Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Troll (Middle-earth)

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The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was keep. Merger can be discussed outside of AfD. (non-admin closure) buidhe 03:50, 17 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Troll (Middle-earth)[edit]

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Troll (Middle-earth) (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)
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What makes Tolkien's troll notable enough for a stand-alone article? In the Tolkien Encyclopedia, they do not have a separate entry, just some mentions in passing here and there. They don't even get a dedicated paragraph in the entry on Monsters, where the book index suggests they should be discussed (page 433 if anyone cares to read it). All that entry says about them is a sentence or two about how the term is derived from Norse literature. Other than that, the article we have is pure WP:PLOT outside of the sentence or two based on concept art from the movie. I don't think this suffices, and BEFORE shows only fan PLOT-like discussions out there and likewise unreliable and trivial discussions of CGI from the movies. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 05:53, 10 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Fictional elements-related deletion discussions. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 05:53, 10 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Science fiction and fantasy-related deletion discussions. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 05:53, 10 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete. Other than the Cockney accent in The Hobbit, Tolkien's trolls are just your generic model, complete with vulnerability to sunlight. Clarityfiend (talk) 07:48, 10 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep - I've added more than 15 secondary sources, describing the origins, significance, and role of trolls in Tolkien's Middle-earth writings, with a few short quotations. I've also cut down the uncited material and cited some of the films and games (a thankless task, that last) as reliably as possible. There are many more sources available; given the enormous popular (film, game) interest in Tolkien's trolls, and the substantial scholarly interest, the subject passes WP:N with flying colours. Even the Cockney accent attracts scholarly attention, cited now in the article. I should have thought this an obvious "Keep". Chiswick Chap (talk) 10:34, 10 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete - We have to remember that Tolkien was a scholar and his field was languages. He was well versed in Old Norse and there is no reason to believe other than that he knew trolls very well from the literature where they came from. I also feel confident that he knew well what the word means, the usage and different meanings of the word. Judging from how the sources now offered in the article is used Tolken wrote about trolls much the same way as Norse myths and fairytales do. I also base my opinion on having read Tolkien and never having found a contradiction between Norwegian writings about trolls and Tolkien's trolls.
- Possibly some of the content can be used in the article about trolls. The section about types should be removed whatever happens to the article. It seems to be rather speculative and judged from the sources there is no reason to assume that Tolkiens trolls can be sorted in any kind of types. If some of the content can be used in the troll arctice it needs to be seriously rewritten. As the article now is written it is pure unfounded speculation in the existence of troll types in Tolkiens books. Possibly a list of occurences in the books and films can be substracted from the content and included in a new section in the troll article about "occurences of trolls in Tolkiens books" or "Tolkiens trolls".
- I always like to find a way to keep the contributions if possible. To to that this article can be redirected to troll. It does not however merit a standalone article. regards ツDyveldi ☯ prat ✉ post 16:25, 10 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Dyveldi - there is extensive scholarly discussion specifically of Tolkien's trolls, cited in the article; the citations do not apply to trolls-in-general, so the make Troll (Middle-earth) separately notable under WP:GNG. Tolkien knew about Norse trolls but his trolls resemble those only in part, and the uses he made of them are mostly entirely his own. On the textual classification, I agree it's not ideal (it's very old and fan-crufty), and I'm happy to rewrite it it's now part-deleted, part rewritten as a conventional 'Appearances', but the article's notability is not affected by bad writing, just the existence of reliable sources. Chiswick Chap (talk) 16:34, 10 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
" extensive scholarly discussion specifically of Tolkien's trolls". Can you quote a dedicated paragraph that is not a WP:PLOT summary? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 02:07, 11 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep: A well-sourced article thanks to Chiswick Chap's improvements. There is scope for further improvement in talking about the differences between Tolkien's trolls and their roots in Norse mythology. I say that as a positive note for further development, not as a criticism of the work that Chiswick did today. :) — Toughpigs (talk) 16:47, 10 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep Thanks to excellent work from User:Chiswick Chap the article now has multiple secondary sources. If anything this should be Speedy Keep Lava Lamps (talk) 17:43, 10 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep, several reliable secondary sources have been added to the article, demonstrating a pass of WP:GNG. Hog Farm (talk) 18:17, 10 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Merge to Troll. The main article does not seem so large that including Tolkien's trolls in it would be a problem.ZXCVBNM (TALK) 19:03, 10 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep Tolkien had a good ruse for beating trolls – keep them arguing until the sun comes up. We should be smart enough not to fall for this endless argument trick. Andrew🐉(talk) 22:39, 10 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. Not a single source added demonstrates non-trivial coverage as required by GNG. Feel free to ping me if anyone proves that a single source here is actually in-depth and not a passing mentions. I doubt, however, than anyone will accept the challenge, it's much easier to say "keep, good sources" and move on. Closing admin should be wary of WP:NOTAVOTE. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 02:06, 11 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    • @Piotrus, Andrew Davidson, Zxcvbnm, Lava Lamps, Toughpigs, Chiswick Chap, Dyveldi, and Clarityfiend: - I found this [1] on Google Scholar, but can't tell what exactly the provenance of this is. Is this a reliable source? It seems to discuss Tolkien's trolls more in-depth. If it's reliable, I can add it to the article. Hog Farm (talk) 02:39, 11 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
      • Thank you for linking a source. I agree the source discusses the topic in-depth (now, if we can find one more in-depth, the GNG requirement of multiple such sources will be met...). I am not sure what is the origin of this paper (I have my suspicions it started as a grad student assignment) but fortunately it is irrelevant as it was published in Bradford Lee Eden (24 September 2014). The Hobbit and Tolkien's Mythology: Essays on Revisions and Influences. McFarland. ISBN 978-1-4766-1795-4. [2] so it is reliable. Good find! --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 03:15, 11 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
      • That source (Hartley's chapter in Eden's book) was most useful, linking the trolls with Tolkien's letter #153 to Peter Hastings in which he discusses the problem of making dumb beasts speak - to a Catholic like Tolkien, that meant they'd have souls, obviously not a great idea, so he went to a lot of trouble to undo the damage he'd done in The Hobbit (resulting in the vast legendarium, and the much darker treatment of trolls in the other books). I've worked this into 'Origins'. Chiswick Chap (talk) 09:08, 11 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Hartley discusses wheather or not several of Tolkiens figures possess "soul" (Fëa). Gregory Hartley's artcle can be downloaded from academia.edu [[3]]. He is assistant professor of writing at University of Alaska profile at University of Alaska, his Linkedin profile. According to Google Scholar he has not published very much [[4]]. The article is not peer-reviewed and he is not to be considered an expert on Tolkien, the soul, trolls or Scandinavian folk beliefs. --regards ツDyveldi ☯ prat ✉ post 17:13, 11 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@Dyveldi: Playing the devil's advocate, it might have been peer reviewed for the book publication. McFarland & Company is generally considered a publisher that satisfies WP:RS I think. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 01:44, 13 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
We always need an advocate to pose questions that should be addressed.
- The book is from a conference. Google's summary is [[5]]: "At the 2013 "Celebrating The Hobbit" conference at Valparaiso University--marking the 75th anniversary of the book's publication and the first installment of Peter Jackson's Hobbit movies--two plenary papers were presented:. The celebrities at the conference seems to have been " John D. Rateliff and Verlyn Flieger. I do not think we can conclude that the contributions from non-notable participants are comparable to peer-reviewed articles.
- I have read the article several times and it seems to be based on one letter Tolkien wrote in answer to a 1954 letter from Catholic bookshop manager Peter Hasting and one short essay simply entitled “Orcs” from 1959. As said above it discusses whether or not trolls, orcs etc have a soul (fea) and is not really an arctice about Tolkiens trolls. --regards ツDyveldi ☯ prat ✉ post 08:13, 13 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

"In The Hobbit, trolls, orcs, and even the dragon operate simply within the fairy tale register. The trolls behave like the trolls of Scandinavian literature;"

The article referred to in Poor Bert... is a very good source for the article Internet troll. --regards ツDyveldi ☯ prat ✉ post 17:13, 11 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Attebery's article discusses trolls in fiction and uses Tolkien as one of several examples. She says "J.R.R. Tolkien's trolls in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings are clearly drawn from the ogre-troll tradition, based not just upon Asbjörnsen and Moe but also upon Tolkien's own study of Icelandic mythology." The article is a good source for expanding the article about trolls and not for the article being discussed here. --regards ツDyveldi ☯ prat ✉ post 17:13, 11 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep Chiswick Chap has greatly improved the article. It clearly passes the general notability guidelines. Dream Focus 14:25, 11 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • My compliments to Chiswick chap for his work. I like the removal of troll types and that the references is split in one section for Tolkiens books and another for the rest of the references. But the revisions to the article have not changed my mind.
- Tolkiens trolls are covered in Middle-earth_peoples#Trolls and though that section needs better references and possibly expanded with a couple of sentences, the section is quite enough about trolls in Tolkiens world. Also an article about much the same theme; Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Mountain giants was deleted 2006.
- The article as it is now is based on at few scattered examples from the text and a few mentions in publications. Hartley's article is not enough to warrant a standalone article and Attebery basically writes about trolls in fiction generally. Furthermore no one have been able to source the lead. Which still states "In this they differed from the trolls of Norse mythology, which were magical and sometimes beautiful creatures, with special skills." Which is does not have sources and I doubt very much that this is possible to give sources. Rather the contrary. The sources we have looked at states that Tolkiens trolls does not differ from Scandinavian trolls past and present. Beautiful I haven't seen anyone write about trolls. It was introduced in 2016 [[6]] and no one discovered the mistake. The rest of the lead does not reflect the realities the sources we have dicussed says. Tolkiens trolls were like the trolls he knew from Nordic literature. The article still needs to loose most of its content especially all the unsourced content. The rest needs focus and to be shortened. As this is I do not think this warrants a stand-alone article. I still think the article about trolls should be expanded to include the trolls in literature presented in this discussion. regards ツDyveldi ☯ prat ✉ post 17:13, 11 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
On the contrary, the sources make it clear, as the article does, that Tolkien has departed considerably from Norse mythology; one only needs to consider the "bred by Sauron" theme to realize that. Chiswick Chap (talk) 17:19, 11 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Which can be covered with one sentence in Middle-earth_peoples#Trolls. regards ツDyveldi ☯ prat ✉ post 18:16, 11 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Question. Did we find a second source that discusses middle-earth trolls in depth, not in a passing sentence here and there? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 01:46, 13 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Trying to find good sources for Troll I have also found a little about Tolkiens trolls. This could possibly be used to fix the section Middle-earth_peoples#Trolls.
- John Lindow have included about 310 words about Tolkiens trolls in his book about trolls. He is a reliable source as he is an expert on trolls among other related things.
- Rudolf Simek seems to be reliable and an expert on trolls etc who also writes about Middle Earth. He has a short section named "Trolle (trolls)" in his book Mittelerde, ISBN 978 3 406 69333 5. The section is about 530 words plus three quotes from Tolkiens books. I would not call the section an in depth discussion, but it is probably representative for what there is to say. As a comparison this discussion was more than 2000 words when I started writing.
- I also found that Rudolf Simek have written a book dedicated to trolls: Trolle: Ihre Geschichte Von Der Nordischen Mythologie Bis Zum Internet (Trolls. Their History from Norse Mythology to the Internet). A review I found here [[7]] is a, I hope, very good description of the book. The review is 4 pages. The review says that Simek discusses trolls in modern literature in chapter 9. That is Henrik Ibsen and onward. The reviewer says: "Auch Fantasy-Autoren greifen auf die westskandinavische Trollvorstellung von riesi- gen und starken Wesen zurück. Besonders J.R.R. Tolkien (1892–1973) wirkte formativ. " So this is just part of a chapter. I do not know how much space Simek have dedicated to Tolkien, but aim to find out when the paper book is delivered. In a short chapter 10 Simek diskusses how trolls is depicted in films and I assume Tolkien films are at least included.
- Clearly a lot more to say about trolls in general though. Lindow and Simek should make a good foundation along with what I found written in Norwegian, which is so much it is difficult to sort out the useful sources. --regards ツDyveldi ☯ prat ✉ post 15:18, 13 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Frankly, I agree the reader would benefit more from having one good article on trolls, with subsections on them in famous literature works/games, then from a bunch of mostly PLOT-filled subarticles. ~I would be fine with this ending up as a merge of the non-plot elements to the article about troll. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 01:47, 14 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep The improvements made clearly demonstrate the article passes WP:GNG, and additional sources identified in this AFD conversation show further potential for article improvement is possible. A good WP:HEY example. I don't think a merge to a generic troll article would be helpful because is enough content here that the resulting article would be too-Tolkien heavy, and would eventually necessitate a split into his own article anyway... — Hunter Kahn 23:19, 14 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry there is no gentle way to say this. This article is a random collection of short mentions scattered all over the place. The one and only "chapter" (about 2 book pages and not very deep coverage) found till now which is dedicated to tolkiens trolls only is in the book by Simek ISBN 978 3 406 69333 5. The second source identified is Lindow ISBN 9781780233307 which is around half a page and most certainly not in depth coverage. Neither of these sources used in the article. The sources used in the article are put together in a way that closely resembles WP:OR and they do not quite fit together. The article needs to be seriously cut to loose the impression of being a collection of unrelated bits an pieces. It is quite correct that this should not be merged to the troll-article. The troll-article would however benefit from being expanded with trolls in literature, illustrations and film, Tolkien and Bauer included. Why Bauer is included here I just do not understand. Bauer did not know Tolkien and it is highly unlikely that Tolkien knew Bauer or had heard of the childrens stories Bauer illustrated. The article probably should be reduced to around 20-30% of present size, but the easiest would probably be to start all over again using Simek and Lindow as a base. regards ツDyveldi ☯ prat ✉ post 18:25, 15 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@Dyveldi: But Middle-earth stuff is cool! We need to preserve the cool side of Wikipedia by keeping a plot-full fancruft as a separate article, rather than try to improve one main article with sscholary sources. After all, scholarly sources are hard to find, but plot fancruft is what most people care about, eh? :> Anyway, WP:NOTAVOTE is rarely remembered by closing admins. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 01:24, 16 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
WP:BLUDGEON -- Toughpigs (talk) 01:39, 16 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
WP:IDONTLIKEIT. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 03:44, 16 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
What I'm trying to say is that Piotrus, as the nominator, has now posted eight times in the discussion, and Dyveldi has posted nine times. Between the two of you, you're taking up about 75% of the conversation, and now Piotrus has posted a mocking imitation of the Keep voters; I see that as an attempt to shame and intimidate us. This is the very definition of WP:BLUDGEON, and it is not considered productive. — Toughpigs (talk) 04:44, 16 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
As far as I am aware WP:IDONTLIKEIT is an argument against removing content just because you don’t like it. It has nothing to do with WP:NPA and WP:AGF both of which seem to have been ignored by the recent deletion arguments. Lava Lamps (talk) 05:12, 16 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Piotrus is right that Middle-earth stuff is cool! I say that it is not just cool, it is of interest to a lot of people and this makes it important to get the article right.
- I will also stress this is in no way an attempt to shame or intimidate anyone. I do however feel intimidation by the trying to think about fixing the article. I just do not know how to. I find the prospect of removing a lot of stuff intimidating.
- In many cases it works to put bits and pieces together. That is if there is a proper skeleton to begin to work from. This article have lacked a skeleton for years and the bits and pieces have not found a home.
- I'll leave this one for now and wait to see what Simeks book about trolls have to offer. That's where I'll see what should be done with the article about trolls. regards ツDyveldi ☯ prat ✉ post 05:27, 16 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. Article much improved, a fair number of sources identified. I'm pretty disappointed by some of the conversation above. Hartley's article is an academic paper, written by an academic, published in an edited collection (a standard genre for academic writing), published by an established academic press - and yet we have all kinds of hand-wringing to argue that this isn't really a reliable source. Is it a monograph published by OUP? No. Is it a paper in Nature? No. Does it meet our requirements for a reliable source? With bells on. Josh Milburn (talk) 07:37, 16 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep because the topic is treated in a number of secondary sources. I have added another Middle-Earth encyclopedia which does have a separate one-page entry for trolls. Daranios (talk) 20:16, 16 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.
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