What about supplanting the text of this article by the text of Wikipedia's article on Tolkien? It's far more information in it. The present one here is rather scant, IMHO. I'm offering to get all the dead links out of the Wikipedia article. --Earendilyon 06:00, 16 February 2006 (EST)
- I agree, not sure why I hadn't done that already. I do think that on some of the Wikipedia articles we should start cutting them down. They cram everything into those few articles because they don't have the opportunity to allow the expansion of content and pages on the subject like we do. --Hyarion 11:56, 16 February 2006 (EST)
- But they do have that Middle-earth Portal I mentioned earlier @ Tolkien Gateway talk:Community Portal. --Earendilyon 16:30, 16 February 2006 (EST)
New Article Text
Well, I did it: I've copied the text from the Wikipedia article on Tolkien. I've deleted lots and lots of internal Wikipedia links; maybe even too many. Also, the pictures aren't there yet. And maybe we should put in some info from the old article? And perhaps 'export' some of the new article's text into seperate articles? --Earendilyon 05:38, 17 February 2006 (EST)
- Cool! Sorry I got side-tracked with Ardamir's pronunciations yesterday. I think adding any content that is missing (but relevant) is a good idea, also separating the broad topics into other articles. I'll try and work on that today. Images are another thing on my to-do list. I think the more images we have the much more enticing the site will look, unfortunately both enticing for visitors and lawyers... --Hyarion 11:31, 17 February 2006 (EST)
Awards
Is a CBE an award? And should there be a reference to it in the first paragraph (something like JRR Tolkien, [CBE])? -- Ederchil 15:21, 15 January 2008 (EST)
- The "Awards" section is intended to include awards, recognitions, honors, etc. so I think CBE would definitely be relevant. I think adding CBE after his name would be a good idea, although I'm not ecstatic about having an external link so near the beginning of the article, however I can't think of a better alternative. --Hyarion 15:48, 15 January 2008 (EST)
- The external link was just to give you some info in case you had no idea what I was talking about. Simply CBE would suffice. -- Ederchil 16:03, 15 January 2008 (EST)
- I suppose, my only concern would be the reader not knowing what CBE means, maybe a tooltip would work, or maybe it would be worth having an article for CBE. --Hyarion 16:18, 15 January 2008 (EST)
- How about an internal link to Tolkien#Awards? -- Ederchil 16:24, 15 January 2008 (EST)
Author
I'm not sure I like Tolkien being referred to as an "author" in the opening sentence. -Ingwe
- It's a straight wiki-rip that still needs a rewrite. I have no problems with "J.R.R. Tolkien is the creator of Middle-earth, the Little Kingdom, and his work forms the backbone of Tolkien Gateway" or something similar. -- Ederchil 01:38, 13 July 2008 (EDT)
We could just call him a philologist.Which was,after all,his profession. -Ingwe
Article title
"J.R.R." or "J. R. R."? --Morgan 17:57, 4 May 2011 (UTC)
- I don't know if there are Official Spelling RulesTM for this, but I think J.R.R. without the spaces is prettier. -- Ederchil (Talk/Contribs/Edits) 18:12, 4 May 2011 (UTC)
- Yes, I agree that it looks much prettier, and that it's much faster to write (I hate pressing the space between the full stops!). I just noticed that WP seems to have set a standard for having a space between abbreviated letters in their article titles.--Morgan 18:29, 4 May 2011 (UTC)
Image
Just want to get a consensus on what the best infobox image is for this page. Typically for real-life people we use photos rather than art. I think an image would look better but I don't have too strong of an opinion here. What do y'all think? ~ Éowyn ☆ talk ~ 17:39, 8 June 2024 (UTC)
- I agree, it's been a while since we've changed this image anyway. It would be great if we could find a photograph that maybe isn't extremely common so we can stand out a bit in search engines. That being said, I'd still be in favor of a common picture of him over the current illustration. Hyarion (talk) 18:05, 8 June 2024 (UTC)
- The one Wikipedia has seems representative, even intrinsic, to me.
Ayapo (talk) 18:38, 8 June 2024 (UTC)
- I like it as well, just wish we could stand out a bit. I know colorizing black and white photos has mixed opinions, it's not something I would be against though if done right. Hyarion (talk) 18:44, 8 June 2024 (UTC)
- I would prefer it not colorized, I think it should stay "real" as the feature image. Ayapo (talk) 18:48, 8 June 2024 (UTC)
- I like it as well, just wish we could stand out a bit. I know colorizing black and white photos has mixed opinions, it's not something I would be against though if done right. Hyarion (talk) 18:44, 8 June 2024 (UTC)
- Agreed that a photo (ideally an original one, not colorized) would be better for the infobox. --Pachyderminator 19:48, 8 June 2024 (UTC)
Page edits
My edit was a bit large for an edit summary to I'm going to try to list all the changes here:
- Sources!
- removed statements I could find no definitive evidence for
- Expanded
- added section (and page) about Suffield Family
- created artwork section
- Works inspired by Tolkien changed into a section about his general influence on fantasy.
- broke #writing into subsections and expanded
- formatting and cleanup, dates, linking biography section, grammar etc
- removed a couple pretty irrelevant/unimportant sentences
- rewrote some sections plagiarized from Wikipedia
I don't think any sections went without any change and I'm sure I missed stuff in this summary but this should hopefully be the big stuff.
I had planned on expanding this page more but while in the middle of this, my life got a bit crazy and I got completely distracted from this and am not confident I will be very active in editing in the future so I figure it's better to leave the page somewhat better than not better at all but I'm sure there's plenty of space for improvement still.
If I made a mistake in my edit, I probably won't be online to see any talk page comments so feel free to just remove anything that doesn't seem right.
Also shout out again to User:Ayapo for fixing the old image we had!
Hope to keep seeing y'all around and if not it's been a pleasure editing with y'all and keep up the hard work :) ~ Éowyn ☆ talk ~ 22:45, 1 September 2024 (UTC)
- @Dour1234, Apologies for removing what you had added, twas a complete accident. That being said, I don't totally agree with the edit. Tolkien's legal name is John Ronald Reuel Tolkien. He may have used the name Philip however he used quite a lot of pseudonyms, which is why we have a whole section specifically dedicated just to his pseudonyms, which at your suggestion I already added Philip to. Imo it's a bit misleading/confusing so best to just leave the pseudonyms in their appropriate section. I know we've disagreed on this topic before and clearly just reverting my edits didn't really make us much progress so feel free to respond to this as I could be totally wrong here. ~ Éowyn ☆ talk ~ 23:16, 1 September 2024 (UTC)
- I actually only reverted your removal of my addition as well as a few minor words. I did not revert your entire edit. I left 99% of it intact.Dour1234 (talk) 23:25, 1 September 2024 (UTC)
- I was also referencing a different time you undid one of my edits also about this name on a different page, but yes, you are correct and apologies if that was unclear. I mentioned that not to criticize any of your actions but just do point out that if there is a disagreement, we should instead discuss it. I already explained my reasons for removing it and requested that you do the same if you still believe it should be kept in but you instead undid my edit again and responded merely to be pedantic about my wording, which doesn't really matter seeing as I had been talking specifically about the one sentence you removed, not the rest of my edit. I'm not always right and as I stated before, I'm always open to having my mind changed but simply reverting edits doesn't help me understand your side.
- I'm just going to leave this here and see if anyone else has any other input. I'm not going to undo your undo for the time being as I think an edit war over a single word is silly but I would appreciate if you could explain why it's important to you to include the name Philip in the lead. ~ Éowyn ☆ talk ~ 23:39, 1 September 2024 (UTC)
- It is not important for me to have the name Phillip in the lead. I just think that it should be there because it is part of his name, not really a pseudonym. It seems strange to have his full name as a pseudonym. The name of the page is still J.R.R. Tolkien, which will never change. I only undid your edit regarding a few minor words (and commas) because it was easier than just making a new edit. I did not restore the name to the introduction.Dour1234 (talk) 23:45, 1 September 2024 (UTC)
- Okay, thanks Dour. Appreciate you cleaning up my edit :) ~ Éowyn ☆ talk ~ 00:03, 2 September 2024 (UTC)
- It is not important for me to have the name Phillip in the lead. I just think that it should be there because it is part of his name, not really a pseudonym. It seems strange to have his full name as a pseudonym. The name of the page is still J.R.R. Tolkien, which will never change. I only undid your edit regarding a few minor words (and commas) because it was easier than just making a new edit. I did not restore the name to the introduction.Dour1234 (talk) 23:45, 1 September 2024 (UTC)
- I actually only reverted your removal of my addition as well as a few minor words. I did not revert your entire edit. I left 99% of it intact.Dour1234 (talk) 23:25, 1 September 2024 (UTC)