Wikipedia:WikiProject Middle-earth/things to do

This is the compilation of all tasks for participants to do for the past, present and future.

For an example on the direction of this page, please see WikiProject Star Wars/things to do and WikiProject Final Fantasy/things to do!

Thing(s) to remember:
 * If a task is completed, do NOT delete it, but strike it. This page will be archived if full.

Archives
I'm going to setup auto archiving on middle-earth talk pages for anything older than 90 days. I'm going to use Aragorn's talk page as a test bed to make sure everything works ok, if it goes well I will move on to the other talk pages, unless anyone has any objection? Carl Sixsmith (talk) 07:44, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

Babel
In the past I have tried to set up Babel userboxes for Sindarin, but only succeeded in making a big mess of it. Is anyone willing/able to take on this task? ▫ Urbane Legend talk 09:25, 17 July 2006 (UTC)


 * It would require the creation of Template:User sjn (as per ISO 639-3) and Template:User sjn-1 to Template:User sjn-5, possibly also Template:User sjn-0; with 'This user speaks Sindarin at a foo level' in Sindarin, with 'foo' for all the separate levels. Since I qualify as below a functional sjn-1 I can't do this. -- Jordi&middot; ✆ 13:41, 17 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Is it possible for anyone to speak Sindarin at level 5? With the partial incompleteness of Sindarin (as all Tolkien's languages are incomplete) I would think it impossible to speak or even write/read at level 5. Of course, I may be wrong as I am not that knowledgeable in Tolkien's languages (yet). If I am wrong please correct me. --Merond e 10:34, 19 July 2006 (UTC)


 * I agree. While there has been alot of research on Sindarin and resulting theories about its structure I'd say that the current upper limit is about 3. Nobody knows Sindarin at a 'near native' level of 4 - even with speculative expansions incorporated. We might get there eventually as more unpublished language samples are released, but probably not. I'm somewhere around a 'low 2'. If no one else wants to take a go I'll piece something together and run it past a few linguists I know. --CBD 11:22, 19 July 2006 (UTC)


 * What about "This man speaks Edhellen": Dîr pêd i lam edhellen? I hope I got everything correct... quite sure about the '(he) speaks elvish language' bit but I am not sure if dîr ("man" of any race, closest we have to "person") takes a suffix here. Edhellen is of course the "native" name for Sindarin. -- Jordi&middot; ✆ 11:44, 14 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Template:User sjn-1 and Template:User que-1 now exist. -- Jordi· ✆ 09:13, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
 * I'm in the middle of fixing an issue with them that rendered sjn-0 incompatible with the Babel box. I fixed that but inadvertently wrecked the category.  I'm trying to fix that now.  -moritheil Talk 07:37, 4 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Figured it out. Normal service has been resumed. I recreated the sjn-0 userpage as it's been days since I asked the deleting admin if it should stay deleted, and there has been no reply.  The page was already accumulating entries anyhow. -moritheil Talk 07:51, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Misc.

 * Eldarin numerals

Texts by Tolkien

 * The Rivers and Beacon-Hills of Gondor needs more references. De728631 (talk) 22:29, 21 March 2010 (UTC) (it's a redirect)

Books

 * Pictures by J. R. R. Tolkien
 * J. R. R. Tolkien: A Descriptive Bibliography
 * Tolkien's View: Windows into his world by J.S. Ryan

Award winners: Over on my talk page, Carcharoth and I have been discussing criteria for which Tolkien reference works should have their own articles. We suggest that any JRRT nonfiction book that won the Mythopoeic Scholarship Award for Inklings Studies or a Hugo, etc., is probably a candidate for an article. Let's use the Template:Infobox Book for these as they grow out of stub class.

Here's the list of Mythopoeic award winners Carcharoth posted there for which we do not have articles:
 * Master of Middle-earth by Paul H. Kocher Just a redirect to the Kocher page at the moment. De728631 (talk) 22:23, 21 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Tolkien Criticism by Richard C. West
 * J. R. R. Tolkien: Myth, Morality and Religion by Richard Purtill
 * The Annotated Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien, edited by Douglas A. Anderson Sos530 (talk) 23:27, 16 November 2012 (UTC) with an Alternate IP adress
 * J. R. R. Tolkien, A Descriptive Bibliography by Wayne G. Hammond with the assistance of Douglas A. Anderson --Nerd1a4i (talk) 16:58, 6 May 2018 (UTC)
 * A Question of Time: J. R. R. Tolkien's Road to Faërie by Verlyn Flieger
 * Tolkien and the Great War: The Threshold of Middle-earth by John Garth
 * War and the Works of J.R.R. Tolkien by Janet Brennan Croft (she is also the current editor of Mythlore, should be linked if/when someone writes a bio)

-- PKM 22:47, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Less significant books? The article on Buffy studies has an interesting approach to listing books under a topic - would this work (without links) as a format for listing works that do not merit a full article? - PKM 19:44, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Journals

 * Mallorn (journal)

Artists

 * Kay Miner

Scholars

 * Julian C. Bradfield
 * Helge Fauskanger
 * Lisa Star

Publishers

 * Milton Waldman

Citing (Sources)

 * Beleriand needs sources for early conceptional names prior to Silmarillion. De728631 (talk) 22:43, 21 March 2010 (UTC)
 * The Rivers and Beacon-Hills of Gondor
 * The Notion Club Papers -- has no references at all. Wouldn't be bad if it was broken into a couple of sections either. -- The Fiddly Leprechaun ·  Catch Me!  01:13, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

Extensive work
Articles that have following&mdash;fancruft, copyvios, copyedits, point of view, etc.&mdash;go under this section.


 * Ceorl (Middle-earth)- Almost completly copied from the Thain's book. Ted87 02:30, 23 April 2006 (UTC)
 * I am wondering whether he is worth a seperate article Bryan 14:37, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I do not think he is worth a separate article. I think he should redirect to another page. Does he have any significance whatsoever? Nuidramdad (talk) 23:57, 3 November 2008 (UTC)
 * I can't even remember hearing about him before now - I'd delete the article (there is an old deletion request further down the page BTW), or merge it into a list of minor people. It's almost certainly not notable; some of the supporters of the WT:Notability (fiction) proposal would pass out if they saw it I'm sure:) NOTE: I moved the page to Ceorl (Middle-earth), as there are several other terms that people are more likely to be looking for at that title. Ceorl now redirects to Ceorl (disambiguation). – The Fiddly Leprechaun ·  Catch Me!  03:40, 18 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Gondolin is a mixture of information from the Silmarillion and the Book of Lost Tales 2. The descriptions from both books must be clearly marked out and separated, and comments should be included about the development and changes in ideas, wherever possible. De728631 (talk) 23:01, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

Enhancing
Articles that are generally good, but need few touches here and there to raise to Featured Article or Good Article status.

i'll get to work on these as soon as i can.man im glad i found wikiproject middle-earth!mrs.sauron 05:35, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Maedhros - To G.A. status. — Mir  l   e   n   00:36, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

General work
Anything that doesn't go under above and below.
 * The Lord of the Rings - Wikipedia is not a link farm. All unnecessary links (a.k.a fansites) should be removed.  The only time a fansite should be listed if the article has used information on that fansite for the article. -- Mir   l   e   n   03:39, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Putting the Infobox character on character articles that don't have them. — Mir  l   e   n   14:56, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Placing ME-project on the talk pages of every Tolkien-related article. — Mir  l   e   n   16:47, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Dates - I noticed a lot of articles that lack any date, such as The Quest of Erebor. Bryan 14:42, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
 * The article on Gondolin is a mixture of information from the Silmarillion and the Book of Lost Tales 2. The descriptions from both books must be clearly marked out and separated, and comments should be included about the development and changes in ideas, wherever possible.--Barnikel 18:39, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I agree entirely. Has this been added to the list of things to do? Carcharoth 12:40, 12 May 2006 (UTC)


 * I just created Destruction of Isengard. Could someone check it out and see if it can be improved? Also, the Isengard link in the War of the Ring Campaign box goes to Isengard the fortress. Can somebody make it redirect to the new article? Thanks! --Barnikel 06:17, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Done. --CBDunkerson 09:37, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Honestly, I think this article is a little pointless. There just isn't enough info/relevence for it to warrent its own article. I think it should be merged with Isengard. --Ted87 18:34, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I think it's an improvement, the current Isengard article breaks the sequence of War of the Ring battles and try to fix that with the other infoboxes, maps etc will look messy. Thu 08:09, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
 * The article is currently listed for merging to List of Middle-earth wars and battles and could need some general cleanup. De728631 (talk) 23:00, 21 March 2010 (UTC)


 * Please expand this text and maybe integrate it correctly into the portal: Middle-Earth DEM Project --Fixuture (talk) 16:28, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

Deletion

 * Marshal (Middle-earth) - Has no content, and I believe it is not worth a separate article. Better make an article Military of Rohan or something like that. Bryan 08:17, 4 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Gorcrows: is based entirely on David Day. The subject does not even deserve an article of its own, since Tolkien only wrote two lines on gorcrows. Besides, I have mentioned all there is worth mentioning about them in the improved article on Mewlips.--Barnikel 15:26, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I moved Mewlips to The Mewlips and then changed Gorcrows into a redirect to that. Thus anyone searching on either name gets redirected to an article on the poem. That work for everyone? --CBDunkerson 22:15, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Sounds great. Carcharoth 00:25, 15 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Ceorl - I don't believe he needs a separate article. He's barely notable. By the time I was finished with the books, I'd forgotten he'd existed. --queso man 23:09, 27 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Remember to confirm this. There was no discussion regarding this, so naturally, like for all articles here, it's necessary to confirm that this character is non-notable. --queso man 23:11, 27 May 2007 (UTC)
 * I'd support deletion or a merger - see my comment above in the Extensive Work section. NOTE: I moved the page to Ceorl (Middle-earth); Ceorl now redirects to Ceorl (disambiguation). – The Fiddly Leprechaun ·  Catch Me!  03:43, 18 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Just checking in to see what the status is here. Shall we go ahead and delete Ceorl? I would merge it into an existing list, but since List of Middle-earth Men is now defunct, there's nowhere to really put it. Mdwicker (talk) 21:43, 8 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Went ahead and nominated for deletion. Mdwicker (talk) 23:38, 13 March 2018 (UTC)

Conforming to Standards

 * Just thought I'd put out something I've noticed in browsing a few Tolkien articles, namely the use of personal pronouns in several of them. I suspect some of that may be copyright violations,  but some may just be people writing in the style Tolkien occassionally use.  Could be worth keeping an eye out for.  I hope this is an appropriate place to put it up.   FrozenPurpleCube 05:44, 21 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Legolas - Rewrite of introduction of less POV preferred, using dates instead of chapter titles in Biography, switching to past tense, etc. &mdash; Mir  l   e   n   11:48, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Yes... This is a totally movie based introduction... Bryan 13:40, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
 * On a side note there is also some unnecceasry info in the adaption section. If no one gets around to editing this article soon, I'd be willing to. Ted87 19:30, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Intro done - Bryan 13:37, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Good, but it does contain spoilers...that stuff goes in the Biography. For regular articles, you write an overview of the article, but for fictional articles, the introduction should be free of spoilers. — Mir   l   e   n   21:36, 27 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Lúthien and Beren - Sections need merging. — Mir  l   e   n   02:16, 24 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Weapons of Middle-earth - Needs to be standardised following list standards. — Mir  l   e   n   21:36, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I've begun work on this. See discussion below and at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Middle-earth. --Alataristarion 23:41, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Creation
What do you think? &mdash;Mirlen 13:43, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
 * I think we should create a lot more lists, like:
 * List of minor men
 * List of minor rangers
 * List of minor elves
 * List of minor dwarves
 * List of minor hobbits
 * Pages already exist for some of this information. See List of Hobbits, List of Middle-earth Men, and Dwarves (Middle-earth). These could use a great deal of additional work. Standardization of the list article names and styles would probably also be a good thing. --CBDunkerson 22:48, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Oh sorry, didn't know. Thanks. Okay...I'm going to put in a different format, and I'll see if you guys like it. &mdash;Mirlen 16:49, 4 March 2006 (UTC)
 * I could provide some charts for the lists. Ready to publish atm is only "Ainur Relations" but more of these are in progress User:Abalone76 6 Septembre 2007

Comments? &mdash; Mir  l   e   n   19:23, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
 * List of Middle-earth Elves (e.g. Nandor, etc.) splitting into:
 * List of High Elves
 * List of Grey Elves
 * List of Peredhel


 * List of Middle-earth weapons - Create that and delete the meweapons template. — Mir  l   e   n   19:51, 23 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Adding note in case anyone missed the discussion below: list already exists at Weapons of Middle-earth. Carcharoth 14:10, 5 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I commented below as well as on the main page regarding this topic. --Alataristarion
 * This list has been created and is being improved; see below. --Alataristarion 20:59, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

Misc.
Anything that doesn't go under above.
 * Clean up
 * All
 * List of Hobbits
 * List of hobbit families
 * Weapons of Middle-earth and all those individual articles with the same info

Minor places in Middle-earth is a random collection of entries, how about refactoring into separate lists e.g.


 * Minor places in Beleriand
 * Minor places in Middle-earth i.e. lands of the Third Age
 * Minor places in Valinor etc

Thu 12:29, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Stubs
Hi, I expanded Years of the Trees before I stumbled across the WikiProject. I apologize if I was supposed to weigh in here before I did it, please do take a look at the diff. Wanted to know if I could similarly expand the other Ages articles too, or is it too much detail? Now that I'm here, will look around to focus on the Things to Do. Sdsouza 15:41, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Howdy. No problems. Just dive in. I made a few changes on Years of the Trees. Not sure what level of detail we should have. There is also the History of Arda page and the Timeline of Arda. Ideally, we might want the 'History' page to give a brief overview of each period with links to the individual sub-pages for more detailed recountings of events (like you did) and the 'Timeline' separate for all the specific dates. --CBD 23:14, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

Categories

 * I've started work on the categories by adding some thoughts to Category_talk:J._R._R._Tolkien. Should the discussions take place there or here? Carcharoth 14:07, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
 * What are you thinking of doing beyond adding the top-level 'Tolkien' category you mentioned previously? From what you'd said I had the impression that was intended as an 'ease of use' category which would have the current Category:J. R. R. Tolkien as a sub-category. You wrote something about a category tree on the talk page linked above. I think that could be useful, but I suspect the branches will change quite a bit going forward. --CBDunkerson 14:37, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
 * I've now added more comments to the talk page referenced above. As for the category tree, I've got stuck with getting the category tree into a suitable form to put on the talk page, I might stick it in my user space instead.
 * As for what I am thinking of doing, I am mainly considering putting categories in more categories, to create more branches on the tree. Most of the articles seem to be fairly well categorised already. I'll take a closer look, try a few category additions, and then come back here for feedback. I'll try to avoid creating lots of new categories or adding category tags to articles until it becomes clear what is needed. Carcharoth 15:05, 2 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Some of the non-Middle-earth Tolkien category structure worked on at User:Carcharoth/Tolkien categories. Comments and additions would be welcomed. The next stage is to decide on names for new categories. Carcharoth 07:18, 10 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Category:Realms of Aman - requested by someone, now created. Carcharoth 10:11, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Also, for further organisation, Category:Aman towns and cities or just Category:Aman cities, or Category:Cities of Aman. Also, Category:Aman landforms, or Category:Landforms of Aman (e.g. Tirion, Alqualondë, Avallónë, Formenos, Valmar, etc.).  I mean, I know every part of Aman is a landform, but a non-city/realm landform (e.g. Taniquetil, Bay of Eldamar, Helcaraxë, Ezellohar, Pelóri, Calacirya, Lorellin, Ungoliant's Lair, etc.). — Mir   l   e   n   21:38, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Though sometimes a list, or summary article, is better than a category, especially if the list is small and won't ever need to be updated, or the items in the category won't have their own articles.   (You then have to include the list in the category, or link to it from the blurb at the top).
 * A category is best used for open-ended lists, or very long lists. Also, getting the naming conventions right ('Cities of Aman' (my preference) vs 'Aman cities') saves a lost of hassle with getting them renamed (you have to ask someone else to do it). Also, rather than the "landform" terminology, which doesn't quite work, just something simple like "Named places in Aman" is usually good enough, which then has subsets as needed. Carcharoth 07:46, 5 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Some administrative tidying started using Category:WikiProject Middle-earth. Please expand and improve as needed. Carcharoth 10:12, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I created Category:Characters in The Children of Húrin and Category:The Children of Húrin. Please expand and add.- Ran  da  l  l  l  in  23:49, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Templates

 * Deletion of the the family tree templates: Elendil, Fëanor, Finarfin, Fingolfin, Half-elven, Húrin, Telcontar, Isildur, Valar, Tookclan, Tolkien - I was thinking, instead of having all the family tree templates on the character's article, we could just have a 'See also' section to link the main family page to it. It would save space, and I sort of see it being unncessary to have the family tree on a character's page when it could be posted on their main family/house article. — Mir  l   e   n   21:52, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
 * I just want to clarify this suggestion and see if any one else has thoughts on it. I assume you mean get rid of the trees as templates that are shared across the various character pages and instead post them only once on family pages (e.g. House of Elendil, thereby eliminating the need to store/save them as templates. If this is the desire/consensus, I'd definitely be willing to do it.  --Alataristarion 21:44, 19 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Update The template for Tolkien is really difficult to read, really tight; i would do something with it but i don't know how.FlowerSniffer 10:21, 28 October 2006 (UTC)
 * I updated the Tolkien template including more information and making it much more readable Alataristarion 21:44, 19 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Deletion meweapons template and create a List of Middle-earth weapons instead. — Mir  l   e   n   19:52, 23 April 2006 (UTC)
 * There is already a Weapons of Middle-earth article, which seems to follow the template quite closely. Carcharoth 10:14, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Ah, then it needs to be standardised. — Mir  l   e   n   21:35, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I've started the process of standardization and improvement for the Weapons of Middle-earth article. --Alataristarion 23:25, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
 * I have standardized and added references to the first and largest section of the list. In addition, I have created the List of Middle-earth weapons page and redirected the Weapons of Middle-earth page to this new location.  This very clearly seems to be a list, not a standard article, and this seems the logical naming convention to follow. Alataristarion 20:41, 26 December 2006 (UTC)
 * What would need to be done in order to remove this template and replace it with the (newly standardized) list? Is that the consensus?  --Alataristarion 22:09, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Images
Gallery currently resides at WikiProject Middle-earth/Images.