Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Middle-earth/archive2

message: ===Role calls===
====April====
Sign your name below and comments are optional.
#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)
thread_title: Community

message: ====April====
Sign your name below and comments are optional.
#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)
thread_title: Role calls

message: Sign your name below and comments are optional.
#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)
thread_title: April

message: 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
#Second choice. --CBDunkerson 16:15, 15 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Poll

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

message: 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)
replies: text: 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)
replies: text: 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)
thread_title:  Dodgy articles? 

message: 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)
replies: text: 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  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)
thread_title:  Nice use of references 

message: 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)
replies: text: 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)
replies: text: 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)
replies: text: 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)
thread_title:  Using "What links here" 

message: *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)
replies: text: 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)
replies: text: 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)
thread_title:  Prizes for weirdest Tolkien links in articles 

message: How about "Tolkien and Middle-earth WikiProject/Portal"? Or is that too wordy? Carcharoth 09:27, 13 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Works for me. --CBDunkerson 10:32, 13 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: On the other hand, would this be a lot of work to update templates and stuff...? Carcharoth 06:30, 15 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: 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)
replies: text: 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)
replies: text: Perhaps Tolkien and Middle-earth WikiProject is too wordy, perhaps just as Ted says, Tolkien WikiProject/Portal. —Mirlen 11:48, 15 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: 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)
thread_title:  Suggestion for portal and project name 

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

message: 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)
thread_title:  Discussion at Middle-earth Portal 

message: 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)
thread_title: Announcement: Standards

message: 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)
thread_title:  Interesting discussion from 2002 

message: 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)
thread_title:  Some more category work 

message: 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)
thread_title:  Discussion at [[Maedhros]] page