Talk:The Lord of the Rings - Misplaced Pages

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Carcharoth (talk | contribs) at 12:46, 26 October 2007 (→Article size: suggestions). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Revision as of 12:46, 26 October 2007 by Carcharoth (talk | contribs) (→Article size: suggestions)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)

The Lord of the Rings is a featured article; it (or a previous version of it) has been identified as one of the best articles produced by the Misplaced Pages community. Even so, if you can update or improve it, please do so.

This article appeared on Misplaced Pages's Main Page as Today's featured article on October 5, 2006.

Article milestones
Date	Process	Result
January 16, 2006	Peer review	Reviewed
April 17, 2006	Good article nominee	Not listed
April 29, 2006	Peer review	Reviewed
June 18, 2006	Featured article candidate	Promoted
Current status: Featured article

This article has not yet been rated on Misplaced Pages's content assessment scale.
It is of interest to the following WikiProjects:

Please add the quality rating to the {{WikiProject banner shell}} template instead of this project banner. See WP:PIQA for details.

Middle-earth Top‑importance

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Middle-earth, which aims to build an encyclopedic guide to J. R. R. Tolkien, his legendarium, and related topics. Please visit the project talk page for suggestions and ideas on how you can improve this and other articles.Middle-earthWikipedia:WikiProject Middle-earthTemplate:WikiProject Middle-earthTolkien
Top	This article has been rated as Top-importance on the project's importance scale.
Note: Though it states in the Guide to writing better articles that generally fictional articles should be written in present tense, all Tolkien legendarium-related articles that cover in-universe material before the current action must be written in past tense. Please see Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Middle-earth/Standards for more information about this and other article standards.

Please add the quality rating to the {{WikiProject banner shell}} template instead of this project banner. See WP:PIQA for details.

Books

This article is within the scope of WikiProject Books. To participate in the project, please visit its page, where you can join the project and discuss matters related to book articles. To use this banner, please refer to the documentation. To improve this article, please refer to the relevant guideline for the type of work.BooksWikipedia:WikiProject BooksTemplate:WikiProject BooksBook

Please add the quality rating to the {{WikiProject banner shell}} template instead of this project banner. See WP:PIQA for details.

Novels: Fantasy Top‑importance

	Novels portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Novels, an attempt to build a comprehensive and detailed guide to novels, novellas, novelettes and short stories on Misplaced Pages. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the project and contribute to the general Project discussion to talk over new ideas and suggestions.NovelsWikipedia:WikiProject NovelsTemplate:WikiProject Novelsnovel
Top	This article has been rated as Top-importance on the project's importance scale.
	This article is supported by Fantasy task force.

To-do: E · H · W · RUpdated 2013-08-12

Return to FA level; don't let the article grow too much or have unnecessary detail get slipped in.
Rework the lead.
I proposed adding a parody to the adaptations. Specifically "Bored of the Rings" See http://www.amazon.com/Bored-Rings-The-Harvard-Lampoon/dp/B00CF6LKKG I note that The Hobbit wikipedia page has a section for parodies in the Adaptions section.

Priority 1 (top)

Template:V0.5

There is a request, submitted by (user:smcgrother), for an audio version of this article to be created. For further information, see WikiProject Spoken Misplaced Pages.

The rationale behind the request is: "Featured article, stable, presumably very popular".

archive 01 ? – August 2004
archive 02 August 2004 – December 2005
archive 03 December 2005 – September 2006
archive 04 September 2006 - October 2007

What exactly is Middle-earth?

Hi guys, just wanted to clarify the categorical definition of what Middle-earth is, as is relevant to its mention at the beginning of the second paragraph of the introduction. In the article it was previously the "fictional region of Middle-earth", but this doesn't really work because Middle-earth isn't simply some geographical area in Tolkien's world, or at least if it once was it is not any more (at the time of LOTR). To call it a continent doesn't help much either, for the same reasons. I mean, am I correct in saying that the name and concept derive from equivalents in several European mythologies, for example Midgard of Norse Mythology, which is the mortal world below the world of the gods and above the underworld of the dead? And if this is true, is it not then reasonable to simply refer to this story as being set in the fictional "world" of Middle-earth, the same way we call the real Earth the world, and don't mean to include such metaphysicals as "heaven"? Genedecanter 03:05, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Actually, in Tolkien's world, Middle-Earth (the name of the place) is the name of a middle-earth (as you have defined it). He has titled it that. It is actually a region within Arda. So, as Tolkien has defined it, the story is set in the middle-earth of Middle-Earth, just as if you lived in a city called "City." Does this help? =David_(contribs) 03:35, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

David, I don't understand what you're saying - how is the story set in a middle-earth of Middle-earth? But I do recognise that it is a difficult definition to nail down, especially since Aman was originally geographically part of the same physical world as the lands of Middle-earth, but when Aman (and the Lands to the East?) was removed from the spheres of the world only Middle-earth remained in the mortal world, and it is this Middle-earth from Tolkien's fictional pre-history that has become the Earth we know and live on now. Additionally, since this is after all the introduction to an article about The Lord Of The Rings, I think we ought not to be too finicky in our explanation of all this, as it is simply not the place.

So perhaps 'world' is too troublesome a word to use here, but I strongly feel that referring to Middle-earth as simply a 'continent' is wrong. As a compromise, how about 'realm'? Although realm is a bit wishy-washy. Or we could eliminate a category altogether, and just say: "The Lord of the Rings is set in a fictional Earth of pre-history, called Middle-earth." How would that be? Genedecanter 14:01, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

It would be wrong. The Earth is not called Middle-earth in Tolkien's mythology, but Ambar. (Arda is the name of the entire system local to the Earth, including Sun, Moon, etc., and not that of the Earth per se, although its often used that way.)

David is a little confused, so it's not surprising you don't understand him. He's laboring under the misapprehension that Tolkien came up with something new here, which wasn't his intention. You were right the first time. "Middle-earth" is just Tolkien's modernization of an Old English word with the same meaning as Midgard. It's sometimes called a continent, but that's mainly because it appears to be a continuous landmass and all the other continents he mentioned were not part of Middle-earth by its old meaning; i.e. they were not inhabited by men.

It's more accurate to say that the story is part of a fictional history of the real Earth, which is what Tolkien always said it was. TCC (talk) (contribs) 23:54, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

To clarify then, what is the difference between Ambar and Middle-earth?

Middle-earth is strictly a continent in Ambar (Earth), which is part of Arda (Earth and "everying in the skies around it"), but Tolkien himself used it more loosely. See Middle-earth cosmology. Uthanc 17:37, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

To be honest, I don't think we need make any reference to Tolkien's story being set in a fictional pre-history of our own world in this introduction, as it is unnecessarily detailed information. How about an essential reversion to an earlier form of the paragraph: "The Lord of the Rings is set in Middle-earth, a fictional land populated by Men (humans) and other humanoid races: Hobbits, Elves, Dwarves, and Orcs." Any thoughts on 'land' to replace 'world' here? I think it compromises quite nicely, since it is generic enough to be more than purely geographical, but is less than world-encompassing. Genedecanter 00:19, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Right now it's phrased "set in a alternate prehistoric Earth, specifically in the continent called Middle-earth". I think the reason why it keeps getting fine-tuned is to avoid misconceptions - Middle-earth's not a different planet (unlike Tatooine), and it is (part of a version of) our Earth (unlike Narnia). Yours is less cumbersome, but we need an invisible note to stop it being changed to "world" or even "planet". Uthanc 17:37, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

It's been changed again and, while the current version is factually accurate, it is also much too long and unwieldy for this introduction section. If we must have this depth of information in the article, can I suggest we move it to the first paragraph of the Background section, or possibly even drop it into the Influences section (since this construct is fairly analogous with the pre-histories of real European mythologies)? But I'd like to know if there's some consensus on this first. Genedecanter 12:02, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

What's wrong with the phrasing used on the JRR Tolkien entry: "an imagined world called Arda, and Middle-earth (derived from an Anglicized form of Old Norse Miðgarðr, the land inhabited by humans in Germanic paganism) in particular, loosely identified as an "alternative" remote past of our own world."? Solicitr 16:52, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

While that is a relatively efficient way to sum up a precise definition, again that wording is, in my opinion, much too long and unnecessarily detailed for the introduction to this article. Furthermore, Arda as a name is never actually used in LOTR (am I right in saying this?), so it seems inappropriate to use it here.

As a general observation, it seems that the introduction section has been steadily ballooning in the past few months. Most of it has been in the second paragraph (ie: the paragraph in question here). I just think a bit of perspective on the scope of this present article is needed. Genedecanter 23:56, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

References

I don't know if anyone noticed, but reference number 10 coded as <ref name="letters" /> has been missing since this edit in April. --Squids'and'Chips 00:52, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. I think it's fixed now. Carcharoth 20:26, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

Article size

To be short, this article has become far too long. When it was promoted to FA it was less than 50 KB. It is now 73 KB. After such a fight for its size, I think that is is a shame that it has ballooned to the levels it is at. At any rate, I can already see some of the areas it has increased in size. If someone would be willing to attack the backstory and synopsis, I think I could get the rest. I'm just not great at plot recollection and writing. At any rate, any assistance in this task is welcome. SorryGuy 02:37, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

Having cut it to 70 KB, I really do not see where all the additions are. Most of it is similar. I think Influences could use a trimming but I'm not really sure what needs to do. Besides that and the earlier mentioned synopsis, I'm not really sure where to cut from. Any input is welcome. SorryGuy 03:21, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

I tend to agree with you on this point. I think long sections can be fine if they're appropriate and relevant, but I feel that parts of this article go into unnecessary and often irrelevant detail. I've done a few trims in the intro section and in parts of the Back story and Synopsis - nothing too radical yet, just a steady pruning operation. :) Genedecanter 12:27, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

I think that the size can be tackled the following way:

Trim and condense the lead section. Details like the high cost of paper in the war can be left to the main article. It's difficult, because the lead section is quite nice at the moment, but some trimming is needed there.
The background section really needs vicious pruning and merging into the synopsis section.
The synopsis itself should be much shorter and leave details to the three "main articles" linked at the top of the section.
Create four new subarticles to cover (1) the writing history; (2) the publication history; (3) the influences; and (4) the critical responses. Leave shorter, summary style sections behind.

Hopefully that will make the article more readable, allowing some people to read the whole article in a reasonable amount of time, while others read through the subarticles. Carcharoth 12:46, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

Categories: