fast. I just found I should have been merging to Minor places in Beleriand. In fact, I really think we should have Geography of Beleriand as an offshoot of Beleriand, rather than an endless set of "minor places" lists. Similarly, Geography of Middle-earth (with Geography of Beleriand as an offshoot of that), and so on. Planning will save a lot of hassle, so I'm going to concentrate on setting out a scheme before doing any more merging. Carcharoth 00:14, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
I agree, with the caveat that we keep the nice table/timeline that is on the page at the moment, and put the sub-sections above or below the table. One problem with overview articles like this is that they end up being perilously close to just representing all the material found in the Rohan section of Appendix A of LotR, which is unsurprising really, as those appendices are pretty much like an encyclopedia of Middle-earth history. What we have to do to make it more than just an excessive rehash of that material, is add stuff like real-world connections, what is recorded of how and when Tolkien wrote the material in relation to the other material, add any quotes he made about specific kings from his letters, and add what people have written in books and papers about the Kings of Rohan, plus stuff from Tolkien's later, posthumously published materials (the story behind Baldor's death, for example). Some further thoughts. Where would Léod go? Here or in the List of Middle-earth Men article? Actually, Fram and Frumgar make up the known Éothéod rulers, so we could work in a list of those three. Getting back to the actual rulers, Eorl (definitely) and Helm Hammerhand (possibly) might also deserve separate articles. We would also want to merge in the family tree at House of Eorl. I also notice the family tree has a red-link Éofor. We need to make sure that redirects for those names without articles are created, and those with sections are linked from the tree, but not those without. Once some of these lists are done, some of the template bloat can be tackled as well, or at least the templates can be restricted to the appropriate places. Carcharoth 16:33, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
Ive started up the article on the artist/illustrator Catherine Karinia Chmiel (needs improving im getting some info form the person) and added a few things to Peoples of Middle-Earth and Northmen (Middle-earth)
No on seems to b very active atm :( le Dan 19:53, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
Shouldn't the roll call for mid-January to February be up now? MacGuy( contact me) 23:56, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
Uploaded by our new member Tommy9281, who understandably has only signed up in front (changing instructions there). See if there's any tagging problems... Also, the page really needs updating... might do it myself... Uthanc 14:24, 20 February 2007 (UTC)