Headrock, welcome!
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Chapter Summaries
Hello Headrock,
Great work on updating the chapter summaries - you have managed to do a lot in a small amount of time! Thanks for contributing.
I see from your edit notes that you are conscious about the length of the summaries already but I do think they need to be trimmed down somehow. My personal feedback would be to not include so many quotes, to focus more on just the key events and also streamline your exposition.
For example:
When Sam sees the inn, he becomes suspicious and recommends seeking out a Hobbit family to stay with. Frodo reminds him that Tom Bombadil had recommended the inn and spoke well of its proprietor, Barliman Butterbur. They hear cheerful songs and laughter from inside, which calms them down a little.
The Hobbits take their ponies into the courtyard, where they encounter Barliman, a short, fat man with a reddish face. After introductions, Barliman seems to recall something related to four Hobbits, but can't remember what it was. He apologizes that the inn is quite busy, indicating that it is an unusual situation. Fortunately, the inn has a room available that is specifically designed for Hobbits. He calls his helpers to take care of the ponies, and invites the Hobbits to their room.
Could potentially be trimmed down to:
The hobbits arrive at The Prancing Pony inn and meet its proprietor, Barliman Butterbur. He finds them a room suitable for hobbits and has their ponies taken to his stables.
In addition to this, one thing you will need to amend is that these articles should be written from an "in-universe" perspective, so we should not be mentioning a narrator and everything should be written in past tense. You can check out the Manual of Style for all guidelines. - incorrect. See update below.
Finally please feel free to join the TG Discord Server where you can seek further feedback from others more knowledgeable than I.
Thank you and happy editing! JR Snow (talk) 12:10, 25 July 2023 (UTC)
- Yeah, I'm always too worried to leave out something which might actually be important. I do leave out Tolkien's many descriptions almost entirely, since such details are not really part of the narrative, and are sufficiently explained in the articles for each subject. I do, however, try to keep most character actions inside, as they can often explain or have a bearing on later occurrences in the same chapter or even later in the book. In the case of your example, you're right that it's probably not necessary to specifically "set up" the unease about the inn, since it doesn't "pay off" on its own, and other parts of the narrative reinforce it anyway. However, it is definitely necessary to mention that Butterbur can't remember what he was told about four Hobbits, since this comes up later in both this chapter and the following one. Similarly, the reminder that Tom Bombadil vouched for Butterbur should probably be left in, to reduce dependence on reading previous articles (the same reason why I often mention which Hobbits are present, rather than just saying "the Hobbits").
- Also, with only about 3 or 4 quotes per chapter, I don't think they're really that excessive; I tend only to quote songs (if their contents have a direct bearing on events) and things that would be very clunky to explain with words. I'll try to tighten it up if I can, and you're welcome to catch me out on this if you still think they're excessive.
- However, I completely disagree that all exposition must be cut, for the same reason that I completely disagree with the final part of your message here: These are explicitly not in-universe articles! There is no such concept within the universe of Middle-earth called "A Short Cut to Mushrooms", for example; it is not a proper noun within the universe, and cannot be treated as such. The concept only exists in our world. These chapter articles are entirely ex-universal, reporting on the contents of a chapter in the novel "The Lord of the Rings". As such, not only should they always be in the present tense, but can freely refer to narration. They discuss a narrative.
- If that contradicts the site's style-guide, then either the style-guide needs to make an exception or the chapter articles must be removed entirely. You'll note, for example, that the article The Fellowship of the Ring also - correctly - summarizes the contents of the book in the present tense. It is not a report of events occurring within a certain timeframe of the universe, but a report on the things written within a discrete portion of a real-world novel.
- In fact, that was the reason I started writing these in the first place. I only ended up adding so much information to each article because so much happened to be missing from the original summaries; the original motivation was to repair the tense alone.
- Since a narrative is what's being discussed, the decision to leave in things like set-up and payoff are in fact relevant, since they are part of the structure of the narrative. We're not just telling about the dry events (that is what articles about the concepts themselves should do), but about the contents of each chapter. This could actually even justify the addition of Tolkien's descriptions, but they are the least important and would bloat the articles unnecessarily, which is why I always leave them out.
- --Headrock (talk) 01:24, 26 July 2023 (UTC)
- I agree in that as far as I'm aware, book and chapter articles are ex-universe. Sage (talk) 03:37, 26 July 2023 (UTC)
- Thanks for taking the feedback - I do not want you to think that the work you have done is anything but worthwhile. The expansion of these summaries were sorely needed!
- I hope I am not stepping on your toes by offering suggestions on how to shorten them and I certainly would not propose removing all exposition. However, as I said earlier it is perhaps possible to "streamline" the exposition; but I will not edit your work as you are clearly a capable writer.
- My personal preference is shorter summaries with quotes only used where, as you say, they add something you can't convey with your own words. Others may have a different opinion.
- Upon reading your comments (and others on Discord) regarding in-or-ex-universe I think you (and @Sage) are right about this and I am wrong, although there does seem to be some inconsistency within TG on how we are writing summaries / synopses the Wikipedia standard is defined as requiring "historical present tense" (thanks @Mord for finding that). JR Snow (talk) 13:37, 26 July 2023 (UTC)
- You're not stepping on my toes at all. This is a collaboration project and I would be wrong not to expect - and welcome - criticism. In fact, I wouldn't mind if you went ahead and just made changes wherever you thought you were necessary. The only thing I ask is you keep in mind why I kept things in; but that doesn't mean they actually have to be left in. That's basically the same thing I'm doing to Tolkien, come to think of it!
- On the topic of summaries and synopses, each serves a different purpose and has a place in different types of articles; it can definitely be tricky to decide which one is best in each case. Going back to The Fellowship of the Ring, it offers really short synopses that barely explain what's in each book - and that's perfectly fine for that article. Otherwise it would be a gigantic wall of text. However the article pages - if they are to exist at all - would contain almost no other information if the long-form summaries were removed, leaving "all the room in the world" for larger summaries, so to speak. It's fine that there's no consistency there.
- As you can see, what I went for is more of a "recapitulation" than a synopsis. This is an informed decision, on the basis of two assumptions:
- 1) Readers will rarely (if ever) reach a specific chapter article looking for a synopsis; they'll have questions about particular things happening at that particular point in the book, and a synopsis by definition does not answer any but the most basic questions. Thus, you have to make sure to answer a wider variety of question they might have.
- 2) Readers will want to be drawn from these articles deeper into the Wiki, or at least should be encouraged to. A recapitulation lends itself greatly to putting in links to other concepts, since it tries to hit every single "linkable" concept brought up in each chapter -- skipping none, if at all possible.
- For example, if we go back to "A Short Cut to Mushrooms", the reader might come looking for this article with all sorts of questions that you have to anticipate in advance. Some of them are obvious ("What's the name of that farmer, again?"), but others might be more obscure ("What is the name of that song they sing on the way to the farm?", or "Did Maggot meet a Black Rider before the Hobbits got there? What was Maggot's reaction?"). A synopsis answers only the first question, while a recapitulation should also answer the others, preferably with a handy link straight to more information. The more information you cut out of it, the more you force the reader to wrack their brains on locating the more esoteric stuff they might be looking for - or go open the book themselves (thus defeating the purpose of the Wiki).
- In fact, I've even happened to add some information that I couldn't find anywhere else on the Wiki (such as the fact that the Standing Stones next to the Barrow-wight's barrow seemed to disappear after the Hobbits were rescued). That sort of information might not be important to mention in any other article, but it is perfect to mention as part of the narrative.
- It's definitely a balancing act, and I would not be averse to any discussion about what should and shouldn't be left in!
- --Headrock (talk) 22:18, 26 July 2023 (UTC)
- It is enjoyable to rediscover some strange details, that are easy to forget, especially if they don't fit well with the general impression we have about Middle-earth. Enigmas, like the disappearing stones, are one of this. Everyone remembers that Gandalf fell in Moria and fought the Balrog, but who knows/remembers that during this he met the "unnamed creatures"? I think we mustn't ignore or neglect those underdeveloped details because they are brush strokes that give different depth to the Legendarium. Sage (talk) 15:48, 27 July 2023 (UTC)
- LOL! I don't remember those!
- --Headrock (talk) 20:58, 27 July 2023 (UTC)
- It is enjoyable to rediscover some strange details, that are easy to forget, especially if they don't fit well with the general impression we have about Middle-earth. Enigmas, like the disappearing stones, are one of this. Everyone remembers that Gandalf fell in Moria and fought the Balrog, but who knows/remembers that during this he met the "unnamed creatures"? I think we mustn't ignore or neglect those underdeveloped details because they are brush strokes that give different depth to the Legendarium. Sage (talk) 15:48, 27 July 2023 (UTC)
AI / LLM Usage
Hi Headrock! Thanks for your recent (and past) contributions to The Council of Elrond. I appreciate your transparency in mentioning the usage of a LLM for improving the article. We've had a policy against AI images on the wiki, but to my knowledge I don't think we've actually had a statement when it comes to LLM editing yet, so your contributions weren't breaking any rules.
As I'm sure you can manage, the power of AI/LLM's is a double edged sword when it comes to content websites like TG. At this point in time, the feedback we've received is that fans wish to view TG without AI generated images and content. I've gone ahead and updated our policy and reverted your recent edits, but I'm definitely open to continuing the discussion if you have any suggestions or feedback as to how we can handle the topic. I can tell you spent time on the edits, but we also want to make sure we convey to our readers that our articles are purely written by humans. We appreciate your help! Hyarion (talk) 20:07, 3 August 2025 (UTC)
- The current article was originally written by me from scratch, and I was asked by several people to edit it for length, which I failed to do in 2023. Eventually I asked an LLM to take a look at it, and worked together with it for nearly 6 straight hours, deciding which elements should stay in and which should be removed, discussing the merits of each element in the context of the entire plot and theme of the book, and then generating and regenerating combinations of the original content until I was perfectly satisfied. Then it was another 4 hours of reading and re-reading the new summary to make sure nothing of importance had been lost, and correcting grammatical errors resulting from the LLM's unique speech pattern. At what point does this stop being "AI-generated content" and becomes my work? In fact, was it AI-generated content at any point during the process?
- I believe this is a knee-jerk reaction that completely misses the entire point of everything I was doing. Meanwhile, it looks like editors have been undoing a lot of the 100% manual work that I'd already put into fixing earlier chapter articles, and literally no one at all stepped in to stop them. Something's backwards here. Headrock (talk) 22:35, 3 August 2025 (UTC)
- I can only imagine how frustrating that must have felt to spend so much time on improving the article and to have your work undone, I'm sorry for that. You bring up a great point, when using AI to write or rewrite content, the lines become blurred as to what is AI generated and what is written by the author. The vast majority of feedback we've received from fans is they wish TG to remain AI-free. We certainly can understand your perspective though and will take that into account for future policy changes.
- I went through your most recent articles, [1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6] and I'm afraid I'm not seeing any undoing of your edits. Is there a particular article you had in mind? Hyarion (talk) 03:59, 4 August 2025 (UTC)
- In that case, the Tolkien Gateway is doomed. There is almost a 100% certainty that it already contains AI-generated content which you would never recognize; and that amount will only increase over time. As it does, you'll have editors accusing each other of using AI, because you literally couldn't tell if they did or didn't. Read the article you've just erased and tell me which parts were written purely by the AI, and which were written purely by me. Had I not literally told you I used AI in the process, you never would have known. That way lies utter madness. It literally means that no matter what I write on this wiki from this point onward, I could "credibly" be accused of using AI again and lose even more hours of work, so there's no point in editing here anymore. Headrock (talk) 05:27, 4 August 2025 (UTC)