Tolkien Gateway talk:To-do

From Tolkien Gateway

I didn't know where else to put this so here it will be. Concerning the Tolkien-themed song contest. Is this going to be for anyone, or just those who are registered? As well, when do you intend to start it, and who will be elected judges? --Narfil Palùrfalas 14:18, 6 June 2006 (EDT)

It's a great spot to talk about that. While it's still just an idea, one thought I had was to have a Tolkien Rap contest, and try to convince the Lords of the Rhymes to make another song based off of the lyrics, but that's a long stretch. All contests should allow non-registered users to participate because we don't want to exclude anyone as the more entries the better. That being said, for contests in general I'm trying to think of ways to give those registered and those who edit a bit of a boost at winning for their hard work. For the song I honestly can't even remember if I was thinking lyircs or actual vocal songs. I'm not sure when to start it as there are so many projects to do and so little time but the more interest surrounds it the sooner we will start as contests can help to generate some new visitors. Maybe we should assign a rank to the projects in order of what should be priority, and what should be set for the distant future. I think it only fair us being a wiki and community-driven that the entries be judged by everyone, save in rare circumstances when maybe we can have some "celebrities" pick the winning entries. If you have any suggestions for the contest do let us know. --Hyarion 14:27, 6 June 2006 (EDT)
I think a Tolkien-themed contest would be better in Middle-earth style (Instrumental/Vocal/Ballad style), but then again I am not one of those who likes Rap. I think that we should have a sort of pointing method. For instance, a maximum ten points for lyrical smoothness, ten for style (as in clearly dwarvish/elven/hobbitish), five for good description, etc. --Narfil Palùrfalas 14:39, 6 June 2006 (EDT)
I agree with you on the style, and I too dislike rap, but I thoroughly enjoy Lords of the Rhymes :) Another option would be to have fans create a techno themed song. (I can see you shaking your head :p ) We might as well open the contest to any genre. I like your idea on the score, we can average out all the points from users for the final score. Now we just need to find a prize. I'll try and get an article with more details written up. --Hyarion 14:58, 6 June 2006 (EDT)
The prize? How about free registration to Tolkien Gateway? --Narfil Palùrfalas 14:16, 8 June 2006 (EDT)

Project focus

One thing which I believe could propel this encyclopedia to reach out to more visitors would be to concentrate on one project, one project that no one else has attempted which would give us something (even more) unique to bring attention our way. What do you guys think about everyone concentrating on a single project? Or are we better off randomly improving the articles? (Which is great and well-needed too)

On a side-note I think partnering with other Tolkien websites is a must and even if we got a forum or two to utilize us as their 'official' encyclopedia I think it would help exponentially. I had the idea for a linking project at minastirith.com but that didn't seem to create much excitement. Some other wikis like The Tolkien Wiki or lotr.wikia.com might prove beneficial to talk to about somehow working together as I hate seeing multiple communities trying to accomplish the same task as every edit seems a waste. At this point in time I really think we have something unique to offer and if only we could allow other people to see it the improvements we could make with a larger editor base would be vast. Hm, I've written yet another rant which seems to have gone off topic and should probably be moved to the forums, oh well. --Hyarion 00:37, 15 June 2006 (EDT)

Old post, but I would like to express my agreement. I find no point in the existence of parallel communities. Any news on that? Sage 20:06, 6 August 2008 (EDT)

Forum Extension

Exactly what will the upgrade to the forum extension do (or be)? --Narfil Palùrfalas 21:50, 19 August 2006 (EDT)

Well if you look at the link it looks like the forum would look more like an actual forum with replies in boxes and date/user/etc all formatted neatly. What I'll do is get a 'test' wiki up where we can test out extensions like this before putting them on the live site. --Hyarion 21:58, 19 August 2006 (EDT)
So it will only affect the forums? --Narfil Palùrfalas 08:43, 20 August 2006 (EDT)
Yep. --Hyarion 12:06, 20 August 2006 (EDT)

Years

Okay, you don't mention it, but you might have noticed: I'll do my best to do a big makeover on the years. -- Ederchil 07:35, 22 January 2008 (EST)

Maps

When will the whole maps issue be worked on? Smeagol 14:45, 3 April 2008 (EDT)

Hm, which issue is that? --Hyarion 01:48, 7 April 2008 (EDT)
Not sure. However, a while ago I gave you access to the repository of maps I had collected, and you created a maps category but the maps page is still empty.


Now we're talking maps... can we make a clear distinction between canon and fanon maps? -- Ederchil 06:04, 7 April 2008 (EDT)
What are canon maps? Only those crappy ones that come with the books? Or others as well?? Smeagol 06:12, 9 April 2008 (EDT)
I mean, a clear distinction between the maps that use canon material - the ones by Tolkien or (at quick glance) the ones on your site, for example. With fanon maps I mean maps that include non-Tolkien stuff. Like (no complete list) "Image:Arda map.gif", "Image:Gondor-map.jpg", "Image:Gondor map.jpg", "Image:ICE - Part of the Misty Mountains.gif", "Image:Lebennin map.jpg", "Image:Linhir.gif", "Image:Middle-earth (large).jpg", "Image:Northern Middle-earth.jpg ", "Image:Pelargir.jpg", "Image:Sullivan - Gondor map.jpg". Maybe they should be included in "Images of..." rather than "Maps ", because they're not very encyclopedic. -- Ederchil 08:14, 9 April 2008 (EDT)
Then feel free to separate the "canon" maps from the rest and put them on the maps page ;-) Smeagol 14:43, 13 April 2008 (EDT)

Book

About the possibility of publishing a book with our content:
What we need to publish a book is a PDF file with the content. It's quite easy to create a PDF file from one Tolkien Gateway article. The problem is: we have a huge number of different and self-contained articles. So we have to create one article that contains the content of all the articles that shall be published. This becomes possible by inserting every single article like a template with {{:Article_name}}

But what kind of book should it be? A encyclopedia or rather a book about one topic like the War of the Ring? Eldarion Telcontar 11:03, 28 April 2008 (EDT)

Well, the difficult part is finding a publisher, making a PDF/offline version is something which we are planning separate from the book. With a PDF we can just export all the pages and then merge them into, most likely, a document for each letter of the alphabet or based on a particular category. However when we consider publishing content in a printed medium, there are more steps which need to be made. We are watching the current Harry Potter lawsuit and if the fansite is allowed to publish the encyclopedia then in a few years when our content is of high enough quality we will look into publishing it. Obviously we won't be able to publish all of the articles so we will have to manually go through the articles, choosing what to publish, and forking the content to a new wiki where we would remove templates, trim unnecessary images, summarize text in longer articles, etc. Unfortunately I don't think including all the articles into one article is going to be the most efficient method. I'll do some more researching on exporting to PDF as I do think it would be nice to have PDF versions of our content, however I would really like to build a standalone application for viewing the content which is capable of updating, searching, etc. I'll try to expand Tolkien_Gateway:Offline version as I think an offline version is more feasible than a published version at the present time. --Hyarion 12:28, 28 April 2008 (EDT)

map

recently I was thinking whether one could make a middle-earth map for google enginge but I don't know what software should be used. I think I saw somewhere a google maps-like page where one could zoom into M-e locations... but I can't find it anymore!!! 19:58, 6 August 2008 (EDT)

Music Portal

Well, i have made a lot of work in the music section, especially in creating new articles with bands, creating band templates and improving the music portal. I am sorry, but i haden't seen that every portal needs a supervisor and i've made big changes without asking. So, if you want you can put me as a supervisor in the music portal. I can help

P.S. I can also find lyrics for bands like Battlelore, blind guardian, which are Tolkien-related and i will try to put them in a category or article.

As far as I'm concerned, you can be the supervisor. If anyone disagrees, they can voice their complaints and then tell why they didn't do all the work you did. Maybe the lyrics can be put on the band's pages, or if it's big enough, the cd's page. -- Ederchil (Talk/Contribs/Edits) 22:42, 14 April 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]

map engine for middle-earth

About this point: "Create a Middle-earth map engine equivalent to Google Earth."

I think that it would be wonderful to have a Google Map for middle-earth. We could add markers for places and visitors could zoom in, could click on the markers and could read the articles about the specific place. Technically it's quite simple to implement such a map. I have have taken a large middle-earth map, have divided it into tiles for the different zoom levels and it works.
The problem is the underlying material:
There are no free canon maps with all details of middle-earth in the right size (at least 8000 x 8000 px). Could we therefore use a map drawn by fans as long as it uses only canon material or maps from the Atlas of Middle-earth? I'm unsure about the licenses and the canon/fanon problem.

Eldarion Telcontar 15:58, 28 May 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]

It's funny, I was looking into how we could make this just yesterday. I found this site which is something like it, I think we could work from this and make it better. I'm not sure about copyrights of maps, but the worst thing that would happen if we do use copyrighted maps is to be asked not to use them; only then would we have to draw our own.-- KingAragorn  talk  contribs  edits  email  19:56, 28 May 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Hm, that's roughly what I have done and it works very well (i'm referring to the link you gave). But it would be great if there were some more details like in Fonstad's Atlas. I think that it would be the best to draw our own map... - Eldarion Telcontar 20:19, 28 May 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Well, it would be good to have maps drawn by us; only problem is, who can draw them?-- KingAragorn  talk  contribs  edits  email  14:35, 29 May 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]
I have made some attempts. I have made a big collage out of Fonstad's regional maps. So far I have not found any free engine where I can put a M-e map. Sage 15:25, 29 May 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]
The engine I was using is the Google Maps API. It allows to add custom layers (e.g. a middle-earth map) and is free. - Eldarion Telcontar 20:16, 29 May 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]
OK, so we have the engine and the maps; this could work out great! Sage, could you upload your maps? Also, we'd need different maps for different zoom levels; I'm not sure how many is necessary though.-- KingAragorn  talk  contribs  edits  email  22:29, 29 May 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]