Template:Did you know nominations/Tolkien's sentience dilemma

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The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by Bruxton (talk) 18:30, 16 March 2023 (UTC)

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Tolkien's sentience dilemma

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Improved to Good Article status by Chiswick Chap (talk). Nominated by Onegreatjoke (talk) at 21:48, 24 February 2023 (UTC). Post-promotion hook changes for this nom will be logged at Template talk:Did you know nominations/Tolkien's sentience dilemma; consider watching this nomination, if it is successful, until the hook appears on the Main Page.

General: Article is new enough and long enough

Policy compliance:

Hook eligibility:

  • Cited: No - It's a bit difficult to tell if it meets the placement criterion, since this is basically the entire premise of the article.
  • Interesting: No - See below.
QPQ: Done.

Overall: The article was promoted to WP:Good article status on 19 February, and is well beyond the required minimum length. All sources but one are, as far as I can tell, reliable for the material they are cited for, and spotchecking them reveals no obvious disqualifying issues. Earwig reveals no copyvio and I didn't spot any instances of unacceptably WP:Close paraphrasing. There are no obvious neutrality issues. QPQ has been done. However, I don't think the hook is particularly interesting. I don't think most readers would be enticed to click on the link to find out more, I think they would simply go "I don't understand what that means" and move on. Some comments on the content:

  • I have added a couple of links.
  • The first sentence—Tolkien's sentience dilemma is that he created Middle-earth peoples who were both clearly sentient and open to morality, like Men, who in Tolkien's Christian framework must therefore have souls, or be non-sentient and without any moral sense, like ordinary animals.—is very difficult to parse.
  • including Elves, Dwarves, Hobbits, Orcs, Trolls, Ents, and Eagles, among others – "including [...] among others" is redundant.
  • didn't – MOS:CONTRACTION.
  • I fail to see what Stuart, p. 46 verifies. Was a different page intended?
  • The critic Gregory Hartley treats Wargs as "personified animals", along with the sentient eagles, giant spiders, Smaug the dragon, ravens and thrushes. – Hartley says The animals examined so far—the dragon, the spiders, and the eagles—have all, to one extent or another, been anthropomorphized. By being given human speech, intellect, and will, they have become more than merely animals. and makes a point to distinguish between personification and anthropomorphization.
  • The stuff about the Wargs could be clarified quite a bit. Hartley says that Much may be made of the illusion of sentience created by the Wargs who partner with the goblins. and The Wargs never speak the language of humans; they do not act independently; they do not possess autonomous wills or build civilizations. Instead they behave like animals. [...] The Wargs' behavior, while described using the words of human activity, never transcends the bestial.
  • had entered the Eä – should probably be glossed. I also don't think Eä usually takes the definite article.
  • Orcs are East Elves (Avari) – surely it would make more sense to link to Sundering of the Elves rather than Elves in Middle-earth?
  • I don't think http://greenbooks.theonering.net/ is a WP:Reliable source. It seems to be a fansite. Part of the sentence can be sourced to Tally (p. 19).
  • if they were fallen Elves or Maiar, then they certainly did, and valuing them as "other", to be killed without mercy, was straightforward racism – is this something Tolkien said, or does it come from sources analysing his works? It's not clear from reading the article which, and I think it makes a pretty big difference.
  • I would, for several of the sentences that currently only cite Tolkien directly, cite Tally as well. Page 18 contains a fair amount of discussion about the origins of Orcs, for instance.

Some of these issues do not strictly speaking relate to the WP:DYK criteria. That being said, I cannot in good conscience approve an article for the WP:Main page with an initial sentence this confusing. Ping DYK nominator Onegreatjoke and GA nominator Chiswick Chap. TompaDompa (talk) 21:56, 25 February 2023 (UTC)

Well, you are right that those comments go well beyond DYK review, and that a better hook is needed. I'll tweak the first sentence. Chiswick Chap (talk) 03:34, 26 February 2023 (UTC)
I guess I'd better suggest a hook:
*Alt1: ... that Tolkien was not sure if Orcs were made of slime or corrupted Elves? Sources:J. R. R. Tolkien The Silmarillion: ch. 10 "Of the Sindar"; J. R. R. Tolkien Book of Lost Tales II: "The Fall of Gondolin". Both quoted and cited in the article. Or Tom Shippey's The Road to Middle-earth p. 265 covers it.
TompaDompa: Oh, and by the way I've actioned the comments above, DYK and non-DYK. Chiswick Chap (talk) 15:42, 27 February 2023 (UTC)
ALT1 ready. TompaDompa (talk) 05:50, 2 March 2023 (UTC)
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