User talk:Mith/2011

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Revision as of 08:27, 20 October 2010 by Mith (talk | contribs) (→‎Dates: Needs wider discussion, I think)

Latest comment: 20 October 2010 by Mith in topic Dates

Mith/2011, welcome!

Hello 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 or ask me on my talk page. Keep up the great work! — Hyarion

Happy Birthday

Just wanted to wish you a Happy Birthday! --Hyarion 14:34, 12 September 2007 (EDT)

Tom Bombadil

Hey, I was just wondering about your Tom Bombadil edits. In the Fellowship of the Ring he certainly bore the ring, if only for about a minute. Does this not count for ring bearer status? If it doesn't then Deagol should probably be taken out too, as he had it for only a few minutes before being murdered. Ælfwine228 01:03, 11 October 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]

We actually had a discussion about this some weeks ago, last night I was only enacting changes which were long agreed by other members.
I personally do not see time or physical holding as the crucial deciding factor, but perceived ownership. Tom did not own the Ring, he borrowed it (and in fact he said, "Show me the precious Ring!" rather than "give"); Déagol, on the other hand, clearly was in ownership of the Ring albeit for a brief period - if Déagol did not own the Ring then Sméagol would not have needed to steal it from him. Déagol says "I found this, and I'm going to keep it" (according to Gandalf).
Furthermore, is physical holding or time is to be crucial deciding factor over whether someone is the Ring-bearer, Gandalf should be included also because he held the Ring in his hand.
Also, if Tom were a Ring-bearer why was he never mentioned as being considered - or even that it could be a possibility - for him to take the ship into the West?--Mith (Talk/Contribs/Edits) 10:03, 11 October 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Nations

You should take a look at nationstates.net its fun/ I've moved my nation to Arnor, contact me my nation is breragor. Invite anyone you know to join my region also. And how do you get the things on your profile that say like the race you prefer and lore level?

Next Meeting

It is planned that we hold our next meeting on the 5th of April 2009, please inform us if you can attend here.-- KingAragorn  talk  contribs  edits  email  18:44, 22 March 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Next Meeting

Sorry to clutter up your talk page, but just informing you about the next meeting. It is planned that we hold our next meeting on Monday the 13th of April 2009, please inform us if you can attend here. Remember that it's on Easter Monday, not Easter Sunday. Thanks!-- KingAragorn  talk  contribs  edits  email  13:21, 9 April 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Who is "we"/"us" and who decides these dates? --Mith (Talk/Contribs/Edits) 15:22, 9 April 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]
"We" is the community, "us" is me and the community. Me and Ederchil decided about Easter Monday here; I've put the scheduling of the meetings on the agenda.-- KingAragorn  talk  contribs  edits  email  23:00, 9 April 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]
I wouldn't really call it "decided", actually. TBF. -- Ederchil (Talk/Contribs/Edits) 23:04, 9 April 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Apostrophes

Hello Mith! Since I'm not a native English speaker I'm a bit curious about the correct grammar of, e.g., 1920s/1920's. Initially I wrote "1920s", but Ederchil changed it to 1920's. Is it a question of American English and British English? I happened to watch the film Goodbye, and Good Luck, which featured an old commercial spelling "in the 1920's and 1930's". Are you able to shed any light on the issue? Cheers/--Morgan 22:20, 22 May 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I did? Far as I can find, it's 1920s in English. -- Ederchil (Talk/Contribs/Edits) 22:36, 22 May 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Maybe it was a mistake ;-) I checked if I remembered wrong, but going through the revision history of "Books by year", you suggested the "...'s" in the revision as of 11:46, 18 April 2010. What I remembered wrong was that you didn't change it, just added the decades from the earlier year by year. Anyway, I'll google the issue and see what comes up. --Morgan 22:49, 22 May 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]
A google search of "In the 1920's" (I used that sentence since only 1920's also yields the possesive usage) gave 11 900 000 hits. "In the 1920s" gave 47 400 000 hits. This is a method used by some linguists trying to find the most common usage of grammar, but is there a grammatical rule applying to this case?--Morgan 22:53, 22 May 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Here is what the Guide to Grammar and Style (by Jack Lynch) says: Using an apostrophe to refer to a decade — the 1960's versus the 1960s — is another matter of house style; again, journalists tend to use the apostrophe, and most other publishers don't. I prefer to omit it: refer to the 1960s or the '60s (the apostrophe indicates that "19" has been omitted), not the 1960's or (worse) the '60's. --Morgan 23:00, 22 May 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Although some would consider it a stylistic issue, strictly it is grammatically incorrect. An apostrophe is used for a) possessive/genitive or b) missing letters; neither case applies to "1920's" - the apostrophe serves no function whatsoever. Certainly in the UK it would be considered very poor style indeed to apostrophise "1920s"; I don't know the style in the USA. That article was annoying me so I had to remove them! --Mith (Talk/Contribs/Edits) 10:27, 23 May 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Grammar

I hope you don't mind that I from time to time ask questions about English grammar and spelling ;-)

If I want to say that something was written in 19XX, at an unknown date, do I say "it was written some time in 1957" or "it was written sometime in 1957"? As far as I understand it, the sentence "it was written sometimes in 1957" is clearly wrong. --Morgan 10:17, 27 June 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Of course I don't mind, I'm happy to help!
You are right, "sometimes" is wrong. I suppose the correct use would be "sometime", if you ask me (definition from CEOD), but that's not to say that "some time" is incorrect; it's one of those occasions (like "can not" and "cannot") in which it all comes down to your personal preference.--Mith (Talk/Contribs/Edits) 10:25, 27 June 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Translation of interview

Hi Mith! I've translated about a third of the interview by now. Would you mind sending your email to morgan[at]kingtape.se, so I can send you the file? --Morgan 00:20, 29 June 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Done. --Mith (Talk/Contribs/Edits) 00:26, 29 June 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Mithbot

Sorry, Mith, but your bot has been making errors. It was a good idea to change link to "Took" into links to "Took Family", but where this also resulted in links to "Firstname Took" changing to link to "Firstname Took Family" (which are redlinks) the result was a bit unfortunate. Also, changing links to "Maggot" into links to "Farmer Farmer Maggot" is overdoing it a bit. I have corrected these errors in the article Translated names, but I have no idea where else they may have been made, and not much time to search. Maybe your want your bot to have a go at it? ;-) — Mithrennaith 01:52, 3 July 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

No need to apologise, it's entirely my fault. Unfortunately Mithbot couldn't fix the mess (as it kept encountering a 500 server error every time it hit Bilbo Baggins), but I have made the necessary by hand. Thanks for informing me. --Mith (Talk/Contribs/Edits) 07:07, 3 July 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]
You’re welcome, and thanks for dealing with this quickly :-) Those 500 errors are getting to be a nuisance ;-) — Mithrennaith 01:47, 5 July 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Angerthas

I used the slash to indicate subcategory or subdirectory of a topic which I think it's a feature overlooked in wikis. I participate in a wiki of alternate realities and we make heavy use of such slashes, which indicate the alternate version of each topic. To my experience, slashes make it more tidy and "make more sense" since they are adaptations of the same concept. I see no problem with them since they are redirected from their simple names, and they are visible in their categories. It's logical they are not linked from other articles since they do not belong in a narrative or story but to the historical background. Sage 08:16, 8 August 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Dates

I notice you've started changing the format on the letter articles I've been editing. I don't mind, I'm all for consistency and will use that style in the future. In fact I've sort of been waiting for someone to challenge me on them so I can ask the question: is there a standard date style for TG? Before I embarked on the letter articles I

a) checked the Manual of Style
b) did a quick sampling of other articles

And couldn't find a definitive answer, which is why I decided to just do what I thought best. --Aule the Smith 10:40, 13 August 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

There isn't really a definite format, no; I just changed the links so readers could find their way to the required day, as well as just year, easily enough. I didn't change the links in the infoboxes, so readers do have the option. I wouldn't trust the Manual of Style: it's woefully out of date and hideously inadequate!
About the infobox, would you mind if I widened it? I noticed that many common topics (e.g. The Lord of the Rings) are wider than the infobox allows for, so it might be best to widen it slightly to accommodate them. --Mith (Talk/Contribs/Edits) 10:47, 13 August 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Not at all. --Aule the Smith 10:53, 13 August 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Regarding date formats, perhaps a template might be used to introduce consistency across the wiki (and make things slightly easier). So the input would be like {\{date|2010-08-10}} (i.e. the ISO standard format), which could then be converted to whatever format and method of linking desired. Of course the hard part would be changing the thousands of current entries, but maybe your bot could help with that. —Aulë the Smith (Tk·Cb) 12:22, 13 August 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]
I'll look into it (although I'm a little apprehensive about infringing on personal style too much). I'll ask see if the bot could do it, although the several hundred dates written in a variety formats may make it pretty tricky. --Mith (Talk/Contribs/Edits) 13:11, 13 August 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Sources on Gandalf

Gandalf is a featured article (i.e. it's supposed to be among the best), and moreover a very highly visible one. I think for those reasons you should at least give some explanation on the talk page before putting an ugly cleanup box in front of it. It seems well-sourced to me, and if there is a particular part of it that you feel isn't you should make that explicit (as well as the talk page also consider using {{fact}} or placing {{sources}} in a specific section).

(P.S. I don't know about TG but on every other wiki I'm involved with it's considered very bad form to revert somebody's non-vandalism edits without a summary) —Aulë the Smith (Tk·Cb) 10:31, 16 August 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

My mistake, it was only nominated for featured article status some time ago. Maybe that box should be removed too. Still, the point about high visibility stands. —Aulë the Smith (Tk·Cb) 10:34, 16 August 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Sorry, I didn't mean to offend. It was nominated at a time, I would argue, when our standards were lower than they are. Also, since Ederchil added the sources template, the number of sources throughout most of the article has barely improved (notable exception being the first three sections).
I am aware that it is one of the most popular articles, but our "ugly cleanup box" is probably better at the top rather than putting the "ugly cleanup box" in all other sections, or sticking Template:Fact after every sentence throughout the entire article (which would be a very tedious job). Anyway, we put those template at the top precisely because we don't want people to miss them and to encourage editors to rectify the situation.
I don't work on any other wikis, so I don't know how they operate. --Mith (Talk/Contribs/Edits) 12:03, 16 August 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

In/of

I don't mind, of course (just glad to get response)! But didn't you confuse Belegaer with Beleriand? I guess it would either be "Remnants of Beleriand" or "Remnants in Belegaer", right? --Morgan 18:10, 24 August 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Ah, I did; I mis-read it - I apologise. I think I prefer "Remnants of Beleriand" because then Lindon could be included in the template, what d'you reckon? --Mith (Talk/Contribs/Edits) 18:16, 24 August 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]
How about making the template more like Template:Cosmology? It could then perhaps look something like this: User:Morgan/Sandbox. /morgan (on Chrome!)
It looks good (although aren't they remnants in the Second and Fourth Ages, too?). The fact you're using Chrome is less good! --Mith (Talk/Contribs/Edits) 20:05, 24 August 2010 (UTC) (on Firefox 3.6.8!)Reply[reply]

Dragon infobox

I was thinking of making a dragon infobox. Is that OK with you? —Aulë the Smith (Tk·Cb) 10:06, 28 August 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I was going to edit the evil infobox so it would display race under the name of the character, including dragons, but sure. Is it worth it, though - there's only a few? --Mith (Talk/Contribs/Edits) 10:10, 28 August 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Only four, yeah, but I figure there's quite a few fields that only apply to dragons: whether they had legs, whether they flew, fire-drake/cold-drake, items in their horde. That sort of thing. Is there an existing infobox in particular I can copy to make it up to date with your latest revisions? —Aulë the Smith (Tk·Cb) 10:18, 28 August 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]
None of them are actually finished because I keep discovering missing fields: I never realise just how much of a mess the infoboxes were in terms of their coding and their lack of standardisation. The closest to being finished are Edain infobox and Half-elf infobox; I've not added a "{{{rule}}}" to them yet, though. Not sure if it's relevant to you or not (although I suppose Smaug ruled Erebor...). --Mith (Talk/Contribs/Edits) 10:22, 28 August 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Nomenclature template

Hi Mith! I added the line {{HM|N}} to use when giving references to the Nomenclature. Should we use it (instead of typing out the whole reference)? --Morgan 00:12, 11 October 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Sure. I honestly don't mind, though, how people write out references, so long as they take the right form. By the way, I was going to ask, how come you put page numbers in brackets in references - I've never seen that done before? --Mith (Talk/Contribs/Edits) 00:22, 11 October 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]
True, it might be more standard to use ", p. X". I think I started using it when pondering about how to best give references to the HoMe, where I have different paginations in my DelRey and HarperCollins's editions: "(p. X; HarperCollins 199X)" or ", p. X (HarperCollins 199X)". But perhaps the latter is better. --Morgan 00:29, 11 October 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Userbox

No problem, I was hoping for some help! :-) I think I understand how to do it now. --Morgan 19:47, 11 October 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Tables are one of those things which are really quite difficult to understand. Wikipedia has a pretty good tutorial, but essentially you need to do remember to do "|-" for every row, and then "|" for every cell within that. --Mith (Talk/Contribs/Edits) 22:26, 11 October 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Dates

I noticed you were the "dates supervisor". I was wondering if non-canon lore dates could be added in the articles for the dates if it is stated it is non-canon? -- User:Pinkkeith

Apologies for the late reply, I haven't been around much over the last 48 hours. My personal inclination is to say no because I already think we're quite generous with non-canon people/places/events and I sort of like the idea that it doesn't find its way into all articles (not to mention that {{noncanon}} is ugly).
Saying that, I probably shouldn't make a unilateral decision.. If no one else replies here, I reckon either a forum topic or just edit a couple of dates as examples to see what people think. How does that sound? --Mith (Talk/Contribs/Edits) 08:27, 20 October 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]