Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Themes of The Lord of the Rings

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 we recently decided that there is actually no deadline. Jerry delusional ¤ kangaroo 00:14, 12 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Themes of The Lord of the Rings

After two years, the patience that was asked for in the first AfD listing has been exhausted. We cannot leave the article in its current state, and cleanup of the pervasive lack of sourcing would entail gutting the article to the point of unreadability. A blank slate is the only way forward. Deltabeignet (talk) 23:34, 6 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Note: the previous discussion is at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Themes in The Lord of the Rings. -- saberwyn 04:57, 7 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Delete If it has not taken care of it's WP:HEY then the end result looks to fail WP:OR. --Pmedema (talk) 01:08, 7 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
There are a couple of sources listed at the end of the article, but there is an absolute lack of WP:citations, which means the casual reader has no way of WP:verifying the content of the article. This is a problem, considering some of the claims made in the article are contentious. Concerns have been raised several times on the talk page regarding the nature of the article's content, and although I believe that a verifiable, reliably sourced and cited article could be written on this subject, what we have is not it. Looking at the history, there does not appear to have been significant improvement since the 2006 discussion (material moved around or rephrased makes up the majority of the unreverted changes), and although I understand that WP:there is no deadline, I agree with Deltabeignet that a clean-slate approach may be the best path to take. Delete unless cleaned up. -- saberwyn 04:57, 7 September 2008 (UTC) Changing to Neutral following Yobmod's article edits, although I am still concered with the lack of verification of content and the likely possibility that the article still contains original research. -- saberwyn 07:16, 9 September 2008 (UTC) Now a weak keep in my view, as some of the content is now sourced and cited, and although the large number of {{fact}} tags (added during the improvement process) are still a concen, but knowledgable and interested editors appear to be working on it. Would a WP:HEYMANN be premature? -- saberwyn 12:56, 10 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- What is you understanding of the oft-quoted "AfD is not clean-up"? If you can explain it, maybe i can use it on other discussions!Yobmod (talk) 15:06, 8 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  - My understanding of that phrase and its use is that a respectable number of articles with problems that have simple, maintenance-type solutions are incorrectly brought to AfD. However, sometimes an article reaches a point where it has to either (1) undergo a radical and complete overhaul or (2) be removed from articlespace. I believed that this article was at that point at the time of nomination. -- saberwyn 07:16, 9 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Delete Not very useful, unsourced rubbish. Should have been cleaned up, but nobody did it. Normally I would be the one to step in and clean it up, but this isn't good enough. Spec ial K 12:13, 7 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Delete as OR/essay. If it was worth keeping, someone would have cleaned it up since the last nomination. Stifle (talk) 12:42, 7 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Comment - Apologies for nothing getting done since the last AfD. I don't think this is unsalvageable. I intend to have a go at cleaning this up and adding sources, so per some of the above delete comments talking about cleaning up, could this discussion please be left open the full 5 days? I will then notify those who have participated here to see if the changes are acceptable. Thanks. Carcharoth (talk) 14:43, 7 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- Go for it. I look forward to seeing how it turns out. --Pmedema (talk) 18:48, 7 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Keep and tag for cleanup. The references show that this is clearly notable. I don't see any benefit in deleting something with the intention of starting a "blank-slate". If you don't like it, fix it. If you don't have the knowledge to fix it, make a draft sub-article on the talk page. Deletion is for articles that shoulf not be on wikipedia, not bad articles that can be improved.Yobmod (talk) 15:04, 8 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Keep Per Yobmod's reasoning. De728631 (talk) 20:14, 8 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Keep and cleanup Some work has already been done to start cleaning up this article and through such efforts, I believe that some sections are starting to look like verifiable claims rather than original research. Most of the other sections are still atrocious and even the ones that have been patched are still far from good quality, but at the moment, even the sections that are entirely original research do refer to topics that are important themes in Tolkien. However, I would recommend keeping the warnings on the top of the page regarding the original research and lack of referencing, since it will take a long while to actually rewrite and reference the whole thing. Astraflame (talk) 09:23, 9 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Comment Not even close to fixing the issues with this article. It's had one chance along time ago with "I'll fix it up" but it never was. So the 5 days are almost up, and with no segnificant changes, I maintain my Delete !vote.--Pmedema (talk) 18:45, 10 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- Ah, but the 5 days are not quite up yet... :-) Carcharoth (talk) 21:34, 10 September 2008 (UTC) The 20 books I have here might be overdoing it, but let's see what we get out at the end of this.[reply]
  - Rewrote the "Power and temptation" section. See here for the main diff, and here for the section as it is at the moment. Carcharoth (talk) 23:16, 10 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- I should note that actually doing a thorough job on this would take something more on the order of 5 months than 5 days. So, attempting to salvage it in five days is less out of any expectation that it will actually be complete in that time (Sorry Carcharoth, but you know that it's true), but an attempt to demonstrate that improving this article is possible and somewhat more efficient than wiping it clean and starting over on a blank slate. I might also note that before I took a hand to trying to fix this article, I also thought it was not worth salvaging. Now that I've worked through some of it, I think it has some hope, though like I said before, it will take some much more substantial work than simply cleaning things up. Astraflame (talk) 23:48, 10 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  - There is a more pressing problem... Reading the books is far more seductive than writing stuff about the themes being discussed in these sources. I made the mistake of taking a 'brief' look at William Ready's Understanding Tolkien (1968) which is completely and utterly fascinating - he only had The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings to work with, but comes up with stuff such as: "...as with C. S. Lewis and Charles Williams, readers sense a likeness between Teilhard de Chardin and Tolkien, and they are wrong ..."; and "...this is altogether at odds with the unromantic, unblinking philosophy that Jacques Maritain has distilled from the Greek, and the Latin, from his own creed, which fits Tolkien's Trilogy as a sword its scabbard."; and a mention of G. K. Chesterton; then "The acclaim that has compared Tolkien to Malory and Spenser, and preferred him to Ariosto [...] fails to realise Tolkien's contribution. He is not to be compared to the writers of the past. Tolkien is a non-pareil..." - goodness. Wonders will never cease. Not sure how much of these observations were expanded on by later authors writing about Tolkien, but I never realised some of the early stuff was so, well, erudite. Carcharoth (talk) 00:50, 11 September 2008 (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.