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{{DYK talk|27 May|2010|entry=... that the first fire-breathing ''']''' in ] occurs in the ] ] '']''?}}
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A fact from The dragon (Beowulf) appeared on Misplaced Pages's Main Page in the Did you know column on 27 May 2010 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:
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This discussion was copied from the discussion at Talk:Beowulf 19:35, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
Currently this stub is rather not notable and ought to be merged and deleted or at least redirected to the correct section of Beowulf. Any other thoughts? Sadads (talk) 20:56, 7 May 2010 (UTC)
Oppose - There are other articles linking back to Beowulf (e.g. Grendel, Grendel's Mother) which are equally notable and which, if also merged, would make the Beowulf article unwieldy. An article on Characters in Beowulf might work better, but The Dragon is a known character in the myth, and should also link back to a dragon disambiguation page.Metabaronic (talk) 21:03, 7 May 2010 (UTC)
So get rid of the unnecessary detail. This article has no information that makes it notable, is even unnamed. I don't think this qualifies it for a child article. Sadads (talk) 21:39, 7 May 2010 (UTC)
I'd argue that a character from a particularly well-known legend is more notable than, say, a character in a film, many of which are deemed notable enough for articles of their own.Metabaronic (talk) 22:33, 9 May 2010 (UTC)
Characters in films should be deleted unless someone goes out of their way to collect sources for them, anyway. Sadads (talk) 18:14, 10 May 2010 (UTC)
The problem with the article is that the fight rather than the dragon recieves the scholarship, see This google scholar search. The dragon itself, which has no significant characterization nor name, therefore does not have lasting repercussions. On the other hand, the character of the battle does, and is hardly covered in the main article. Therefore child article should not exist yet. Also, the article has little real need throughout the rest of the Encyclopedia, see . Sadads (talk) 18:14, 10 May 2010 (UTC)
Ah, I see your point. But surely the first step is to either seek a greater level of references and citations in relation to the Dragon itself (particularly focusing on its description and characteristics), or else propose a change to the article title (and possibly also to the Grendel and Grendel’s Mother articles) to ‘Beowulf and the Dragon’. Some components of the article are repetitive of what appears in the main Beowulf article, and should be trimmed.
The problem in my view is that the Beowulf article is of a good length, and that linked, supporting articles are also at least start-class or better. I also think that this article should form part of a number of looking at British and English Dragons more generally.
The Dragon article should certainly be better written (I think most dragon articles suffer from this) and its purpose made more clear (the one liner about it under European dragon does a better job in a lot less space), but I don’t think a challenge to its notability stands up as there is a lot of Tolkein-focused literary research out there which could be brought into play, in that Beowulf was studied and translated by Tolkein, and its fire-breathing, cave-dwelling, treasure-guarding characteristics were clearly the basis for Smaug in The Hobbit, directly influencing the dragon archetype adopted in modern fantasy literature.Metabaronic (talk) 17:25, 11 May 2010 (UTC)
The Dragon (Beowulf) could use expansion, and in fact Sadads' google scholar search does have material about the dragon. The article size is another important consideration (I'd intended to mention it, but Metabaronic beat me to it). Beowulf comes in at over 6000 words of readable prose;Grendel's mother at over 2000 words of readable prose. If the The Dragon (Beowulf) were to be included here, then a precedent is set to include Grendel's mother as well, which would result in an overly lengthy article. Also agree that Tolkien's work should be incorporated in The Dragon (Beowulf) as part of the expansion of that page. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 13:17, 12 May 2010 (UTC)
"Beowulf is the earliest surviving piece of Anglo-Saxon literature to feature a dragon, and it is possible that the poet had access to similar stories from Germanic legend"
I understand what they are trying to say, but are not the Anglo-Saxons Germanic? It seems more clarification is needed, as this sounds misleadingly contrasting Anglo-Saxons with Germanics. The article Anglo-Saxons even calls them "Germanic". HeinrichMueller (talk) 17:39, 8 October 2016 (UTC)
