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This is a mature article; it tells the history of Middle-earth in film and other motion-picture media clearly and rather comprehensively. But, Gollum-like, it has two personalities.
One (Sméagol) is calm, concise, encyclopedic, historic, and careful to cite its claims.
The other (Gollum, my Preciousss!) is straight from Tolkien fandom and thinks that synthesising a giga-table of "Cast and characters" (doesn't Cast mean a list of actors and characters?) in exhaustive uncited detail, listing characters so minor or so new that they don't even have bluelinks, with (ahem) not a single citation in sight, is wonderfully exciting and totally appropriate. Actually it thinks that the Crew is equally exciting and wonderful.
But this is an article not about a film – where a list of cast and perhaps crew is relevant – nor even about a film series (where such a list could I guess be OK), but about a whole lot of productions by different directors in media from animations to streaming. What exactly is the rationale for combining the personality of film fandom (every detail of every production of every type, enumerated) with an encyclopedia article about the process of bringing a complex book to the screen? Each of the productions has its own article, complete with cast and crew...
In short, something has gone very wrong here. There is no good reason for reduplicating cast and crew of multiple productions, each well-documented in separate Wikipedia articles, here in an article of a different kind. The history of Middle-earth in motion pictures, with its twists and turns among different companies, does not have a cast or crew, or at least, if it does, they are Tolkien, Walt Disney, Forrest J. Ackerman and so on at that level. But the article gives those folks plenty of space already.
I suggest that we remove the two large WP:SYNTH tables, "Crew" and "Cast and characters" from this article. They could imaginably go into a separate list article (or two articles), but they would be wholly uncited deletion-fodder, and they would be wholly redundant to the cast and crew lists in the various film articles already mentioned. So we're probably best just cutting them: the article will be much the better without them. Chiswick Chap ( talk) 10:56, 14 February 2023 (UTC)
- Agree, tables add nothing to the subject. If anyone wants to know who played CharacterName in MovieName, it's easier to check this movie's article. This one should be general and readable, so I completely agree with proposed removal. Artem.G ( talk) 11:01, 14 February 2023 (UTC)
Would we be opposed to a cast table of just the Recurring cast and characters, as exists at Spider-Man in film and Batman in film, summarising just those characters who have appeared across multiple franchise interpretations of Middle-earth in motion pictures? As there should be one here, if not split already to an independent page. 64.43.50.93 ( talk) 11:32, 1 March 2023 (UTC)
- I already put a note on your talk page, stating that the matter had already been discussed on the thread (above), so I'm sorry this old sore has been reopened.
WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS is never a valid reason for doing something, as the other cases are very likely in breach of policy too. The article is unquestionably in a better state without the list, for the reasons given above. The article is now coherent, uniform in style, and encyclopedic. Quite apart from the damage such a list does to coherence and style, the insertion of a large volume of uncited material into a fully-cited article by definition decreases its quality from fully verifiable to something markedly lower (verifiable by research, perhaps). There are thus multiple reasons for not putting such a list here. As I've already stated, there is no objection to putting such a list somewhere else, but it will have to be cited or become instant deletion-fodder. The reason for that is not just that a lot of editors insist on Wikipedia's notability policy; nor even that fan-material like comparative lists of cast members are unencyclopedic; but that unless
RELIABLE SOURCES - scholars, critics, textbook authors - have discussed the matter of actors recurring across Middle-earth productions, are
CITED in the article and hence have demonstrated
NOTABILITY, such comparisons are
ORIGINAL RESEARCH and therefore forbidden. It would be much appreciated if you could please go and study these core Wikipedia policies before going any further. All the best,
Chiswick Chap (
talk) 11:48, 1 March 2023 (UTC)
- I read the note. You seem to be ignoring what I was saying, which is that what I am proposing is the norm on other pages like these (and that two people two weeks ago is absolutely not consensus to make radical changes to an article). I was not proposing a return of the original bloated list, but a shortened version as with other pages, and then-after a separate article listing every cast member (also like the other ones), which would be linked to as the main article of discussion above the shortened list. You seem to be saying that as long as it has citations, a shortened Recurring characters list would be welcome presently, before the separate article is made. That can be arranged.
64.43.50.93 (
talk) 12:01, 1 March 2023 (UTC)
- No, I'm not ignoring it, but replying to you in detail. I do not think either the list you propose or the original list would be appropriate, though clearly the bigger one would be even worse. I have already suggested it would be more appropriate as a stand-alone list and given you encouragement to cite it properly, if such sources in fact exist. I have also noted, repeatedly now, that patching together multiple fragmentary sources (source 1 says actor A served in films x and y, source 2 says actor B served in films x and z, etc) would NOT be suitable, as this is SYNTHESIS. I have further stated, again repeatedly now, that this particular article needs a fan-table like a hole in the head. I have also told you that arguing from other stuff that exists on Wikipedia is not helpful: there is plenty of badly-constructed material out there and we do not need to add to it. I have also told you that I boldly deleted the original table, something I could have done without discussion, with a proper statement on the talk page and with the agreement of another project member. Granted it might have been nice to have a wider consensus but we can only have what's available; the "radical change" was certainly an improvement per policy. Chiswick Chap ( talk) 12:22, 1 March 2023 (UTC)
- I read the note. You seem to be ignoring what I was saying, which is that what I am proposing is the norm on other pages like these (and that two people two weeks ago is absolutely not consensus to make radical changes to an article). I was not proposing a return of the original bloated list, but a shortened version as with other pages, and then-after a separate article listing every cast member (also like the other ones), which would be linked to as the main article of discussion above the shortened list. You seem to be saying that as long as it has citations, a shortened Recurring characters list would be welcome presently, before the separate article is made. That can be arranged.
64.43.50.93 (
talk) 12:01, 1 March 2023 (UTC)
- I already put a note on your talk page, stating that the matter had already been discussed on the thread (above), so I'm sorry this old sore has been reopened.
WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS is never a valid reason for doing something, as the other cases are very likely in breach of policy too. The article is unquestionably in a better state without the list, for the reasons given above. The article is now coherent, uniform in style, and encyclopedic. Quite apart from the damage such a list does to coherence and style, the insertion of a large volume of uncited material into a fully-cited article by definition decreases its quality from fully verifiable to something markedly lower (verifiable by research, perhaps). There are thus multiple reasons for not putting such a list here. As I've already stated, there is no objection to putting such a list somewhere else, but it will have to be cited or become instant deletion-fodder. The reason for that is not just that a lot of editors insist on Wikipedia's notability policy; nor even that fan-material like comparative lists of cast members are unencyclopedic; but that unless
RELIABLE SOURCES - scholars, critics, textbook authors - have discussed the matter of actors recurring across Middle-earth productions, are
CITED in the article and hence have demonstrated
NOTABILITY, such comparisons are
ORIGINAL RESEARCH and therefore forbidden. It would be much appreciated if you could please go and study these core Wikipedia policies before going any further. All the best,
Chiswick Chap (
talk) 11:48, 1 March 2023 (UTC)
- Did you just edit your original response with your rebuttal (and make my initial response look contradictive to a bystander) rather than actually respond?
64.43.50.93 (
talk) 12:07, 1 March 2023 (UTC)
- Please assume good faith. I just fixed a small error in my text.
Chiswick Chap (
talk) 12:22, 1 March 2023 (UTC)
- Very well. 64.43.50.93 ( talk) 13:00, 1 March 2023 (UTC)
- Please assume good faith. I just fixed a small error in my text.
Chiswick Chap (
talk) 12:22, 1 March 2023 (UTC)
- Did you just edit your original response with your rebuttal (and make my initial response look contradictive to a bystander) rather than actually respond?
64.43.50.93 (
talk) 12:07, 1 March 2023 (UTC)
It may also be helpful to note that there is already rather a large table of this sort in The Lord of the Rings (film series). That one is somewhat more defensible because at least it concerns just the one film series, so some idea of the cast might be expected there: and it is properly cited because critics were interested in the series' cast list. That is probably the situation you were trying to compare with other franchises, in which case the reply would be that a) there is already such a cast list over there, and b) the cast list would make no sense over here: if it were the franchise-only cast list, it doesn't belong here, an article not about any franchise; and if it were the bigger list, it doesn't work for all the reasons given above. Chiswick Chap ( talk) 13:25, 1 March 2023 (UTC)
- That section would also be among the things split, in this scenario.
64.43.50.93 (
talk) 13:34, 1 March 2023 (UTC)
- None of that would be relevant to this article, to be clear, as it is not that kind of article. Chiswick Chap ( talk) 13:52, 1 March 2023 (UTC)