Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2015 April 4

= April 4 =

Wikipedia and its comprehensive Middle-earth articles
Every cities have its own article, every character has its own article. The weapons itself have its own article, and even the movie soundtrack have its own article. It also have its own portal. And its the same wiki as the wiki that have an article about quantum physics. The question is: Why?

And the more amusing part is that people probably search for lord of the rings wiki and they will probably click this because its in the first link: http://lotr.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page, only to find out this:

This page uses content from Wikipedia. The original article was at Black Gate (Middle-earth). The list of authors can be seen in the page history. As with The One Wiki to Rule Them All, the text of Wikipedia is available under the Commons Attribution-Share Alike license.

What Wikipedia lacks is that the usual infobox for cities like Gondor, tolkiengateway.net have it, even uncyclopedia have it. Yes, I know I say uncyclopedia, don't ask

118.137.229.147 (talk) 17:53, 4 April 2015 (UTC)


 * Short answer: The Lord of the Rings books will eventually occupy the same role in the English-language as Beowulf, Arthurian legend, and Shakespeare. However, every element in the Lord of the Rings is made up, so all of the background elements end up with articles of their own instead of articles on legendary or historical people and places.
 * Long answer: In the West in the 1800s, there was an artistic movement known as Romanticism, which inspired most nations to develop national arts, including literature, especially epics. In England, however, Romantic writers focused on other lands.  Tolkien wrote after this time, but still wrote under the shadow of Romanticism.  The books also provided an escape from the "dark times" brought on by industrialization and the world wars (though Tolkien wrote Lord of the Rings before the second world war).  The books could be enjoyed both by war-profiteers who saw themselves as warriors in a struggle against evil could enjoy the books, as could nature-lovers who hated losing their countryside to factories.  The mythology Tolkien created for it was (initially) religiously neutral, which allowed a wider variety of people to enjoy it.  The books also included a lot of academic effort.  Tolkien wrote the books to imitate various historical styles, and also to feature artificial languages he created.  These constructed languages were realistically modeled after real languages.
 * Again, because everything in the Rings books was made up, we cannot just link to articles on legendary or historical people and places like we can for the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Iliad, or Le Morte d'Arthur. Ian.thomson (talk) 18:26, 4 April 2015 (UTC)
 * I will note in passing that the mythology that Tolkien created was "religiously neutral" because he made a special effort to keep religion out of it, because he belonged to a religious minority, English Catholics, and didn't want to stir up religious controversy. Tolkien has been criticized by a few authors of fantasy fiction because there is no mention of religions in Lord of the Rings, and religion was an aspect of ancient (and modern) cultures, but Tolkien left religion out on purpose because he belonged to a minority and didn't want to stir up old controversies.  However, if one reads between the lines, he worked in a few odd references.  He mentions that in Numenor before its fall, there was a minority known as The Faithful, led by Elendil, but that the kings were persecuting those who used the High Elvish languages.  What do you think that was?  There was some sort of ritual being said in a foreign language, and the rulers tried to suppress it.  What do you think that is?  That was the Latin Mass.  Tolkien was being very consciously religiously neutral because he knew that there had been too much conflict over religion in The West, both in the historical West and Tolkien's West.  Robert McClenon (talk) 02:50, 6 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Agree with much of that except the chronology; according to our article, LoR was written "...in stages between 1937 and 1949, much of it during World War II" and first published in 1954. Alansplodge (talk) 21:07, 4 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Is it? Will LOTR reaches Shakespeare level? Is there anything to back it up? Because if its true, its really awesome 118.137.229.147 (talk) 03:57, 5 April 2015 (UTC)
 * I am exaggerating with the Shakespeare comparison, but my experience from earning my bachelor's in English is that studying Lord of the Rings is at least allowed. I usually wrote about grimoires when given the chance, however, so I'm only speaking from indirect experience.  Ian.thomson (talk) 04:10, 5 April 2015 (UTC)
 * To answer the OP's specific question, see WP:FAN and Deletion policy/Middle-earth items. Note that this discussion is 10 years old, and a similar one today would probably have a different outcome.  WP:VP/P is probably the best place to raise this issue. Tevildo (talk) 21:37, 4 April 2015 (UTC)


 * There are perpetual arguments within the Wikipedia community between "Deletionists" and "Inclusionists". The former want to strip out a ton of material that they don't deem worthy of an encyclopedia - the latter are happy to have a comprehensive, insanely detailed article about every single Pokemon character, every single Japanese railway station...and even characters in Lord of the Rings that only got a one line mention.


 * I have some sympathy with both sides. Maintaining all of those articles about Japanese Railway stations over the coming decades will be painful.  The subject of the article changes - and there is a good case to be made for "It's better to have no article at all than one that is so outdated that it's incorrect"...but these Lord of the Ring articles are somewhat different from that.  J.R.R.Tolkein is dead - no more books in that canon will be written - so the articles about all of those things don't need to change.  Once they are established as being sufficiently well written - why not keep them?  Disk space is cheap.


 * This is a horrible debate - neither side is 100% right or 100% wrong. SteveBaker (talk) 04:35, 5 April 2015 (UTC)