Talk:Mithril

Why not spin off a Tolkienpedia for all this elvish underbrush? All these articles are written as if this stuff were real without even bothering to note that it is all made up, and mithril is no realler than kryptonite or cavourite (and no more interesting either). Ortolan88 14:58 Aug 9, 2002 (PDT)

Hm. I'm tempted to write Bergotte, Heathcliff, Emma Woodhouse, Yossarian, and The Wart, for starters ... -- Tarquin 15:18 Aug 9, 2002 (PDT)

Hi. I'm taking responsibility for the Tolkien related articles here, and I'm in the process of cleaning them up and marking them clearly as fictional, and not that they contain spoilers. Mithril has managed to escape my attention so far, but I'm tracking everything down. Articles on characters in litterature is an asset to Wikipedia.

I can't really comment on the presence of a page on Mithril, a fictional metal of little importance, compared with the lack of a page on as complex a character as, say Heathcliff, without coming off as sounding like a cultural snob, can I? A page on Mithril isn't bad per se, it's just that... arg... Could someone with greater diplomatic skills say it? -- Tarquin 15:36 Aug 9, 2002 (PDT)

There are, at the moment, probably more people who feel competent to write a page on mithril than one on Heathcliff, though--in part because it is a simpler topic. Vicki Rosenzweig

It certainly is. I just finished Wuthering Heights last week, and I don't know where to begin on describing Heathcliff's character. I have this unfounded and silly worry that when people who do feel competent to write about literature find Wikipedia, they'll think it's largely about technical subjects and won't feel inclined to contribute -- yes, I know that's a horribly broad generalization -- worse, it's completely untrue, as I've spent hours reading on philosophy and history here -- I just worry ... anyway, maybe we should make rough starts on major works of fiction that we haven't covered yet, and see if we can snowball some of them. Here's an idea -- how about a Wikipedia Book Group, where the aim is to collectively write an article on the book after everyone involved has read it? -- Tarquin

Gah! Two edit conflicts in a row. But it's given me time to make my thoughts a bit more concise. If fiction is going to be in the Wikipedia (and I think there's so much of it in already it'd be difficult to excise it), I think addressing the balance between fiction that happens to be popular with the core of Wikipedia contributors and fiction that is less popular with that audience (to try and phrase it diplomatically) may turn out to require people making a special effort to include the latter group, in the same way that some people make a special effort to read up to write an article on Polish history, or whatever. (Of course, as more contributors join, the more likely it is we'll get someone who does like X, but I think Tarquin does have grounds for worry). I think a Book Group might be a good way to encourage that. -- Bth

This is a do-mocracy. Efforts on certain articles are usually not drawing time away from other articles, but from non-Wikipedia occupations. It's not a question of having either Tolkien articles or articles about characters from serious literature. It's about having Tolkien articles or nothing. And I say fine, let's have Tolkien articles. There is a tendency to be a lot of them (as we're getting saturated, I'm trying to go more in depth (see Saruman)), sure, that effect is drowned by the sheer amount of Wikipedia articles. Besides, they're an asset. --GayCom

BTW, how to phrase this diplomatically... efforts on talk pages like this do draw time away from other articles. :) -- GayCom

Yes, certainly, if people want to create Tolkien articles let them create Tolkien articles. However, I think that if the end-state of the Wikipedia (in some sort of hypothetical after-infinite-time sense) were unbalanced in such a fashion, it would be a shame. And I don't think this talk page effort has been wasted; it's already spawned a very good suggestion for how those who feel that those other articles ought to be created could go about doing so. Just as do-mocratic. -- Bth

I'm glad I started it. Ever consider spinning off a Simpsonspedia? heh heh. Ortolan88, the old English major.

I thought mith meant "gray"? -phma

It means both gray and fog, or mist. -- Zoe

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Look. Nobody is forcing anybody to read this. If you don't like it, go somewhere else. There was a link already established, and I created an entry for the ALREADY ESTABLISHED LINK. What one person thinks is important, means as little me as all of the scientific articles on the various importances of various minute articles that have no meaning in my world. I don't read them because I don't know anything about them. Are you really interested in driving me and other people away? IT SURE IS STARTING TO BECOME LESS AND LESS INTERESTING FOR ME TO COME HERE! -- Zoe

Well, I for one welcome the Tolkien articles! Whether certain stuffed shirts like it or not, Tolkien's work has earned a place in our literature and cultural consciousness. It's certainly a heck of a lot more interesting to me than random entries from a 19-th century bible dictionary... Those of you who feel you'd like more articles on Wuthering Heights, go and write them. --Brion VIBBER

I didn't mean to hurt anyone's feelings. I am sorry. I just asked (in what I meant, unsuccessfully it seems, to be a wry tone; it sure looks sarcastic now) if people could please label fictional substances and fictional languages as fictional. I don't apologize for that. As long as people don't do that, other people will have to come here and fix these articles so that we have an accurate encyclopedia. I see no reason we shouldn't have articles on cavourite and kryptonite too, but if the articles said unequivocally that the one blocks gravity and the other causes people from other planets to go all weak, we'd have a problem, don't you think?

I can easily imagine someone making an allusive reference to some real, existing silvery thing or other as "made of mithril" and some reader looking the subject up in the Wikipedia. If they had looked it up before I edited this article, they would have been given the impression that mithril was a real substance and a word in the real Elvish language.

I have read LOTR many times over the years, including reading it to my children, who are now reading it to their children, listened to the BBC version and the books on tape, saw all the movies, played the board game, and I love, respect and admire it. But I think we ought to be able to discuss it without YELLING or calling people names. Ortolan88 20:54 Aug 10, 2002 (PDT)

You're absolutely correct Ortolan88 in asking for a fictional tag at the top. Moreover, I think that the move of these subjects as subcategories of Middle Earth was distinctly retrograde and intellectually unsound. My Heathcliff article is somewhat Micawber btw... user:sjc

The articles were already indicated as fictional, by starting off by saying that they were in the works of J. R. R. Tolkien. And it was certainly delivered in a tone which indicated that the articles weren't worth the electrons they were written with. Unlike all of the articles about David Niven and Richard Burton and word games and Lillie Langtry, which are all so much more important. -- Zoe

Well, curiously some of us do not have quite the high regard for Professor Tolkien's far right adventures in the realms of fantasy that others do. If you were to study the source material from which his witterings are constructed you would realise just how poor and thin his three-volume staircase mystery actually is. If you want to read someone who can really do fantasy why not have a look at Lord Dunsany (who Tolkien also assiduously borrows from btw). Articles about e.g. mithril are important but then again should I be writing articles about my pet subjects in Dunsany (Slith, gnolls, etc)? - I suspect not. user:sjc

What makes you think I haven't read Dunsany, or any of the other high masters of fantasy? I've only been working on Tolkien articles because there had already been links created to them and nobody had filled in those articles. If you have such a high regard for Dunsany, or Eddison (whose work I prefer), why don't you write an article on the gnolls, or other subjects? What you and Ortolan are doing is just trying to make yourselves come across as superior to those of us who ARE writing these articles. Nobody on this project is any better than anybody else, just more polite. -- Zoe

The reason I wouldn't even think to write articles on Dunsany's creations is that I do not think that it is appropriate material for an encyclopedia; in any case why spoil the ineluctable mysteries of Dunsany for people? In the same way I don't really think that a standalone article on mithril is appropriate (I'm not even sure about a subclassed article) for an encyclopedia. OK, so that's what we now have. Let's open the asylum gates for a moment and take a peek at where this leads us. Cavorite, kryptonite (red and green) etc have already been mooted. Are we ready for an article on samite? Or even one on reversite? (I made that one up, it appears in a short story I wrote a long time ago, but hey, it's fictional!) It is a very slippery slope. My take on it is as follows: fictional content should be firmly contextualised as a subclass of the work of fiction which contains it or marked e.g. (fictional substance). user:sjc

I apologized once for being sarcastic. I apologize again. But if you look at the diffs on those articles you cited, I think you'll find I improved every one of them, and I improved the article on mithril too, and plenty of others, sincerely, Tom Parmenter.

Why do I get the feeling I should jump in here blowing a Referee's whistle?! I've seen occasional comments on other fictional entries, to the effect that they don't belong in the wikipedia or that they should be covered in the main article because they're a waste of time. I happen to disagree, and so do many other people. The wikipedia is INclusive not EXclusive. There's plenty of room for articles on popular culture, fiction, movies etc alongside the science/technology stuff. The only worry is one that I have seen on many articles, not just fictional ones - many people writing an article ASSUME that the reader is familiar with the context of the article and so they don't bother to state the most basic information about it, eg.articles on award-winning authors or actors that fail to say what country they're from, entries on cities that don't tell you what country they're in etc. But the main fact is that there is plenty of room for everyone - if you know about Tolkien then write about him by all means! KJ 21:47 Aug 10, 2002 (PDT)

FWIW, I believe there should be an article on Kryptonite (as indeed there is); it's part of the cultural vocabulary here in the United States at least. Of course it and all such things should be marked as fictional (just as real things should be contextualized), no one is disputing that so certain people who keep harping on that issue can please stop sticking pins in their straw man and find something productive to do. --Brion VIBBER 21:52 Aug 10, 2002 (PDT)

I agree with Karen and Brion -- so long as the names are unique (or are made to be unique through disambiguation) and are about a character/fictional thing from the arts, then there is no reason not to have (especially when we are dealing with popular works or ones that are deemed to be important). I wouldn't go nuts over providing disclaimers; it is more than enough to simply say; Frodo, a fictional character in J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth,.... --mav

This page will definitely need disambiguation. There are at least two altogether more significant (i.e. real)Mithrils out there: the programming language and the Steve Schwartz's memory glasses project at MIT. Now it gets really interesting: which gets primacy: the real subject or the fantasy? Sysops, your elevated views, please.... user:sjc

Even if we hadn't had this "discussion" before, I vehemently disagree that those other items are more significant. After all, they were named for the fictional item, which preceded them by a considerable amount of time and is probably more well-known. -- Zoe (And here I'd planned on stopping discussing this subject)

Sjc, please see Wikipedia:Naming conventions. The programming language belongs at Mithril programming language, and the wearable computing project (http://www.media.mit.edu/wearables/mithril/) belongs at MIThril. I recommend including a brief "see also" block at the top of each of these three pages. --Brion VIBBER 22:47 Aug 10, 2002 (PDT)

Once an idea from fiction is so well known that people are naming real things after it (not that I'd call a programming language a "real thing", but no matter) it probably deserves its own article. It's just human nature to take interest in strange fictional ideas (see Batman, which is entirely about some comic stip character, with a real city of Batman, Turkey added as a footnote). My complaint about the current mithril article is that is surely does not need a spoiler warning (these seem silly at the best of times, but here it's just ridiculous.)

I seem to remember that Frodo did not know the coat of mail was mithril, until he left Moria, so there is a minor spoiler in the article. Anyway, I believe that it is better to have a spoiler warning more than needed than one less. Valhalla

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Just a thot -- we're going for at least one hundred thousand articles. Why not a quarter-million? The point is that there's plenty of space for articles on just about anything and everything, assuming that http://www.bomis.com (rhymes with Thomas) can afford to keep the project up. And, after all, once all the articles on Mithril and Kryptonite are written, then maybe more articles will be written on real-world things like cherimoya (a fruit) and McLeod (a tool) and helictite (a cave formation) and hickory horned devil (a caterpillar) and the Dogon (an African tribe that believe in blue aliens from the region of Sirius) and all the other wonderful stuff that fills our universe. In other words, what's all the hassle? And, after all, Mithril and Kryptonite are organic parts of our popular culture. --John Knouse