Talk:History of Arda/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Casliber (talk · contribs) 18:46, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

I'll take a look - you know the drill Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 18:46, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

Many thanks, I'll reply promptly. Chiswick Chap (talk) 19:04, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

• Avoid one-sentence paras like the one in Spring of Arda
  • Fixed.
• Shortly after the destruction of the Two Lamps and the kingdom of Almaren,... - How do we know what "Shortly" is here, I'd probably rephrase as a sequence of events
  • Edited.
• There are both spaced ndashes and unspaced mdashes...choose yer formatting poison...
  • Spaced ndashes it is.
• The article is in-universe heavy - did Tolkien talk about why/how/inspiration for some key elements? Is this covered elsewhere in any of the other middle earth articles that have been buffed?
  • Well, the history is a piece of infrastructure for everything else, and Tolkien is necessarily the authority on it. Inspiration is covered in J. R. R. Tolkien's influences, with support from several articles like Christianity in Middle-earth and Beowulf and Middle-earth. Hope this helps. Chiswick Chap (talk) 19:59, 23 January 2022 (UTC)
    • The addition of more scholarly analysis for the points below has also changed the Tolkien/scholar balance. Chiswick Chap (talk) 11:40, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

Overall reads well and GA is achievable. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 19:52, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

Thanks! Chiswick Chap (talk) 19:59, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

Okay - I'd be surprised if there weren't more specific studies on the ideas behind the creation myth (Iluvatar/Melkor etc.). As it stands, the bottom segment "Imagined prehistory" seems pretty sparse on more specifics. If not to be expanded here, maybe a See also at the top. Some is in the Ainulindalë article, and more in Cosmology_of_Tolkien's_legendarium#Creation_account. In fact, there is alot of overlap of in-universe content with Cosmology of Tolkien's legendarium and am not sure what the ultimate aim here is of what to go where. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 03:20, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

On the creation myth: that is the Ainulindalë. I've happily added a bit on the ideas behind it, at risk of straying into the curtilage of Christianity in Middle-earth#The creation.

On the 'Imagined prehistory': the section makes it clear that Tolkien places Middle-earth as the Earth in the distant past; and how he imagines it is, well, the entire content of all his Middle-earth books, and the time-sequence is what is described in the body of this article! He does not describe the course of the "about 6000 years" between the end of the Third Age and today beyond what is quoted in the article. The scholars quoted there do the best they can to explain the concept, so I feel the section is pretty comprehensive, actually.

On the Cosmology, that is, to state the obvious, an article with a different purpose; our concern in this article and this GAN is the history of Arda, i.e. an overview of the events as a sequence in time (regardless of how badly all the other Middle-earth articles are constructed :-} ). Clearly the largest of those events are cosmological (so some overlap is inevitable). The aim of the Cosmology article is to cover the large themes, which are inevitably theological, as opposed to this article whose theme is chronological. Perhaps the feeling of cosmology is partly from the diagrams; but they have value here. Again, hope this helps a bit. Chiswick Chap (talk) 09:00, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

I've quite substantially added to the 'Analysis' for you. My goal has been to avoid going into the (enormous) scholarly effort on the themes of Middle-earth, as that is very thoroughly covered in other articles. Instead I've focused on the background of the mythological history as far as possible. Chiswick Chap (talk) 10:21, 26 January 2022 (UTC)

1. Well written?:

Prose quality:

Manual of Style compliance:

2. Factually accurate and verifiable?:

References to sources:

Citations to reliable sources, where required:

No original research:

3. Broad in coverage?:

Major aspects:

Focused:

4. Reflects a neutral point of view?:

Fair representation without bias:

5. Reasonably stable?

No edit wars, etc. (Vandalism does not count against GA):

6. Illustrated by images, when possible and appropriate?:

Images are copyright tagged, and non-free images have fair use rationales:

Images are provided where possible and appropriate, with suitable captions:

Overall:

Pass or Fail: - I recognise the difficulty in deciding what analysis to put where - I think this is the right balance now Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 01:33, 27 January 2022 (UTC)