User talk:Gamling

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Revision as of 21:49, 30 June 2011 by Gamling (talk | contribs)

Latest comment: 30 June 2011 by Gamling in topic Boffin family tree

Welcome!

Hello Henry, and welcome to Tolkien Gateway! I hope you like the place and choose to join our work. Here are a few good links for newcomers:

I hope you enjoy editing here and we look forward to your future edits. By the way, you can sign your name on Talk and vote pages using three tildes, like this: ~~~. Four tildes (~~~~) produces your name and the current date. If you have any questions, see the help pages, add a question to the Council forums, join our chat or ask me on my talk page. Keep up the great work!

Welcome

Nice to have you on board! Hope you will enjoy editing on Tolkien Gateway! --Morgan 22:53, 7 March 2011 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Seconded! A pleasure to have you around Gamling. I don't suppose you still have any pictures of that scroll? --Hyarion 01:06, 8 March 2011 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Well, I still have the scroll but I haven't photographed the whole thing. Perhaps that's a project I ought to do. If I do though the next suggestion will be to post it and I'd need some instructions on how and where to do so. Unsigned comment by Gamling (talk • contribs).
Just let us know if you need any help, I'm sure there could be a place for images of the scroll here on TG.--Morgan 17:57, 8 March 2011 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Welcome from me too! :) If you need any help in getting to grips with using the wiki software feel free to ask me, Hyarion, Morgan, Mith, Ederchil or Amroth. -- KingAragorn  talk  contribs  edits  email  18:21, 8 March 2011 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Welcome, hopely you will have a good time here. --Amroth 18:25, 8 March 2011 (UTC)Reply[reply]

British/American English

I've noticed that on a couple of occasions you have amended an article from British usage to American usage; just to let you know that both British English and American English is acceptable on the wiki (I think usage of it is about 50/50 at the moment). The general rule (which, admittedly, is not written down anywhere) is that whoever writes or rewrites an article effectively "claims" it for their language and future editors should respect that; so, for instance, in your excellent Letter 163 no one should come along and change "labor" to "labour".

Keep up the good work! --Mith (Talk/Contribs/Edits) 09:03, 30 March 2011 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Letters

Look at all those blue links! I just wanted to congratulate you on all your hard work on those letters. The section is an invaluable addition to TG and I'm sure a great many people will appreciate the time you spent on it. --Hyarion 23:48, 11 May 2011 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Thank you for the congratulations Hyarion, but there is still one more, the epistolary Fastitocalon - Letter 131 - which has as its "summary" just the head note and nothing of the body of the text. I have begun working on it but this one is going to take a bit of time. -- Gamling 00:02, 12 May 2011 (UTC)
I second that Sage 08:02, 12 May 2011 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Great work, Gamling! It'll be interesting to see your next project on TG! --Morgan 10:29, 12 May 2011 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Nice Work! I actually didn't see that you were already this far. Now people who haven't purchased the letters (I for example) can finally find out what Tolkien wrote in these :) I also second Morgan about your next peolple (I like beer, by the way :P ). --Amroth 15:11, 12 May 2011 (UTC)Reply[reply]


I have just finished the summary of Letter 131 (9 pages in Word, out of 17 pages in "The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien", out of 41 pages in the original) so now the Letters are "done" (except for edits).

I didn't mean to disappear for a few days but that's what Letter 131 took. Since Morgan asked (seconded by Amroth), here's some of what I plan to do:

  • Some of you may have seen me make corrections of grammar and misspelling here and there - that'll continue.
  • Add references to various articles. When I updated "Rhimdath" it was because it had no references and I did not know where the information came from. I eventually found a reference but outside of the Tolkien Gateway. By the way, a number of people made tweaks to what I did which I am happy to see.
  • I'm thinking about working on some of the Locations articles and I will probably continue to generate articles from the Wanted pages, especially those with lots of income and unfulfilled links.

In addition--

  • Next week I will vanish again (for 4 days) to retrieve my son from college for the summer.
  • With my son's help I will embark on a special project. Years ago I produced a 22-page essay on an aspect of Middle-earth. I now want to create a Website for this essay, and add diagrams and other pictorial aids. When it is done I'll let you know since I would appreciate comments. I will also ask if the Tolkien Gateway would want to reference what I will have done. I believe it will count as Tolkienology but that may be up to your judgment (which is why I've been greatly interested in following the Original Research discussion). I will still be active as a contributor to the Tolkien Gateway but some of my time will be on this other project.

-- Gamling 05:35, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

Sound's Interesting. If you give me the link (once it's done) I'll certainly give comments. Though, it may cost some time since I've test week over 3 weeks. --Amroth 16:05, 20 May 2011 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Favor

I would be grateful if you checked War of the Ring. For months it has been tagged as needing improvement. I made some effort to improve and make it a 'complete' article but since nobody contributed to it since then, there was no feedback or corrections to my blunders. Some paragraphs are awfully written and it would really need a second hand. Sage 06:40, 19 May 2011 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Comments on Edits

On the Recent Changes page many editors have a short comment that appears after each of their edits, and they appear to have been written by the editor. I don't know how this is done and I'd like to be able to put in "Corrected typo" or "Added ref" when I've made such changes. Could someone please instruct me in how to added comments to appear in Recent Changes? --Gamling 03:42, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

Certainly, it's quite easy. When you "edit" an article, there's a box called "summary" beneath the edit window and above the "save page"- and "show preview"-buttons. In this "summary" box you can add such short comments.--Morgan 07:49, 23 June 2011 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Thank you Morgan. I'm not called Gamling for nothing; on my computer the "Summary" box only has a line on top and my aged eyes never noticed that it was a box instead of just a separator line. --Gamling 18:49, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

Talk Page Comments

If you type "~~~~" or press this button it will automatically put in your name and the time stamp; important it will format you name as "Gamling" rather than "Gamling" enabling people to easily find your user name and talk page. --Mith (Talk/Contribs/Edits) 18:56, 23 June 2011 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Boffin family tree

In changing the format of the Boffin family tree you have lost Otho Sackville-Baggins and sundry Bracegirdles (and Brandybucks). Otherwise you’re doing good work on the hobbits and their family trees! — Mithrennaith 03:46, 30 June 2011 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I have just put in the Bracegirdles and Otho back into the Boffin Family Tree. Originally I left them out because I thought that there was too much of the Bracegirdles and the Sackville-Baggins in the Boffins' Tree (in the version of the tree before mine the children of Hilda and Seredic had been added, which I felt was going too far astray from the Boffin line). However, including what's now back in the tree was what J.R.R. Tolkien created, so perhaps that's the best standard. What Tolkien should have done was keep all these family trees in separate pages in his own wiki, except that... --Gamling 22:47, 30 June 2011 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Also, I now notice, your reformatting of the Brandybuck family tree has the side effect that it has now disappeared from Meriadoc Brandybuck’s page, since it was rather cleverly transcluded there. I don’t know whether that was intentional, of course. But it has made me think (again), whether it would be a better idea to make these family trees into templates, so that they can be stuck into articles on family members. — Mithrennaith 04:12, 30 June 2011 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Actually I suspected but didn't know that the Meriadoc article brought in the tree from the Brandybuck article. The Brandybuck tree before mine had a number of omissions (the "Two sons" under Sadoc, Menegilda Goold, Merimac Brandybuck, Berilac Brandybuck, and Peony Baggins were all left out) so eventually I was going to get to Meriadoc and made the changes.
I'm not sure where I stand on including the whole family tree for major characters; it kind of makes the article look bloated. Perhaps a standard statement: "For the complete family tree of Meriadoc, please see the Brandybuck Family." would suffice, or perhaps this sentence plus a piece of the family tree surrounding the character of the article would be sufficient. So far only the Baggins Family has its tree in a template.
By the way, it was you (Mithrennaith) who told me about Estella Bolger - thank you! --Gamling 22:47, 30 June 2011 (UTC)Reply[reply]