# Talk:Poems and Songs of Middle Earth

Hello - this is a wonderful article. Just a quick point - in regards to the lead referring to "English musician Donald Swann", I think British would be more appropriate as Swann was born in Wales to parents who were refugees from the Russian Revolution. Humbledaisy (talk) 01:20, 28 March 2022 (UTC)

@Humbledaisy: You're 100% right; I've now revised "English" (which is certainly wrong) to "British". Thank you for the correction (that was an oversight on my part), and thanks very much for the kind praise! —blz 2049 ➠ ❏ 08:53, 28 March 2022 (UTC)

This review is transcluded from Talk:Poems and Songs of Middle Earth/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.
Reviewer: Figureskatingfan (talk · contribs) 22:23, 16 June 2022 (UTC)

I am so going to grab this GAN, as part of the June Backlog drive.
Congrats, if there were such a thing as a "quick pass", I'd unequivocably give this article it. What a breath of fresh air; an article that was already ready for a GAN before it was submitted. I thank you so much for that! Granted, I did a quick read of its prose and only checked a few sources, but I find very little wrong about this article. The prose seems solid and well-written. The sources also seem good, high quality, and academic. I also admit that other than reading The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings a few times, the sources strike me as authoritative and well-chosen. The sources also seem to actually support the statements and claims made, which I also highly appreciate because one of my personal pet peeves (and something that seems to plague a lot of WP articles) is when that doesn't happen. What a great contribution to Tolkien studies on Wikipedia! The only suggestion I have is to request another expert to look at it because they'd be in a better postition to seriously evaluate it. (I have a classmate in the English MA program who would qualify, although they're not a WP editor, but if you like, I'd be happy to have them look at it.) Then, run--don't walk--to FAC. In the meantime, I will happily pass this to GA now. Please let me know when you submit this to FAC and I will assist. Best, Christine (Figureskatingfan) (talk) 22:46, 16 June 2022 (UTC)

@Figureskatingfan: Thank you very much for your thoughtful feedback (and kind encouragement)! I share your pet peeve re: citations not supporting, with high precision, every claim within the corresponding cited statements, and it's made me a bit of a stickler. I'd be very pleased to have your classmate take a look and provide some specific feedback, if they'd like. I also plan to ping WikiProject Middle-earth, plus one or two other specific editors with established Tolkienology chops, before I'd take this article to FAC. —blz 2049 ➠ ❏ 07:39, 21 June 2022 (UTC)
Ah, @Blz 2049: finally--someone after mine own heart; I'm sure there's an appropriate Tolkien quote and I only wish I could pull it out at this time. ;) Anyway, supporting claims with precision is so important in every WP article, but especially the more scholarly ones like this one. Yes, I'll contact my classmate. Again, best to you and your endeavors! Christine (Figureskatingfan) (talk) 16:23, 21 June 2022 (UTC)

Hi Blz_2049! Though I agree that the article is good, few things can be added.

Personnel and Track listing can be sourced to this [1]
True! Though it's not necessary to cite this information when the source is the primary source of the album itself.
"The Adventures of Tom Bombadil[T 1]" - notes inside the quote marks look really strange. I think it would benefit anybody who is not a Tolkien expert to move this notes to tracklisting (like in the original sleeve)
 Done I agree about the footnotes inside quotation marks looking strange; it's something I've been meaning to reconfigure. I've now added an extra column to the track listing to provide the sourcing info.
In "Side A" you have (poem read by Tolkien) for each song, looks a bit redundant IMO
 Done Cleaned this up too.
Note 'g', about Auden, can be moved to the text. It's not so obvious why he wrote the intro and why it was pleasing Tolkien immensely without this note
 Done I've moved the footnote into the main text.
Marshall Tymn listed it as a resource - Tymn can be introduced somehow. Same here : Per David Bratman, "Swann's song cycle has never gotten
 Done I've introduced Tymn as a bibliographer and Bratman as a Tolkien scholar.
and just a note from me, that it seems a bit strange that there are photos of Swann and Auden but no photo of Tolkien
I actually have two specific reasons for Tolkien's no-show:
First is contemporaneity: the Swann photo is right-on-the-dot from 1966, while the Auden photo is from the mid-1950s. Both of those photos are fair representations of the general appearance of their respective subjects as of the time the album was released. On the other hand, the only two photo portraits of Tolkien at Commons depict him in 1916 and "the 1940s" (fat chance—I suspect the photo is from much earlier). At minimum, both photos are from much much earlier than the relevant time period and unrepresentative of how Tolkien generally appeared by that time (here's how he looked in July 1965, for comparison).
Second: I actually don't even believe either of the aforementioned Tolkien portraits on Commons are actually in the public domain. I nominated his 1916 portrait for deletion back in March, and I nominated his "1940s" portrait for deletion today (see more about my doubts re: the date that photo was taken in my deletion request). So not only are they unrepresentative of Tolkien's mid-1960s appearance, I'm not even satisfied that either photo is even in the public domain in the first place.
That's all I've found, though I didn't check the sources. Artem.G (talk) 07:21, 17 June 2022 (UTC)

@Artem.G: Thank you for the feedback! I've revised the article based on your suggestions. —blz 2049 ➠ ❏ 00:39, 21 June 2022 (UTC)