User talk:Bitterhand/Archive 1

Thanks
Thanks for removing the word "we" from articles. That's an essential encyclopedic mistake that only I've been correcting. Also, welcome. 'HiddenVale -  TalkPage ' 20:02, June 21, 2018 (UTC)


 * No problem; that's something that bothers me as well. And thanks for the welcome! I'll be happy to help around here however I can. --Bitterhand (talk) 21:06, June 21, 2018 (UTC)

Re: Assumption/citing question
Ohhh, okay that makes sense; that doesn't tend to happen here actually. Utilize this new template. Alternatively, if neither The Atlas of Middle-earth nor "The Land of Shadow" contain the specific descriptions of lands found in that article, go ahead and remove whatever claims look opinionated. 'HiddenVale -  TalkPage ' 21:36, June 22, 2018 (UTC)

Mae Govannen from a Fellow Christian and Tolkienite
Hi Bitterhand! I just wanted to drop by and say "Mae Govannen to You!" It's always nice to meet another Christian Tolkienite on this wiki! ;)

"ℌ𝔦𝔰 𝔏𝔬𝔳𝔢 𝔑𝔢𝔳𝔢𝔯 𝔉𝔞𝔦𝔩𝔰!" (𝙻𝚎𝚊𝚟𝚎 𝙼𝚎 𝙰 𝙽𝚘𝚝𝚎) 15:55, June 26, 2018 (UTC)

Kindle ref's
Remove any references containing Kindle-page numbers, i.e. "Beren and Lúthien, Kindle Loc. 330-331". In their place, leave behind the { { fact } } notice. In time I will replace them with appropriate references, once I read the non-Kindle version of the book myself. 'HiddenVale -  TalkPage ' 00:40, June 28, 2018 (UTC)

Re: Holman Greenhand
Yes the redirect page can be deleted. What is it exactly? 'HiddenVale -  TalkPage ' 23:59, June 28, 2018 (UTC)

Alright, redirect's been deleted. And you're welcome! That's the idea. 'HiddenVale -  TalkPage ' 00:59, June 29, 2018 (UTC)

What you did is appropriate. 'HiddenVale -  TalkPage '

The references guide
I should have mentioned this earlier: in case you're ever citing a book in an edit, here is my page of the Reference standards, explaining a reference format that's gradually been replacing an older one. It is cluttered with clarifiers and examples, so let me know how readable you think it is. 'HiddenVale -  TalkPage ' 20:06, July 1, 2018 (UTC)

Re: Fireworks
Ha! Wow, the difference is their apostrophe. One uses ` and the other '. The shorter article will be deleted; thanks for bringing that to light. 'HiddenVale -  TalkPage ' 05:15, July 6, 2018 (UTC)

Re: Various questions
1. I never inspected that campaignbox closely to notice that. I've looked and found out that very few of the events listed are to canon-articles; because of this, remove the campaignbox from Canon articles - I've removed it from Attack on Lake-town, and at Battle of the Five Armies it's actually put in the proper section - and don't make a new canonical equivalent of the campaignbox. It would contain very few things, as most events & encounters from The Hobbit aren't really things you can make a substantial article out of. Glad you observed this - It's definitely a good idea to make sure that canon articles, or sections of articles, never easily lead a reader to articles on topics originating from a despicable film trilogy.

2. Thanks for finding that.

3. Aha, you're thinking of the word fanon. "Fandom" isn't short for "fan-fiction"; it just has to do with being a fan of something, hence the new name of this site's owner-brand. If our policy uses the word "Fandom" the wrong way I'll go and correct it. The state of that category and most of its contents are fine.

"Fan videos" is a bit out of place here, so I've deleted that. Same with the South Park article, for your reasons.

4. There was episodic vandalism at Grond a few years ago, but I'll revert the protection on it. It's better anyways to allow vandalizers to act so that they can then be blocked.

5. Well in cases such as "Mouth of Sauron", one would never mention his name without using "The". So it depends on whether out-loud use of the name/subject would be awkward without the word. Hopefully no cases of that would be too uncertain. Say the emboldened name out loud to yourself as if talking about it and note whether you use "The" beforehand.

No problem at all. Everything was clear, and it should be an administrator's duty in general to reply resolutely to inquiries and approval requests. You've unveiled a great many things of note for me here; continue! '<font color="#248f24">HiddenVale -  <font color="#cccc00">TalkPage ' 00:54, July 11, 2018 (UTC)

Good idea actually, about Hill-men; done. '<font color="#248f24">HiddenVale -  <font color="#cccc00">TalkPage ' 00:15, July 12, 2018 (UTC)

Re: Hill trolls
Oh.. I probably put that there and didn't realize that. No problem then! '<font color="#248f24">HiddenVale -  <font color="#cccc00">TalkPage ' 00:35, July 16, 2018 (UTC)

Re: A few other questions and notes
1. Yes, Idis and Rimion would be. Idis is not "non-canonical", as the idea of her did not originate from non-canonical sources as the template qualifies. I'll go and replace my "Precanonical main characters" category with "Precanonical characters", so go ahead and add it to those two pages. All of Rimion's current categories are fine.

An example of a character I considered to be "precanonical" when coining the concept was Tevildo; he was simply the forerunner to Sauron, but we consider his identity to be seperate from Sauron's identity enough, because he was a feline person and not a Maia. (One couldn't say merely that "the character Sauron was named Tevildo in earlier versions".) They are distinguishable. On the other hand, the original character Tinúviel from The Tale of Tinúviel is not really distinguishable from the later equivalent character Lúthien; thus there is not a seperate article for Tinúviel.'''

2. Thanks for doing that. Link to me the collection of templates (if that's how you accessed them all) that are of unknown type and I'll do the rest of them. The Took Family Tree has been fixed.

3. That's a complicated process. We have a lot of them given the site's age. Don't worry about it; I'll ask a bunch of questions at Portability Hub sometime in the next century.

4. Neither are really preferrable, but RiversOfBeleriand should be on all of those.

5. No, since "Kingdom under the Mountain" is actually one term mentioned in the Appendices that applies specifically to the kingdom, which leaves "Erebor" and "Lonely Mountain" to be synonymous terms for the whole mountain. Seperately, on page 1046 (in Appendix A) it states that Náin's son...came to Erebor, the Lonely Mountain, near the eastern eaves of Mirkwood. This preceded the establishment of the kingdom.

6. Taken care of. I'll look into why those Trivia Quiz pages are unhandleable.

7. Those are images actually, not wikitext objects, so unfortunately they'd have to be individually shopped for adding transparency. I'm making that a new secondary goal of mine to fix.

You're welcome! Cheers, '<font color="#248f24">HiddenVale -  <font color="#cccc00">TalkPage ' 00:46, July 18, 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for the links!

That would violate the very importance of something being canon (on a Wiki that primarily concerns what is canon) versus something non-canon. The name of an article is the most defining trait of the substance of the article, considering that for a reader, the title of an article precedes what they then read in the article. (Likewise our own universe was preceded & caused by the Word, not vice versa.) Names/terms that random filmmakers or game-developers came up with don't get to, figuratively, be the Wiki's label of an original thing Tolkien had made up. Unless they made it up in the first place, and not him.

Regardless, having a page for Durin's axe would be like having a page for Gandalf's pointy hat, or for Sam's pan collection. We have articles for weapons that either actually have names or have extraordinary qualities. The name Barazanthual has no importance relative to the actual character's weapon, because the developers of whichever game it was could have named it Chuck if they wanted to. At this Wiki canon should obviously be treated as "true", non-fiction, in analogy to non-canon being treated as fiction.

'<font color="#248f24">HiddenVale -  <font color="#cccc00">TalkPage ' 02:44, July 18, 2018 (UTC)

1. It makes sense actually to make that change, since I did add the section qualification to the NonCanon notice last year. So yes.

2. We don't officially adopt the same policy, but go ahead and remove them.

3. Yes.

4. I had deleted that page already; somehow the talk-page lingered.

5. That's a bit strange, since other creature species are universally not labeled in the singular - e.g. "Orcs", "Eagles", "Ents", "Mewlips", "Elves". I'd recommend reverting them all to plural. In a hypothetical Brothers Grimm encyclopedia, it would make sense for "Troll" to be a species referred to in the singular, since in context, one would think of the particular, singular troll who lived under a bridge and met three goats. But in Middle-earth, Trolls have the same plural identity as other races, since we see many of them and no one of them has a significant role.

6. Well that isn't good. I'll remove the redirects.

7. I remember noticing that before and forgetting to remedy it; I've removed the code from Template:Infobox Actor that automated that.

8. We have a separate article for "Elbereth" because by its frequent appearance in The Lord of the Rings, one who has only read the trilogy might be unaware that it's an alternate name for Varda. To my knowledge, the name 'Varda' does not appear there. And, because other Valar apart from her aren't similarly mentioned.

9. The List of Animals article is currently not allowing my keyboard to work properly, but I'll be set on it.

10. Aha. I am familiar with the rare map and thought I had properly labeled all unfamiliar Mordor-locations that appeared on it. The map was drawn for film guides, such as Weapons and Warfare and Jude Fisher's visual companions, and the invented locations it features are of the collective film-fanon stuff that relates to MERP, thelandofshadow.com, and the games you mentioned. Unsure which entity actually came up with them first. I've put the NonCanon notice on Ered Glamhoth.

11. Might as well, yes. Here it is.

No problem! '<font color="#248f24">HiddenVale -  <font color="#cccc00">TalkPage ' 22:52, July 25, 2018 (UTC)

No, only if Christopher Tolkien mentions that they were eventually excluded, as he does with Eriol. We don't know that the inhabitants of the Cottage, or the Cottage itself, didn't really exist in all versions of the mythology; the reason we can be sure Eriol did not is because his character is linked to real-world England. '<font color="#248f24">HiddenVale -  <font color="#cccc00">TalkPage ' 04:54, July 26, 2018 (UTC)

Oh, yes I guess so. I'll fix them all. '<font color="#248f24">HiddenVale -  <font color="#cccc00">TalkPage ' 21:49, July 26, 2018 (UTC)

Re:Non-canon Nazgul
Yes that's fine. Make sure to transfer any images that the articles have. '<font color="#248f24">HiddenVale -  <font color="#cccc00">TalkPage ' 18:42, July 27, 2018 (UTC)

Good, thanks. Only administrators can, so I'll delete them. '<font color="#248f24">HiddenVale -  <font color="#cccc00">TalkPage ' 23:06, July 27, 2018 (UTC)

Re:
We don't, because in most cases, it is no less helpful to simply mention infobox-appropriate information in the sentences of the article itself. So with Emilíana, her image will have to stand alone, and those factoids resituated.

And yes; good thinking. I've deleted it. '<font color="#248f24">HiddenVale -  <font color="#cccc00">TalkPage ' 00:31, August 2, 2018 (UTC)

Category name
Categories with "Laketown" in the name must instead have "Lake-town", as the place is never spelled the former way. '<font color="#248f24">HiddenVale -  <font color="#cccc00">TalkPage ' 00:30, August 3, 2018 (UTC)

Re: Mordor locations
Yes. Some locations I'm sure were made by the website, some were made by the filmmakers independently of fan-fiction, but do appear on that website's map. This way, both categories, even though connected, contain all articles that apply side-by-side. '<font color="#248f24">HiddenVale -  <font color="#cccc00">TalkPage ' 23:14, August 7, 2018 (UTC)

Aha - yes some other infoboxes say "Peter Jackson's Film Trilogy and other media". So I'll change the heading on that infobox to "Peter Jackson's films or other media". Thanks for seeing.

Hmm the basic template did say "and other media". Point me to a page. '<font color="#248f24">HiddenVale -  <font color="#cccc00">TalkPage ' 00:56, August 8, 2018 (UTC)

Re: Separate articles for Fili and Kili
Mae Govannen, Bitterhand! Thank you for asking my opinion on giving Fili and Kili separate pages. I read your reasoning on HiddenVale's talk page, but I'm afraid that I cannot honestly agree with you that the characters should each have a page all to themselves because they are always mentioned together in The Hobbit; it just seems as though there wouldn't be much to write about one without including the other; plus, there is already a page for the both of them. But that's just how I see it. :)

Love your new signature, by the way! ;)

—<font face="Trajan Pro">J.S. Clingman Fëalórin, A Child of Him   <font face="Trajan Pro">whose love never fails. 18:18, August 15, 2018 (UTC)

Re: New issues
1. Impressively I never noticed that they were seperate articles beforehand.... The two names have almost the same relation as "Erebor" and "Lonely Mountain", expect neither are the name of the mountain, and "Moria" was simply the name of Khazad-dûm once it was overrun and desolate (for which reason Tolkien Gateway has a single article). The policy page doesn't say that; it only says that the article name should be the more familiar label. But thank you for directing me to the policy page anyways; it needed a wash.

3. I haven't. Once I get to the New Shadow section of THOME, I'll see if it's true and recreate the article if so.

4. Nothing really (null to use a better word). All connected topics to The New Shadow are clarified to have originated from an unfinished story; wiki viewers will understand all they need by knowing that. Any details of Tolkien quickly abandoning the story should be given on the tale's article; this also sufficiently enlightens viewers, and none will wonder what canon designation it has. Because there's not a substantial amount of other abandoned content, we don't need a new designation to account for all parts of the canon gradient. (We have some articles categorized as "Precanon" that also pertain to topics abandoned by him without replacement, so things would conflict.)

5. It wouldn't hurt to split them, if indeed the film differences are significant, but that isn't something I'll undertake.

There is less reason to split Elladan and Elrohir because they are together in all contexts (in lore and in adaptations), and having seperate articles would entail a larger percentage of duplicate text than Kili and Fili. Kili and Fili are major characters in their story.

No problem. '<font color="#248f24">HiddenVale -  <font color="#cccc00">TalkPage ' 23:14, August 15, 2018 (UTC)

Re: A Couple Questions
I've deleted the redirect.

The greatest woe is that no, the "corpus" of a wiki category exists across all articles put under it. So one must make a category change article-by-article. We categorize non-canon music to distinguish from in-world music, whereas there are no in-world films or games.

Have a great week, '<font color="#248f24">HiddenVale -  <font color="#cccc00">TalkPage ' 17:04, September 11, 2018 (UTC)

Hello
Hey there, just wanted to say hi since we've both been doing lots of editing here (or more accurately, you've been doing a ton and I've been doing some). Anyways, I'd like to share with you a very helpful JavaScript tool that allows you to find and replace text in an article, which can be extremely helpful for quickly making minor changes to a lot of things (e.g. replacing  with  ). You can read more about it here. Let me know if you have any questions or are interested in some other handy tools. Have a great week!

Re:
We'll keep the first because that video game doesn't have a wiki of its own, and the second one I've never come across, and deleted. Thanks for noticing them.

I'll give Badgers the rewrite its text needs tomorrow, but still have had issues trying to successfully alter those Animal lists. See if you're able to some time after I've fixed Badgers.

'<font color="#248f24">HiddenVale -  <font color="#cccc00">TalkPage ' 05:09, September 26, 2018 (UTC)

Re: Hobbit families and users
Go ahead and change plural ones to singular, since most start with singlar wording: "The (Brandybuck) clan/family was...." I've changed the two you linked. Do "____ (family)" if you wish, for words that could be awkward if singular and alone as an article title, such as Chubb.

Yes, you have permission to change user profile categories where factually appropriate. '<font color="#248f24">HiddenVale -  <font color="#cccc00">TalkPage ' 03:10, October 2, 2018 (UTC)

Re: Infobox issues
Until I've designed a real-person infobox, I've made the "physical description" heading dissappear on Tolkien's infobox for now, since that's the only small hint that it's for characters. I've fixed Infobox: Actors by removing the category automation for nationality. Such categories can easily just be added manually now.

I've been reverting the Wiki theme back.

'<font color="#248f24">HiddenVale -  <font color="#cccc00">TalkPage ' 16:45, October 11, 2018 (UTC)

Literature tiers
I've made a new way to specifically organize our wealth of book articles by categories. All preexisting categories applied to book articles (such as "Books") can remain, but Primary literature is the category for main, works of Middle-earth canon by Tolkien, and for The History of Middle-earth; more helpfully, Secondary literature is for books written about Tolkien or his world: biographies, scholarly works, Christian books, and atlases/guides. And technically there's Tertiary literature as I will be making an article for a book that was written in honor of Tom Shippey, which concerns his Tolkien-scholarship. Currently, none of our categories dilineate this.

Books about the films, and Tolkien's poems or mythic translations and retellings of real-world tales, don't really fit into this pyramid.

No need to go and apply these categories throughout unless you wish. Just a heads-up; use these categories as you come across book pages.

Have a good night, '<font color="#248f24">HiddenVale -  <font color="#cccc00">TalkPage ' 03:47, October 17, 2018 (UTC)

Aha, that would be Primary literature. '<font color="#248f24">HiddenVale -  <font color="#cccc00">TalkPage ' 02:12, October 19, 2018 (UTC)

Re: BOTFA category
Oh wonderful, thank you.

You as well. '<font color="#248f24">HiddenVale -  <font color="#cccc00">TalkPage ' 04:05, October 25, 2018 (UTC)

RE: Formatting
No problem! I'll definitely be keeping track of that conversation, since my bot could possibly be used to implement new canonicity templates and since it could have a far-ranging impact on the wiki. On a side note, let me know if you ever want me to run a bot operation for you. Cheers!


 * Cool! Have a nice evening as well.

Re: Canon & other things
Tolkien may have abandoned The New Shadow before it was finished but the reality is is that what he did write, thought unfinished was published as a short story in The Peoples of Middle-earth, not just notes about his ideas or intentions to write a new story, but the actual story. So I say yes, what text remains of The New Shadow is canon here, unless the estate gives a definite "No". As for templates, they should be wholly or partly designed by the user intending to upload them, and yes nothing should resemble anything like what is at the Tolkien Gateway.--DarkLantern (talk) 03:28, October 31, 2018 (UTC)

Re: Canonicity
An individual work that is incomplete and lacks an entire plot and/or conclusion, i.e. New Shadow, is troublesome (and moreso awkward) to be classified as canon, because all other identifiable pieces of the canon "continuum" are things Tolkien concluded. So, we clarify in its article without use of notices or categories that it was an unfinished story. The Lost Tales content that we consider canon is what isn't mentioned by Chris.Tolkien to have been later revised, and isn't a mesh of real-world myth and fiction. This winter break I'll be resuming my old project of providing articles for the chapters of The History of Middle-earth, each of which correspond to a tale, and in reading all of their commentaries I'll know whether there is deeper canon ambiguity. Most of the time Christopher gives detail on what ideas were emended.

Which articles are ostensibly relevant?

The template would be a good idea, with the first sentence simplified to ''The canonicity of this article's subject is disputed. ''In this environment, things that are disputed are uncertain.

'<font color="#248f24">HiddenVale -  <font color="#cccc00">TalkPage ' 03:39, November 3, 2018 (UTC)

Okay, go ahead and place it at The Adventures of Tom Bombadil, and Pixies and Sprites, and the story-tellers & the Cottage. '<font color="#248f24">HiddenVale -  <font color="#cccc00">TalkPage ' 04:56, November 5, 2018 (UTC)

Those two books are unconnected. '<font color="#248f24">HiddenVale -  <font color="#cccc00">TalkPage ' 02:59, November 6, 2018 (UTC)

Re:
Thank you for that; they're all superfluous (for different reasons), even though some sorrow was engendered in me when having to delete the Potato article of all things...

'<font color="#248f24">HiddenVale -  <font color="#cccc00">TalkPage ' 04:22, November 13, 2018 (UTC)

RE: Replacing
Sure thing, that's a piece of cake. Done! On a side note, see what I did here to make the exact wording you had show up. :)


 * No problem, let me know if something of this nature arises again. Cheers

Re: New pages
I thought the pages were too small for that so I left it out Ill try to in future but tell me if its still wrong

Ulmo lord of the waters (talk) 11:24, November 17, 2018 (UTC)Ulmo lord of the Waters

Re: Year Template
Aha, I recall meeting that issue in one of those pages. I don't remember if I looked at that template; I'll be doing so tomorrow. '<font color="#248f24">HiddenVale -  <font color="#cccc00">TalkPage ' 01:00, November 25, 2018 (UTC)

Fixed the Year template such that (for example) SR 1423 is equal to FO 2. A deeper trek down into the code will be needed to fix the overlap and grammar flaw at SR 1422; I'll get to that another time. '<font color="#248f24">HiddenVale -  <font color="#cccc00">TalkPage ' 03:50, November 26, 2018 (UTC)

Re: FO/SR corrections
They've been deleted. Thanks and good work! '<font color="#248f24">HiddenVale -  <font color="#cccc00">TalkPage ' 03:44, November 29, 2018 (UTC)

Unknown
I'm curious why you're replacing many of the elves' lifespan of "Still alive" with "Unknown". Canonically, for instance, Olwe never died and should consequently still be alive in the lore. Xkcd1BeretGuy (talk) 13:15, December 6, 2018 (UTC)

Re: Couple of things
For Elf lifespans, "unknown" is fine and better than "Still alive" for the reasons you told him. If a minor character Elf infobox doesn't have a lifespan entry, and no dates are known for them, you can leave the entry unused.

I don't see those links on Recent Activity- where are you looking?

'<font color="#248f24">HiddenVale -  <font color="#cccc00">TalkPage ' 19:32, December 10, 2018 (UTC)

RE: Template script
Hey there, I've updated most of the templates that you've linked to. The ones I have not are being discussed here. Thanks for bringing this up,

Re: Misc. questions
Not in a way that makes adding a image impossible, across all articles that use the infobox, so for the time being I've swapped the infobox of that article with this one. Its name is ugly but only editors notice template names...

I looked at the first conception of the Minas Ithil article, and it seems an article made for something just referenced in passing. If you didn't see the right details of it in the Appendix then it's probably speculative, and there need not be an article on the small amount of what's certain. So I've deleted it.

Thank you, and you as well! '<font color="#248f24">HiddenVale -  <font color="#cccc00">TalkPage ' 01:14, December 20, 2018 (UTC)

Re: Categories
Yikes, the Hobbit images overlap is huge and concerning..."Images of Hobbits" is the right name. For now, empty the "Map" category and I'll delete it. I have recategorized the Far South articles and corrected the name of the Master images category. '<font color="#248f24">HiddenVale -  <font color="#cccc00">TalkPage ' 23:59, December 26, 2018 (UTC)

Re: Categories and merging suggestions
Thanks for that hard work with images! Daggers of Westernesse has been deleted, and the latter two have been merged to Great Gate.

Thanks and let me know if you have any. ;|

'<font color="#248f24">HiddenVale -  <font color="#cccc00">TalkPage ' 01:47, January 5, 2019 (UTC)