Talk:Watership Down/Archive 1

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Archive This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Contents

Name

Shouldn't the hill be listed first and then the book? Lee M 02:13, 31 Oct 2003 (UTC)

In the words of Kenneth Wolstenholme: it is now. Lee M 04:55, 16 Nov 2003 (UTC)

and I've now reversed it...I have doubts that few look for the hill first. If this bothers you, feel free to revert it. Parelle

And I've done the obvious, and created a page for the hill itself, at Watership Down (place). It's known for other reasons than the story, after all. Loganberry 00:04, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I see that "Martin Rosen" has been unlinked, presumably because at the moment it redirects to Moishe Rosen. I think Martin Rosen the director is significant enough to have a page, so if no-one else does it first, I'll try to get a stub done, sort out the Moishe Rosen redirect, and then restore the link. Loganberry 03:05, 22 May 2005 (UTC)

Chapter 49

Reasons for my edits:

  1. The character of "Doctor Adams" is almost certainly based on Adams' father, not Richard himself; Richard is described in many editions' biographical blurb as "the son of a country doctor".
  2. Chapter 49 is entitled Dea ex Machina (not Deus...). This is because it is Lucy, rather than Doctor Adams, who is the important person here.

Loganberry (Talk) 18:27, 20 August 2005 (UTC)

Shouldn't the movie Donnie Darko be mentioned in cultural references?

Go ahead and add it if you like; I don't know the film well enough to do so reliably. Could you sign your comments on Talk pages (only) please, though? Use ~~~~ after your comment to do that. Cheers. Loganberry (Talk) 01:11, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

The book in Another Languages

I added a section about how is the book named in another languages. So far I only added the name of the Japanese version. Feel free to add or correct another languages' versions. --Luisedgarf 21:59, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

El-Hrair-Rah

Shouldn't some mention be made of this character? He's not in the breakdown, likely because he's not in the actual plot of the story, just in the internal mythos, but he is an important part of the book.

Ben

Gundam

Here's my source for the Gundam info: Category:Titans Test Team Mobile Weapons from the Advance of Zeta wiki. A web search for "hazel gundam" will probably yield some Hazel kits. --KJ 09:10, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

"Gundam model kits named after Hazel have been released by Bandai. Mobile weapons named Hazel-rah, Kehaar, Bigwig, and Hrududu also exist, albeit only in fiction. "

Don't all Gundams exist in fiction? This should be clarified

Revisions

  1. . A novel can not star anyone. This is a term reservered for preformances.
  2. . Second revision is simply to break up the run on sentence. Several ideas were clumped together. Not necessary.
  3. . The term "breaking through" is illusive and not encyclopedic.
  4. . The phrase "for purposes of fiction" seems like POV to me but, I'm willing to debate this one.
  5. . Yet again, this section was broken up to better exspress several ideas that have been needless jumbled into a run on sentence.
  6. . Use of the word "Legendary" is POV
  7. . Saying it is "one of the legendary xenofictions" is open ended. What are the others? This sentence still seems weaselly to me but I left it for another editor to fix.
  8. . "Chewed out" not encyclopedic
  9. . Use of the word they is illusive, who are they?
  10. . "Fornlornly", awkward wording but, thats my own personal opinion
  11. . Totlatarian state would be run "by" a totalitarian not "under" one.
  12. . "must persuad does to join" I didn't know what this sentence meant, so I changed "does" to "others"
  13. . More awkard wording. I intend to come back and put this section in a table when I have more time.
  14. . Adams is already wikified

I intend to come back and do more revisions when I have more time. --The_stuart 22:00, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for your edits, but please double-check to see how they affect flow and capitalization. --KJ 05:35, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
In number 12 of your list, The_stuart, "does" is the plural of "doe," a female rabbit, not a conjugation of "do." --Rosey 19:49, 25 April 2006

Some tidying needed...

...and I'm talking about the whole Watership Down section, not just this article. For a start, Thlayli is a silly place to put Bigwig's article, since a) the latter is a much more familiar name, and b) Thlayli isn't used at all in the 1978 film. Bigwig (Watership Down) is where it ought to be, and I intend to move it there subject to any serious objections. Several other articles also need to be moved, although some are a case of simple capitalisation corrections (eg El-ahrairah, which in fact I have just moved from the incorrect El-Ahrairah).

There are also a number of places in these WD articles that simply seem overly "fannish". As a devoted WD fan myself, I can understand that, but we need to remember that Wikipedia is not a personal website or journal. I've seen examples of Lapine used that were the work of fans, not of Richard Adams, and yet were quoted as though they were official canon.

A bit more attention to detail wouldn't go amiss either. For example, Owslafa didn't have a proper bolded headword until I put it in just now, and both that and the aforementioned El-ahrairah article used {{Fantasy-book-stub}}, which is just plain wrong: that stub is for books themselves, whereas El-ahrairah is a book character and Owslafa an institution.

More things come to mind - for example, more clearly marking out things that are not in all versions of the story (eg Redstone) - but this will do for now, I think. And yes, of course I'm going to work on improving these things and not just complaining! Hoi, hoi, u embleer Hrair... =;P Loganberry (Talk) 03:12, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

I generally agree; one more thing: we don't need to have articles for everything when we can put similar content together. We don't need a separate article for owslafa when we can merge it into owsla. --KJ 04:23, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
Owsla and Owslafa are sufficiently different to be on seperate pages. CL8 04:49, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
Then how come the old owslafa article didn't say anything worthy of another article? Can owslafa ever be anything other than a really small stub, a candidate for deletion or merging? I think not. --KJ 05:32, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
Come to think of it, I think it would be nice to have owsla redirect to Watership Down, or some other article. We don't need stubs with no hope. --KJ 05:35, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
Maybe we could have some sort of "Concepts in Watership Down" article where these things could be brought together? I'm thinking of the existing Minor Discworld concepts page; WD isn't as big a "universe" as Discworld, so we'd probably only need one page, wherein could be found (for example), Owsla, Owslafa, Wide Patrol, Hlessi... that sort of thing. Loganberry (Talk) 22:03, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Standardising article titles

I noticed that there wasn't much consistency in these: for example Captain Campion, Vervain (character) and Blackberry (rabbit). That made it harder to find (and edit) them, so I'm being bold and moving all those that require disambiguation in the first place (El-ahrairah doesn't, for example) to a standardised format of Character (Watership Down). I am making an exception for General Woundwort, because his title is almost an integral part of his name and extremely well-known. Loganberry (Talk) 15:32, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, Logan! --Kizor 18:06, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

Template?

I've just knocked this template up quickly. Please do not add it to article pages at the moment as there is not yet a proper template page in existence; I'm merely interested in hearing what people make of it.

Richard Adams' Watership Down
Novels: Watership Down - Tales from Watership Down
Adaptations: Feature film - Film Picture Book - TV series - BBC radio play - Stage adaptations
Characters: Bigwig - Blackavar - Blackberry - Bluebell - Campion - Chervil - Clover - Cowslip - Dandelion - Fiver - Flyairth - General Woundwort - Hannah - Hazel - Holly - Hyzenthlay - Kehaar - Pipkin - Primrose - Silver - Silverweed - Strawberry - The Threarah - Vervain - Vilthuril - more...
Mythical/story creatures: Black Rabbit of Inlé - El-ahrairah - Frith - Hufsa - King Darzin - Prince Rainbow - Rabscuttle - Rowsby Woof
Locations: Cowslip's warren - Darkhaven - Efrafa - River Enborne - Nuthanger Farm - Railway line - Redstone - Sandleford - River Test - Vleflain - Watership Down

One point I've already thought of: it's bound to be difficult to decide who is entitled to their own character article and who is not; the names I've given above are just a first suggestion, and I'm sure others will have their own opinions. I've included most of the original band that left Sandleford, but it could easily be argued that (say) Speedwell really doesn't have enough to do to make him worthy of his own article.

Another point that may come up: I know that informally the WD fandom has adopted "Warren of Shining Wires" or similar for Cowslip's place, but I don't think we can justify that here - a Google search shows that no variation has anything like as many hits as "Cowslip's warren", and perhaps more importantly the WoSW title is never once used in the books; it's an invention of the TV series. I think we should have "Cowslip's warren", with a redirect from WoSW and an explanation in the article.

Anyway, please give me some feedback on this template - what's missing, what ought to be removed, that sort of thing. For those who don't know, Flyairth is in Tales and Hannah is in the TV series. (And judging by all those redlinks, we have a big job still to do anyway!) Loganberry (Talk) 00:28, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for all the good work. :) Maybe we could split the template into smaller ones? In articles for the Ender's Game series, there are three templates: {{EnderBooks}}, {{EnderCharacters}}, and {{EnderThings}}. What do you think? --KJ 04:27, 12 June 2006 (UTC)
That was something I was thinking about myself. I don't think the template as it stands is that excessive, and I wouldn't want to split things up too much, as WD is a relatively small universe and there's no point in confusing things for the sake of it. And there are only two novels, after all, so it would be silly to have a separate template just for those; this isn't Discworld! However, a split that might work would be along the lines of Stories (meaning books, film, series, plays etc) / Characters / Locations / Miscellanea. I like the way the Ender's Game templates have links to the others in the bottom bar; I'd support adopting that if we did go for a split.
The Miscellanea section is the one I'm least sure about of the four I've mentioned; realistically, how many articles could we include there that would get beyond stub length? (See Owsla, which personally I think ought to be subsumed into a Concepts in Watership Down article anyway.) I've managed to write essays about several aspects, but obviously that's original research and thus not suitable for Wikipedia. I think we could do it, if we covered subjects such as the allegations of sexism, whether WD is allegorical, the awards the book won, etc... but it would be a big effort. Loganberry (Talk) 13:36, 12 June 2006 (UTC)
I've just left-aligned the template to see how it looks; center alignment always looks untidy to me. As for more miscellanea, Lapine needs to go somewhere. :3 Spottedowl 14:05, 12 June 2006 (UTC)
Heh; personally I think the centred alignment looks considerably more attractive! =:P More input on that point, among others, from other editors would be very welcome. Fair point about Lapine; you're probably right. 86.132.143.154 23:26, 12 June 2006 (UTC)
(That was me; I got signed out without noticing.) Loganberry (Talk) 16:03, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
How about a version without red links? It's already good enough to be put on article pages, IMHO. --kjoonlee 15:07, 18 June 2006 (UTC)
Richard Adams' Watership Down
Novels: Watership Down - Tales from Watership Down
Adaptations: Feature film
Characters: Bigwig - Blackberry - Campion - Dandelion - General Woundwort - Hazel - Kehaar - Vervain - more...
Mythical/story creatures: El-ahrairah
Locations: Efrafa - River Enborne - Railway line - Redstone - River Test - Watership Down
Looks okay, though I have very mixed feelings about leaving out redlinks; I think it may give readers a false sense of completeness. Ideally we'd have some sort of article on every relevant thing before using the template at all, but that's idealism.
The other question is whether to have one big template or several smaller ones. I've knocked up an example of the latter (with redlinks!), and that can be seen here: Template:Watership_Down/temp. Of course if this became active, each box would go on a separate template page. Loganberry (Talk) 01:33, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

Template!

I think red links are discouraged: see {{redlinks}}. If articles grow and the template grows, then I think we should split the template, but with the current amount of material, I think a single small template would suffice. (New section created to make editing easier.) --Kjoonlee 04:30, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Richard Adams' Watership Down
Novels: Watership Down - Tales from Watership Down
Adaptations: Feature film
Characters: Bigwig - Blackberry - Campion - Dandelion - General Woundwort - Fiver - Hazel - Kehaar - Vervain
Mythical/story creatures: El-ahrairah
Locations: Efrafa - River Enborne - Railway line - Redstone - River Test - Watership Down

How does this look? Fiver added, moved "List of characters" link to "Characters". --Kjoonlee 16:59, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

I note that the {{redlinks}} template has now been "removed after discussion because it was deemed not in keeping with Wikipedia's goals. It was argued that many redlinks on a page promote the creation of new articles." That being so, it would appear that redlinks are generally considered desirable. Loganberry (Talk) 00:28, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

Templates again

As I mentioned briefly above, redlinks are not now discouraged, if they ever were, and when the {{redlinks}} template was put up on Tfd in August, the discussion was overwhelmingly in favour of its deletion (13-2 if we're counting). The impression I've got over the years is that redlinks are actually generally encouraged, since they make it very quick and easy to see what still needs writing.

Having said that, I do agree that we could probably get away with a single template for the moment, so I'm going to add that to some relevant pages tonight. The possible split templates still exist at Template:Watership Down/temp, but if it is decided to use them at some point, please do not use the "move page" feature to bring them out of the "temp" page, since that would cause all kinds of problems as we'd want three new template pages rather than just the one. Loganberry (Talk) 00:34, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

Titled, entitled

Hi, in my lexicon the words titled and entitled are distinguished by their objects; people are entitled to prizes or titles, while works are titled their names. I think using "titled" for books or chapters is safer than using entitled. --Kjoonlee 11:15, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

You seem to be going by American usage, which is not helpful where Watership Down is concerned. It is a British book by a British author, and so Wikipedia convention is to use British English. "Titled" here is not usual British English usage, as can be seen from a Google search restricted to .uk domains. The phrase "the book titled" gets 660 hits, but the phrase "the book entitled" gets 11,700 hits - more than seventeen times as many. Besides, how on earth can "one sequel, entitled Tales..." be interpreted to mean anything to do with prizes?
Though I was originally tempted to revert again, I think that would be a ridiculous revert war to get into, but "titled" just does not look right in British English. That being so, instead I've edited the section to say what maybe should have been written in the first place, and reworded it to say "One sequel, Tales from Watership Down has been published..." I've also put it in a separate section right at the end (since it's not part of WD proper), which again should have been done from the start. That looks okay to me, and avoids the (en)titled problem entirely. Loganberry (Talk) 00:59, 20 October 2006 (UTC)
I normally try to follow British usage when I can. In fact, I learned my English in what is now Greater London (New Malden, Surrey, to be precise.) Despite that, I was unaware that there were BE/AmE differences involved. (BTW, searching for "book titled" and "book entitled," the latter gives me only 3.377 times as many hits in my case.)
Anyway, I guess a paraphrase solves the problem nicely. There are still some bits on chapters that still use "titled," though. --Kjoonlee 01:21, 20 October 2006 (UTC)
As a provincial, I could be rude and question whether London counts as representative of Britain, but that would be uncalled for! I don't know why you get such a different ratio; I have SafeSearch off in Google if that makes any difference. And thanks for pointing out the other occurrences of "titled"; I've reworded or removed those as appropriate. Loganberry (Talk) 01:52, 20 October 2006 (UTC)
  1. Word search, exclusive usage
    • Results 1 - 10 of about 18,400,000 for book entitled -titled. (0.16 seconds)
    • Results 1 - 10 of about 606,000 for book titled -entitled. (0.18 seconds)
  2. Phrase search, exclusive usage
    • Results 1 - 10 of about 171,000 for "book entitled" -titled. (0.05 seconds)
    • Results 1 - 10 of about 47,700 for "book titled" -entitled. (0.12 seconds)
  3. Phrase search
    • Results 1 - 10 of about 179,000 for "book entitled". (0.77 seconds)
    • Results 1 - 10 of about 52,700 for "book titled". (0.08 seconds)
  4. Word search
    • Results 1 - 10 of about 4,260,000 for book entitled. (0.53 seconds)
    • Results 1 - 10 of about 740,000 for book titled. (0.24 seconds)
These are results with SafeSearch off and no "site:uk"; I think "site:uk" removes results from .org or .net domains that are located in the UK. --Kjoonlee 02:09, 20 October 2006 (UTC)
(So I used "* pages from the UK." --Kjoonlee 02:11, 20 October 2006 (UTC))

Kehaar

Doesn't he deserve an article of his own? He's a pretty important character, even if he's not a rabbit. When I click on his link it only redirects to this page. Dora Nichov 03:35, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. There's still a lot of work to do on WD-related topics, and a proper page for Kehaar would seem to be a fairly high priority. Loganberry (Talk) 03:43, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

Yeah. I just HAD to say that, 'cause I was surprised nobody had brought this up yet. Dora Nichov 09:13, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

I suggested that the article be merged because it's a stub.Jrdaigle1000 16:40, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

It is on the short side, so I think it should be merged. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 72.94.182.11 (talk • contribs).

Stubs

I have noticed several stubs pertaining to Watership Down. I even saw an entire article about the word elil. I think this is overkill. I marked them to be merged with this one. Jrdaigle1000 16:49, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Elil and Owsla should probably go into an article called something like Concepts in Watership Down, since I think this main article would get too long if everything was included here; I wouldn't like to see it much longer than it is now. Specifically, elil and Owsla probably don't deserve articles of their own, but I disagree about Kehaar. He's a major character and deserves a proper article, even if he doesn't have one at the moment! So I'd quite strongly oppose that specific merge. Loganberry (Talk) 02:47, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

WikiProject Novels assessment

Rather lost in all the recent edits, Kevinalewis has assessed this article for WikiProject Novels, and has rated it as:

  • High importance: this is the second-highest class (out of four) and means that Watership Down itself is considered significant both within the field of literature and outside it, but is not quite a "core" book that absolutely everyone will know at least something about.
  • B-class: this is the fourth-highest class (out of six) and means that this specific article is considered to have a good deal of useful information, but to have significant gaps, some cleanup required, and/or missing references.

I would broadly agree with his assessment. I think this article isn't bad, but that it's not really good enough for a novel of Watership Down's importance. For example:

  • The article's layout isn't the clearest. There are 14 sections (not including the lead): do we really need quite that many? It could also do with a bit of a rewrite for consistency: it's rather too obvious at the moment that it's been written piecemeal.
  • Some fairly significant spoilers are given outside the spoiler tags - for example, the specific explanation of what's going on at Cowslip's warren in the "Literary significance & criticism" section, and this happens again in some of the character summaries.
  • Some of the plot and character summaries teeter on the edge of fansite rather than encyclopedia article. The list of characters itself is okay, but we should guard against bits and pieces continually being added to it and making it even more unwieldy. We don't need to mention everything about each character.
  • We should not list every single person/band/book that's gained inspiration from WD, and nor do we need to mention every time someone in a film or on TV is seen reading the book; there are - well - hrair of those! The reference from The Stand is quite famous and probably justified; the fact that two people on Lost mention it is really pretty minor.
  • "Trivia" sections are becoming increasingly frowned upon on Wikipedia. As we only have one entry in ours, it shouldn't be hard to incorporate that somewhere in the main article, and remove the Trivia section entirely. That would also discourage other editors from adding more and more trivia: not everything suitable for a WD fansite belongs in a Wikipedia article.
  • There are no inline references: that's only an absolute requirement for featured articles, but it's good practice anyway. If quoting page numbers from the book itself, we should stick to the British Penguin/Puffin editions (which have identical pagination), since it's a British book and they're the most popular editions by far in the UK.
  • There are too many external links, some of which are of dubious notability. WP's guidelines on external links gives a useful list of links normally to be avoided, which includes personal web pages not written by a "recognised authority". I'd be inclined to keep Chris Boyce's page as it's an excellent resource, but things like this are just plain fansite material and should be zapped. (And any site that plays music automatically will irritate the heck out of visitors anyway!) We really don't need multiple publication histories either.

I think that in the long term this article should be able to reach featured status, but it's a very tough target, so probably the first goal should be to try to get it approved as a Good Article. If I get the time in the nearish future I'll have a go at a complete rewrite, which I'll then put up on a temp page for everyone here to comment on - but I can't promise that I will have the time. Anyway, we have a lot of digging to do (yes, bucks too)! Loganberry (Talk) 03:27, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Inle right?

I know I'm probably wrong or else it would have probably been changed already but this is my favorite novel and I am just absolutley sure that it's the black rabbit of inle that comes for Hazel at the end, not el-hrairah —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Herzog (talk • contribs) 06:23, 6 January 2007 (UTC).

No, it's El-ahrairah; try to remember how Hazel noticed it was him. --Kjoonlee 06:55, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
Yup. The ears sparkle. --Kizor 08:01, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Woundwort "insane"?

I'm not too sure if I'd call Woundwort "insane" in the summary... Power-crazed and despotic yes, but he always had his wits about him, even during the waning moments of the last Watership Down seige. Banpei 21:24, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

I'd say where we draw the line is debatable. He did try to take on a dog bare-clawed in the end. That said, the current description seems quite appropriate. --Kizor 23:43, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

Yes, Woundwort is quite insane. : ) Jrdaigle1000 21:28, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

But Wikipedia is not a place for debates... WP:NOR WP:NPOV --Kjoonlee 22:00, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
God knows the mods don't want people to question wiki.

-G

cultural references

Can we scale down the cultural references section? The bar for inclusion at present seems to be any reference of any kind by any figure with no regard for a) the prominence of who is making the reference, b) the prominence of the work making the reference c) the degree to which the reference is notable within the work itself.

Of these, (c) bothers me the most, and furthermore can be evaluated with the least amount of PoV. To me the barrier needs to be that the work uses or references WD as a significant part of the work. Bunnies and Burrows is obviously inspired in large part by WD, and itself is relatively notable, so it's inclusion is entirely appropriate. The Wallace and Grommit example, on the other hand, is an incredibly minor and obscure reference not the the book directly but to the movie. If it belongs anywhere it's the trivia section, but I would argue that it isn't relevant at all for inclusion in this article.

Anyway, I've gotten rid of a couple that I thought were so far below the threshold that they weren't even debateable, but I thought I'd see if there was any major disagreement with reorganizing the cultural references section with a higher bar for inclusion. Charles (Kznf) 16:12, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

Please go ahead. I agree entirely with your feelings about this, and would like to see the glancing references removed entirely, unless there's some other reason why they're notable. Loganberry (Talk) 23:44, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
Okay, I've taken my first stab at it. One of the ways I determined whether or not to use or keep an example was whether or not it was mentioned anywhere in the article about the source. The Gundam ones in particular seemed kinda notable, but I couldn't find any reference to it in the Gundam articles or any of it's sub-articles at all, so I ditched it. I'm sure it could still be cleaned up, and copy-edited, but I think it represents a vast improvement over the list-mess that was the previous incarnation. Charles (Kznf) 16:34, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
Actually, the Gundam series in question is Advance of Zeta: The Flags of the Titans. In that series, all of the Titan Test Team's mobile suit is named after those character from WD, such as TR-01 Hazel. I think MAHQ.net and mechascientific.com have very good info and example of those mobile suit. Ang Ling Yuen 07:59, 7 May 2007 (UTC)
And that Gundam series doesn't have a wikipedia article that I could find. Watership Down is a major novel that has sold millions of copies. There are probably thousands of references to it throughout the popular cultures of dozens of countries. I don't think the Gundam one is any more notable than most of these, and I think it falls under WP:TRIVIA Charles (Kznf) 12:54, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

Star Wars

I can't find any terribly reliable source for Lucas being inspired by Watership Down. There's plenty of references for both of them being inspired by Hero with a thousand faces. A very small handful of places make reference to "interviews" where he credits WD, but never with a date or publication for the interview. For all I know this could be original research, but it wouldn't be that outrageous for it to be true, so I've merely tagged it with needing a citation for now. Charles (Kznf) 16:41, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

I think we should leave that tag for a little while, then if nothing turns up to justify the assertion we can delete it. If nobody can provide a verifiable source for it, then it shouldn't be in the article. Loganberry (Talk) 01:11, 3 May 2007 (UTC)