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The Fellowship of the Ring

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The Fellowship of the Ring (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)

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I'm nominating The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King for deletion. Has a palantír driven me mad? No, let me explain:

WP:PAGEDECIDE says editors should consider how best to help readers understand a topic and that there are times when it's better to cover a topic as part of a larger page about a broader topic, with more context.

Tolkien conceived and wrote Lord of the Rings as one novel, split into multiple volumes, and I believe that's the easiest and best way to talk about the work. (Just like the best way to talk about Moby Dick is with a single article, even though, like LotR, it's very long and was originally published in multiple volumes.) Just look at the sources, and how they largely focus on the work as a whole and not individual volumes: ,, , , , ...etc.

Now look at how comprehensive the The Lord of the Rings article is, and compare it to how under-developed the articles about the individual volumes are. If a reader types "Fellowship of the Ring" into Misplaced Pages, do we really want them to wind up at the start-class Fellowship of the Ring article? An article with just a handful of references, that mostly conists of an overly-long plot summary, that barely touches on the things a reader would want to learn about, like the work's development, themes, influences, etc.? Wouldn't it be better for them to wind up at the comprehensive Lord of the Rings article, which covers everything in the FotR article plus lots more? Of course the three sub-articles could be expanded over time, but, in the end, is there a compelling reason for them to exist in the first place? WanderingWanda (talk) 20:42, 27 January 2020 (UTC)

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Science fiction and fantasy-related deletion discussions. WanderingWanda (talk) 20:42, 27 January 2020 (UTC)

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Literature-related deletion discussions. WanderingWanda (talk) 20:42, 27 January 2020 (UTC)

• Keep I mean, I hear you, and appreciate the bold idea, but there are three books, and each of the books is notable in its own right. If there's significant overlap between this and the Lord of the Rings article, then the more reasonable approach would be to have that focus more on the series as a series without getting into the specifics of the individual books -- as each book has more than enough to say about it to make its own article. So, yeah, this is a definite keep for me, but again appreciate the bold idea. TheOtherBob 20:48, 27 January 2020 (UTC)

• Keep An obviously notable book. AFD is not for cleanup, per WP:AFDISNOTFORCLEANUP; proposed content rearrangements and merges are best discussed on the talk pages of their respective articles. --{{u|Mark viking}} {Talk} 20:56, 27 January 2020 (UTC) Update OK, it looks like this nomination is about all three books. My assertions are the same for all three books, and my recommendation is keep for all of them. --{{u|Mark viking}} {Talk} 21:00, 27 January 2020 (UTC)
• Keep and perhaps we can make this a Snow Close? What you are suggesting has merit, but deletion is not the right way to go here. You should have a merger discussion as that is what you are actually proposing. Deletion is only concerned with notability and the books pass on those grounds. -- Sirfurboy (talk) 21:01, 27 January 2020 (UTC)
• Keep as per above as well. The articles are clearly notable and just need some clean up and then they'll be golden. My assertion is for all three articles.QueerFilmNerd 21:02, 27 January 2020 (UTC)
• Well I wonder. I hear all the instant reflex Keep !votes, but the 3 articles are all neglected and it's hard to see what they're actually for - there's the main LOTR article (pretty good), 3 scrappy unmaintained "book" articles, lots of character, place, and artefact articles (in need of work, and they're getting attention now from me and others). Deletion may be a wee bit drastic but it's not absurd; of course we'd want to merge and redirect to LOTR instead, really. Chiswick Chap (talk) 21:07, 27 January 2020 (UTC)

Comment But merge is keep. The merge discussion has to be proposed on the pages that will be merged. It is a different process and if AfD has consensus to merge then the admin closing the AfD keeps the page and someone else has to go and propose the merge. An agreed merge would indeed involve a redirect being created. Thus my comment above. -- Sirfurboy (talk) 23:23, 27 January 2020 (UTC)

An AfD can decide on merge as an outcome, though this one clearly won't. But you're right, the matter can be pursued outside this narrow forum. Chiswick Chap (talk) 09:20, 28 January 2020 (UTC)

• Keep for the purposes of this AfD. The three books are all notable. Why not discuss this with involved and uninvolved editors on the talk pages? Esowteric+Talk 21:10, 27 January 2020 (UTC)

• Or Void if the AfD criteria have not been met here. Esowteric+Talk 21:21, 27 January 2020 (UTC)

• Merge and of course leave redirects, to The Lord of the Rings. While this is at AfD, it is clearly more of a merge discussion. However, I support it being at AfD (due to how contentious this will be) instead of left to rot on the talk pages. A bold nomination, but I must agree. The subpages are mostly plot, with little actual sourcing. Per WP:PAGEDECIDE, we have the leeway to decide how to best present the series. The three book breakdown is a bit of a publisher's formality, as it was intended to be a single volume, but of course you're not going to sell a single, 3,000 page book. I note that the main page could certainly absorb the others without crowding; the LoTR page has only 43kb of prose, well under the 100k max we prefer. Creating a single subsection for each of the three books would make a complete article that was not overly crowded. Most of the sources (even on the subpages) discuss the series as a whole, rather than as individual books. I also note that the main page receives some 5-10 times the page views as the subpages. I see no need for us to maintain several poor pages, when we could simply maintain one good page and have the same end result: our readers become well informed about LoTR. Combined with issues of context, I agree that having standalone pages is unnecessary. I would urge others reading this not to reflexively vote keep, but instead consider that our duty is create an excellent encyclopedia, and that having a certain number of pages is less useful to our readers than having concise and accessible content. Smooth sailing, CaptainEek ⚓ 01:45, 28 January 2020 (UTC)

  I would urge others reading this to not reflexively vote merge, as this is the wrong venue. You and Chiswick Chap have good arguments for merging, but these belong on the talk pages, where all the editors watching the articles can see them, not just the masochistic few who choose to participate at AfD. AfD definitely should not be wielded as a sword of Damocles to force a merge discussion. Let's not turn AfD into a general drama board for all manner of contentious article edits. --{{u|Mark viking}} {Talk} 01:05, 28 January 2020 (UTC)

• Keep. Just because the trilogy could be covered at one article, doesn't mean it has to be. Easily passes WP:NBOOK and WP:GNG. Cleanup is needed, especially with the WP:ALLPLOT issues, but that doesn't mean the article should be deleted. There are some incidents of books meant to be published together having a single article (I and II Samuel share Books of Samuel), but there isn't a precedent that that has to be done. I don't see a strong enough reason to combine three books that all easily pass WP:NBOOK and WP:GNG into one article on the trilogy just because we can. Hog Farm (talk) 04:13, 28 January 2020 (UTC)
• Merge to LOTR: There is no trilogy; there are no three books. It is written as a single novel, and often published as one volume. Within the novel there are six books, originally published in three volumes.--Jack Upland (talk) 07:07, 28 January 2020 (UTC)
• Merge to LOTR: It is a single work with relatively unimportant subdivisions; redirects to a table of chapters/books/volumes/ in LotR would be good. PJTraill (talk) 12:57, 28 January 2020 (UTC)
• Merge to LOTR per nom and Chiswick Chap and Jack Upland and others, but reserve the option to split out again if elements focused on the individual works become large enough. Some consideration is also needed on how to handle sales figures and meta-data (e.g. I know Wikidata can be tweaked to reflect this merge, but some care may be needed to ensure the right tweaks are made, plus some updating of the incoming links would be useful). I would suggest that if the result here is merge (or even no consensus) that a post-AfD discussion is continued at the appropriate article talk page on how best to handle this. Carcharoth (talk) 13:02, 28 January 2020 (UTC)

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