Talk:The Lord of the Rings influences

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Contents 1 Fair use rationale for Image:Cover lotr green gandalf.jpg 2 Merge?

[edit] Fair use rationale for Image:Cover lotr green gandalf.jpg

Image:Cover lotr green gandalf.jpg is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

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BetacommandBot (talk) 20:44, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Merge?

All the cited content is already found in the Lord of the Rings article, and the rest is either speculative, or actually about the Silmarillion, which isn't really appropriate here. Is a separate article really required at the moment? I think it should be merged with the LoTR and Sil. articles, then allowed to grow as part of the parent, then split off when it becomes worthwhile? Or perhaps the page could be renamed to "Tolkiens Literary Influences" so the Sil. content can still stand, and encourage the expansion of this article? Davémon (talk) 13:38, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

I concur there are original research issues in this article. Some of it is verifiable, but much is not. The text is interesting, and may be correct, but we need reliable sources to support the content.

I also concur that there is lack of clarity about what are influences of LOTR and what apply to the Silmarillion. It might be hard to do a merge to one or the other articles though, since the two works share common influences.

I prefer the solution suggested by Davémon, that the influences from both other articles be focused in one article - or perhaps it could be moved into the article at Tolkien's legendarium as a main influences section. The lead paragraphs of the influences article could be used in a modified form as a small section in the LOTR and Silmarillion articles, with links to the main influences article or "Tolkien's legendarium" - influences section.

There's also a discussion of this at Talk:The Lord of the Rings#Problems with the Influence section; I suggest focusing the discussion here since it involves several articles. --Jack-A-Roe (talk) 06:17, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

Follow-up - I've looked around some more, considering the best place for the influences info. It seems it would fit well in Middle-earth, since that article summarizes the entire cosmology, history, geography and peoples that were influenced by the influences. That's already a long article though, so maybe it's better to keep the influences as a separate article. The other article I mentioned above, Tolkien's legendarium is not so long, there is room there for a section with the influences content, and it's a good centralized article title since it's in the title bar of the nav-box footers. Or perhaps this article could be renamed to Middle-earth influences or Tolkien's legendarium influences.

I'm not proposing a specific one of those solutions at this time, but the way it is now has a lot of overlap. If we centralize the influences topic into one place it would be easier to do effective referencing and avoid duplicating work. --Jack-A-Roe (talk) 06:49, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

As Jack-A-Roe suggests a general article covering "J.R.R. Tolkiens influences" would reduce a lot of repetitious content, overlap and duplicate effort. There is also the influences section at J.R.R. Tolkien to be included. I have noted several problems with the Tolkien's legendarium article on it's talk page - the main crux of the issue is that the scope of the term isn't well defined the literature (and the only formal, sourced, declaration of it does not include anything that contains hobbits). Until those problems are resolved, I'd stay away from lending the concept more weight in Wikipedia than it is given in the external literature. J.R.R. only borrowed the term "Middle-earth" part-way through writing the Lord of the Rings, and it doesn't appear in the early Silmarillion, or the Hobbit, so its relation to the process of writing these is negligible. Even in tracing something as simple as the influence (or perhaps reference) to The Man in the Moon nursery rhyme, sees it appear in The Book of Lost Tales-> Silmarillion, Father Christmas Letters, Roverandom and Lord of The Rings, taking the influence far beyond the scope of Middle-earth, perhaps an article J.R.R. Tolkien's influences with subsections dealing with each of his writings gives us the broadest scope for collating the subject-matter? --Davémon (talk) 12:37, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

So I will just explain as the creator of this article: I think the majority of it is horrible. I simply cut it out of the main article because the length there is far too long for FA and the content is not FA-standard. That was before I conceded the battle of bringing the article back to the standard on which I got it promoted to FA. My suggestion would be to leave this article, verify what you can, and cut the main article section to about three paragraphs. SorryGuy  Talk  17:10, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

So far it seems we're on the same wavelength about centralizing the influences section out of the other articles because of duplication and excessive length. I was not aware of some of the facts brought up by Davémon, so in light of that information, I'd agree with renaming this article to J.R.R. Tolkien's influences, with subsections, along with SorryGuy's idea of cutting the sections to a few paragraphs in the LOTR article (and wherever else they are, ie Silmarillion, and anywhere else we find them), with links to this one as the "main article" for influences.

Once the material is collected into one article, it will be easier to identify where it is sourced or unsourced, to clear out the original research, and bring it up to good standards using good referencing. It would be fine with me to proceed on this without delay, because it does not seem controversial; I wonder how much time we should allow for others to enter comments. --Jack-A-Roe (talk) 19:36, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

J. R. R. Tolkien's influences for consistent spacing. Uthanc (talk) 02:27, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

Aside from the spacing in the title, do you concur with the merge proposal to combine the various influences into one article? Thanks... --Jack-A-Roe (talk) 02:31, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

Ok, but how about something like Harry Potter influences and analogues? Influences and analogues in J. R. R. Tolkien's fiction or something like that... Awkward? Uthanc (talk) 02:38, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure what value "Analogues" may have - can you give one or two (cited) examples in relation to Tolkien (there may be some in articles already)? Incidently I think that Harry Potter article needs to be careful of taking the authors self-publicity statements at face value and reporting them as fact. Thankfully 60 years of Tolkien analysis and research probably means we can avoid that kind of thing! --Davémon (talk) 08:20, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

I think J. R. R. Tolkien's influences is sufficient - "Analogues" is not needed. If verifiable information about analogues is found at some point, the title could be adjusted then. For now, the topic is "influences", according to the text in the articles so that's what the title should reflect. --Jack-A-Roe (talk) 04:30, 11 June 2008 (UTC)