Talk:Dol Guldur

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A request has been made for this article to be peer reviewed to receive a broader perspective on how it may be improved. Please make any edits you see fit to improve the quality of this article.
Middle-earth Wikiproject This article is within the scope of WikiProject Middle-earth, which aims to build an encyclopedic guide to J. R. R. Tolkien, his legendarium, and related topics. Please visit the project talk page for suggestions and ideas on how you can improve this and other articles.
Note: Though it states in the Guide to writing better articles that generally fictional articles should be written in present tense, all Tolkien legendarium-related articles that cover in-universe material must be written in past tense. Please see Wikipedia:WikiProject Middle-earth/Standards for more information about this and other article standards.
Assessment
B
This article has been rated as b-Class on the quality scale.
Mid
This article has been rated as mid-importance on the importance scale.

Article Grading:
The article has been rated for quality and/or importance but has no comments yet. If appropriate, please review the article and then leave comments here to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the article and what work it will need.

[edit] Refs

I need help with the refs, and have completely re-written that article from this. I will look for citations, I had prepared an article like this before but lost the sources nonetheless if you want to delete stuff then discuss it here first. LOTRrules (talk) 22:53, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Found many citations at last. Will start to write them in in the next couple of days. LOTRrules (talk) 23:49, 30 May 2008 (UTC)
I've added pictures and maps which should be enough with the fair use licenses up to date. Just locating final citations and dates. LOTRrules (talk) 17:19, 31 May 2008 (UTC)
Completed most of the citations, just need to expand the adaptations section and check to avoid use of in-universe style language. LOTRrules (talk) 23:30, 31 May 2008 (UTC)
I think I have expanded it as far it would go. Need someone with experiance to look at this section in detail as I am unfamiliar of other adaptations. I will try to make it less in-universe...LOTRrules (talk) 13:55, 1 June 2008 (UTC)
A culture section has been included and many of the sections expanded. Referances will be coming in the few days. LOTRrules (talk) 19:21, 1 June 2008 (UTC)
As of today the article looks like this. LOTRrules (talk) 19:44, 1 June 2008 (UTC)
Now this LOTRrules (talk) 18:10, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
Final copy before submission to get it reviewed for mistakes LOTRrules (talk) 18:16, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

I would not submit it just yet. There is so much to clean up it's hard to know where to start. I made a brief pass to fix the most obvious spelling and punctuation problems. For the next step, I would suggest focusing on the following:

  • In refs, don't rely on fan sites unless they really are the ultimate source. Find the sources in Tolkien's books or reliable literary sources. That the external refs are all to fan sites is something of an embarrassment.
  • Separate Notes from References; the Notes don't require full bibliographic citations, which can appear once in a separate References section.
  • If you're going to use named refs (which is not a bad idea), please choose more descriptive names.
  • Perhaps most important for starters, reduce the redundancy -- the article mentions several things several times over. Also, the article should limit itself to the geographical details and the events that happened here -- the details of Sauron's return to power in the Third Age, the White Council, and the hunt for the Ring are described adequately in other articles, which should be referenced.

Elphion (talk) 20:22, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Hi, some ideas on improving the article:

  • The article needs lots more real-world information about Tolkien's creative processes and the changing role of Tol-in-Gaurhoth/Necromancers Tower/Dol Guldur (for example have a look at the Development section of Elf (Middle-earth)). Some very relevant information appears in Mr. Baggins (book one of The History of the Hobbit).
  • Find references in critical literature and use those, even in preference to citing the original texts. You'll have to be careful the sources that are reliable, and those that aren't. Have a look at some of the results for: http://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?q=dol+guldur
  • Adaptations: Try to find critical information with regards adaptations:
    • For start with: http://www.gamehobby.net/ and http://www.aeolia.net/dragondex/reviews-games.html for where to find reviews of ICE MERP. I know DG appeared in more than one ICE MERP book including the Mirkwood supplements - why not list them all? Likewise there is Decipher Inc.'s RPG and CCG which probably have some Dol Guldur references. Issue 317 of White Dwarf magazine had design notes by Matt Ward on The Rise of the Necromancer - so there should be some good Dol Guldur material there too.

Hope these notes help, and keep up the hard work! --Davémon (talk) 18:27, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Re: critical literature being preferable to citations of the text: Both have their place. Certainly we want to promote the notability of Tolkien by showing that there are critical treatments. But the WP articles serve a valuable function by identifying where in Tolkien's opus various ideas and events are discussed; such citations are very useful (and, I suspect, more useful to most of our readers than the critical references).  Elphion (talk) 21:39, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
One problem with this article is that it is structured in an in-universe way, bordering on OR. Critical literature (and I'm including the commentaries of HoTH and HoME in that) wont just help establish notability but will also ground the article in the real-world, and therefore be encyclopedic, which focusing on primary sources as research material can never do. Davémon (talk) 16:37, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Another suggestion: many of the passages in the article that have been copied verbatim from fan-sites in the external references ought to be rewritten  Elphion (talk) 15:05, 4 June 2008 (UTC)