Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Gil-galad


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was redirect to Noldor. Or elsewhere as subsequent discussion may determine.  Sandstein  07:27, 19 January 2020 (UTC)

Gil-galad

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In universe Gil-galad is of course very impoortant, the last High King of the Elves and the leader of the Last Alliance of Elves and Men. The problem is that Tolkien did not write books about that Last Allicance, but about events 3000 years later. The article comes close to quoting all the LotR texts that mention Gil-galad. This is not enough to show notability, and the extensive third party sources are not there. The upcomming LotR TV show may come to show Gil-galad enough to make him notable, but until that day he is not notable. John Pack Lambert (talk) 23:00, 11 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Redirect to Elrond. The article is sourced to primary sources and an 'essay' that contains nothing but in-universe information and a brief section on how Christopher Tolkien was in a rush when compiling the Silmarillion. Consequently, it fails WP:GNG Devonian Wombat (talk) 00:32, 12 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Fictional elements-related deletion discussions. Coolabahapple (talk) 04:31, 12 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Science fiction and fantasy-related deletion discussions. Coolabahapple (talk) 04:31, 12 January 2020 (UTC)


 * Delete per nom. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:241:301:4360:4C0E:C3EB:4371:B0AF (talk) 04:44, 12 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Redirect to Noldor. I can find some Google scholar hits for Gil-galad, but nothing substantial enough to build an article out of.  Noldor describes the basics about Gil-galad: High King of the Elves, who died fighting Sauron at the end of the Second Age. Hog Farm (talk) 04:52, 12 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Redirect to Noldor per Hog Farm. Goustien (talk) 06:13, 12 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Redirect to Noldor I cannot find anything other than a handful of plot summaries. &#8213; Susmuffin Talk 11:19, 12 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Redirect, Per above, redirect to Noldor. Alex-h (talk) 08:56, 13 January 2020 (UTC)


 * Merge and Redirect Well I guess you guys are right about the redirect, at least given the current state of the article (though that is not the measure of notability) and Noldor is a fair target. Tom Shippey does in fact devote several pages (pp. 101-106) of The Road to Middle-Earth to the question of why Tolkien should have bothered to create Gil-Galad, answering that he lends depth, hints at elvish language, and creates a pleasurable effect through sound that Tolkien had a lot of theory about (like the sound of "cellar door" (p. 104), if you've seen the Tolkien biopic). In short, Gil-Galad is not unimportant as a key to Tolkien's thought. The article would have been better if something of this had been discussed and reliably cited. I am not sure that Noldor is a good place for that discussion, which might belong in J. R. R. Tolkien's influences, if a man's personal pleasures can be so called. I also suspect that better scholars than me would readily find other reliable sources on Gil-Galad (after all, nobody else noticed Shippey...) I think we are deleting in great haste, and that we may well have cause to repent of much of it in due time. Chiswick Chap (talk) 09:52, 15 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Great haste my left eye. Many of these articles have been tagged as being too in universe for 9 years or more. Wikipedia is being weiged down and made less by its excessive Tolkiencruft. By creating a seperate article each time we find a reference in a reliable source, we end up with a huge number of articles with very few reliable sources and nothing that is well sourced. Some have pointed out that even the article on Gondor lacks much in the way of reliable sourcing.John Pack Lambert (talk) 15:29, 15 January 2020 (UTC)
 * By haste I mean the rate at which articles (and redirects) are being submitted, a point that has made in the Wikipedia talk:Notability (fiction) discussion. On the sourcing, I completely agree that the way these articles have been written is completely topsy-turvy - it's all in-universe, all plot, all sourced to JRRT, with nary a thought to what would make the articles notable, which is their subjects' often substantial coverage by critics. On emotive phrases like "weighed down" and "Tolkiencruft", I would urge politeness, caution, and restraint. Wikipedia has nearly six million articles, only a very small percentage (much less than 0.05%, I suspect) of them about JRRT's output: the corpse is not weighted down particularly heavily. Tolkien himself loved genealogy, linguistics and constructed languages, maps, mythology and other "fan-crufty" pleasures, and it would be a brave editor indeed who'd suggest any of these were not now major subjects for research and encyclopedic coverage. All the best, Chiswick Chap (talk) 15:42, 15 January 2020 (UTC)
 * 600 Tolkien articles (which would be too many) is 0.01%. I would estimate something more like 200 articles is a more reasonable figure. It all depends on the sourcing of the content and how it is arranged by topics. Carcharoth (talk) 16:51, 15 January 2020 (UTC)
 * I think the actual direction of these discussions show that I am right, and most people see that we need far fewer articles on Tolkien. One editor complaining about "speed" does not mean we have too much speed. These topics have been given a lot of thought and consideration. For several months. The speed at which these articles were created is the problem, not the speed with which they are being removed.John Pack Lambert (talk) 18:59, 15 January 2020 (UTC)
 * I do not suppose anything we might say would convince you, but it's two editors actually. On being "right", I have several times agreed that we need far fewer articles, and I've indicated with concrete examples here and elsewhere what those better articles would be. Chiswick Chap (talk) 19:05, 15 January 2020 (UTC)


 * So, am I correct in assuming that this page is being nominated for deletion because it doesn't met the notability guidelines? Is this the only reason? ARoyalPrincess (talk) 01:04, 17 January 2020 (UTC)ARoyalPrincess


 * Comment. I'm having some trouble seeing how the above discussion between relates to this particular deletion. Their debate seems too meta for this venue. I know there is a lot of disagreement over Tolkien content more generally, but I don't see how these points are actionable in this AfD. BenKuykendall (talk) 20:14, 18 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete per nom.--Jack Upland (talk) 23:46, 18 January 2020 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.