Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/J. R. R. Tolkien/archive1

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[edit] J. R. R. Tolkien

Partial self-nomination; this article has been quite stable for some months now, and there are six FAs on other language WPs that partially derive from it. I've looked it through again, and while there are some minor things that I would phrase differently, as a matter of personal taste, I do think it is fair enough, and would welcome more scrutiny. As possible objections, I see the liberal use of "fair use" images (actionable easily enough, either we keep them, or we scrap them), and the bibliography (cf. the Talk archive; I would prefer to keep it in the article, but others may vote to export it; compare the (featured) de:J._R._R._Tolkien, where they take an even more radical approach, including the list of poems we have exported to Poems by J. R. R. Tolkien). The ToC may also be a matter for discussion; I have given this quite some thought, and at the moment I see no better organisation than the "Bio/Writings/Languages" sections, but maybe there are better suggestions. dab (ᛏ) 13:51, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

• Minor object, as follows:

1. Everything in the "See also" section is linked from the text; is its presence necessary?
2. The "Professional life" section looks like it could be expanded a little; but I'm not certain how much material of interest is actually available.
3. I've never seen a citation style that places the date before the author; is this actually in use elsewhere, or is there some other reason for it I'm unaware of?

Other than that, it looks to be a very good article. Kirill Lokshin 15:57, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

1. yes, I've just trimmed it, leaving only the single few most important links. You can remove them too, if you like, it's a matter of your philosophy of the "See also" section.
2. I've just created it. It could be merged back with "Personal life", but then I'm at a loss for a good title ("Middle age"?)
3. this is also on purpose; it is how I usually do bibliographies on biographical articles (obviously not "literature" sections for references or further reading). The idea is to present the works in their chronological order of the author's biography. We can certainly also change that format if people don't like it.

dab (ᛏ) 18:15, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

uh, I only just realized that the "Further Reading" section is in the same format. I agree that this is not very good, and I'll change it. I've converted it to {{Book reference}} style (which doesn't look very good for collections with only editors but no single author; maybe we have another template for those?) dab (ᛏ) 18:20, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

Support after those changes. I generally favor minimal "See also" sections, but, as you mentioned, it's more a matter of personal style than anything significant. As far as {{Book reference}} goes, it's rather inflexible; but I prefer Chicago style, so I format references by hand in any case. Kirill Lokshin 20:03, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

• Object. It's a very good article but is missing a few bits of final polish.
  • Too many fair-use images by far. Wikipedia:Fair use states "The amount of copyrighted work used should be as little as possible." In most biographical articles, that means one picture of the subject, in the lead, though I think I could support two here. (It would be nice if there were a picure from around the '40s, though.)
  • Not enough references in the text. If I were to try to fact-check the article, it would be quite difficult to determine what facts come from which source. Only quotes from Letters are treated as I would expect.
  • Speaking of quotes from Letters, it took me quite a bit of hunting to figure out what book that referred to. When I did find it (under "Posthumous publications", I wasn't given a publisher or ISBN number, which might make it hard for me to find the book, or the right version if there are multiple (which I'm guessing there aren't, but there could be in the future, possibly). I think you need a separate "References" section, which might have some duplication with the bibliography, to help readers find the books referred to in the text.
  • The "Professional career" section needs to be expanded or possibly merged with the "Personal life" section. One way or another, the one-paragraph section needs to go.
  • I think the article overlinks years and dates; if you really like that style, I won't fight it, but it's more-and-more the case that we're not linking years and dates, and it does make reading a little easier.

—Bunchofgrapes (talk) 01:32, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

• regarding the fair use images, there are three in total: the two 1972 images, and the book covers. The remaining three are PD, dating to pre-1916 (in the US and most other countries, probably not in the UK. I do think that for our purposes US law applies (the KJV is copyrighted in the UK, and yet we have it on wikisource)). There will be no PD post-1916 images of Tolkien, so I do think the fair use rationale applies. There is also Image:Jrrtolkien2-sm.jpg which I removed because I was unable to date it.

I'm no copyright expert. But those pre-1916 images are currently tagged as "copyright unknown" and "fair use". If there's an argument to be made that they are PD in the US (I thought the author had to be dead for 70 years for that, or something), then they should be retagged. Even assuming we're convinced the pre-1916 pics are PD, that still leaves too many fair-use images. We don't need two 1972 pictures, and I don't believe a good fair-use argument can be made for the book covers in this article at all. —Bunchofgrapes (talk) 16:17, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

In the US, everything published pre-1923 is public domain. --Carnildo 06:48, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

• Regarding the "career" section, we can merge it back (see above), but what section title do you propose?
• Regarding the references, I'll see what I can do (but help is appreciated of course).
• dab (ᛏ) 09:45, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

• I do not want to object, but the lack of anything on how he made his bread and his importance to philology is startling. There are books both on the influences of Anglo-Saxon literature on his work and, of course, Tolkein's own Anglo-Saxon and mythographic writings. Tolkein earned his bread as a don of Anglo-Saxon literature and language. I'm not competent to go into it, as I only minored in medieval literature, but there are others who can give a summary of his linguistic career. He was important there, as most Greatest Generation Oxford dons were, and having a biography that doesn't mention it is not comprehensive. The coverage of Tolkein as fiction writer is fine, but there is the rest of his work to consider. Geogre 11:11, 14 November 2005 (UTC)
  • (this should maybe go to the article talklpage) -- well, Tolkien fans tend to exaggerate JRRT's importance as a medievalist/philologist. We give a full list of his academic writings. Sure, he was a professor of medieval literature at a prestigious University. But considering that, his contributions are not outstanding, and I doubt we would even have a stub about him if it wasn't for his legendarium (there would maybe be a citation on the Beowulf article, but that's about it). In his letters, his professional work is most prominently mentioned in his complaints that the yearly exams are tedious and boring. His academic output is, as is mentioned in the article, remarkably meagre. We know why this is the case, it is because he preferred to spend time working on his legendarium. So there you have it, you are welcome to add professional details, of course, but the fact of the matter is that the account is about balanced as it is. dab (ᛏ) 13:57, 14 November 2005 (UTC)
    • You're being slightly unfair; Tolkien's Ancrene Wisse is one of the major entries in the EETS series of AW/AR texts, and Norman Davis' revision of the Tolkien/Gordon Gawain is the standard edition at Oxford. Sure, we probably wouldn't have an article for him just for those, but they may deserve a mention in the prose as well as the list... Gawain in particular. — Haeleth Talk 00:07, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
• Comment: I might be mixing some facts here, but didn't he write an actual annotated version of Beowulf that was only recently discovered/published (I think this is a different work from "The monsters and the critics")? In any case, I do think the actual influence of Tolkien's work on the study of Beowulf deserves to be extended beyond the passing mention in the "1920s to 1950s" section. I do believe there is enough evidence that he is considered a prominent Beowulf scholar. -- Rune Welsh | ταλκ | Esperanza 19:33, 14 November 2005 (UTC)
• I hate to say this, but while the content is great, the style is letting it down in places. For example, the paragraph beginning "In 1911, while they were at King Edward's School, Birmingham" opens with a gargantuan sentence, that spans several lines, with numerous clauses, separated by commas, which could beneficially be split up, into three or four shorter sentences. The next paragraph then switches back and forth between past and present tense as it moves between quoting Tolkien's letters and describing a holiday he took - the effect is confusing and difficult to follow. Similar shortcomings are found throughout. So basically I have to say that I think this article needs a bit of copy-editing before I can happily support the nomination. That's my only concern, though, and if it really doesn't strike anyone else as an issue, I won't hold up the process with a formal objection. — Haeleth Talk 00:07, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

• Object. This really needs inline citations. Use inote or noteref or whatever system you want, but please give us an indication of where the info is coming from (book and page, etc.) --Spangineer^es (háblame) 00:11, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

• SUPPORT, I personally don't care for inline citations in a non-research paper. The toast is TO THE PROFESSOR! Take the Oxford Tolkien Quiz HERE--R.D.H. (Ghost In The Machine) 03:32, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
• Object as per Spangineer. We DO need a mechanism for readers to readily vet/verify the article's statements and claims. Saravask 06:23, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
  • as a reply to those wanting inline citations, the entire "Biography" section is a summary of one single reference, Carpenter's Biography, now listed under "References" rather than stashed away under "Further reading". Imho it would be silly to give page numbers every other sentence. I will try to reference all statements that are not in Carpenter's biography. dab (ᛏ) 14:43, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
    • I'm not asking for a page reference after every sentence, but perhaps a page range after every paragraph or two. Normally books are fairly well organized, so I would expect that the info on Tolkien's childhood would be all together and thus it would be fairly easy to give a range of say 10 pages within which all the info in the first two paragraphs of the section is contained. Thanks for working with us on this; I know it's a pain to have to retroactively add these things, but especially in light of all the criticisms of Wikipedia accuracy and such, it's really important. --Spangineer 22:22, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Support, conditional on the lead being shined up. Congratulations to dab on a masterful article, and I'd like to support, but the lead section is supposed to summarize the article as a whole and bring out its most salient points, and I don't think it lives up to this. Even though skimpy for the length of the article, it contains less-than-essential details (a reference to C. S. Lewis, who is by no means extensively treated below), and one long, difficult-to-parse sentence: How are the posthumous books about a legendarium, rather than being a legendarium? Is the earth called Arda, or is it called Arda and Middle-earth, and why does this bit of terminology, out of all others, deserve to be in the Lead anyway? The last sentence of the lead is sadly misplaced, ruining the roundedness that the previous sentence had nicely imparted—committee editing? An improvement drive please, and a plumping-up, too. Bishonen|talk 21:47, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Support'. Great article to put it simply.--Wiglaf 00:47, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

'Neutral/comment. Very good, but not great. Fix it up, tweak it, get it perfect. One thing I did notice was that the pictures seemed to stop abruptly about half way down. Could you remedy this? Overall, though, not bad...not bad at all. HereToHelp|talk 00:55, 21 November 2005 (UTC)

• Support'. Brilliant article. The see also seems repetitive. I feel it can be replaced by {{Lotr}} & {{Middle-earth}}. --Pamri • Talk 13:28, 21 November 2005 (UTC)