Misplaced Pages

talk:WikiProject Middle-earth - Misplaced Pages

Article snapshot taken from Wikipedia with creative commons attribution-sharealike license. Give it a read and then ask your questions in the chat. We can research this topic together.

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Carcharoth (talk | contribs) at 00:22, 27 October 2007 (→Notability of articles: update). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Revision as of 00:22, 27 October 2007 by Carcharoth (talk | contribs) (→Notability of articles: update)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff) Front page · Main discussion · Standards · Things to do · Assessment · Templates
Images · Watchlist (Recent changes) Tolkien articles by quality statistics (worklist) :
Tolkien articles by quality and importance
Quality Importance
Top High Mid Low NA ??? Total
FA 1 1 2 4
FL 1 1
GA 9 50 108 66 233
B 9 47 59 115
C 29 75 1 105
Start 128 1 129
Stub 3 3
List 2 6 11 1 20
Category 166 166
Disambig 34 34
File 92 92
Project 3 3
Redirect 2 6 555 563
Template 41 41
NA 1 32 33
Other 6 6
Assessed 10 61 194 351 931 1 1,548
Unassessed 1 1
Total 10 61 194 351 931 2 1,549
WikiWork factors (?) ω = 1,899 Ω = 3.22
Archive
Archives

If anyone wants to pull out or copy a previous discussion, feel free to to do so. —Mirlen 17:13, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

Shortcut
  • ]

Community

Roll call: October - ?

Please sign your name below and on the front page. Comments are optional.

Issues

Deletion proposals

Strike out expired proposals with <s></s> and note result. Uthanc 15:08, 20 October 2007 (UTC)
Images
Articles
Redirects
Templates
Categories
Already deleted

Articles newly made/found

Please ensure these are all added to Portal:Middle-earth/Pages. This is a list of all the pages related to the project, to allow related changes for that page to be used to watch changes to all the pages - please add template, categories and similar pages to that list as well. Though there should be periodic attempts to redo the list in a comprehensive fashion, keeping it up-to-date manually will be a great help. If you are uncertain about whether a page belongs there, list it at Portal talk:Middle-earth/Pages. Please also ensure that {{ME-project}} is added on the talk page of new articles, try to give them an initial assessment, and place them in the correct categories. The top level categories are Category:Tolkien and Category:Middle-earth. Carcharoth 16:11, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Move/merge proposals

Hi! I'm here too (currently). Done the suggested merge - article still needs work. Also pictures in article are 'not the best' - if anyone has any better.. See the talk page for anything else.. ?87.102.0.6 12:59, 22 October 2007 (UTC)
Question - article uses the term "The Valian Years" - is this in common use - seems to be about the first age??87.102.0.6 13:02, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Redirects reorganised

Have a look at Category:Middle-earth redirects! Some great work has been done there by Súrendil, showing how our redirects should be organised, and the advantages of such organisation, showing how redirects to lists and sections can really help organise merged lists and avoid having hundreds of short stubs. This also reduces the amount of material that needs assessing as well, once the "merge era" is finished. Carcharoth 11:36, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

Inspired by that, I created and have started to populate Category:Middle-earth redirects with possibilities. Carcharoth 15:55, 19 July 2007 (UTC)
Could I suggest making additions to the redirect page, rather than creating new articles - I'm sure 'spiders of mirkwood' would make a fine addition to the article mirkwood, but might not stand as well on it's own..87.102.0.6 13:06, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Best articles

Currently we have 15 articles that are considered examples of the best articles we have. I am going to list them below so that people can enjoy reading them, help improve them, and have a model for articles they work on. These are from Category:FA-Class Tolkien articles (WP:FAC is a separate peer reviewed process); Category:A-Class Tolkien articles (examples of the best articles we have - effectively an internal wikiproject assessment); Category:GA-Class Tolkien articles (the WP:GA process is a separate review process). I haven't included any of the 85 current B-class articles at Category:B-Class Tolkien articles, but if any of those are especially good in your opinion, please re-assess, or list or discuss below. Also, please raise any concerns you have with these articles below, though remember to take extensive discussions to the article talk pages. It would be nice to update this every couple of months to see what progress is being made. Carcharoth 12:31, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

FA, A, and GA articles:

Discussion

Models for merges

There are some articles that I think are good models for how to merge material from stubs and reference it (well, at least in some cases). If you see any articles that you like the look of, please add them below. Carcharoth 22:16, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

See also Category:Middle-earth lists. Anyone have any thoughts about the advantages and disadvantages of these different styles? Carcharoth 22:16, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

Another assessment/merging drive?

Well, I say another, though the previous one never really took off... I noticed that some people are busy merging and assessing articles, and as you can see from Misplaced Pages:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Tolkien articles by quality statistics, the number of assessed articles (534) is close to overtaking the number of unassessed articles (603). So let's aim to cross the halfway stage soon! Remember to consider merging before you assess something, as assessing is pointless if the article is later merged. Any questions, please ask. Carcharoth 21:27, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

New images process

See Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Middle-earth/Images/Disputed images. Carcharoth 03:38, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Discussion in progress

Carried over from last archive. Uthanc 15:08, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

Discussion taking place at Talk:Tolkien's legendarium, in case anyone is interested. Carcharoth 13:27, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

Notability of articles

I have just examined over a dozen articles in Category:Middle-earth locations, and not one of them can anywhere near meeting the notability requirements set out in WP:FICTION. I have tagged the articles accordingly with {{nn}} etc, in the hope that editors may be able to produce references which demonstrate notability. May I remind participants in this project that not every detail of Tolkein's works is notable, and that notability needs to be demonstrated for each article by external sources (i.e. not just by citations from Tolkein's works). It would be a pity to see so much writing being deleted, but that's what's likely to happen unless references are forthcoming.

It maybe better to merge many of these small articles into a limited number of much bigger articles for which suitable secondary references are available. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 02:32, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Hi BrownHairedGirl. You've made a logical, but incorrect, assumption about the sequence of events. This Wikiproject was not responsible for the creation of the vast number of articles on minor elements of Tolkien lore in Misplaced Pages. The articles came first, most from the earliest days of Misplaced Pages, and then the Wikiproject was created to try to bring some sort of order and encyclopedic treatment to the chaos. That which you seek to 'remind' us of is, in fact, a major focus of this project... working on references and merging articles. However, there is ALOT of material to be recast. As to the 'primary sources' issue you cite; The "valid conclusions drawn beased on primary sources" wording you quote is referring to when secondary sources should be used... for interpretations and conclusions. The intent was that when you are citing a reference for simple facts (e.g. the color of Gloin's beard in the stories) it is better to cite the primary source. When you are citing a reference for 'interpretation' (e.g. the 'meaning' of the various different colors of the Dwarves' beards) a secondary source is needed... as they also are to establish notability. This is consistent with Misplaced Pages's sourcing policies. --CBD 13:09, 25 October 2007 (UTC)
There are a lot of articles which the problematic ones can be merged into, like how Bridge of Khazad-dûm was merged into Moria (Middle-earth) (which sports a notability tag!). We have Minor places in Middle-earth, Minor places in Beleriand, and Minor places in Arda. However, where should we merge these into? For example, Lamedon and Lossarnach are just regions of Gondor, but do they go in Gondor, or Minor places in Middle-earth? Uthanc 17:29, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

{deindent) Thanks for the replies, and sorry if I had misunderstood the history of the articles. Good to know that a cleanup is underway :)

Thanks to CBD for clarifying intent of the guidelines; that make sense, although there is a danger that it could be interpreted as encouraging original research. It might be a good idea to clarify that, and wouldn't it be a good idea to add a section to the referencing guidelines stressing the importance of secondary sources to establish notability?

Good luck with all the mergeing — there is a lot of work to do there, and not just in combing articles. Even the article Minor places in Middle-earth currently has no secondary sources to establish notability, and I do wonder whether deletion may be a better solution in many cases. There has clearly been a lot of work put into creating all this material, but so far it hasn't been shown to meet wikipedia's notability criteria. I haven't scanned all the all the sub-categories, but so far I don't see any articles in Category:Middle-earth locations which pass WP:FICTION. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 19:51, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

I clarified the confusion up in ME:S, taken from the words of CBD - who explains it so much better than I could've. If anyone else wants to expand on the importance of secondary sources to establish notability, feel free to do so. In any case, there are a LOT of articles that need proper referencing and clean up and so on, so progress might be slow - but hopefully, we'll get there. Thanks for your comments, BrownHairedGirl.
As for whether or not to place Lamedon and Lossarnarch in Gondor, or Minor places of Middle-earth - that's a tricky question. Perhaps we could discuss it very briefly in Gondor, and expand on it in Minor places of Middle-earth... Or alternatively, we could just keep it in Gondor and only use Minor places of Middle-earth only when the section describing the various regions of Gondor gets too long. The small but subtle difference between the first option and second one is that while placing the the regions of Gondor in the list is a certainy, it will not always be the case for the secondary option. Based on WP:FICTION, I think the second option follows the guideline more closely. What do the other members think about this? —Mirlen 01:41, 26 October 2007 (UTC)
Mirlen, at the risk of labouring the point, it seems to me that you might be putting the cart before the horse. A decision on whether or not to merge seems to me to be premature if notability has not been established even for the merge target; you may be putting a lot of work into something which will ultimately be deleted.
I have just noticed that some of the {{nn}} and {{primarysources}} tags which I had added to these articles have been removed. I won't edit war, but will nominate at AfD any articles which do n not meet WP:FICTION and for which these tags have been removed. The first is Gondor (see AfD/Gondor), but there are several others to follow. This is a pity, because I would have much preferred to give you good folks plenty more time to find sources, but if the tags are removed, then I have to conclude that editors find the article satisfactory as they are, in which case the AfD process is needed. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 07:30, 26 October 2007 (UTC)
Did you discuss the removal of the tags with the editor who removed them? I will see what I can do for the articles in question after the weekend, but I will note that if the long-term goal is merging, then AfD is disruptive because if I had arrived at the article without an AfD notice I personally might have merged. Now an AfD notice is there, I cannot merge. Actually, none of the articles nominated are merge candidates, but the point still needs to be made. Asking for sources is more than acceptable, and is really helpful, but in future if an editor removes tags that you add, could you discuss it with them before going straight to AfD? Carcharoth 09:29, 26 October 2007 (UTC)
How about doing this the other way around: that instead of leaving it outsiders like me to challenge the lack of evidence of notability, this project starts its own systematic process of tagging articles for which notability has not been clearly established through multiple non-trivial references to sources independent of the subject, and reinstating any such tags which are improperly removed for spurious reasons, such as because the article mentions Tolkiens' son and literary executor? You mentioned at AfD that this is a large and active wikiproject, so I'm sure that it would be easy to ensure that this tagging is maintained.
And I'm sorry, but AfD does not disrupt a possible merger: "merge to X" is perfectly legitimate outcome of an AfD. Personally, I have no axe to grind either way about merger; my sole concern is whether the articles meet the notability guidelines. As stated at AfD, I would be happy to withdraw the nominations if this wikiproject starts the work of ensuring that its articles demonstrate notability, but so far don't see that — all I see is resentment at the notion that notability needs to be demonstrated through references per WP:NOTE and WP:FICTION rather than merely taken as axiomatic. I do hope that we will get to the point where I can withdraw these nominations, but we're not there yet. I hope the gap isn't as big as it currently looks. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 13:31, 26 October 2007 (UTC)
Please read the project talk page archive to see what we have been doing. Not terribly well organised and not immensely productive. But some, slow progress is being made. Also, I did not say "All these articles are supported by a large and active WikiProject" - it was TCC who said that. If you are going to say that I've said something, please attribute correctly. The main focus has been merging, but you are quite right to say that the notability part has been neglected. Would you like to join the WikiProject and help us? Finally, I think merging is sometimes an obvious solution that should come before AfD. But the implication of an AfD is that deletion is "on the table", so merging cannot take place during the AfD, and if deletion takes place, then merging is no longer possible. Getting stuff undeleted at DRV to perform a merger is a pain, but is sometimes the only option if AfD neglect the merge option. I understand that some articles should be deleted instead of merged, but the initial merging decision should be editorial, not a community-driven AfD decision. Carcharoth 13:57, 26 October 2007 (UTC)
Sorry about the misattribution, that was careless of me. But, no I'm, not sufficiently interested in the subject to join the project. I happened to chance upon one nn and unreferenced article, and a quick check found loads more, so I didn't just tag them, I came here to explain why I had done so, which I hoped would be seen as a friendly and helpful thing to do. In the same spirit I have offered to withdraw the AfDs if this project starts its own work of checking notability. Anyway, I expect that's all from me for a few days. Good luck! --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 14:21, 26 October 2007 (UTC)
OK, thanks. That's it from me as well. Carcharoth 14:41, 26 October 2007 (UTC)
At the very least we should be merging articles. Uthanc 16:50, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

Update

See here, here and here for the latest. The short story is that a large spate (around 150) of non-notability tags were placed by BrownHairedGirl, followed by mass reversions by IronGargoyle, followed by mass reversions by BrownHairedGirl of the reversions. A similar incident took place back in August (see here for details). We probably need to emphasise what should and shouldn't be done if this happens again in future. I suggest something like the following:

  • (1) Do not edit war over the tags. Discuss here or on other talk pages.
  • (2) If you can provide sources and notability, please do so. References to Christopher Tolkien's works are sufficient, but it is probably best to add at least one other non-Tolkien reference if possible.
  • (3) Mass tagging of articles is almost certainly disruptive. There is only a limited amount of work we can do, and we are already aware of the problems. Possibly we can tag the articles ourselves in a less intrusive way, but what we can't do is ignore the problems and hope they go away. The important thing is to set up a system that ensures that work is done on a regular basis (in other words, we need to be more organised). Once we have a steady flow of work being done, it will be easier to ask mass taggers to stop overwhelming us with work and to let us work slowly but surely through the whole set of articles (in this scheme, the unobtrusive tags, such as Category:WikiProject Middle-earth to be merged should work well).

If you didn't understand any of that, please ask! :-) Carcharoth 00:22, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

Category: