Wikipedia talk:WikiProject King Arthur

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[edit] Removed prod

Project page was misnamed. You have my profoundest apologies for that. John Carter 22:33, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Tristan und Isolde

Just wondering what is the link between the above opera, on whose Talk page your banner has appeared, and King Arthur? (Now, Parsifal ...) --GuillaumeTell 21:24, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Both characters in the title are in the King Arthur legend. Also, it was in the Arthurian theatre category, and we're just trying to get the template on everything. Wrad 21:31, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

(edit conflict)To expand on the above, which is somewhat presumptuous of me, as the above editor placed the banner, but here goes. The above articles are operatic representations of stories contained in the mythos of King Arthur. They are also contained in at least one of the subcategories of Category:Arthurian legend. I am not the one who tagged the article, but it does seem to me to be at least potentially useful if, for instance, the content of the above pages contained information indicating how (if at all) the storyline of the opera differed from the preexisting versions of the story, and/or which particular version of the story was being followed. I can say that reasonably we would probably be the best people to deal with such matters. It might be argued that such content would be of less than extreme importance to the article, and personally I would not necessarily disagree, but such lacks might be sufficient cause for an article to be found not to deserve GA or FA status. Also, I believe that eventually this project will develop a watchlist will be able to assist in monitoring the articles for recent changes. (In fact, a link to it is already included in the Project's main page.) It is my belief that we may also be able to assist in bringing these articles, and the other adaptations of Arthurian literature which currently has content in wikipedia, to GA or FA status. John Carter 21:41, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Just want to clarify that I didn't place the banner, although if it really is part of the vast reach of Arthurian legend, it wasn't misplaced. Wrad 21:50, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

It's not misplaced, any version of the Tristan and Iseult story is inseparable from the overarching Arthurian legend. I think it would be silly to separate out versions that mention Arthur and those that don't, when this project could help in improving articles on all the variants.--Cúchullain t/c 21:58, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Okay, then this project may need to be responsible for outlining its place within the legend. That may be helpful to the article. Wrad 22:00, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

I only qualified my earlier statements as I did because the members of the Wikipedia:WikiProject Opera, led by someone who describes himself as a professional editor, User:Kleinzach, has explicitly stated that they wish all the articles that they believe fall within their scope to conform to a standard of construction and content that they have arrived at. I am not doubting the truth of his being an editor, by the way, although he has himself expressed that he doubts the existence of several other things, including workgroups of Wikipedia:WikiProject Biography. They have gone so far as to question the members of the Biography project regarding their tagging and changes to operatic biographies, including (I believe) those which are counted as being the most important biographies. Part of that is based on the fact that Biography has its own standards for how a biographical article should be constructed, which differ from those of Opera. As we have no such "content" policies and guidelines, I don't think that we will necessarily be in conflict with them as Biography has been. John Carter 22:35, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Ok, so we just need to respect their standards, I see. You seem to have quite a broad knowledge of the wiki. Wrad 22:40, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, John never ceases to amaze. I guess he is the warlord of Mars, after all.;)--Cúchullain t/c 23:00, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Well, you've sort of answered my question, and I am now marginally more clued up on the Knights of the Round Table than I was before, so thanks. BTW, the Wikipedia:WikiProject Opera does not explicitly have a Leader. --GuillaumeTell 00:26, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Sorry about that mistake. John Carter 00:33, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
I feel I should explicitly state an implicit assumption I made earlier, for the purposes of clarification. It may be, depending upon how this project develops, that an article which is clearly apparently within the scope of another project, specifically Opera, may, depending upon the importance of the article to that project, be of greater importance to us than it's apparent "home" project. I am thinking hear specifically of Richard Wagner's Parsifal. It is, as far as I can remember, one of the first works to explicitly imply a connection between the Holy Grail and the area of France and Spain with which the Grail is explicitly connected in such books as Holy Blood, Holy Grail. As the majority of the content in wikipedia relating to the Grail is, I think fairly reasonably, within the scope of this project, and the history of the Grail is an issue which might be of considerable importance to this project, depending on how the various members feel, it is possible that the article on Wagner's opera might be of unusually high importance to us. I again emphasize might. Also, there may be other "cross-over" articles which are in substantially the same position where, for whatever reason, they might be more important to us than to other projects. In the event we do encounter this situation, it is my hope that we will do our best to respect any existing guidelines other parties interested in the article might have, while at the same time giving ourselves "space" within the article to address issues of importance to us. Sorry once again for having not been more specific earlier. John Carter 13:53, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
I just remembered another article where there is an intersection with another WikiProject: the English composer Henry Purcell wrote an opera called King Arthur. More modern works include Gawain and the musical Camelot. --Kyoko 13:13, 8 May 2007 (UTC)
Not to mention Spamalot. --GuillaumeTell 13:26, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Navbox

So far we have template tags on all of the Arthurian characters category pages! We need some sort of navbox or something to make it easier to navigate between main characters, but I don't know how to decide who is a main character.

Here are some that are:

  • Arthur
  • Uther Pendragon
  • Guinevere
  • Mordred
  • Gawain
  • Morgan Le Fay
  • Lancelot
  • Kay
  • Galahad
  • Nimue (?)
  • Merlin (?)
  • Percival (?)

???

Navboxes may also be useful in organizing candidates for Arthur's basis in history, or in organizing the more popular works based on him, but I haven't sorted out exactly how to organize this. Wrad 23:08, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Maybe an option would be to have two navboxes. One of these would be links to the main characters, (including Lancelot, Galahad, Gawain, and Kay) and include a link to the second, which would be for the remaining Knights of the Round Table. I propose this primarily because many/most of the knights are subjects of one or more stories themselves, and are probably deserving of their own links. Regarding works based on him, considering the considerable amount of overlap between film and book, maybe setting up a sidebar listing them all might be the way to go. I have no clue how to handle the historical articles, however. Sorry. John Carter 23:19, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
I've been toying with creating navboxes for a long time, but I'm not sure how it should work. There are so many works, authors, and characters that it would be hard to judge which is the most important. Perhaps we should look into how Wikipedia:WikiProject Star Wars handles it, they have a similar scope as we do.--Cúchullain t/c 23:21, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

I made one. We should probably move this conversation to its talk page to hammer this out.

v • d • e
King Arthur Characters

It is located here. [1] Wrad 21:19, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

A navbox might also be useful for linking works related to Arthurian legend. I know that the category already does that, but a navbox would allow greater organisation, for example:
Novel (The Once and Future King, The Mists of Avalon)
Poem (Parzifal, Idylls of the King)
Theatrical work (Camelot, Spamalot, etc.)
My concern is that this could rapidly become unwieldy. --Kyoko 14:08, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] are derivative works covered in this project?

Hello, would derivative works such as Bulfinch's Mythology fall under the scope of this project? Thanks, --Kyoko 01:27, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Good question. I would have to say "yes" to that specific example, as at least the second volume of the work in question includes "King Arthur" in the title. Also, in general, even derivative works will have some sort of commentary on the subject, and that commentary would generally be original to the book in question. John Carter 01:34, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

I don't know how many of you are familiar with Stargate SG-1, but there are several episodes in Seasons 9 and 10 that are heavily entrenched in Arthur lore. They mix ancient Arthurian legend with Sci-fi. Also, C. S. Lewis's That Hideous Strength. Wrad 03:22, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

I'm reasonably familiar with Stargate SG-1, where Merlin's powers are explained by his being an ancient alien (literally, one of the Ancients) whose apparent magic is actually highly advanced technology. It seems a bit of a stretch to lump the series under King Arthur, though. --Kyoko 11:31, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
In this instance, I can see maybe including That Hideous Strength, as it deals explicitly with reawakening Merlin, which is directly related to the myth of Merlin. I think the idea that each and every person of history who demonstrated extraordinary ability was some sort of alien has been done so often that the specific information regarding to Stargate is so minimal that those articles might safely not be included. Unless, of course, they in some way explicitly deal with the legend of Merlin in a direct way. I'm afraid I don't know the show at all, however, so I can't say anything more about it. John Carter 15:09, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Haha, you may be right. I was pretty impressed with these episodes, though. Still, I don't know what we would do with them. Wrad 15:24, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

What about video games (or other kinds of games), such as Dark Age of Camelot? fleela | ± 15:27, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

I personally think that our project could put these types of things in Arthurian categories, as well as pointing out how they are similar to or different from the actual myth. Not a big job, but a necessary one. Most of these would be low-priority, but could be within the project. Wrad 15:33, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Which article in the Ceasar's invasions of Britain category are we covering? Wrad 20:03, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Considering that all the articles relating to that subject deal with things known from what would be called concrete history (assuming Julius' honesty, of course) I didn't include that category as within the scope of the project thinking I wasn't sure it really qualified. I should have mentioned that reservation explicitly earlier, however, and certainly agree it is a decision of the project as a whole which will finally be followed. John Carter 14:56, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] How about authors?

Are authors included in the project? And if it depends, what are we using to judge who gets included and who doesn't?  — AnnaKucsma   (Talk to me!) 18:10, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

I would think Thomas Malory and Chretien de Troyes certainly would be, as their lives can be seen as significant to the construction of the works they created. Also, any nonfiction author who has published works relating to the subject might be covered. Other opinions? John Carter 14:56, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Peer review

I just put Sir Gawain and the Green Knight up for a peer review. Feel free to comment or improve the article. Wrad 20:24, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Arthur's Oven

Good luck with the project, one missing link I've come across is Arthur's Oven near Carron – could do with a page on that, and there seem to be lots of them! . ... dave souza, talk 18:08, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Collaboration

I feel we need to decide on an article to collaborate on and get to feature standard. The most obvious one is the King Arthur page. Maybe we should lay out a plan of action . . . Wrad 00:36, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

That sounds fine with me, but I'm busy with other things, so my own contribution will be minimal. I'm willing to do things like copyedit and do quick translations, but nothing more involved than that. --Kyoko 00:57, 7 May 2007 (UTC)
Sounds good to me. What are you thinking, Wrad?--Cúchullain t/c 05:19, 7 May 2007 (UTC)
As a proposal, I think it might be a good idea to first specify which articles we think of as "Top" importance, thus indicating to the membership and anyone else interested that, whether that article is the specific collaboration of the (period) or not, it is one of the articles we see as being most important and thus we should all collectively focus the greatest degree of attention on. Any responses? John Carter 15:07, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

We do need to set some top priorities. I'll draw up my suggestions in a sec. Let's set King Arthur up for collaboration in the meantime. It'll set up some standards for other character pages, and be our first real accomplishment as a project. Wrad 15:10, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Top articles

This is just to discuss and lay out the top-importance articles in our project. Here's a quick list of possibilities:

These are already marked as top.

  1. King Arthur
  2. Matter of Britain

After looking through the rest, I hesitate to put any others as high, just so we don't have too many and spread ourselves out, and also because I just don't see any others that reach their level.

Here are some that should at least be high importance:

  1. Merlin
  2. Guinevere
  3. Lancelot
  4. Mordred
  5. Morgan le Fay
  6. Knights of the Round Table
  7. Camelot (These last two I can see as possibly being high importance)
  8. Historical basis for King Arthur

Also, some of our lists should be at least high importance, in my opinion. They provide a valuable "central-information station" for our project and for wikiusers which needs to be carefully maintained:

  1. List of books about King Arthur
  2. List of Arthurian characters
  3. List of films based on Arthurian legend
  4. Sites and places associated with Arthurian legend
  5. King Arthur in various media

Let me know what you think. Wrad 22:36, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

I've started a new page at Wikipedia:WikiProject King Arthur/Importance to allow for broader discussion of this matter. Personally, I think we might best be served to determine which general level of importance certain types of articles will receive, and then specifically discuss individual articles which we think might not necessarily fall in the same importance grade as others of their type. Personally, I could see perhaps conceivably adding Gawain, Percival, and the Holy Grail to the list above, with the possibly remote possibility of dropping Morgan to high. John Carter 23:43, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Project tag

I'm not sure you need one of your project tags at Merlin (disambiguation)... --Dweller 09:28, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

You probably have a point. In the defense of whoever put it there, though 6 of the 45 entries in that list do directly relate to this project, so we do have a degree of interest in it. However, if the banner is removed, I don't think I personally would lose any sleep over it. :) John Carter 14:03, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Collaboration

I just wanted to make a note here about Wrad's proposal of collaboration to get our flagship article, King Arthur, up to FA status. This has been a dream of mine since I started editing here over two years ago, so I hope we can see it through. Rex quondam rexque futurus, and all that.--Cúchullain t/c 07:13, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] King Arthur (film)

Could anyone provide more sources for its list of historical inaccuracies? I've seen these in critiques, but those are only tertiary sources. Some secondary sources (or even primary) would be great. This is important as the film is most notable for being a "historical" take which isn't that historical. Uthanc 03:19, 6 August 2007 (UTC)


[edit] odd

Having been tagging monty python related articles for most of the day it would appear that this King Arthur project has either had a good joker ( i was tagging to quick to check the history sections of the arts) as a participant - or this project is based on monty python - as there were some itmes that were more python than king arthur - and there were this project tags and not a monty python tag in sight. May this serve you well if you need it - and may your sense of humour continue - whoever or whatever you are - its was and will be for a while less perplexing as various python skits are part of this project - and not tagged for the pythons - may all your knights go niiii - 13:26, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

That tagger was probably me. The reason for the tagging for the one project and not the other were that (1) the Python project was apparently basically inactive, and also one of which I am not myself a member; there didn't seem much reason to tag for an inactive project, and (2) all of the articles relative to Category:Monty Python and the Holy Grail are contained in a subcategory of Category:Arthurian legend, and are thus within the scope of this newer project. I was tagging for the newer project when it was created. Also, I regret to say that such attempts at comandeering the territory of others are part of the violence inherent in the system. I might come over to the Python project for a quick look-see, though, and see if I can think I can disply my tendencies for megalomania offer any assistance to that project as well. John Carter 14:38, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the explanation - may your knights all be black :) SatuSuro 15:05, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Owain, or the Lady of the Fountain

The first external link goes to a page about punk mp3's and fashion. I had a look and couldn't find anything on-topic at the site ('zinescene') so I think the link should be deleted. There's already a link to a Wikisource file of the Lady Charlotte Guest translation, so the external one's probably redundant.

I'd delete it myself but I'm rather new to this and it seems a bit cavalier just to wade in and do it without asking.

--Wes Pacek 05:14, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Check out this page: WP:BE BOLD. I think your idea is great. Wrad 05:44, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

OK. I waded in emboldened :-) Thanks. Wes Pacek 21:39, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Sir Gawain and the Green Knight FAC

This article is up for FA status, and if it passes it will be our first FA! Have a look. Wrad (talk) 23:19, 26 February 2008 (UTC)


[edit] Other

Wikipedia:WikiProject Celts is a very relavent related project.---G.T.N. (talk) 23:46, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Sub-Roman Britain Wikiproject

I've proposed a Sub-Roman Britain Wikiproject, and as it involves the time period of Arthur, I thought I'd recommend those interested join. There's a wealth of information about this subject, but surprisingly few good articles. Please check it out! ---G.T.N. (talk) 01:15, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

The proposal's been changed to a taskforce in European history. Come join up if you like the idea.---G.T.N. (talk) 02:35, 30 March 2008 (UTC)