Talk:Gandalf

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Gandalf article.
This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject.

Put new text under old text. Click here to start a new topic.
New to Wikipedia? Welcome! Learn to edit; get help.

Article policies

Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL

Archives: 1, 2

Gandalf has been listed as one of the Language and literature good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can reassess it.

Article milestones
Date	Process	Result
January 13, 2008	Articles for deletion	Speedily kept
April 19, 2020	Good article nominee	Listed

Current status: Good article

Children's literature High‑importance

This article is within the scope of WikiProject Children's literature, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Children's literature on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Children's literatureWikipedia:WikiProject Children's literatureTemplate:WikiProject Children's literaturechildren and young adult literature articles

High

This article has been rated as High-importance on the project's importance scale.

Tasks you can do:

Here are some open tasks for WikiProject Children's literature, an attempt to create and standardize articles related to children's literature. Feel free to help with any of the following tasks.

Add {{Portal|Children's literature}} to the See also section of related articles.
Tag the talk pages of related articles with {{WikiProject Children's literature}}
Join WikiProject Children's literature and list yourself as a Participant in the project.
Cleanup: A cleanup listing for this project is available. See also the list by category, the tool's wiki page and the index of WikiProjects.
Deletion discussions: listed at Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Literature
Notability: Articles with notability concerns, listed at WikiProject Notability
Rate the Unassessed articles in the Children's literature WikiProject.
References: Add references to Unreferenced BLPs.
Requested articles: Create a requested article on literature
Stubs: Improve a stub-class article

edit

Middle-earth Top‑importance

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Middle-earth, which aims to build an encyclopedic guide to J. R. R. Tolkien, his legendarium, and related topics. Please visit the project talk page for suggestions and ideas on how you can improve this and other articles.Middle-earthWikipedia:WikiProject Middle-earthTemplate:WikiProject Middle-earthTolkien articles
Top	This article has been rated as Top-importance on the project's importance scale.
Note: Though it states in the Guide to writing better articles that generally fictional articles should be written in present tense, all Tolkien legendarium-related articles that cover in-universe material before the current action must be written in past tense. Please see Wikipedia:WikiProject Middle-earth/Standards for more information about this and other article standards.

Film: British

	Film portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Film. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see lists of open tasks and regional and topical task forces. To use this banner, please refer to the documentation. To improve this article, please refer to the guidelines.FilmWikipedia:WikiProject FilmTemplate:WikiProject Filmfilm articles
	This article is supported by the British cinema task force.

Fictional characters

This article is within the scope of WikiProject Fictional characters, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of fictional characters on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Fictional charactersWikipedia:WikiProject Fictional charactersTemplate:WikiProject Fictional charactersfictional character articles

Protagonist

Hello. I just wanted to offer that the term "protagonist", which is used in the lead and elsewhere in the article, is a subjective interpretation. It should either be avoided or sourced. Wafflewombat (talk) 08:19, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Not really. It is used routinely by too many Tolkien scholars to mention. It isn't editorial invention. Chiswick Chap (talk) 08:40, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

But if you don't source it, isn't it something that could be debated? For example, someone could argue that Gollum is a protagonist and not an antagonist, or they could argue that he is both. Wafflewombat (talk) 08:46, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Not really, honestly, it's a commonly accepted fact throughout the literature. Chiswick Chap (talk) 08:48, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

If you don't feel like debating this, just let me know. I'm not much of a debater myself. I'm wondering, though, for a reader who knows nothing of Gandalf, how would they know that his status as a protagonist is a commonly accepted fact in literature about Tolkien? Why should they believe the claim that he's a protagonist unless you cite a source?

Hopefully it's clear I'm not trying to turn this into an argument AT ALL. I work on a lot of fictional character articles, and I have been advised by other editors to avoid the terms "protagonist", "antagonist", "villain," etc, so it intrigues me that your perspective is different from others. Wafflewombat (talk) 08:57, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Glad you're not "arguing"... It's absolutely fine to use descriptive terms like protagonist and antagonist; nobody, I believe, is in any doubt that Moriarty is an antagonist to the protagonist Sherlock Holmes, or that Sauron is a (massive) antagonist in LOTR, and nothing in policy says we should not be clear in our descriptions: quite the reverse. Chiswick Chap (talk) 09:54, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I mostly work on articles related to films and film characters, and the MOS for writing about films states:

"Subjective interpretation using labels such as protagonist, antagonist, villain, or main character, should be avoided."

I'm not assuming that this applies to characters in literature as well, and there may other reasons not to apply it to a character such as Gandalf. I just wanted to mention it, so you're aware that there is some level of MOS caution about these terms. Wafflewombat (talk) 10:08, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Well this time you are *definitely* arguing, within the meaning of the act. If you want the b****y thing cited, it'll be done, but there is no reason to apply it to literature, and it's bizarre that it's there for film frankly. Don't remove anything from the article. Chiswick Chap (talk) 10:46, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sorry I upset you. That was not my intention. Take care, and thank you for all the effort you put into Wikipedia. Wafflewombat (talk) 11:01, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Many thanks. Chiswick Chap (talk) 12:20, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Shorter lead?

Would it be possible to shorten the lead section? It's a fair bit longer than the lead in most articles. Maybe it could be condensed a bit?

P.S. I apologize for being argumentative on this page the other day. It won't happen again. I'm not here to lobby hard for a shorter lead, but merely to offer the idea. Thanks for your time. Wafflewombat (talk) 08:18, 26 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. The body of the article is well over 5,000 words, so the lead is not disproportionately long. Chiswick Chap (talk) 08:47, 26 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]