Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Minor places in Beleriand

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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 Keep, with a reminder to actually address the raised points on the basis of the indicated sources and editorial commitment.Tikiwont 16:12, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Minor places in Beleriand

Minor places in Beleriand (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) – (View log)

Delete. Non-notable fictional location, fails WP:FICTION. I have noticed in the last few days that most of the articles in Category:Middle-earth locations contain no references to secondary sources, and many are entirely unreferenced. This article cites only the editions created by Christopher Tolkein, so I had tagged the article with {{nn}} and {{primarysources}}. Those tags were removed on the grounds that "Christopher Tolkein's work is a secondary source". I believe that this is wrong: as the article Christopher Tolkien makes clear, he edited collections of his fathers' work, completing some unfinished material, but the valuable work of an editor is not a secondary source. Per WP:OR, "secondary sources draw on primary sources to make generalizations or interpretive, analytical, or synthetic claims". Posthumous editions of unpublished works do not meet that test, whether or not the editor completes unfinished material.
I should stress that I have nothing against Tolkien, and I know that his works have amassed a huge cult following even before the release of the blockbuster films. The original works and the films are clearly very notable, as are some major characters and other details but that doesn't mean that every detail of the works is also notable. (See also discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Middle-earth#Notability_of_articles.) BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 07:43, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

  • Comment C. Tolkien isn't just an editor, as the History of Middle-earth books all contain much commentary on the textual history of the writings he's editing and the evolution of his father's fictional world. Uthanc 08:02, 26 October 2007 (UTC)
  • Reply Those works are not cited as refs for this article. Do they actually contain non-trivial commentary on the significance of the minor places in Beleriand? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 08:16, 26 October 2007 (UTC)
  • In any case, per WP:NOTE, "multiple sources are generally preferred" and the test is "significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject" (emphasis added by me). A compendium by the author's son and posthumous editor does not seem to me to be a remotely independent source. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 08:35, 26 October 2007 (UTC)
  • Reply First of all, I wish we had this discussion without turning to AfD, to keep it in one place. Is there any way to do it still? We three are repeating ourselves over four AfD discussions. Uthanc 08:48, 26 October 2007 (UTC)
  • That would also have been my preference, but if the tags are going to be removed, I think that an AfD is appropriate. I would of course be happy to withdraw the nomination for any article for which "significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject" have been provided. The reason for separate nominations is that this test may be met for one of more of the articles, but not for all of them. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 09:00, 26 October 2007 (UTC)
  • Reply The Atlas of Middle-earth should serve then; it's independent from the Tolkiens. I think merging into Beleriand (and similar merges for the other "minor places") would be best as it would be easier to defend the notability of the information, but I'm refraining from voting until after more experienced Tolkien enthusiasts have had their say. There may be mention of these in scholarly papers, see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Middle-earth cosmology. Uthanc 09:20, 26 October 2007 (UTC)
  • An atlas usually offers only trivial coverage of many places. I'm not familiar with this publication, but without evidence to the contrary, I don't see how a mention in an atlas amounts to significant coverage. It is in any case, only one source; multiple sources are needed. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 09:26, 26 October 2007 (UTC)
  • PS a merge to Beleriand currently seems unlikely to help the notability problem, becaise the article Beleriand itself contains no references other than implicit refs to Tolkein (father or son) — so I have tagged it too with {{nn}} and {{primarysources}}. If those tags area allowed to stand, I think that at least a month should be left before considering an AfD nomination for it; there are so many unreferenced or under-referenced Tolkein articles that the editors working on that area have a lot of research to do. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 09:36, 26 October 2007 (UTC)
  • A month? Let's be clear here. We have a small group of editors (the membership may be quite large but the active editors with access to appropriate sources is small) working on a large group of articles. This has been going on for nearly two years now. Slow progress is being made. Episodes like this are either disruptive or prod us to speed up the work/do more work, depending on the attitude and knowledge of the person doing the nomination/prodding (and I mean prodding people to do work, not prodding articles). If you would like to help us organise this better, then please do join in, but don't slap down arbitrary deadlines of a month. How about a weekly collaboration being organised, and the most important articles are queued up to be dealt with? That would show that there is a more organised plan to deal with things? If you look at this and compare it to this, you will see that the total number of articles has decreased by nearly 300. That number will go down more as further merges are performed, and hopefully the assessments will be finished by then as well. Then more work can be done. There is a plan (if not exactly written down), and the end result should be well-written and adequately sourced articles. Carcharoth 14:08, 26 October 2007 (UTC)
It seems to me that every time I mention notability, the response I get is about merger, but that may not always be the appropriate solution.
The subcategories of Category:Middle-earth locations contain lots of redirects where articles have merged, as evidence of your prodigious good work in merging trivia such as Bridge of Khazad-dûm, the first such article I spotted and which prompted me to look further. The problem, though, is that not even the upmerged articles establish notability. That's why I AfDed these articles: if, as it appears from the current state of the articles, even the upmerged results are non-notable, then you folks may be misdirecting your efforts. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 17:13, 26 October 2007 (UTC)
Alternatively, we could be reducing the number of AfDs that will be required... :-) Seriously, in the long run that will probably save time. And I'm not joking here. AfDs are incredibly time-intensive. But I thnk we both said we'd wait until after the weekend, so I'll stop there. I do have an hour or so to spare, so will look up some Gondor refs tonight. Carcharoth 18:51, 26 October 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep on this and the rest of BrownHairedGirl's AfDs. They are grossly premature. The correct course of action should have been to tag them {{in-universe}} and allow the editors some time to assemble sources and improve the articles. TCC (talk) (contribs) 09:53, 26 October 2007 (UTC)
    • {{in-universe}} might be appropriate as an additional tag for such articles, but it doesn't cover the notability problems. As stated in the nomination, I would have been happy to leave time for improvement, but the tags were removed. However, it is perfectly proper to make an AfD nomination of an article for which notability has not been established. I have nominated only 4 articles, and if these articles are remotely as notable as commentators are claiming at AfD, then the 7 day span of an AfD should be plenty of time to accumulate the minimal referencing required to establish notablity. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 10:01, 26 October 2007 (UTC)
      • Comment Yes, it does cover the notability problems, since the best way to overcome them is to cite multiple sources of commentary and analysis, which also corrects the in-universe style, which is really the fundamental problem. The reason for the non-notability tag, placed without explanation on the talk page as you did, is not obvious to those working on the articles. Talk page discussion is a minimal courtesy in these cases, and it's borderline uncivil of you to have not bothered with it. How long have you been around here that you don't understand that when you place a tag like that without discussion on an article watched by a large project, it's likely to get removed equally unceremoniously? TCC (talk) (contribs) 10:08, 26 October 2007 (UTC)
      • Reply Csernica, maybe the inuniverse tag would have been a good one to add as well, but that doesn't undermine the fact that there is a notability problem, which is why the {tl|nn}} tag was also relevant. It's quite possible to write an article which takes a broader perspective without actually asserting notability, let alone demonstrating it through references, so {{inuniverse}} is no substitute.
        Also, if you had been borderline civil enough to followed the link in the nomination, you'll see that I posted to the wikiproject's talk page, to centralise discussion rather than spreading it over dozens of dift talk pages. And I have been around for long enough to know that if that if such a large project is neither establishing notability for its articles nor tagging them as in need of sources, then it isn't focusing enough on the question of notability. I have been involved in another project where such tagging arose out of a nasty tit-for-tat war, but where it was only the challenge of AfD which eventually (after a lot of protest) began to focus editors' minds on the need to establish notability within a project which had tolerated far too many articles on subjects which stood not a snowball-in-hell's chance of meeting the guidelines. You are, I'm afraid, making the same mistake that I have seen others make, by shooting the messenger here. The problem is that none of the articles I have viewed in Category:Middle-earth locations have demonstrate the notability of the subject. It may be uncomfortable for some people to have that fact drawn to their attention, but {{primarysurces}} is pretty clear in what it means. I'd be grateful if you would desist from sniping because I assume that people could read what it said without me writing an accompanying essay at each article. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 17:03, 26 October 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep - See comments and references establishing notability under similar Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Minor places in Arda nomination above. --CBD 10:59, 26 October 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep, the universe created by Tolkien and a lot of its locations have been the subject of many, many derivative works and even scientific articles. --Cpt. Morgan (Reinoutr) 12:07, 26 October 2007 (UTC)
  • Delete, no need to recreate the appendices to LotR (and similar works). If there are reliable independent sources making (some of these) locations notable, the article (or an article on these few locations) can be kept. Since these are truly minor locations, I doubt it though. Fram 14:07, 26 October 2007 (UTC)
    • Does each location have to independently satisfy the notability criteria? That would seem to argue against any "minor..." articles at all. In general, these articles seem to act as extensive footnotes and appendical or glossary material. If a place is mentioned in a primary article, this list explains what is being mentioned, and is preferable to having the same footnote in 3 or 4 different articles. Carcharoth 14:12, 26 October 2007 (UTC)
      • That's not what I intended. It would surprise me if many of these locations were mentioned in other articles though (I would suppose that in that case we have too edxtensive plot summaries), making their value as background on Wikipedia useless. Looking e.g. at Aelin-Uial, it is used in three lists and only one article[1], where it isn't really needed for the article to be clear. I suppose that most items in this list will get similar results. The last item in the list, Woods of Nuath, gives only the three lists[2]. If we would remove all those items from the list, nothing much would be left (perhaps the three lists on AfD can then be merged into one?), only marginally more important things like Estolad[3]. These items just don't play any crucial role in the stories, or in the critical commentaries on them. Fram 14:20, 26 October 2007 (UTC)
        • That is a fair point. Sometimes though, it is easier to have redirects to a list in place to avoid people recreating stubs. And the linguistic information alone is enough, in my opinion, to make it marginally encyclopedic. The linking from other articles can probably be expanded slightly as other articles are improved, but not to a great extent. As you say, we need to avoid excessive plot summaries. Carcharoth 14:28, 26 October 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment. I agree that most of these places don't have much in the way of secondary sources, beyond mentions in Tolkien atlases, guides etc, and Christopher Tolkien's writings, and so perhaps don't meet the letter of WP:FICT. However, WP:FICT is stomped on by hundreds of thousands of 100% in-universe fiction articles, most of which are from far less notable sources, so I'm wondering why start with these? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Espresso Addict (talk • contribs) 15:38, 26 October 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep, since CBD points out "Numerous independent sources" on the "Arda" AfD (see above)... I think an article to emulate is Land of Oz. The problem is adding references instead of finding references. Uthanc 16:46, 26 October 2007 (UTC)
  • Delete While the works of Tolkein are extraordinarily notable, they are also full of endless NN place, characters, items. Wikipedia is not the place to creat a massive Tolkein encyclopedia.Ridernyc 18:27, 26 October 2007 (UTC)
  • Strong keep per CBD's excellent reasoning. IronGargoyle 21:27, 26 October 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep--proper treatment, repeal WP:FICTION, we aren't a paper venue, and many people check here first or second for information. // FrankB 05:26, 27 October 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep fully adequate sourcing for a very notable fictional location. Some authors do warrant this degree of detail--this is core material on Wikipedia.DGG (talk) 22:53, 27 October 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep per CBD. jonathon 04:02, 28 October 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep per CBD. —Mirlen 12:16, 28 October 2007 (UTC)
  • Delete as nominated. Lack of reliable seconary sources suggests these fictional locations have no notability outside their primary source. --Gavin Collins 10:56, 30 October 2007 (UTC)
    • As DGG said, "The individual items in an article do not have to meet the standard of notability. That is exactly why we have this type of article on minor fictional topics where the fictional work is important enough to warrant it.". Carcharoth 11:36, 30 October 2007 (UTC)
  • In the interest of brevity (as I have elaborated elsewhere), keep per CBD. --Iamunknown 12:49, 30 October 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep - have discussed this above and elsewhere, and, for those reasons, keep but do lots more work to improve the article. Carcharoth 14:50, 30 October 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.