Tolkien Gateway:Task list

Unexpected Party by David T. Wenzel

This page lists specific tasks to be completed in Tolkien Gateway. Feel free to add new suggestions of things to be improved in the wiki, but remember this is "the J.R.R. Tolkien encyclopedia that anyone can edit", so you can also pick a task and get into it. Just do not forget to follow the Manual of Style. Users can also be involved in wider projects.

Wiki updating

Discussed by gatekeepers in Discord

• Create a common bot for technical stuff.
  • Change images in publication infoboxed to 275px.
• Create Tolkien Gateway:General disclaimer.
• Update favicon.
• Displaytitle is ignored when there is no direct equivalence with the page's actual title.

• Make easier guidelines for new editors.
• Remake Tolkien Gateway:Chat and give place to the Discord server.
• Remake Tolkien Gateway:Projects.
• Give linguistics stuff its own project.

New Letters

• Remove the previously unpublished letters out of the list and category, and move their name article to the name in the new edition: "Letter ##a/b/c...".
• While doing the previous task, change the links all over the wiki, specially dates and references.
• Update Template:Letters.
• Create a new Template:L for the new edition, and apply it where necessary.
• Include the new info (if any) all over the wiki.

Reddit

Pointed by various users in a Reddit post

• the War of Wrath article talks about the presence of the Valar during the battle, but there's nothing in the text stating that they were actually present.
• Please more clearly define First Age (the First Age began in VY 4550 with the Awakening of the Elves, ended with the beginning of the Years of the Sun according to the Valinorean loremasters, but for the loremasters of the Noldor Exiles, included the 590 sun years from the rising of the Sun to the overthrow of Morgoth.)
• The Timeline article and the Timeline/First Age article both incorrectly mark the beginning of the First Age in the first year of the Years of the Sun instead of VY 1050.
• "Years of the Lamps" is fanon for the 3500 Valian year period from the descent of the Ainur into Arda up to the creation of the Two Trees. This time should be "Days before days".
• The time within the "Days before days" that was lit by the Two Lamps is the Spring of Arda.
• Nazgûl#Powers_and_abilities is mostly fanon.

Quanta Sarmë

Pointed by Erkenbard in Discord

• the page about Quanta Sarmë says that "its usage and characters are a mystery" and lacks any information about qanta-tenkele from PE22, while that system, fully explained there and readily useable, is essentially the same full writing system as later Quanta Sarmë, I believe, or at least it is worth mentioning in connection with the latter; so some of the editors with access to PE22 might want to take a look at this matter.

Silvan Elvish

Explained by Ellanto in Discord

During the 2nd sundering the Nandor (Q. for "those who go back") split off from the Teleri; over time therefore their language deviates from the Old Telerin tongue, and forms the Nandorin language. The Nandor then split once more as the Laiquendi go west, and later their dialects drift apart: thus East Danian and West Danian.

"Silvan Elvish" is itself an umbrella term for the various dialects of Elvish spoken by various groups of Elves in later Ages. These languages descend from the East Danian dialect(s), but are not synonymous with it/them, because they don't coexist: East Danian refers to the language of the eastern Nandor in the 1st Age , "Silvan Elvish" is a term applicable to the 2nd & 3rd. Furthermore, the Silvan Elvish tongues are noted to have been influenced by Avarin tongues, brought by Avarin peoples who migrated westwards over time and mingled with the Silvan Elves; East Danian had no such influences (yet).

To summarise: East Danian evolved over time, with some Avarin influence, into what is later known as "Silvan Elvish", which is itself an umbrella term for several closely related dialects - similar to the relation between Old and Modern English. As a side-note, I would be careful with saying "Danian (from their leader Dân)", as it is currently phrased on both of the pages you linked; this is a false assumption. The element dan- is cognate of Q. nan- in the Telerin languages, e.g. Quenya Nandor "those who go back" is equivalent to the Sindarin terms Danedhel, Danwaith, Danathrim. This first element comes from Primitive Elvish √NDAN.

This however seems to have nothing to do with Lenwe/Dân/Denweg: if his name was based on the same root, it would be Nenwe in Quenya, not Lenwe. In his case the element is √DAN, which is unattested and likely related to √NDAN, but distinct from it. My point is - saying "Danian is from Dân" is mixing up cause and effect.

Another side-note - reference #2 in both of these pages (citing PE17/153) is unnecessary and does not fit there, it should be replaced with another instance of ref #1 (PE18/78).

A collection of important & useful Tolkien websites

Suggested by User:Luotiansha

• This page - Websites - is intended to be an index to all the useful and good websites both now and past. It is best to give a short description to each of these entries. Anyone can add entries to it.

Books

Suggested by User:Luotiansha

— TolkienGuide store —
↑This, is a good place to check the upcoming books & editions. It also lists many other Tolkien-related books, if any of them does not currently have a page on TolkienGateway, hey, you know what to do.

— A HarperCollins books sheet —
↑A google sheet of HarperCollins books, could be useful for reference. (source)

Infoboxes

Suggested by User:IvarTheBoneless

• Change the Noldor/Vanyar/Falmari infoboxes to include the 'people' section, so that Gnomes, Teleri, and Solosimpi characters could be under their respective infoboxes. Subsequently delete the Gnomes infobox.
• Maybe create a super infobox for characters that magically changes its color depending of the race.

Contributions

Suggested by User:Dour1234

• Check page 779 of The Two Towers to confirm or object to moving A Rhyme of Lore to Rhymes of Lore.
• Add a "Category:Nameless" page to the "Template:Unnamed" to make it easier to find any page about an unnamed topic and to avoid a tedious amount of work of adding the category page to every individual page with the "Template:Unnamed".
• Create a page on "J0 9184", which was the license plate that both of Tolkien's cars had possessed. Some links to possible references can be found in the following post: "Forums:J0 9184".
• Create a page on the "Túrin Wrapper".

Suggested by User:Sage

• Rewrite essay-like articles such as Blue Wizards, Dagor Dagorath and Later Ages from in-universe point of view, per the Manual of Style.
• Disambiguate The End from Dagor Dagorath, or rename the main page as The End; the Battle is a part of the End.

Some priorities

Suggested by User:LorenzoCB

• The Lord of the Rings
  • All articles citing it should include pagination of the 50th Anniversary Edition.
  • All articles of Poems in The Lord of the Rings need better references and an explanation of their context.
  • Eye of Sauron deserves its own article, which should be divided in the appareance of Sauron and his heraldic device.
• Unfinished Tales of Númenor and Middle-earth
  • All articles citing it should include pagination. This is to be included in Help:References.
  • Many of its chapters are stubs or need a better synopsis.
• The Silmarillion
  • Only "Of Túrin Turambar"'s synopsis is left.
  • Analysis of Christopher's editorial work on each chapter. Not about the evolution of his father's work, but a simplification of what is explained in Arda Reconstructed.
  • Maybe articles for other sections like the Foreword, the Appendix, the Map of the Realms and the Tables.
• The History of Middle-earth
  • Including the transcription of the Tengwar inscription in the title page of each volume. Including the Tengwar inscription itself would be appropiate.
  • Each book needs a better section on editions.
  • Synopsis for all chapters/sections of each book. More details below.
• The Book of Lost Tales
  • An explanation of its composition is missing in the main article.
  • Synopsis for all the chapters of Part One and Part Two. There are some already done, which include a synopsis of the narrative and Christopher's commentary.
  • Articles on the languages in this phase are quite poor.
  • Same with the races.
• The Lays of Beleriand
  • The Lay of the Children of Húrin: the two versions of the poem can be summarized in the same article or be split in two.
  • The Lay of Leithian: the synopsis of the Cantos need better consistency, and we should give them as chapter synopsis, rather than part of the in-universe Lay. An article for the "Unwritten Cantos" is needed.
  • The Lay of Leithian Recommenced is a stub.
• The History of The Lord of the Rings: somebody began a good synopsis of The Return of the Shadow chapters, but left it in chapter XIV. It would be appropiate to follow the same style.
• The Notion Club Papers
  • The main article should not include a synopsis, but an overall analysis and an index that leads to the synopsis of each section.
  • Expand articles about the members of the Club: not only their description, but also their interventions in the meetings.
  • Include the dates of the Nights in the articles of Category:Dates (as in-universe, same as the dates of the legendarium's ages).
• Legendarium
  • Equivalences between YT-YS. Tolkien changed the number of YS in a YT, but the wiki chose one equivalence to calculate the (solar) age of Elves in the infoboxes. We should explain this in an article and justify every calculation in a note.
  • Merge the Elvish demonyms into the "Other names" section of their main articles, (for example, Apanónar into Men).
  • An article for the Quenta Silmarillion in-universe is needed, which should be done in a similar way to Ainulindalë (Rúmil's work), including all the versions.
  • Merge Category:Books and documents within the legendarium and Category:Lays and tales within the legendarium and create a [Category:Literary works within the legendarium].
  • Awakening of the Elves
  • Light of Valinor
  • Round World version of the Silmarillion
  • Clarify the terms Teleri and Falathrim. Somebody began applying the term "Falathrim" to the Teleri in Aman, but it was done poorly.
  • Merge fëa and hröa into Incarnate.
• Languages
  • Move [:Category:Images of alphabets] to Category:Images of writing systems
  • Upload all kind of runes in a way they can be applied for the English use and the different modes of Cirth.
  • New English Alphabet
  • Revise the main articles for each language, including earlier versions.
  • Revise all the articles of C:Elvish words:
    • Correct article name: many times articles were created without taking into account lenition rules (for example, aearon instead of gaearon).
    • Proper differentiation between early/later Elvish, specially Gnomish/Noldorin/Sindarin.
    • References (preferably primary, such as The Silmarillion appendix, no need to overcharge an article with every single work in which the word appears).
    • Etymology section that includes the root, if exists.
    • Examples section without references, but with a link to other articles.
    • Cognates section, if any.
  • Upload better quality images of Tengwar
  • Obliterate [:Category:Tengwar Quenya] and [:Category:Tengwar Sindarin]
• Synopsis of books unrelated to the legendarium:
  • The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún: each poem needs its own article.
  • The Fall of Arthur: the poem needs a synopsis somewhere.
  • Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl and Sir Orfeo: each text needs its own article.
  • "On Fairy-Stories" is a stub.
• Move [:Category:User images] to [:Category:Images by users]. Maybe include Image categories of artists as subcategories?
• Update and clean up all the indexes (Category:Index)
  • Clean up Index:Writings by year, and probably move it to "Index:Tolkien studies publications by year" or something like that.
• Life of J.R.R. Tolkien
  • Full original article for his life, with references!
  • Oxford
• Clean up all the stub tags accumulated by Category:The Lord of the Rings (film series) scenes
• Add Displaytitle in Category:Book-specific.
• Make a more detailed list of TG's bibliography.
• Lots of journal issues waiting to be created (not just the most recent numbers!):
  • Mallorn
  • Amon Hen
  • Lembas (Extra)
  • Mythlore
  • SEVEN

Good summary! A note: some years ago we discussed page references to UT, and found that the pagination is not consistent in the different editions (unlike the Houghton Mifflin/HarperCollins HoME, and works that have a "standard" edition like LotR). I therefore made an expanded citation template for UT, since there are several divisions and sub-divisions in the book. But perhaps there are new reasons to start including page references to UT as well? --Morgan 22:29, 4 August 2022 (UTC)

Christopher Tolkien uses UT pagination constantly thoughtout HOME, so using the same as him is perfectly consistent with what we already have. I've always included pages when citing UT, aware that it was the same as the one used by Christopher. Expanding the citation template was useful nontheless, but having the more precise references, the better. --LorenzoCB 12:53, 5 August 2022 (UTC)