Talk:Barrow-wight/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: RoySmith (talk ·

Starting review. Before I even get into this, I'm curious about your choice to divide the references up into primary and secondary. Which I assume WP:PRIMARY and WP:SECONDARY; categorizing sources like that seems like more of an internal wikipedia thing and not something we should present to the reader. Is there some president for doing it this way? I don't know that it's a problem, but I'd like to hear your thoughts on it. I'll dive into the rest of the review, and we can have that conversation in parallel. -- RoySmith (talk) 22:28, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

It's all across the WP:Middle-earth project, as we had a major issue with deletionists complaining that everything was primary-sourced. It makes it much easier to see the status of an article and to ensure that primary sources are when needed (i.e. when not just about plot or basic facts) accompanied by secondary sources. For the reader, looking something up in the right place in The Lord of the Rings (which 150 million people have at home) is a very different proposition than looking out a scholarly source (only thee and me and the university library have a copy). Chiswick Chap (talk) 20:59, 28 March 2021 (UTC)

Prose

• "best-known from J. R. R. Tolkien's world of Middle-earth." That's certainly where I heard of them first, and I'm guessing you too, but it's WP:OR to assume that globally that's where they're best known from. Is there a WP:RS that says so?

Edited.

• link "undead" the first time it's used.

Done.

• link "computer games" the first time.

Done.

• "A barrow is simply a burial mound", drop "simply".

Done.

• "Eidanger, Telemark", leave out Telemark, per WP:SEAOFBLUE. Actually, is there anything special about what the people in Eidanger believed vs. the rural population in the rest of Norway? Maybe just leave it out completely.

Dropped the Telemark. We have written evidence from Eidanger; it's not clear that the belief extended beyond Telemark.

• "Tolkien stated in his Nomenclature", it's not clear what "Nomentclature is". Is it the title of a book? A section in a book, like one of the zillions of appendixes in LOTR?

He wrote a separate guide when he realised the translators were messing up the names in German. It's reprinted in full in the cited source; I've added its full name in the text and in the citation, where it's a chapter.

• In the block quote from Grettis saga, why are barrow-wight and barrow-dweller in bold? Was it that way in the original?

No, just showing where the terms were. We can live without.

• "The Grettis Saga ... clearly influenced Tolkien's barrow-wights" Unless there's a source that explicitly says so (I haven't dug into the sources yet), saying "clearly" is OR.

As cited, but dropped the adverb.

(This brings me up to "Lord of the Rings narrative". I'll pick up there in another session).

• "and nearly brutally killed by a barrow-wight". As opposed to being killed gently with loving kindness? Drop "brutally".

Done.

• "Patrick Callahan notes that the whole Bombadil episode". Who is Patrick Callahan? You note earlier that Tom Shippey is a Tolkien scholar. Do something similar here.

Done.

• "Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings film trilogy." WP:SEAOFBLUE Maybe, "absent in Peter Jackson's film trilogy, The Lord of the Rings.

Rejigged the sentence.

• "The Tolkien scholar John Rateliff", leave off "The".

No, it's standard British English usage, and BE is standard across the Middle-earth project.

• "Brian Rosebury states", somehow "states" seems too much like it's an unassailable fact. Maybe, "Brian Rosebury believes"? Or argues? Or something like which which makes it clear this is just Rosebury's opinion. Also, shorten "The scholar of humanities" to "Humanities scholar". Personally, I think he's full of crap; leaving Bombadil out was a travesty. But that's not a GA criteria :-(

Tweaked it. Actually I've been jumped on by other reviewers for using "argues" as they say that's not neutral, while you and I reckon it's just a descriptive word. English has many varieties...

• On a more GA-acceptable level, I'm concerned that most of the "In other media" section is giving WP:UNDUE weight to Jackson's film-making decisions and is largely out of scope for an article about the the creatures (criteria 3b: it stays focused on the topic without going into unnecessary detail).

Cut. I do actually feel it can be defended but I agree the lost material is more about the barrow than the wight.

• "Tom Shippey adds that in the book,", the word "adds" seems an odd way to tie this to something you said several paragraphs earlier. Maybe, "Shippey (no need to include the first name here) noted that..." Also, "in the book" seems odd for a three-book trilogy. Maybe just make it plural: "In the books"?

Cut, per above.

• "Barrow-wights have however been included in games..." Although I'm not sure I subscribe to the idea, many people object to single-sentence paragraphs, and if if you find them acceptable, this one just sounds stilted. I don't think it adds much to the article, so maybe leave it out completely per UNDUE.

Given the cut, I think you'll see that the remaining bit actually works well: it's brief and focused.

(that does it for the prose review. I'll pick up again later)

References

• "Barrow". Cambridge Dictionary. Is it possible to construct a URL which points directly to the (for burial) meaning?

Don't think so, it's just one short page. (Lot more convenient than being pointed to volume 3 of Webster, flip through 500 pages to find the entry!)

• Not a GA criteria, but consider combining the three Shippy references into one, and using {{rp}} to note individual pages where cited.

Merged.

You merged the refs, but left out the {{rp}}. Having the specific page numbers is indeed useful.

Don't like the clutter of rp. The page numbers, all close together, are inside the citation.

• Mythprint, unless there's a specific reason to use Google Books for a citation (i.e. they have full text available), I'd prefer a vendor-neutral directory like WorldCat. In any case, you need a full citation with Title, Publisher, ISBN and/or OCLC numbers, etc.

Mythprint was a society newsletter; the publisher, date, and page are given, the other details don't exist, and it's a fortunate thing that there is a URL that works for it, as otherwise it'd be a trip to the library to locate.

Sure they do. Check the WorldCat entry. And, at least some of the volumes are available on-line. But, here's the bigger question: are they a WP:RS? I can't tell from the description if they're a fanzine, a peer-reviewed academic journal, or something in between. -- RoySmith (talk) 22:04, 28 March 2021 (UTC)

In between, a well-informed newsletter: not likely to be mistaken on such a simple point, either. Thanks for the link, added details.

I'm still confused why you're linking to Google Books. What value does that add? Also, if this is a journal, you should cite it with {{Cite journal}}, which has a real volume attribute, so you don't have to shove <!--vols 9-13--> into the title. Cite the exact volume, not 9-13. 9-13 was an artifact of how Google Books bundled multiple volumes into a single entry, or something like that.

Er, that was how I accessed the source, but let's drop it, replaced the ref.

Reading through this once more, the last issue I see is the "In other media" section heading. Maybe change that to "In contemporary media"?

Done.

2nd Opinion needed

The author and I have gone back and forth a couple times on the sourcing for the last sentence in the article, and this is now the only thing keeping this from passing the review. Are the sources being used for Despite their omission from the film trilogy, Barrow-wights have been included in games based on Tolkien's Middle-earth acceptable WP:RS? -- RoySmith (talk) 17:08, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

RoySmith I'll drop the section until I can find some academic research on the matter. But TBH gamers are hardly going to lie about something of this sort so I'd have thought we could rely on them for something so simple. Chiswick Chap (talk) 18:07, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

Chiswick Chap, My apologies for being hard-nosed about this, but RS really is a core part of GA. The rest of the article is very nice, and the bit about being included in video games really doesn't add anything significant to it. I'll go ahead and mark this as passed now. -- RoySmith (talk) 18:26, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

Thanks. Chiswick Chap (talk) 18:31, 29 March 2021 (UTC)