# Talk:A Secret Vice

The first sentence ends abruptly 'where he unveiled for the first time to a listening public the art that he had both.' I have not read Tolkien's text so cannot guess what is missing. I did not find an earlier version of the Wiki text that had the missing part. Gdeyoe, 07:54, 28 October 2018‎

Frzzl: Refs are far more manageable, both within an article and between articles, if named intelligibly. Thus "Shippey 2005" is preferable to ":7" or other incomprehensible identifier. Actually the whole WikiProject uses the name-and-date style, including this article up until yesterday. I'd be very glad if we could now restore that usage, please. Chiswick Chap (talk) 18:06, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

Sorry, didn't see this - yes, I will ensure that these are kept. Apologies, I'm using VisualEditor and it slaps these in all over the place, so I don't see them unless I have to switch to source mode for some reason. ~~~  Frzzl  talk; contribs  20:29, 31 October 2023 (UTC)
No worries. --Chiswick Chap (talk) 20:47, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

@Chiswick Chap Hi - OK, so my reasons for removing those two pieces are:
For the Fauskanger: Having read it, it seemed to me that Fauskanger is discussing Tolkien's constructed languages, and his relations with constructed languages, but not A Secret Vice in itself. He mentions the essay twice in the webpage: the first is when he's talking about Animalic; the second is when he quotes it to talk about the creation of Tolkien's mythology and Elvish. Nowhere in this does he actually comment about the essay itself, or really provide any analysis, so I don't see why we'd include it in the Reception section. It'd be fine as a source for Languages constructed by J. R. R. Tolkien, but I can't justify it for this article.
For the second: it's written by Higgins, the editor of the book. Therefore, it's not independent, so I removed it. Also, why would we put in Higgins' reception of his own book???
Please tell me if you find this argument acceptable, hope it justifies it better than what I can stick in an edit summary.  Frzzl  talk; contribs  21:04, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

Well, the Higgins clearly has to go. The Fauskanger quotation in the article actually names the essay, making it a little hard to claim it's off-topic. I'll cut it down a bit. Chiswick Chap (talk) 07:36, 1 November 2023 (UTC)