Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Middle-earth/archive3

Role call: Late May – June
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 * 1) I'm here, just on wikibreak. (See my userpage for further details). — Mir   l   e   n   01:41, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
 * 2) I'm here as well. Still rummaging around the category system when I get time, and really wanting to start adding more stuff to articles soon! Carcharoth 11:28, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
 * 3) Right here. Doing random stuff.--Barnikel 08:36, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
 * 4) I'm here too. Just doing some random things, and I am probably at a little lower activity level, since I am having my exams this week. Bryan 08:40, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
 * 5) Howdy. Busy at work, but doing some article cleanup and referencing. --CBDunkerson 10:14, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
 * 6) Same story as Bryan. --Ted87 17:47, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
 * 7) Just nominated The Lord of the Rings for F.A., finally. I guess I will attempt go get another up to F.A. assuming lotr passes, not sure which yet. Sorry Guy 23:07, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
 * 8) Here, somewhat. Haven't had as much time lately.  -ASchmoo 00:20, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
 * 9) Here. Editing whenever I feel like it, and merging or expanding where needed. -- -- Jordi&middot; ✆ 14:43, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
 * 10) Here. Doing random stuff.--Barnikel 12:35, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
 * 11) Just signed up. --Ifrit 08:16, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Expanded 1956 radio adaptation article
I've done a big expansion of The Lord of the Rings (1956 radio series). Comments on the talk page would be great. I'm unsure about where to draw the line with quotes from Letters (I've quoted nearly every Letter where Tolkien mentions this radio series), and I think the formatting and references need to be tidied up quite a bit. Possibly the external link reference can be removed, depending on whether everything in that source can be tracked back to Letters.

I was very gratified to discover that Wikipedia already has articles on Terence Tiller and Norman Shelley! Sadly, when I tried to link to The Critics, I found something else (rather less savoury) squatting in that article! I'm going to try and update all the other articles I've linked, so hopefully the information in this article will be consistent with other articles.

I also discovered that the year is wrong in the title! I'm going to be moving the page to the correct name soon, just as soon as I get advice on whether The Lord of the Rings (1955-6 radio series) or The Lord of the Rings (1955-1956 radio series) is better. Carcharoth 21:15, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

Took out the Trash
I have edited the article on The Mewlips to remove misinformation from Day's Tolkien Bestiary. And the source is now The Adventures of Tom Bombadil. Barnikel
 * Wonderful. Thanks. One thing, I'm not sure this is the best place to annouce that. I don't check this page very often, and only came across this after you left a message on my user page. Carcharoth 12:39, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

(this section was moved into its appropriate section by — Mir  l   e   n   21:11, 12 May 2006 (UTC))

More trash to take out
Can someone tidy these articles? They need to have references to the relevant books by Christopher Tolkien or J. R. R. Tolkien, rather than David Day's Bestiary.


 * Brambles of Mordor
 * Are like any other brambles. Deserve neitheer an article nor mention anywhere else.--Barnikel 14:38, 19 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Have a look at the merge tags I've put on the articles Brambles of Mordor and Mordor. This is good thing to do if you spot something like this and don't have time to do the merge at the moment. Carcharoth 12:16, 21 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Culumalda - where does Christopher Tolkien mention this?? Carcharoth 12:21, 21 May 2006 (UTC)
 * See the Silmarillion appendix entry for 'mal-'. --CBDunkerson 22:05, 21 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Gallows-weed -
 * Only mentioned by name. It has nothing more. No descriptin, attributes, nothing. So I have edited the Mewlips article to make mention of this. Is a seperate article necessary?--Barnikel 14:32, 19 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Again, merge with The Mewlips. See tags I've added. Carcharoth 12:16, 21 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Mallos- Cleaned up. Out, David Day, Out!--Barnikel 14:27, 19 May 2006 (UTC)
 * LOL! Calm down! His books aren't that bad... Carcharoth 12:16, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Carcharoth 12:09, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

But please, please remember to categorise the redirects, so we don't lose track of them! Carcharoth 12:38, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Middle-earth gallery expanded
I've been rumaging around articles and Commons and uncovering lots of Tolkien-related images on Wikipedia, ranging from screenshots of the movies, to Tengwar writing, to book covers, to photos of Tolkien himself. I've added most of the ones I could find to WikiProject_Middle-earth/Images. I've also noted there which areas I haven't browsed yet to find more images to enter into the gallery. These are the large areas that will take longer to browse. Does this updated gallery look useful? What are the standards for pictures here? What should we do with all these pictures, especially the numerous screenshots from the films? Carcharoth 13:37, 15 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Cool. This is defiantly useful although I think it's suppose to be in wikipedia commons. I think we should make as much catogeries as relevently possible and group them (images can go into multiple catagories). We should even try getting one nominated for featured picture. --Ted87 18:13, 15 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I wasn't sure whether to expand the Commons selection of pictures, or go with this one. I'm still not quite clear on what the difference is anyway. I think images on both Wikipedia and Commons are linked to in the same way, but the actual location may be different. Also, Commons has a different licence to the GFDL one on Wikipedia - not sure how different though. As for featured picture, I would suggest one of the pictures of Tolkien (if they are public domain) or one of the scans of the front cover of the first edition of 'The Hobbit' - could be accompanied by something about how valuable those first editions are. Carcharoth 18:57, 15 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Actually, 'Commons' is a place for public domain images which can then be used on all the MediaWiki sub-projects. Thus, alot of these pictures (all the movie stills, photos of Tolkien, book & DVD covers, et cetera) can't be uploaded to Commons because they are 'fair use' rather than 'public domain'. Whenever you create an 'image:' link the system checks if that image name exists on the current project and, if not, whether it exists on Commons. Thus, any image which is freely available for use by all should go on Commons by default so that it can be used by all the wikiprojects. The gallery is useful for seeing what images are available to add into articles and for other uses. Ideally, we would want to have as many freely available / 'public domain' images as possible... because there are then no potential copyright issues, they may be nominated as featured pictures, et cetera. Unfortunately, it isn't always easy to come up with such. --CBDunkerson 21:10, 15 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Thanks. That makes things a bit clearer. I'll continue expanding the gallery here then (including both Wikipedia and Commons images), and not worry about organising the content on Commons (that can come later). What though, is the best way to organise the Wikipedia images? By galleries (which can be labelled and annotated) or by categories (which can't) or both? I guess any organisational structure should also clearly indicate which images are from Commons, and thus more widely available.


 * As for featured pics, does a scan of a book cover count as public domain if it is very old book, say published in 1937? :-) Carcharoth 04:57, 16 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Copyright duration is a ridiculously complex issue, but generally extends 50 to 70 years from death of the original creator. Thus, any text/image created by JRR Tolkien will probably be under copyright another twenty to forty years. If Christopher can claim partial contributor status based on his work on the maps and proofreading or some other grounds then it might well extend 70 years after his death (as The Silmarillion and similar texts definitely will). In the case of The Hobbit cover art it would depend on who created the image or possibly fall under the 'corporate content' rules (if they hired someone to create the image, but they owned the rights to it) which I believe is 95 years from creation... which would still be another 20+ years. So, overall... none of the stuff we might want to use is likely to fall outside its copyright duration any time soon. --CBDunkerson 12:20, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

OK. The gallery is finished! Well, unless people upload any more pictures. But at least WikiProject_Middle-earth/Images is a snapshot of what images were present in Tolkien and Middle-earth related articles in May 2006. There is some duplication (I managed to create two sections for the film cast, which should be merged back into one section), and more organisation is needed. I'm going to leave it for a bit, as I've had enough of pictures for now! I'm also not quite sure how to organise it, and what the gallery is best used for... I had some vague ideas of using the gallery to come up with standards for the use of images (especially film screenshots - the images should link back to the articles they are in). Maybe we should identify articles that need a better picture, or ones that don't have a picture at all? Carcharoth 22:05, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Interesting discussion on Noldor spelling
Discovered an interesting (well, to some) discussion on the spelling of Noldor. See Talk:Ñoldor. Carcharoth 06:30, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Alternative family tree template?
I think I've found another way to do family trees. It looks quite nice. Not sure if it is mentioned in the discussion on family tree templates that is somewhere round here, but I really, really like the format used at Ñoldor. Carcharoth 06:32, 16 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Found the family tree format discussion here and added a comment. Have we decided on what format to use, or is the discussion still going? Carcharoth 06:39, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Copyright issues for poems and similar stuff
Found another very interesting article at Oath of Fëanor. Someone has put up some of the early versions of the oath, which are fascinating. I am slightly worried though about copyright issues. What is the standard concerning quoting whole poems or large chunks of text? Where should the line be drawn? Does the amount of commentary and contextualising affect how much can be quoted? The same issues apply for Malbeth the Seer, All that is Gold Does Not Glitter, The Road Goes Ever On (song), and the Ring Verse at The One Ring (here, for example, I would like to mention and maybe quote some of the early versions of the Ring Verse). A different approach is taken at Namárië, Errantry, and The Man in the Moon Stayed Up Too Late, where only the opening lines or extracts are given (not surprising for Errantry, which is a long poem). Nothing at all is quoted at articles like Bilbo's Last Song, Fastitocalon or The Mewlips. Carcharoth 06:51, 16 May 2006 (UTC)
 * As an example of "context", I've expanded and tidied up The Road Goes Ever On (song). As a history of the song, I find the article quite powerful. Do the very brief comments justify the full quotes though? Carcharoth 07:38, 16 May 2006 (UTC)
 * More changes. The original article was quoting the wrong songs!! I've now corrected this and added some more stuff about other walking songs. I even found a literary reference to a real fairy-story! Carcharoth 10:45, 16 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Yikes! I put the first three versions up. Well, at least they're only excerpts of larger poems, as opposed to whole poems. I don't have a copy of Morgoth's Ring so I'm not sure about the last version. Do they belong in Wikiquote? Anyway, a footnote in the Maedhros article attributes the last version to The Lays of Beleriand, which I have, and I assure you it's not in there. Uthanc 08:19, 1 June 2006 (UTC) (not a member.)
 * Wikisource (is there something else called Wikiquote?) is for public domain quotes only, I believe. The Maedhros footnote should be corrected. Excerpts are OK, as long as there is commentary and analysis (which might fall foul of WP:NOR), but in general excerpts should be kept as small as possible. Carcharoth 09:48, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Oops. I got very confused between the two projects. I'm still confused, as I couldn't find out whether Wikisource is for anything (with permission) or only old public domain texts. Wikiquote doesn't seem suitable for long extracts from poems. It seems to be more for quotes of what people or fictional characters have said. Carcharoth 09:52, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Wikisource is basically anything 'public domain'... which includes old books (paralleling project Gutenberg), many government documents, items specifically released by their creators, et cetera. Thus Tolkien poems would not be allowed there. Use of quotations of poems and letters gets tricky because they can sometimes be considered to have 'individual copyright'... quoting a three line poem out of a thousand page book seems like a reasonable application of 'fair use' if the poem is relevant to what you are commenting on, but if the poem were published separately (and some of them were) then you'd be quoting a copyrighted work in full, which is definitely a violation of fair use. So, some Tolkien poems we can probably quote under fair use and others we cannot (Bilbo's Last Song is one I know we definitely cannot). The Jabberwocky article is a good example of quoting a poem for purposes of analysis, but that one is public domain. --CBDunkerson 11:03, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Wow. Thanks for the link to Jabberwocky - that was an interesting read. Getting back to Tolkien, what do you think of the articles I mentioned above? Would they be fair use, or are they quoting too much without any justification? Thanks for the point about Bilbo's Last Song - should we remove the article's external link to a copy of the poem? Carcharoth 11:24, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Yeah, that's a great article. On the different pages; I think Malbeth the Seer & All that is Gold Does Not Glitter would probably be ok if they actually analyzed the meaning and significance of the quoted verses rather than simply listing them. I'm not sure about The Road Goes Ever On (song) - some versions have been separately published, but it has also been so extensively used that I'm not sure copyright could be exerted at this point. The other's all seem ok as they are. The external link on Bilbo's Last Song goes to a copyvio, but I don't think there is any requirement to not link to copyvio sites. --CBDunkerson 21:23, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Another point, I don't like the way some people wikilink from quotes, as at The_One_Ring. IMO, the relevant bits should be mentioned and linked from the accompanying commentary, leaving the quote clean and easy to read. In fact, this is almost certainly a guideline somewhere. Carcharoth 11:30, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

New linguistics articles
Two new linguistics articles have been added recently:
 * Neo-Eldarin
 * Neo-Eldarin literature

Also, I discovered that David Salo is linked from List of swimming coaches. I suspect this is wrong, and was done automatically, but thought I had better check whether anyone knows whether David Salo is indeed a swimming coach, as well as a Tolkien linguist. :-) Carcharoth 02:04, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

And some more linguistics stuff. Redirects have been created for all the Tengwar characters! See Talk:%EE%80%89 and here for a sample. I'm not sure whether to be impressed or not. Carcharoth 02:23, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Another article referencing Day's Bestiary
Can someone please check the Simbelmynë article for David Dayisms. Thanks. Carcharoth 10:18, 22 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Now done. Thanks! Carcharoth 15:19, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Only one more, I think: Alfirin. Probably some David Day speculation in there. I think this is the lot, mainly because I found this here. Carcharoth 15:33, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I made 'alfirin' a redirect to Simbelmynë and added more details there. --CBDunkerson 02:05, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Thanks. Was the content at alfirin nearly all David Dayisms then? ("The alfrin plant is very special to the elves, as it both symbolises the gold bells of Valinor, which the blessed constantly hear in the Undying Lands, and the call of the Eldar to voyage home, across the Belegaer, into the west."). Shocking... Carcharoth 13:26, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Yeah, Day does a good job digging out obscure references, but he then embellishes considerably. --CBDunkerson 22:20, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Difference Question
How is this project going to be any different from the wiki Tolkien Gateway? --72.66.5.235, Also known as Narfil Palùrfalas of Tolkien Gateway
 * If Wikipedia were significantly restricting the sort of Tolkien content which can be included then I'd contribute to one of the Tolkien specific Wikis more. However, since to date this hasn't been a problem it makes more sense to me to store the information in the most 'visible' source. Note that many of the articles, templates, et cetera on that 'Tolkien Gateway' Wiki were copied directly from here. If the inclusion of these materials in Wikipedia ever does become an issue we could thus just relocate them, but until then what is 'different' about the Tolkien content here is that it is on a top 20 website and thus gets read and edited by hundreds of people every week. --CBDunkerson 12:44, 30 May 2006 (UTC)


 * I see. Thank you.  By the way it is true that many of the articles were copied from Wikipedia.  The reason for this is with only about five or six active editors we didn't want empty spaces until we could get around to writing/rewriting them. Still, I believe that now Tolkien Gateway has more entries and larger entries currently than Wikipedia. --72.66.5.235 15:17, 30 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Out of curiosity, I'd be interested in hearing the other side of this. How is the Tolkien Gateway wiki different than this project?  (Or, more broadly, different than the Tolkien content on Wikipedia in general?)  What is the advantage of the separate site?  (And in particular, if the Tolkien Gateway has started out by populating its articles from corresponding Wikipedia entries, what was the argument against simply improving them on Wikipedia instead?)--Steuard 16:48, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
 * What I see is less consistency, and that there are (somewhat) duplicate articles:, , ,  . Also note that for example Aldarion's main article is at Tar-Aldarion, while Cirion's main article is at Cirion. Bryan 18:14, 30 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Concerning those "duplicate" articles, many (if not most) of the few editors believe that the individual names should each have articles. I am, incidentally, not one of them; I prefer a section of names at the bottom or top of one article to many individual articles.  I'm not sure quite why it was seperated from Wikipedia (I am not Hyarion, the founder of the site), but I do think it is a good idea to have a seperate wiki.  As for copying them from Wikipedia articles, most were not.  For most of the answers you should talk to Hyarion on his user talk or on the Main Page talk, for I joined months after the project was started.  --72.66.5.235 22:16, 30 May 2006 (UTC)


 * How is Tolkien Gateway different from The Lord of the Rings Wiki and any other Tolkien wikis? At least the Tolkien content on Wikipedia itself will definitely get more exposure. Though I don't know if that's the case with Wookieepedia. Uthanc 08:12, 1 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Well, here's their reasons for making a separate one, which seem enticing, but then... And how about The Tolkien Wiki? How's that any different? Uthanc 08:12, 1 June 2006 (UTC) (not a member.)


 * Hello Uthanc (and everyone), sorry for taking so long to respond. Great question regarding the difference between The Tolkien Wiki. The Tolkien community really isn't large enough for so many wikis and I certainly wouldn't want to spend time on something that was simply going to disappear when the wiki phase dies out so I understand your concern. Walter created his wiki some years ago before I found it, and while I've watched it over the past year I've yet to see really any editing, a bit of removing of spam and this past month has probably been the most active as there were months in which not a single article was edited. Which is unfortunate but seems to be common among wikis as it really takes some dedicated editors to work for so long by themselves to build up a database. Walter's encyclopedia concentrates on legendarium aspects while Tolkien Gateway also expands into fields such as calendars (we currently host the largest archive of Tolkien Calendars), collectibles, books, information not considered canon such Bingo and Trotter, images, essays, reviews, news, etc. while also focusing on the legendarium of course. I believe TTW also has a different copyright policy in which their content is actually "protected" while we use the copyleft GFDL license that Wikipedia uses which allows free distribution as long as the content is kept free. I'll try and stop now as I'm obviously going to be biased in my statements about which wiki is "better." In the end however, Tolkien Gateway is only growing and you will be hearing more about us as time progresses. Thanks for your time and I'll try to keep advertisements like this to a minimum as I enjoy the Wikipedia project and the last thing I'd like is to take away from it. --Hyarion 01:50, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

My view on all this is that there are some articles that would never fit comfortably on Wikipedia, by which I mean the detailed fandom histories, and lists of books about Tolkien and Middle-earth, and articles about the fanzines and websites (I've seen such articles on some of the Tolkien wikis). Much of this would not be of interest outside fandom. I also think that there are different ways of writing the same article. One way is to write as if you are a Middle-earth historian, and that these people are real (this tends to duplicate the way Tolkien wrote about them). The other way is to write as if the person, place, etc is a character in a story, and to write about it in relation to the author and other aspects of the real world. This is a more analytical style. Sometimes neither style fits comfortably in Wikipedia. I would hope that the main topics and subject areas eventually become worthy Wikipedia articles, and that the other stuff (some of which I want to help write!) finds a home somewhere. I do worry sometimes about the overlap, but haven't really thought of a suitable way to encourage co-ordination and reduce duplication of effort. Carcharoth 11:39, 2 June 2006 (UTC)


 * One question in particular I have for Hyarion is the issue of permissions for pictures by fan artists and other Tolkien artists. Plus other stuff like front covers of fanzines like Amon Hen, and calendars and things llike that. It all looks very nice, but I'm unclear where all the permissions have come from. Is there somewhere on the Tolkien Gateway that makes all this clear? Thanks. Carcharoth 12:28, 2 June 2006 (UTC)


 * PS. Thanks for the link to Brian Sibley's blog from the Tolkien Gateway front page. I wasn't aware of that, and there is some very interesting stuff there. Carcharoth 12:39, 2 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Glad you like the blog :) The cool thing about that was Brian Sibley actually emailed me to tell me about it, quite flattering and we are hoping to work with him on future projects (hopefully to get him in for a chat on our IRC network). You've asked another important question regarding images; we are very interested in working with artists to make sure they allow their work to be displayed. The most well known Tolkien artists such as Lee, Nasmith, Howe are quite lenient to fans and I spoke with Howe a short time ago. As long as they are acknowledged for the piece and are not out to make a profit then they are more than willing. We also try and forward as many visitors as possible to their websites as the more people buying the art, the higher possibility of the artists producing more :) I spoke with John Cook earlier this week and we received permission to host all of his Fraud of the Rings comics. This is something no one, not even his official site, does and we are thrilled to be able to help showcase projects like this that would not have been possible. We also recently spoke with the Tolkien Society who brought up the fact that the JRRT monogram on our logo is owned by the Tolkien Estate, so we will either be contacting TE for permission (which they have granted in some cases) or creating a new logo as pleasing and working with them is one of our main goals, something most sites try to hide from if anything. I'm working on a page which will list specifically what we have been given permission to use, otherwise we will assume most of the artwork is considered fair use until we can research differently. Thanks for your input as it is much appreciated. --Hyarion 16:16, 2 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Thanks, Hyarion. You sure did a far better job than I did at explaining it. --72.66.5.235 20:08, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for those comments Hyarion. I think I might pop over and start contributing to the Tolkien Gateway, though I want to set myself a clear demarcation on what subjects to contribute to either site. Please don't take this the wrong way, but I am considering editing "serious" articles on Wikipedia (anything that I think the reader of a general encyclopedia would find of interest), and "fandom" articles on Tolkien Gateway (anything that only fans would be interested in). One of the things that might help is having an article covering all the Tolkien wikis - I think the Tolkien Gateway would be a good place to have that. Or maybe, even better, something covering the main Tolkien websites out there. I've considered something like that for Wikipedia, but I'm not sure about it. Carcharoth 08:01, 3 June 2006 (UTC)


 * PS. I've also bookmarked the Tolkien News site - that is really good! Carcharoth 08:02, 3 June 2006 (UTC)


 * The most well known Tolkien artists such as Lee, Nasmith, Howe are quite lenient to fans and I spoke with Howe a short time ago. As long as they are acknowledged for the piece and are not out to make a profit then they are more than willing. Does this mean it's all right with at least these three if one puts their artwork here without explicit permission, as long they're properly credited? All the Jackson images bug me. (Using Anke Katrin Eißmann and Jenny Dolfen's artwork, as of now, requires their permission.) 202.81.183.37 01:49, 4 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Hello, John Howe's requirements, Ted Nasmith's requirements (See the 12 November 2002 entry) I'll have to research a bit more to find the quote from Lee. I agree, seeing every article with images from PJ's films can be rather one-sided and other Tolkien artists tend to bring a breath of fresh air. In the end as long as you stick with low-res images, credited, and link to the official site it should fall under Fair Use. --Hyarion 05:31, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

Handy links to Prefix Index
Here are some handy links to all articles beginning with certain words or phrases:


 * Tolkien
 * The Lord of the Rings
 * Middle-earth

And the same for categories:


 * Tolkien
 * The Lord of the Rings
 * Middle-earth

And for templates:


 * Tolkien
 * The Lord of the Rings
 * Middle-earth

And for portals:


 * Tolkien
 * The Lord of the Rings
 * Middle-earth

Carcharoth 11:36, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

The Lord of the Rings is now a featured article!
Well, the title says it all! I still think a little bit more work needs doing on it, but a huge amount of work has already gone into bringing The Lord of the Rings up to featured article status. I'd like to congratulate SorryGuy (who nominated it and did a lot of the recent work on it), and everyone else who worked on it. Carcharoth 21:04, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

Time for a new collaboration
J. R. R. Tolkien is now featured (along with The Lord of the Rings and Middle-earth&mdash;am I missing any?). Time for a new collaboration, I think. Any suggestions? savidan(talk) (e@) 03:50, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
 * I think those three are the total number of featured articles. I don't think there are any specific articles that are as important to bring to featured status. How about a series of improvement drives on the articles about the books? This would aim to bring all such articles up to a minimum standard. The best place to start is Category:Texts_by_J._R._R._Tolkien and its subcategories. From there, we can get the following list (I've excluded non-fiction and the more obscure medieval poetry):

Middle-earth:
 * The Hobbit (talk page)
 * The Lord of the Rings (talk page)
 * The Silmarillion (talk page)
 * Unfinished Tales (talk page)
 * The History of Middle-earth (talk page)

Minor works:
 * Leaf by Niggle (talk page)
 * Farmer Giles of Ham (talk page)
 * Smith of Wootton Major (talk page)
 * The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm's Son (talk page)
 * The Adventures of Tom Bombadil (talk page)

Other:
 * The Father Christmas Letters (talk page)
 * Mr. Bliss (talk page)
 * Roverandom (talk page)
 * Bilbo's Last Song (talk page)
 * The Road Goes Ever On (talk page)

Some of these articles are OK. But some need to be worked on. Could people have a look through them and add comments on the talk pages on how much work, and what sort of work, is needed? And then back here mark the ones that need work done on them. Carcharoth 22:59, 23 June 2006 (UTC)


 * The things you list could all use improvement, but I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss the featured article possibilities for the project. All of the books, for example, could be Featured Article Candidates if brought up to a high level of quality. Several of the daughter articles of Middle-earth could also qualify. If Bulbasaur can be a featured article, then anything is possible. savidan(talk) (e@) 00:08, 24 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Some of the major characters, particularly Gandalf, could also be brought up to featured article status. --CBD 00:43, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

Replying to Savidan, I agree, getting the articles to Featured status is possible and should be the aim. But do we concnetrate on one article, or improve a series of articles? The three currently featured articles seem to fall in the following three categories:


 * Places (Middle-earth)
 * Tolkien (J. R. R. Tolkien)
 * Books (The Lord of the Rings)

Maybe the best approach is to get an article up to featured status in the other categories we can think of, and then to use the featured article of each category as an example from which to improve the other articles in that category. Some categories I can think of, with suggestions for articles to try and improve/get featured:


 * Characters (Gandalf)
 * Tolkien people (Christopher Tolkien)
 * After Tolkien (an overview article on adaptations, using material from articles at Category:Middle-earth_adaptations, with similar overview articles on Tolkien fandom and Tolkien studies)
 * History of Middle-earth (History of Arda, plus the articles in the template at that page)
 * Races (Middle-earth_peoples)
 * Languages (Languages_of_Arda)
 * Geography (no article yet, but could be created as a daughter article of Middle-earth, based on Middle-earth)

Further improvement, based on existing articles:


 * Books (The Silmarillion and The Hobbit - based on The Lord of the Rings)
 * Places (The Shire or something else that a lot can be written about)

From this, we can probably come up with a list of 10 articles that should be improved, hopefully to featured status, which would serve as an excellent introduction to Middle-earth. What do people think? Set up this list and then pick one to work on? Carcharoth 14:13, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

The Silmarillion article needs improving!
Following on from the suggestion above, and looking through the articles on that list, I think it is fair to say that the article on The Silmarillion needs most work doing on it. Unfortunately, it is also the most difficult one to write! Shall we have a go? Carcharoth 23:31, 23 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Sounds like a good project to me. --CBD 00:44, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

Which are the major character articles?
Continuing the discussion of what articles to work on next, which are the major/interesting character articles? There is Category:Middle-earth characters, but for LotR, I would, off the top of my head, pick: Gandalf, Bilbo Baggins, Frodo Baggins, Samwise Gamgee, Gollum, Aragorn, Elrond, Galadriel, Treebeard, Tom Bombadil, Saruman, Sauron, Denethor, Boromir, Faramir, Peregrin Took, Meriadoc Brandybuck, Théoden, Éomer, Éowyn, Legolas, Gimli, Celeborn, Arwen.

Though the inclusion of some of these as major might be debatable, particularly Arwen and Celeborn! Also, we see more of some monsters than some of these characters, particularly: Shelob, The Balrog in LotR.

Conrad has suggested Gandalf would be a good candidate article to work on, but does anyone like (or dislike) the look of any of these articles? Would they qualify as a first "tier" of articles to work on? Carcharoth 13:31, 24 June 2006 (UTC)


 * A general point from looking at those articles: the use of film images is inconsistent. There is a template to put an image in an infobox at the top of an article. See for example Samwise Gamgee, but this gives too much emphasis to the Jackson films. A better approach, IMO, is the way it has been done at Frodo_Baggins, or Gandalf. What do people think? Carcharoth 13:43, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

Templates to categories
It is rather presumptuous for this project to have the templates Dragons and Dwarves since you can find them outside Tolkein's writings. They also seem to be better suited for use as categories anyway (i.e. Category:Middle-earth dragons and Category:Middle-earth dwarves). The template Fellowship is also slightly problematic in its name grabbing, but at least its material is well suited for a navigation template. Caerwine Caerwhine 06:37, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Well, using "What links here", I see that they are used in 8 and 24 articles respectively, so if you want to recycle the names you could move the templates to a better, ME-related, name (along with the page history and everything), fix the template link names on the pages where they are used, and then create new content at the "dragon" and "dwarves" templates. Do be careful about the spelling of the plural of dwarf though... Are you intending to create a more widely ranging template for dragons and dwarves? Let's see if there are lots of dragon and dwarf articles for such wider categories? OK - there are. If you want to use these names for such templates, I'm happy to help tidy things up on the Tolkien side. Carcharoth 08:23, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
 * About the categories, there is already Category:Middle-earth Dwarves (it is a capital 'D' because that was how Tolkien wrote it). There is no "dragon" category, as you rightly point out. But then there only seem to be four dragon articles anyway. But there probably should be a dragons category. I'll create it now. Carcharoth 08:19, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Created at Category:Middle-earth Dragons to keep capitalisation consistent. Carcharoth 08:37, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Oh, and a general point - is it really a template OR category dichotomy? ie. Is it really a case of if a suitable template exists there is no need for the category, or if the category exists there is no need for the template? By this logic, many navigational templates could become categories? To take the examples here, we already have Category:Dragons, Category:Fictional dragons and Category:Dwarves - so why bother with a dragon or dwarf navigational template? Maybe the reason is that technically speaking, to use the Middle-earth articles as examples, the Dragon (Middle-earth) article belongs in Category:Middle-earth races, but not in Category:Middle-earth Dragons - the reasoning being that the latter category is only for articles about the named Dragons, and the former category is for general articles about the different races of Middle-earth. But this then leaves readers of the Dragon (Middle-earth) article having to click Category:Middle-earth races and then Category:Middle-earth Dragons to get to a list of Middle-earth dragons (the alternative is to list the four named dragons under "See also", and to do similar listings at the named dragon articles. This then, might be a reason to use navigational templates, to reduce the number of clicks needed to get somewhere. Carcharoth 08:46, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Actually it is fairly common to have both a category and a navigation template containing all the items in that category. So much so that I've received requests for a template which automatically provides links to all members of a category (which is not possible with current markup). I do think the navigation templates would be un-neccessary if the categories were more fully developed / used, but currently standard practice is to have both... largely for the nicer 'presentation' of the navboxes and the reduction in clicks that you note. --CBD 11:35, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
 * That reminds me. While I was ferreting around the Tolkien and Middle-earth categories, and trying to make them easier to navigate, I wanted to find an easy way to _list_ all articles in a category. Just copying and pasting doesn't really work very well. Is there an easy way to do this? Then I would be more likely to update the category page at Portal:Middle-earth/Categories. I know about the Catgegory Tree/Scan tool, but that doesn't really output lists either. I just want a plain list without all the added html or wiki-markup. Any advice? Carcharoth 21:13, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Unfortunately no, I don't know of any automated way of doing so. Just manually copying, pasting, and reformatting into a list. In theory you could create a template which adds an article to the category and then use that template instead of the standard category link on all articles... in that case the 'what links here' for the template would provide a simple list of the articles. Just alot of work to redo all the category links and there might be some objections to so many 'unneccessary' transclusions. --CBD 23:47, 28 June 2006 (UTC)