Talk:Middle-earth cosmology

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This article was nominated for deletion on 22 January 2007. The result of the discussion was Keep.

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Middle-earth, which aims to build an encyclopedic guide to J. R. R. Tolkien and his legendarium. Please visit the project page for suggestions and ideas on how you can improve this and other articles.
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[edit] Suggestions for improvement

Suggest identifying the languages involved, quoting a few uses of the stars involved, and a few quotes from Letters. Also say which books the different stars are mentioned in, and tie that in to a timeline (ie. dates for when Tolkien wrote about each object). Also, tone down references to speculation, as that is a red rag to bulls, or rather, say who is doing the speculation, and give a reference. Carcharoth 02:05, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

For almost all of the uncertain ones the person doing the speculating is Christopher Tolkien and the reference is given immediately afterwards. For those which have been guessed at by other people I can dig up references. Translations of all the names make sense. If we are going to add details of where/when they appear in the books I'd like to merge in the contents of some of the articles which are just stubs... rather than having significant amounts of info on these things in two places. --CBD 02:30, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

You mean the articles in Category:Middle-earth astronomy and Category:Middle-earth in space? I've been going through the ~900 unassessed articles, and lots of them can be merged into list-like articles. Is it best to step back and plan that, or do it as and when? Carcharoth 03:01, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Yes, most of the pages in those categories are linked from this page and several are short enough that they could be incorporated into it. An overall plan for list building efforts might be worthwhile, but in many cases I think it is going to happen as people get to things. --CBD 11:57, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

See here for a quick first pass at how we might want to organize the various lists with existing pages shown. Several of those existing pages could probably also be merged. --CBD 12:57, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

That looks good. Have you seen List of Middle-earth weapons? The intro and ending are a bit dodgy, but the bits about specific weapons are short, authoritative, and nicely referenced. IMO, that is what we should be aiming for. The various ISBNs of the books can be listed at the end (they aren't at the moment). Would you want to try that citation style over here? Carcharoth 23:37, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Middle-earth

You know that Middle-earth is simply just one continent on Arda? Calling this article "Middle-earth cosmology" looks just plain stupid. Jon Harald Søby 06:53, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Read the first sentence of the article. It refers to Tolkien's 'Middle-earth legendarium'. The term 'Middle-earth' does, indeed, refer to a particular continent of Arda. It also, in some cases, refers to all lands/continents where humans dwell. In some instances it refers to the world as a whole, and in yet other cases it refers to the all the stories and details relating to Tolkien's invented world. Tolkien himself used the term in all of these ways. The title of this article, as indicated by the first sentence, is using it in the last of them... to refer to the cosmology of the entire cycle of stories. The debate about other possible options has been held repeatedly, but can be gone through again if you wish. Would 'Eä cosmology' be better? I think it runs aground of the fact that alot more people have heard of the 'Middle-earth stories' than have heard of Eä... and there's still the same 'geography' problem you object to, given that the Timeless Halls were outside of Eä. Is there some term OTHER than Middle-earth which anyone has ever applied to the whole of Tolkien's invention? --CBD 13:58, 25 March 2007 (UTC)