Tolkien Gateway

User talk:Woolly Mammoth


[edit] Welcome!



-- Mith (Talk/Contribs/Edits) 23:43, 25 December 2014 (UTC)

[edit] Images

Please only upload images if you include artist information and we have permission from said artist. See here for a full list. --Ederchil (Talk/Contribs/Edits) 11:04, 10 May 2015 (UTC)

[edit] Sources

When you change data, always include a source. As specific as possible. Also, since we don't know birthdays, age at death can be 1 year apart. --Ederchil (Talk/Contribs/Edits) 21:32, 10 May 2015 (UTC)

[edit] Infoboxes

Why are you removing infoboxes from articles? --Mith (Talk/Contribs/Edits) 12:57, 11 May 2015 (UTC)

Woolly Mammoth 13:01, 11 May 2015 (UTC)Because these characters are either developing concepts or concepts abandoned by Tolkien...and the matter of Canon vs. Non-canon is a pretty cloudy concept...
That doesn't explain why Tolkien Gateway shouldn't give them an infobox. Please stop removing infoboxes from these characters. --Mith (Talk/Contribs/Edits) 13:03, 11 May 2015 (UTC)
Woolly Mammoth Perhaps I was wrong...sorry...but I strive for consistency as much as possible (considering Tolkien), and there are plenty of characters that deserve "Non-canon" label...
Just for your information - as per my userpage and the claimed tags (that you've ignored) - I have spent years - literally years - sorting out all the infoboxes to a point where they are consistent with one another, contain the information we want to contain, and have appropriate colour schemes. Without exaggeration, I have gone through hundreds and hundreds of characters fixing and standardising their infoboxes (look through their article histories and at some point you will see an edit by me with the summary "Updated infobox").
I have reverted your edits on the men infobox and I have subsequently protected all the infobox templates I have made and amended. The reasons I disagree with your edit to add "nationality" to the infobox are as follows:
  1. It is inconsistent with other infoboxes;
  2. Nationality is not a physical description;
  3. I don't know if this is a language issue, but the idea of nationality as is understood in modernity is not a concept in Middle-earth;
  4. Notwithstanding all of the above, your usage of the nationality field is highly question. Being a Bree-lander is not a nationality; being an Oathbreaker, or a Wraith, is not a nationality; being a Drúadan is not a nationality. These are entirely nonsensical uses of the word "nationality".
You seem to be obsessed with constantly fiddling around with the infoboxes to the point where you've made dozen consecutive edits, all incredibly minor (and, in my view, are including far too much information in the "notablefor" field). I noticed, for example, two of the edits to Elmar were changing the infobox from men to northmen and then changing it back again! What is it that you are trying to achieve with this constant fiddling? This is not an antagonistic question: I need to understand what it is that you are actually seeking to achieve because at the moment you are very successfully frustrating other editors (evidenced by the number of people who have written on this talk page). --Mith (Talk/Contribs/Edits) 10:36, 22 May 2015 (UTC)
Yes. Nationality is not really an appropriate term. Ethnicity would, perhaps, do. Or a division.
What am I trying to achieve with this constant fiddling? The simplest answer would be - nothing. But, considering, for example, Elmar, I don't think that there is any evidence to point out that she is a North(wo)man. We can only speculate. Woolly Mammoth 14:36, 22 May 2015 (UTC)
And yet, in at least 80% of cases the text you had written in nationality was the exact same as that included in "affiliation" and/or overlapped with "position" or "title". I note that - ignoring my message above - you changed the elf infobox and carried on editing characters with "division" instead; a rather amusing contradiction is that you created an elf infobox for elves of ambiguous background and filled in the "division" field with information to remove ambiguity! We do not do speculation; putting four different potential divisions is not actually helpful to the reader, is it?
If there is no evidence for Elmar being a Nothman, why did you make the edit? It was your edit that lacked evidence.
Let me make this clear: you are not to amend or create any new infobox without discussing it with the community. Should you do so - and a consensus not be reached - I shall ban you. --Mith (Talk/Contribs/Edits) 13:05, 23 May 2015 (UTC)
Oh...yes...characters are in "position" of being a "Man of Bree" or an "Easterling" or a "Man of Agar". Even "affiliated" doesn't really do the work, does it? Consider, for example, the "Oath of Fëanor" affiliation. Yes, granted, the infobox itself does in this case state their "affiliation" but what if it wasn't known, say, that Maedhros is a Noldo? What then? If he had a generic Elf infobox then his affiliation would be the "Noldor" AND the "Oath of Fëanor". Groups and subgroups. You shouldn't mix those two under the same tag in my opinion.
And neither is it helpful to the average reader (talking about The Silmarillion now) to put Orodreth as the son of Angrod. Even it was an error on the editor's part, which it was, perhaps the reader doesn't know that (though there is a note at the end of the article which states that it is an error, but still, we are arguing about the all infobox shenanigan).
This site, and for that matter, the entirety of Tolkien's writings are a contradiction, more or less, by itself. For example: when you "schooled" me about the whole "Years of the Trees IS the First Age" thing (which I have known myself very well and did it so NOT to confuse the readers) in the "Celebrimbor" article, I have already noticed that in basically every article on this site First Age and the Years of the Trees are kept apart, as a separate thing (like the article on "Turgon" which states: born - YT 1300/died - FA 510).
So please, don't talk to me about consistency and contradictions, when in fact one could spent their entire lifetime sorting out the contradictions on this site with the site itself AND with the site and what Tolkien wrote (which was, as I said before and I stress it now more then ever, very contradictory by its own). And if the "division" tag bothers you, delete it if you want, or if you're too frustrated with amending all that I did, then let me do this heart wrenchingly, tear droppingly, hard work.
And if don't want to confuse the readers, then make separate infoboxes for Easterlings, Haradrim, Bree-men, Dunlendings, Men of Agar, Druedain, Avari, Englishmen, English women, Chinese, the Bushmen of both Kalahari and of the Simpson desert, giants, ogres, pixies, leprechauns, unicorns, aliens and the Flying Spaghetti Monster. And if you want to ban me, ban me.
Over and Out! Woolly Mammoth 16:02, 23 May 2015 (UTC)
Pardon me. I see that you have already deleted my Magnum opus. Woolly Mammoth 16:08, 23 May 2015 (UTC)

[edit] More on canon/non-canon

The Tolkien Gateway editors decided some years ago that we should scrap the note about "non-canon" in articles about concepts appearing the works by Tolkien, since, as you note above, canonicity is a cloudy concept. It was decided that it should be enough to provide references and a note if Tolkien explicitly abandoned/changed the concept in later writings (and then the readers can decide for themselves how "canonical" a certain concept is).--Morgan 16:25, 11 May 2015 (UTC)

[edit] Categories

When added categories to a page, can you make sure you don't include a space. i.e. [[Category:Hobbits]] instead of [[Category: Hobbits]]. Cheers. --Mith (Talk/Contribs/Edits) 08:14, 13 May 2015 (UTC)

Woolly Mammoth 08:15, 13 May 2015 (UTC) Already done that!

You've just done it again! Please stop. --Mith (Talk/Contribs/Edits) 09:10, 13 May 2015 (UTC)

[edit] Category:Characters

The category "Characters" is a top-category; a character should only be placed here if there's not a suitable sub-category.--Morgan 08:25, 13 May 2015 (UTC)

My bot has just sorted this out. --Mith (Talk/Contribs/Edits) 08:51, 13 May 2015 (UTC)

[edit] Merging

Hello and welcome. Please note that merging does not mean just removing content from article A and replacing it with a redirect to article B. Merging means incorporating and assimilating information from A to B so that it's not lost. Of course mergeable articles repeat almost identical information, but sometimes the deletable article contains information not repeated elsewhere. For example, when you attempted to merge Herucalmo and Tar-Anducal, you missed some information, like the etymology of the name "Herucalmo". I am going to check the redirects to make sure that nothing was missed. Sage 09:36, 14 May 2015 (UTC)

Please just keep in mind that the wiki here has some well-established culture and mentality. There are and will be many things to be improved, corrected and tidied, but otherwise things represent precedent decisions or policies. If you aren't experienced in wiki editing I suggest you be more modest with your edits until you get a better grasp of the things. I understand your enthusiasm, but when you are fresh somewhere, the last thing you want is starting a massive "tide-up". You are bound to make mistakes. I've also fell for it when I joined here, and this happens from time to time. It's ok to make some occasional edits and learn by trial and error, but when you try to "tide-up" whole groups of articles you force others to try and catch up with your edits. Please try to tone down and don't rely on trial and error. Sage 11:10, 14 May 2015 (UTC)

Can I just re-emphasise Sage's message. You have made over a thousand edits in just a few days but many of them have been in contravention of the established norms of this wiki, and some have mistakes. Keeping track of everything you're doing is incredibly difficult. Could you please slow down and take some time to learn how we operate? --Mith (Talk/Contribs/Edits) 07:25, 15 May 2015 (UTC)
I apologize for your trouble. I'll try to slow down a bit, as you have said, but mistakes I do are mainly due to my overt hastiness. And I have zero tolerance for inconsistency. Woolly Mammoth 08:11, 15 May 2015 (UTC)
Please consider opening a discussion before resolving the inconsistencies yourself. And if hastiness causes you make mistakes, try to improve the quality of your edits, not your speed or amount. Sage 15:18, 15 May 2015 (UTC)

[edit] Moving pages

Do not move pages without discussion. --Ederchil (Talk/Contribs/Edits) 16:14, 14 May 2015 (UTC)

Woolly Mammoth 16:20, 14 May 2015 (UTC) We're discussing it now. That page is contradicting itself (judging by the content)!

[edit] Disputed canon

Please, stop putting "noncanon" tags to the articles that are based on Tolkien's writings, whether they are from his earliest writings, abandoned concepts, etc. As an administrator you should know little better than that.

A much better approach would be to put a "Disputedcanon" tag for such matters. Woolly Mammoth 23:14, 15 May 2015 (UTC)

Can you name me one person or organisation who regards Trotter as canon? --Mith (Talk/Contribs/Edits) 08:54, 17 May 2015 (UTC)

[edit] Year of the Trees 1469

Why have you created an article to be deleted? --Mith (Talk/Contribs/Edits) 13:34, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

Because I botched the rest of the years template before I learned how to use them properly, and besides, the only thing that happens in that years is the birth of Isfin (Aredhel) which was later changed to YT 1362.Woolly Mammoth 02:38, 30 May 2015 (UTC)
I think that is a very accurate description of your behaviour. But that doesn't explain why you would create an article just for it be deleted - is this a technical issue you aren't sure about? If you were creating an article for YT 1469 simply don't save the article; if there were links to YT 1469, remove those links. --Mith (Talk/Contribs/Edits) 08:14, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

[edit] Year of the Lamps

I see you've just created an article for Year of the Lamps 1600. As you are no doubt aware, in creating articles for Years of the Trees and Years of the Lamps you have waded into a concluding part of a much larger project I am working on. Could I ask that you don't continue with the Years of the Lamps? The reason I ask is that I haven't fully reconciled my template to function correctly with Valian Years in a way that is consistent; and I was considering whether to ditch "Years of the Lamps" altogether and just go with "Valian Year X" instead. Cheers --Mith (Talk/Contribs/Edits) 08:53, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

I see that you've encountered the problem I was up against. --Mith (Talk/Contribs/Edits) 08:56, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

[edit] Wanted Categories

I don't know if you're aware but you have to create categories as you would with any other page. The majority of the images you've just uploaded need to have categories created for them (see here). Is this something that you need help to do? --Mith (Talk/Contribs/Edits) 15:48, 31 May 2015 (UTC)

Yes, indeed. I always had a hard time with creating and editing categories, so a little help would do. Woolly Mammoth 15:52, 31 May 2015 (UTC)
OK - can you please stop uploading things. You've created a bit of a mess that's going to need to be sorted but I can't keep up; if you can just pause for an hour I would appreciate it. Also, as a bit of housekeeping, can you forward to me either a copy of the emails from the artists or a screenprint so we have a bit of a proof - my email is Cheers --Mith (Talk/Contribs/Edits) 14:51, 1 June 2015 (UTC)
Yes, I will. But just one reminder: all the images by VunastiMamut are mine. Woolly Mammoth 14:56, 1 June 2015 (UTC)
OK, thanks. FYI, with pages like Gilmith we generally avoid displaying images like that in articles where there is more infobox than article - it looks a bit lopsided. --Mith (Talk/Contribs/Edits) 15:18, 1 June 2015 (UTC)
Going back to categories, when you create a category (or, indeed, any article) you need to make sure that it is itself categorised (otherwise the whole category structure is rather pointless); it works in exactly the same way as categorising articles. See how with Category:Images of Bór I've added it to both Category:Images of characters in The Silmarillion and Category:Images of Easterlings. There's no hard-and-fast rule about in which categories you should categorise things, but I would just copy the usage of another character (e.g. for Category:Images of Gilmith I copied Category:Images of Imrahil).
Template:Main is not actually a requirement but I started doing it a couple of years ago as good practice; it stops some of the messiness that was creeping into categories where they were just unnecessarily replicating the content of the the articles (see this edit today).
As you've spotted, the name of categories should match the naming convention of character/location/event.
Finally, let me explain DEFAULTSORT. DEFAULTSORT is part of the Mediawiki software and is there to over-ride how the software sorts articles by default. For categories and articles we use this in two ways: first to drop things like "the" and "Images of" (otherwise, for instance everything would be categorised in "I"); secondly, to over-ride accents. The second is really important as Mediawiki sorts words with diacritics after ordinary characters; e.g. "Éomer" would come after "Walda" in Category:Rohirrim which is why the article includes {{DEFAULTSORT:Eomer}}; similarly without {{DEFAULTSORT:Feanor}} Fëanor would come after Fingon. As such, when sorting categories only use the standard 26 characters of the English alphabet; when categorising image categories do the same thing and also drop "Images of" (and "Images of the"). E.g. Category:Images of Bór has {{DEFAULTSORT:Bor}} whilst Category:Images of the Witch-king has {{DEFAULTSORT:Witch-king}}.
Does this all make sense? --Mith (Talk/Contribs/Edits) 17:38, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

[edit] Deviantart

Hey are you an artist in Deviantart? Did you make those mountain paintings? Sage 18:31, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

Yes. Woolly Mammoth 18:38, 2 June 2015 (UTC)
Actually, I have been making literally hundreds of paintings for years concerning the Middle-earth. However, I have been a member of Deviantart for only a few weeks, and an active member of Tolkien Gateway for less then a month.
This is in part the consequence of being without the access to internet for a while. Woolly Mammoth 19:01, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

[edit] Profile

How do you add a picture to your profile?

[edit] Uploading images

When you upload images you don't need to edit them afterwards to add licensing information and categories: you can do this at the point of uploading by pasting the information in the large "Summary" box immediately beneath "Destination filename". This should save you quite a bit of time. --Mith (Talk/Contribs/Edits) 09:38, 18 June 2015 (UTC)