Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Middle-earth canon

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was no consensus. Might be better to restart the AfD when the article is stable. Majorly (hot!) 11:11, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Middle-earth canon

Middle-earth canon (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) – (View log)

Article is nothing more than an essay, full of unsourced opinions. A list of the works of Tolkien, or of works set in Tolkien's world, would be appropriate for Wikipedia, but op-ed pieces of this sort are not. Mr. Darcy talk 15:53, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

• Delete Wikipedia is not a publisher of original thought. NeoChaosX (talk, walk) 17:04, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
• Delete unless adequate sources can be found, if so, then merge into an article on the Middle-earth books over all. I'm not sure which one that would be, but I don't think this subject stands well on its own. FrozenPurpleCube 17:36, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
• Delete fails WP:V--Vintagekits 17:46, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
• Delete per everyone else. Acalamari 20:21, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
• Delete into the Sammath Naur: A big whopping failure of WP:NOR. This is an interesting essay that should go to a blog, perhaps, but not here.  RGTraynor  20:29, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
• Delete fails WP:NOR, can't be fixed. Jay32183 01:06, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
• Delete for now, anyway, as it's clearly OR. The concept might be salvagable, if there are reputable sources that have attempted to define a "canon". Djcastel 14:06, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Change to Keep. After three substantial rewrites/trimmings, this article now has a well-defined subject and most of the essay qualities have been removed. Djcastel 13:25, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

• Comment - Deleting this will break a link used in dozens (see "what links here") of Middle-Earth pages that make use of the {{ME-canonstart}} and {{ME-canonend}} templates. I'd strongly suggest that this AfD be withdrawn for now and give notice over at Wikipedia:WikiProject Middle-earth so that they are given a chance to salvage the article with sources, if possible. Tarc 14:55, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

This is incorrect; I find only eight articles that use {{ME-canonstart}} (list) and, oddly enough, only seven that use {{ME-canonend}}. That is quite easily remedied after this article is deleted. In fact, only fifty articles (mainspace, excluding talk pages) link to this one. | Mr. Darcy talk 19:15, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

No it is not incorrect, as I was referring to what links to the Middle-earth canon page. Tarc 19:18, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Re-read your own post, please. You claimed that dozens of pages use those templates; that is wrong, as only SEVEN articles use both of those templates. And only fifty (50) mainspace articles link to the article itself. Are you disputing either of those facts? | Mr. Darcy talk 21:23, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

The terms 'about fifty' and 'dozens' do not seem contradictory - and most of those 'about fifty' are substitutions of the templates in question. So yes, what Tarc wrote was entirely correct. --CBD 20:42, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

• Delete. Interesting, but Wikipedia articles are not essays.— JyriL ^talk 21:45, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
• Comment - Per this very first edit, which includes: "For the sake of consistency, in this encyclopedia the following writings are considered canon:" - From that self-reference,it seems clear that this was never intended to be an article, but a set of critera for inclusion. I suggest that it be moved to be a sub-page of Wikipedia:WikiProject Middle-earth. - jc37 23:52, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
• Question - is it possible to preserve the talk page somewhere, as that contains useful discussion? Carcharoth 00:57, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
• Suggestion - From what I remember of the history of this article, it started off as a set of criteria, and then became its own article. It then got heavily rewritten into the version you see now. Maybe, instead of deletion, it should be rolled back to the point before it was rewritten, which seems to be around about here. Unfortunately, that version is not really that much of an improvement, so I propose to pare this article down to practically a stub, and then see if something useful can be worked back up again. Would this be acceptable? Carcharoth 01:12, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

It might be useful as an outline of the various arguments as a sub page of Wikipedia:WikiProject Middle-earth, it won't and can't prevent canon arguments in a publication series of the size of Tolkien's but may save some typing during one Tttom1 20:02, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

• Start over - I believe we should have an article on Middle-earth canon just as we do Star Trek canon, Canon of Sherlock Holmes, Buffyverse canonical issues, and various other items listed under Canon (fiction). However, the current article is not it. Info on how we structure Wikipedia articles in relation to questions of 'canon' should be maintained on a sub-page of the Wikiproject. The article itself should discuss issues of why there is a dispute about 'canon' and some of the common views as referenced to various books. --CBD 20:42, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

The existence of other, similar articles is not in and of itself grounds for keeping this article. If anything, your argument favors deletion of all of these "canon" articles as NOR violations. | Mr. Darcy talk 02:31, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

You haven't looked at Star Trek canon and Buffyverse canonical issues, have you? They are well-written, well-referenced articles, and I fail to see how you can justify calling them NOR violations. What CBD is saying is that it is possible to write NPOV, well-referenced, articles about canon (fiction) referring to one particular topic. I agree this article is not it for Middle-earth, but that is a reason to rewrite the article, not a reason to delete it. AfD often fails to understand the difference between a rewrite and a delete. A delete is for something that we should never have had an article on in the first place. A rewrite is aimed at removing POV and OR and ending up with something useful. Carcharoth 00:57, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

• Move to Project Subpage preserving text and discussion, but Delete from article namespace per CBD. // FrankB 21:00, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
• Move to Project subpage and return to article space when it has been rewritten to a suitable state (make Middle-earth canon temporarily redirect to Canon (fiction)#Middle-earth in the meantime), leaving behind guidelines in the Project pages. Carcharoth 00:51, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
• Question - Is the issue with this 'canon' article, and/or other canon articles, that they are insufficiently referenced, or that the article's subject itself somehow violates Wiki guidlines? Or is it the treatment of the subject? Tttom1 15:02, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

• Treatment. The tone and style of Middle-earth canon is very different from Star Trek canon, as well as the latter being heavily referenced. If you could provide references for Middle-earth canon, that would be great. Bascially, a opinon/editorial (op-ed) piece on Middle-earth canon is not encyclopedic, while an encyclopedic article on the subject is (obviously) encyclopedic. The tone would have to be dispassionate and neutral, and it would have to be short and to the point, and, crucially, would have to show that reliable sources had written about the topic. Would you like to take up the challenge? Carcharoth 17:09, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

The article as written seems generally, to me, a fairly balanced view of the opinions regarding 'what is canon in M-e'. It certainly lacks refences for those described opinions. Personally, I wouldn't know where to find references on those as in my own experience canon debates were off the record or peripheral to other debates such as Dwarf Lady beards, Elf ears, Balrog wings, or Hobbit tea cosies. But that isn't to say the article doesn't describe the canon debates acurately. It has some primary world primary source references from Letters of JRRT. What kind of secondary and tertiary sources are sufficient and exist? Tttom1 18:45, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

• Note to closing admin - OK, I'm generally reluctant to do this on AfD, but I'm going to be bold and carry out an extensive rewrite of the article, and add sources. Hopefully any closing admin will see this comment and give me this evening to finish the rewrite. Then I will let them judge whether the article has changed enough to justify a re-listing for a further 5 days. Carcharoth 19:16, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

 In deference to Carcharoth's substantial rewrite of this article, I am relisting to allow further discussion.
 Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, WjBscribe 00:43, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

• Update. Thanks for the relisting. I didn't get as much done as I had hoped, but I have stripped out a lot of the more opinionated wording and some of the rank theorizing and speculation. What is left is mostly factual statements that can be referenced. Except I don't have time to do that tonight. I will continue to rewrite the article tomorrow and add in the references. Carcharoth 00:47, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Added some refences Tttom1 05:00, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

• Keep Don't know what was there before, but the references and the fact that people are actively improving this article make me loath to stand in the way. YechielMan 05:25, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
• Delete. The rewrite attempt is commendable but it is still an essay. The crux of the problem is that there still does not exist a reliable secondary source to attribute the claim as to what is (or is not) "Middle-earth canon". This is an attempt to create a definition and not expound upon an existing one - the highly verbose footnotes are an indication that an attempt is being made to create and clarify a definition from scratch. Arkyan • ^(talk) 15:42, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

• I agree the article still reads too much like an essay trying to define the concept, but that is probably a result of it being rewritten from the earlier "essay" version. Starting from scratch is often best, but I was attempting to preserve the information contained in that essay while turning it from an essay into an encyclopedia article - turns out that this is invariably a very difficult thing to do. Starting from scratch is sometimes best to avoid this problem, but I prefer blanking and rewriting, to deletion. Deletion should concern itself less with the current state of the article, and more with whether there should be an article at all (in practice, unsalvageble messes are often deleted to allow starting with a clean slate - but I don't think that is justified in this case). Carcharoth 10:12, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
• Ultimately, this article needs to move away from "defining" the term towards a "historical" article documenting (using reliable secondary sources) the history of Tolkien's writings and the history of their publication and the response of scholars and critics to the entire corpus of work. The concepts of "secondary world", "Tolkien's legendarium", "Middle-earth canon", "Middle-earth cycle", "mythology for England", "the Silmarillion concept versus the published Silmarillion", would then naturally be clearly understood in the context of that article. Carcharoth 10:12, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

• Move to Project Subpage per >FrankB's suggestion. ---Charles 16:23, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
• Keep. See nothing wrong with this article. --Fang Aili ^talk 16:54, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
• Purge of OR. It's acceptable under current standards, but could really be stripped of all the OR and POV. bibliomaniac15 23:49, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
• Delete, it read like a literature essay before and still does. Gazpacho 06:52, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
• Keep, it's impossible to present Tolkien canon without falling into a canonicity issue discussion, and the topic is far more important than many other wikipedia articles and wikipedia should be lacking without it. The references are mostly justifiable Pictureuploader 08:23, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

• Comment -Christopher Tolkien, as Literary Executor and editor, has both the legal authority and the author's explicit permission to publish JRRT works in his name. C.Tolkien has used 4 methods to do this and their factual, in print, existence bears on 'canonicity'. Lost Tales presents JRRT complete stories in their original earliest form; Unfinished Tales presents incomplete stories; The Silmarillion presents an editorially developed conclusion to certain works that were not, in their entirety, completed and had to have editorial additions; and the new Children of Húrin presents a complete tale compiled from writings that alledge a minimum of editorial intrusion using only material written by JRRT. To some extent these publications 'frame' possible aspects of canonicity. As this sort of thing happens to authors and their work, the issue would need to be addressed, at least in an article on Me canon. Tttom1 14:51, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
• Comment- Actually, there are 5. Most of the History of Middle-earth series presents JRRT's writing for the Silmarillion and the Lord of the Rings in the chronological stages of their development. Tttom1 15:17, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

• Delete still fails WP:NOR, still reads like a fan's essay, still totally inappropriate for Wikipedia. Unless there's a single, independent, recognized source on what is and is not "canon," this article will always fail the OR and verifiability policies. Delete, userfy, move to the Wikiproject, but let's get this out of mainspace. | Mr. Darcy talk 01:25, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
• Keep - Link to Tolkien Estate is independant source that establishes canon described in article. Consistency within the canon itself is a separate issue and needs further rewrite. Tttom1 02:07, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
• Keep agree with YechielMan. Not a great article but it is being improved. - TwoOars ^{(T | C)} 06:53, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
• Keep, as the subject matter is notable and the OR issued are being addressed in a better manner than deletion would. Tarc 13:26, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
• Keep per last two people. Uthanc 13:54, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.