Talk:Goblin

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Contents 1 Yuk! 2 Characteristics 3 WHO SAYS GOBLINS ARE BAD 4 no games here 5 To Split or Not to Split 6 Sources 7 Goblins in Runescape 8 Cut material 9 The 'Description' section...

[edit] Yuk!

This is a truly woeful page, and I am flagging it for a major restructure and cleanup. Sjc 04:35, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Yup.

-G —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 134.117.157.7 (talk) 15:06, 15 January 2007 (UTC).

I've tried to begin this. Brainmuncher 05:41, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Characteristics

I'm pretty sure goblins are well-known for eating dead people (and sometimes people who eat dead people can be described as goblins); I remember a short story about that and that was how my old dictionary primarily defined goblins. Can this be verified? CanadianCaesar Et tu, Brute? 18:36, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

Never mind... I was finally able to check, and this was wrong. CanadianCaesar Et tu, Brute? 23:44, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] WHO SAYS GOBLINS ARE BAD

"THE HOLLOW HILL" TRILOGY BY CLARE B. DUNKLE PORTRAYS GOBLINS AS A TRULY KIND RACE OF CREATURES, AND THE EVILS THEY DO AS MERELY NECESSARY FOR SURVIVAL. JULI

There are no experts on imaginary creatures, but we can get an idea of how they are described by studying folklore. And ancient folklore has almost always portrayed goblins as evil, just like demons and devils and such. So I think the first sentence of the article is appropriate as-is. Citizen Premier 00:12, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] no games here

Split them please.

Done Brainmuncher 05:41, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] To Split or Not to Split

I would say keep them in one place. It is a slight to remove games from an area where folklore and litearture define what a goblin is. The games of today are bending and expanding what a goblin is and it is important that we recognize some games as being important to the definition of a goblin

Ya, split it! I think the fact that all the "fatcs"(!) are lsited in the main page, having the games as a totally irrelevant to some articles like demonology looks a bit annoying!

All of the other related mythological characters: Dwarves, Elves, Gnomes, Orcs have gaming sections. Are we proposing separating all of those? Fact of the matter is that games are the new medium through which these fantastic creatures now thrive. In many cases they are the predominant source of 1st contact. Gaming is a relevant and appropriate category for defining these entities. --Samunoz1 17:31, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

--86.133.44.35 20:32, 14 July 2006 (UTC)Yes, please, split the games off into a new article! --MacRusgail 20:31, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

If we split this one up, we need to look at many other articles which do the exact same thing. The Troll article comes to mind, for example (which even has an image of video game trolls in it). And I'm not just talking about fantasy/mythology articles either -- many other articles on many other subjects include gaming references. If Wikipedia is (supposed to be) standardised, this could become a bigger job than it seems. 19th May 2006

This is the messiest talk page I've ever seen. I edited this portion of the conversation so it can be more easily followed, but I didn't dare move the signatures or anything of that nature as I couldn't tell who had said what. Anyway, I'm not in favor of a split unless you're willing to create pages for both goblins in games and goblins in literature, as they are at about the same length. Even if you did, it seems rather silly to evict a perfectly good section of material from an article simply because it concerns an unorthadox media. Magic the Gathering, one of the games in which goblins are featured, is an excellent modern day source of "information" on these fictional monsters, so I can hardly see the advantage in moving that information to another page. I also agree that if this article was altered in such a way other articles would have to be cropped similarly. MaskedScissorDoll 08:33, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

I say split games AND literature AND pop culture all into their own article. Make another article entirely called "Goblins in Popular Culture", which would list board games, video games, novels, poems, recreational pseudoscience books (such as the Spiderwick Chronicles encyclopedia and "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them"), films, plays, etc. This has been done, and should be done for all other major legendary creatures, including dragons and vampires. There's more information on goblins in pop culture on this page than on goblins themselves!67.167.26.239 04:39, 13 January 2007 (UTC)Chris G.

I have split the gaming section into a separate article. The pop-trivia and gaming information was choking this article. To the general reader, the goblin depicted in folklore and mythology is more relevant than its modern adaptions; the latter, by its sheer volume, turns this article into an ungodly mess. Anyhow, anyone interested in goblins in gaming needs to understand the traditional roots for context and perspective. Brainmuncher 05:34, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Wonderful, wonderful! This should be done for all of the related topics as well. If the article can be made more serious as a fokelore topic I would like to see if anyone has considered working in parallels from Hindu mythology. The closest parallel to the goblins that I have found is the Vinayakas but the parallel is not exact. Is anyone working on the Indo-European materials with an eye to these parallels? There is quite a bit of additional material on the Vinayakas which I have not yet put into that article, including dwarfish aspects of size. Buddhipriya 06:09, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Sources

I don't believe the Encyclopedia of Things That Never Were by Michael Page & Robert Ingpen is a very reliable source. The book was mostly written for entertainment value rather than informative value. Many of the info there is inaccurate. Particularly the "origins" section(i.e. the cleft in the Pyrenees). Goblins have no fixed origin according to folklore.

We reliable sources for this article period. The Wirt Sikes' book is the only truly reliable source, as the others listed so far contain material created solely by the author, and not relayed in folklore or mythology. I would at least like to see some citations from these books in the article itself, to make for a more reliable, trustworthy article.67.167.26.239 04:43, 13 January 2007 (UTC) Chris G.

[edit] Goblins in Runescape

I added some stuff about the cave goblins.--86.133.44.35 20:32, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Cut material

I removed the following from the article as it seemed unencyclopedic:

• In some circles, Goblins are considered to be the cousins of gnomes, except that gnomes are more intelligent and no one in their right mind would confuse the two.
• Witches will not tolerate living with goblins.
• Like other fairies, goblins were more harmless early in history, before the Puritans demonized them.
• A favorite sport among Goblins is playing deadly pranks on humans, gnomes, elfs, and dwarfs (in RPG games).
• An infant goblin is sometimes confused with a Snotling (in Warhammer).
• Goblins are often mistaken for imps among other sprites.
• Goblins are sometimes believed to be associated with trolls.

I also removed the following as I don't believe it is factual:

• In The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit Goblins consider hobbit meat a delicacy and cannot abide the furry footed creatures alive.

I've read LOTR several times and I don't think this is in there.

I plan to work on the article in the near future and part of my work will be replacing the list with actual paragraphs and probably splitting off the bit about goblins in computer games. Matt Deres 15:15, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] The 'Description' section...

...is a mess. The main problem with it is that it provides this big list, saying "various (sometimes conflicting) abilities and attributes have been given to them", but it doesn't say which were given to them by who. Combining every creature to which the term 'goblin' has ever been applied by anyone into one incoherent list is no good. The list would be better written as a prose paragraph, describing the general concept of Goblins according to various noteworthy sources. The article on Hobgoblins might be used as a general template... but, overall, that list really needs to go. "Goblins can grow to anywhere from 30 cm to 2 m tall?" "Goblins are of the Unseelie Court, and are at war with fairies?" According to who? I'm tempted to just remove that list entirely (what limited worthwhile information it has is so lacking in context and citations as to be totally useless), but I'm not sure what to replace it with. --Aquillion 04:47, 5 November 2006 (UTC)