User talk:Hyarion: Difference between revisions

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*The Mediawiki software could use updating. Compare Wikipedia's "Editing..." pages to ours.  
*The Mediawiki software could use updating. Compare Wikipedia's "Editing..." pages to ours.  
*Ideally, all articles should eventually be rewritten from scratch in order to avoid being Wikipedia forks/clones (daunting!) in the same way that all Tolkien guidebooks/sites are (were) written differently. I don't want to "pirate" Wikipedia for articles here, so the most we can do is to borrow references.
*Ideally, many articles should eventually be rewritten from scratch in order to avoid being Wikipedia forks/clones (daunting!) in the same way that all Tolkien guidebooks/sites are (were) written differently. I don't want to "pirate" Wikipedia for articles here, so the most we can do is to borrow references.
*I believe some naming conventions are unwieldy. For example, [[Faramir]] leads to a disambiguation page between [[Faramir (son of Denethor II)]], [[Faramir son of Ondoher]] and [[Faramir Took I]] (the First?!). In fairness, that's what Wookieepedia does - type Luke and you won't go to that Skywalker immediately. And that makes this wiki different from Wikipedia... [[Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings]] instead of [[The Lord of the Rings film trilogy]]? Well, redirects can make the redlink go to the other link. Also, parentheses or no parentheses in "son of"?
*I believe some naming conventions are unwieldy. For example, [[Faramir]] leads to a disambiguation page between [[Faramir (son of Denethor II)]], [[Faramir son of Ondoher]] and [[Faramir Took I]] (the First?!). In fairness, that's what Wookieepedia does - type Luke and you won't go to that Skywalker immediately. And that makes this wiki different from Wikipedia... [[Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings]] instead of [[The Lord of the Rings film trilogy]]? Well, redirects can make the redlink go to the other link. Also, parentheses or no parentheses in "son of"?
*Apparently here everything is canon... we just need to point out when Tolkien wrote it, and whether it has been superseded. Wikipedia's [[Wikipedia:Middle-earth canon|was rewritten]] and no longer declares such-and-such to be canon. How about a "definitely non-canon" category and template for derivative stuff like the movies and its merchandise? [[User:Uthanc|Uthanc]] 21:42, 19 June 2007 (EDT)
*Apparently here everything is canon... we just need to point out when Tolkien wrote it, and whether it has been superseded. Wikipedia's [[Wikipedia:Middle-earth canon|was rewritten]] and no longer declares such-and-such to be canon. How about a "definitely non-canon" category and template for derivative stuff like the movies and its merchandise? [[User:Uthanc|Uthanc]] 21:42, 19 June 2007 (EDT)
**Edit: we do have [[Template:Noncanon]] and [[Tempate:Fanon]]
**Edit: we do have [[Template:Noncanon]] and [[Tempate:Fanon]]
*It's refreshing to use in-universe style here, without complaints or like-minded tags. [[User:Uthanc|Uthanc]] 21:45, 19 June 2007 (EDT)
*It's nice to see in-universe style here, without complaints or like-minded tags. [[User:Uthanc|Uthanc]] 21:45, 19 June 2007 (EDT)

Revision as of 01:51, 20 June 2007

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Spam

Hey Hyarion, I have found a problem in copying and pasting.

I was copying a paragraph on the Dwarves of the Iron Hills article and it brought up a questionaire instead of my paste. So I thought I would let you know of that and see if you could fix it.

Your wiking friend --Dwarf Lord 01:09, 21 February 2007 (EST)

Hm, just to make sure I'm following; instead of pasting the text you had copied it pasted some questionnaire? Unfortunately (or fortunately) there is no way for any kind of spam to get into TG that way, my only guess is you accidently had something else copied during or after you attempted to copy the text. Sorry I couldn't be of more help, but I can assure you it's not related to TG. --Hyarion 01:30, 21 February 2007 (EST)

I thunk your right. My brother gets those off the web and sends them to his friends so he may be the culprate. Thanks --Dwarf Lord 13:02, 21 February 2007 (EST)

Simpson's Spoof

I saw that the other night and I knew that it was going to be put up, awesome! One little problem, not really important, it was not UPS they were waging war with, it was a fictional group called the American Shipping Service, or A.S.S.(not to be confused with the human ass). I'm sure you knew that, I'm just splitting hairs. --Quidon88 15:13, 13 March 2007 (EDT)

Ya I liked it too :) I was going to put American Shipping Service but figured UPS was more simple and to the point. Do you think having an article on The Simpsons here with all the references to Tolkien/Lord of the Rings would be going too far? If I can find more references I think it may be worth it. --Hyarion 15:20, 13 March 2007 (EDT)
Dude, that was an awesome clip! --Dwarf Lord 19:54, 14 March 2007 (EDT)
I think any show like that, Family Guy, Simpsons, Futurama, etc. should have an article. I don't know if you've ever heard of it, but there was a sitcom on Fox called That '70s Show, and the sole reason I watched week after week was for the Star Wars references. Its not going to far at all, any reference Tolkien's masterpiece deserves a place on Tolkien Gateway, in my opinion.Info wise, I can help with that, but I'll leave the uploading of video to more experienced editors.--Quidon88 23:38, 14 March 2007 (EDT)
I've gone ahead and created an article for The Simpsons, embedding the YouTube videos is easy, there's also a tag for Google Video: <googlevideo>8119893978710705002</googlevideo>. Uploading our own video isn't quite complete yet, but you can see it in action here. --Hyarion 00:13, 15 March 2007 (EDT)

Recent Vandalism

I believe you missed the vandalism on the article Dragons. I can't easily revert edits, and I'm not sure if that's a privelige with administrators where you can just press a button and it is reverted or what. Anyway, how do these vandals work, deleting all beyond a certain point? They aren't all different people, are they? --Narfil Palùrfalas 17:05, 17 April 2007 (EDT)

I hadn't missed it, just had yet to get to it :) I've been busy in the chat giving away all the prizes and chatting with all the guest speakers, where you should be! Admins have a revert button, yes, but it's pretty simple for a regular user to revert as well, just click the history tab, click the link directly before the vandalism happened, and then click edit, save. The only reason these bots are getting through the filter is because they aren't adding external links so it's hard to catch them. --Hyarion 17:09, 17 April 2007 (EDT)

Cluttered Edain pages

Bit of a newbie suggestion concerning a merger but i've checked the Wiki 'how to' article and it doesnt cover it. There's an awful lot of pages in the Edain category which deal with much the same thing, pages like Three Houses of the Edain; House of Beor; First House of the Edain; People of Hador and many others, both to do with specific houses, characters after whom houses are named, and various specific terms (as in the case of some of the above). I would suggest some serious merging of all of these articles to form a more complete and coherent resource of imformation. Is that something i can do myself and simply havnt found out how or does it take more 'powers' to mark something up for merging? Dr Death

You hit the nail on the head with adding the merge notices, although it might be easier if you simply add {{merge|Title of article}} this grabs what is located at Template:Merge and includes it automatically while inserting the variable. I think now we just need to figure out which title is the most common and place the article there. Keep up the great work! --Hyarion 11:59, 19 April 2007 (EDT)

>> I beleive that the most obvious terms of use (and thus the name page titles) should be the 'House of...Beor/Haleth/Hador', though there is a strong case for the House of Haleth to be called the Haladin. The Three Houses of the Edain page should simply be a portion of the Edain page and it's that which i will endeavour to do when i have the time.

Change to Main Page

Hello Hyarion! Just wondered about adding a link to the Category index from the main page. As a new user I've found catergory list in the special pages great, but there doesn't seem to be a link on the main page. Findegil

I think that's a good idea and if you like that page you might also like Index of categories. It has to be updated manually so it's missing a lot but hopefully we'll be able to create a nice tree-like structure for even easier navigation. I'll try and find a spot for it down by the A-Z list or something. Oh and you can sign your comments by clicking the signature button second from the right just above this textbox. --Hyarion 12:11, 22 April 2007 (EDT)

Thanks --Findegil 13:45, 26 April 2007 (EDT)


Chat isn't working for me

Well, I'm back, as you've probably noticed. I was hoping to communicate with you on Chat, but for the past three days I haven't been able to access it through the java links provided. My browser keeps on saying "page not found", etc. I'm not sure if it's my problem or that of the Chat itself. --Narfil Palùrfalas 11:38, 8 June 2007 (EDT)

By the way, was the issue of redirects ever cleared up? Several editors are really leaping at the chance to redirect a lot of pages. --Narfil Palùrfalas 11:41, 8 June 2007 (EDT)
Just cleaning up, Narfil. I apologise if i seem to be taking a liberty but i'm using my best judgement in every redirect i make. Dr Death 12:46, 8 June 2007 (EDT)
Welcome back Narfil! The Java clients will be down for a while, I'll try and get them working this weekend, but your best bet is to get a real IRC client like XChat and connect to irc.tolkiengateway.net. I don't think we've come to a conclusion regarding redirects, but for now we should probably lay off converting anything into redirects as right now I think those who oppose yours and my views don't fully see the whole dictionary aspect and how much redirection would hurt that goal. --Hyarion 13:37, 8 June 2007 (EDT)
I'm not sure if you saw what I posted at the forum, but in short I said that I believed that it should only be converted into a redirect if it contains no more information that "this was another name for", etc. Of course, it might be an interesting idea if for such things (minor names) we could have references on that page to where that particular name was used. Might be good if we could decide on a standard version of LotR/Sil/HoME, so we could add page numbers. --Narfil Palùrfalas 14:28, 8 June 2007 (EDT)
Ya I saw what you posted and I entirely agree. Everything about Gandalf should all be in the Gandalf article, however we can expand on his titles, when they were used, how they were derived, (by Tolkien as well as in-universe), etc. in Mithrandir, Olorin, etc. References is an issue I hope to tackle this summer, I'd like everything to be based on paragraph seeing as this wouldn't change. And I'll create a website which will allow people to easily lookup and convert the paragraphs into their respected page numbers and visa versa. --Hyarion 14:57, 8 June 2007 (EDT)
Well to add a face to 'those who...' i think it's worth pointing out that even dictionaries have 'see: X' under some entries, redirection just cuts out the middleman. While i whole heartedly agree that full exploration should be given to every name and its entymology (for gods sake dont get me wrong on that) i still beleive that it should be done under a central article to what it applies so as to fascilitate a greater resource of information regarding the subject. If you really want to get pedantic wikis are online *encyclopedias* rather than dictionaries and so should provide the greatest and most comprehensive amount of information without having to piddle about with technicalities. I say this as much from the standpoint of a user as an editor. By all means have sections within a main article and redirect to those sections but there are too many technicalities (a recent new page for '*The* War of Wrath' rather than just 'War of Wrath' prooves my point adequately as to how easily people can get mixed up). Dr Death 08:54, 9 June 2007 (EDT)
And I can see the benefit to that which is why I'm not 100% decided on the issue either. However let us take Aragorn for example, where would the history behind the name be located at, Aragorn I or Aragorn II? Same goes for Boromir, Minas Tirith, and many more articles. Instead of having to replicate the information on the name on each article, Aragorn is a nice example of how the definition could be at the disambiguation article which links to articles with that name.
When we get more editors we will be able to vote on matters like this, it is just hard now with so few as we don't want to be swayed in the wrong direction by a one/two votes, which is why I guess we'll just have to focus on other matters until we all agree on something. Thanks for all your input and help by the way!
Looking back, I think we both have the same idea, but the issue is which article is the "central article". Wikipedia, (and I think yourself?) would vote for Aragorn since it is the most popular and obvious. I tend to sway towards staying neutral and treating even the minor characters with equality, as one might say that just because Tolkien's stories focused more one one character, doesn't make them more important. This is obviously going to force the majority of users to make an extra click, but I'm just a perfectionist like that :) --Hyarion 19:35, 9 June 2007 (EDT)
In the case of disambiguation pages i am in utter and complete agreement with you. Considering that Tolkien Gateway is more specialist than wikipedia we should treat all subjects with identical names with complete equality (so long as we make it clear which is which) and if we include a translation of the name there for both cases then so much the better, since that page does have to exist. In those cases it may be worth giving a 'quick translation' though in the character box if someone does go specific (so you dont have to go to Aragorn if you just want to know out of interest what Aragorn II's name translates as).
The situations i am opposed to though are those when a name or term for any subject (which does tend to be characters but others suffer as well) which specifically refers to that one subject and has no context outside it (Mithrandir only ever refers to Gandalf in the writings of Tolkien) is given a whole page all to itself just because strictly speaking it could (rather than does) refer to something else (such as the case of Mithrandir- there may be another referred to as 'Grey Pilgrim' out there but Tolkien never mentioned them). In those cases i beleive that entymology should be given to every such term but in a section the article of the sole subject it refers to rather than as an independant page.
In the case of titles or tags which could refer to multiple things (say The Nine, King under the Mountain etc. I beleive that they should be disambiguation pages with a little information on the term itself (much like occurs in the case of two characters called the same thing (Aragorn using the common example).)
I beleive our notions are how to do things are closer than you think. The matter just seems to have been overlooked (that isnt meant as an insult, just a comment). However i'm going to make it my business to really sort it out so as to provide the clearest possible way to find information on this site. Dr Death 08:12, 10 June 2007 (EDT)
A quick translation wouldn't be a bad idea in the infobox, though I do think we'll run into an issue when there is a translation multiple languages, such as a Mannish word has a translation in Black Speech, Quenya, Sindarin, etc. On all of the articles we are definitely trying to add Etymology sections however, which should also prove fairly quick in providing the meaning and history behind a name (both in-Arda and out-of-Arda).
I'm glad we both agree on the disambig articles, and I can definitely see the benefit for an article such as Mithrandir to be a redirect. But here is the conflict: Articles such as those found in Category:Quenya_words. If we agree that these articles of Quenya words are worth having, then we can deduce that the difference between an article such as Astar and Mithrandir is that Mithrandir is attributed to someone/something. To me that is like giving less importance to a "more important" article. I guess I'm trying to just look at it from the perspective of a language expert using the wiki as a dictionary reference. Heh, sorry, I can be rather stubborn at times :) Thanks for bringing this up and hopefully we can set a standard for it as a lot of the wiki is not as standardized as I would like. --Hyarion 09:34, 10 June 2007 (EDT)
Well i mentioned briefly on the forum the difference between words in their pure form and in the form found in names. In names which usually consist of forms of at least two words of a different language. For example Gondor in its purest form would be Gondhdôr but is mutated to a far simpler form. I make no claim to be a linguistic expert but considering pretty much all names in middle earth whether they apply to a person or place are rendered into some form of elvish rather than 'The Queen's English' to provide two entries for each: one for the word and another for what it refers to, seems to be all too much of a muchness (and would only be balanced by providing redirects to the subject matter for the word's translation in english). Far better to present the component words in their purest forms on their own page and provide the examples of use there while providing a 'quick translation' on the page of what the hybrid words refer to (naturally linking to its componant parts). To me this sounds only like good sense, but i may be wrong. What do you think? Dr Death 10:50, 10 June 2007 (EDT)
I've gone ahead and thrown together a crude example at Mithrandir. A lot more could still be added to this article, and it just seems like we would be cramming a lot of information into Gandalf if we had to have similar sections for every single name Gandalf had. Anyway, I think both of us have our own, valid, opinions on the matter and we might as well just wait for a few more editors to voice their opinion until we can get a good majority before placing a final vote. Thanks for your input! --Hyarion 11:49, 10 June 2007 (EDT)
Yes, fair enoughski. Your article on Mithrandir is certainly a preferable format to what was there whem i redirected it to Gandalf but i cant help but feel it could have been summed up in a single short paragraph. Just to cobble together an example-

Mithrandir (pronounced "Meethra'ndeerr") Sindarin for 'Grey-Pilgrim/Wanderer' (Olorin in Quenya: see above/below) used widely among the Elves1 , Gondorians2 and Dúnedain3

Notes

1."Mithrandir, Mithrandir sang the Elves, O Pilgrim Grey! For so they loved to call him."

The Fellowship of the Ring, The Mirror of Galadriel

2. "May you bring good councel to Denethor in his need, and to us all, Mithrandir!' Ingold cried."

- The Return of the King, Minas Tirith

3. "Dark indeed is the hour,' said the old man, 'and at such times you are wont to come Mithrandir."

- The Return of the King, Minas Tirith

So as you can see while the coding is pretty fiendish it can be done. But as you say, the deciding vote will be cast when there are more voters to make it. Until then we'll just have to tread carefully around each others edits :). Dr Death 13:21, 10 June 2007 (EDT)
I would agree my example was rather stretched out and yours flows much better. This brings up yet another issue, we need a good template for our Elvish word articles, pronunciation mp3 link in the corner, image of the word in Tengwar, standard headers/sections/etc. I think this discussion could go on forever so I better stop as we both have made some good points, I think in a few more months we should be able to make a final decision as TG grows. --Hyarion 14:19, 10 June 2007 (EDT)

The Hobbit Screenplay

I'm just stopping by to ask about the Hobbit screenplay, I'm contributing to it. First, I would want to ask you, is it still active? Second, I want to ask you, can you read my additions and make suggestions on the thing I just wrote. Third, when the time comes, give the script to Peter Jackson or whatever responsible director and he/she and his/her colleague(s) will to whatever they want to it. =)

The book is really cool in my opinion, and I don't want some children's movie like Eragon or something like the 1980's adaption released in honor of this great book. =)

Hope it isn't that much to ask! =)

--Iluvatar 21:53, 12 June 2007 (EDT)

I wouldn't say it is extremely active, but it just takes one person to get it started again and more people will join in, I'll start working on it as well though I don't have much experience with screenplays. Not many people know about it so we'll have to spread the word a bit. So far your additions look great, very vivid. I definitely think it would be a good idea to hand the script over to a studio/director, even if just for inspiration. Keep up the great work! --Hyarion 22:03, 12 June 2007 (EDT)

Year pages

A question for you, Mr. H-- I have noticed that there are alot of red links for pages for important years, like III 3019, for instance. Is there an organized plan to create these pages? And what structure or format should be used? --Theoden1 16:15, 13 June 2007 (EDT)

Hey there, right now the best place for year pages is to look at Timeline. I went through and made articles for most of the years that were mentioned in the Appendices but haven't got around to verifying all the other information, as the Timeline is not 100% accurate. I would eventually like to get a source for all the years so we can make sure not to make any mistakes. I do want to work on a standard layout for all the years, definitely with some templates and a way to navigate between the years but I haven't settled on anything. If you want to start on the articles though feel free to, I think we settled on a Fourth Age 1000 naming scheme. Just try to verify that the information is correct if you can, and make sure the Timeline links to it. Thanks! --Hyarion 16:25, 13 June 2007 (EDT)

Additional Book Source

Just curious....how difficult would it be to add another (non-commercial) site to the Book Sources page?--fleela 13:11, 19 June 2007 (EDT)

Hm, not sure I know what you mean by the Book Sources page. --Hyarion 13:21, 19 June 2007 (EDT)
Special:Booksources--fleela 13:28, 19 June 2007 (EDT)
Ah, sorry, I forgot about that. Ya, as long as the book can be accessed by just inserting the ISBN into the URL. Another thing I'd like to do is add more variables to the infobox so we can add other stores there if they are cheaper than Amazon. --Hyarion 13:39, 19 June 2007 (EDT)
I'd love it if you could add LibraryThing as a source. The link looks like "http://www.librarything.com/isbn/0618134700" You can also take a look at their huge list of book source links at http://www.librarything.com/bookservices.php --fleela 13:53, 19 June 2007 (EDT)
Added. :) --Hyarion 14:38, 19 June 2007 (EDT)
Great, thanks! --fleela 14:54, 19 June 2007 (EDT)

Multiple account mess

Hi. I'm also User:Rog and Wikipedia's Uthanc. I was planning to use the latter here as well, so I created User:Uthanc and was going to make all my Rog links redirect to Uthanc, but then User:Rog is still online even when I'm logged in as Uthanc. What should I do? Uthanc 21:10, 19 June 2007 (EDT)

General comments

  • The Mediawiki software could use updating. Compare Wikipedia's "Editing..." pages to ours.
  • Ideally, many articles should eventually be rewritten from scratch in order to avoid being Wikipedia forks/clones (daunting!) in the same way that all Tolkien guidebooks/sites are (were) written differently. I don't want to "pirate" Wikipedia for articles here, so the most we can do is to borrow references.
  • I believe some naming conventions are unwieldy. For example, Faramir leads to a disambiguation page between Faramir (son of Denethor II), Faramir son of Ondoher and Faramir Took I (the First?!). In fairness, that's what Wookieepedia does - type Luke and you won't go to that Skywalker immediately. And that makes this wiki different from Wikipedia... Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings instead of The Lord of the Rings film trilogy? Well, redirects can make the redlink go to the other link. Also, parentheses or no parentheses in "son of"?
  • Apparently here everything is canon... we just need to point out when Tolkien wrote it, and whether it has been superseded. Wikipedia's was rewritten and no longer declares such-and-such to be canon. How about a "definitely non-canon" category and template for derivative stuff like the movies and its merchandise? Uthanc 21:42, 19 June 2007 (EDT)
  • It's nice to see in-universe style here, without complaints or like-minded tags. Uthanc 21:45, 19 June 2007 (EDT)