Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Wizard (Middle-earth)

{{AFD help}}

:{{la|Wizard (Middle-earth)}} – (View AfDView log{{int:dot-separator}} [https://tools.wmflabs.org/jackbot/snottywong/cgi-bin/votecounter.cgi?page=Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Wizard_(Middle-earth) Stats])

:({{Find sources AFD|Wizard (Middle-earth)}})

What makes the concept of Middle-earth wizard encyclopedic? Seems to fail WP:NFICTION/WP:GNG/WP:PLOT. No independent sources, all WP:PRIMARY, a de facto fancruft essay "Wizards of Middle Earth". Not sure if there is any good merge target. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 05:54, 12 November 2019 (UTC)

:Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Fictional elements-related deletion discussions. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 05:54, 12 November 2019 (UTC)

• Delete: There is no reason to have this article. The main wizards in The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, Gandalf and Saruman already have their own articles. Radagast is a very minor character. He is mentioned briefly in The Hobbit. He is mentioned in The Lord of the Rings at the time of the Council of Elrond, and is never mentioned again. He is left out of the films of LOTR, though he has an expanded role in the films of The Hobbit. The Blue Wizards are even less notable. They don't appear in the two major works at all. Their "existence" has been gleaned from draft manuscripts published long after Tolkien's death. Overall, the authorities cited by this article have a wraith-like quality, being works attributed to Tolkien without his consent and after he was dead. These articles should be dropped into the fires of Mount Doom.--Jack Upland (talk) 07:39, 12 November 2019 (UTC)
• Keep - this is a substantial article with references. Vorbee (talk) 07:42, 12 November 2019 (UTC)
• Delete Mostly original research. A wizard is a wizard, that can be explained on the pages of the notable wizards of the series and doesn't require a separate crufty page._{ZXCVBNM (TALK)} 07:46, 12 November 2019 (UTC)
• Redirect to Middle-earth peoples#Istari (Wizards) where there is already an entry and WP:REDIRECTSARECHEAP. Hard to decifer if it's notable as a concept in and of itself. It's too generic to find sources, I thought maybe searching for "Istari" would be more fruitful, but it doesn't seem to be (or at least from what I have access to).
  Potential: "Nycz, D. (2013). The Forest and the City: The Dichotomy of Tolkien's Istari. Tolkien: The Forest and the City, 67-75." (which would have to be borrowed from a library). A review of the book has an overview of her essay [http://scholar.valpo.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1011&context=journaloftolkienresearch here], and that provides notability itself (as a single source), but more would need to be definitively found. Maybe I can request a copy... -2pou (talk) 19:49, 12 November 2019 (UTC)

::It's a review, not an introduction.--Jack Upland (talk) 01:06, 13 November 2019 (UTC)

:::Gracias. Fixed. -2pou (talk) 01:23, 13 November 2019 (UTC)

• Redirect per 2pou. Pretty much what's not already there is in-universe plot details. Clarityfiend (talk) 20:33, 12 November 2019 (UTC)
• Redirect to Middle-earth peoples#Istari (Wizards) This is not a notable concept, but it is a plausible search term. ―Susmuffin ^Talk 00:45, 13 November 2019 (UTC)
• Keep or Merge to Middle-earth peoples#Istari (Wizards). Goustien (talk) 06:02, 13 November 2019 (UTC)
• Keep Good article. Consider deleting blue wizards instead. (Stpaul (talk) 13:29, 13 November 2019 (UTC))
• Redirect as 2pou said. Lacks definite/reliable sources and the fact that there's only 5 of them known in the universe, the race summary should be fine unless people need specific information about the more significant characters. Fenceless (talk) 01:04, 14 November 2019 (UTC)
• Delete or redirect - Fails to establish notability. TTN (talk) 02:02, 14 November 2019 (UTC)
• Keep. Although the article is currently too in-universe, there are sufficient book sources with out-of-universe discussion, some of it academic, to enable a good article to be built. There is [https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=FrzK9tN3l8IC J.R.R. Tolkien's Gandalf and Saruman in the Tradition of Shakespeare's Prospero]. There is discussion of Tolkien's inspirations and antecedants for his wizards in [https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=B0loOBA3ejIC J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia: Scholarship and Critical Assessment] with respect to Druids [https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=B0loOBA3ejIC&pg=PA132], and The Kalevala, [https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=B0loOBA3ejIC&pg=PA206], as well as extensive entries for Gandalf [https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=B0loOBA3ejIC&pg=PA230], Saruman [https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=B0loOBA3ejIC&pg=PA589], and Tolkien's wizards generally [https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=B0loOBA3ejIC&pg=PA709]. Radagast is also covered (but not in his own entry) and there are even a couple of mentions of the Blue Wizards. [https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=CB6hBAAAQBAJ&pg=PA181 The Medieval Hero on Screen: Representations from Beowulf to Buffy] discusses Merlin as an influence for Tolkien's wizards and their portrayal in film. Although primary [https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=9eLCAgAAQBAJ The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien] contains usable information on how Tolkien himself viewed his wizards. In short, this is a demonstrably notable subject. SpinningSpark 22:43, 14 November 2019 (UTC)
• {{Rto|Spinningspark}} The first source seems to be a student paper and it focuses on wizards, not Tolkien ones. The third reference seems to be to mostly in passing, with the idea of the concept of Wizards. But the Tolkien encyclopedia, which seems to be a reliable source, does indeed have its own article on wizards. It is a good source (I've donwloaded it for reference to use before I consider any other Tolkien article for deletion) and I'd usually consider it sufficient to withdraw this nom (since I have a rule of thumb that if something has an entry in a specialized encyclopedia, we should have an entry on it) however in this particular case the entry is very disappointing: it contains not an ounce of analysis, it is just a PLOT-like summary of what Wizards are. Even your other entries, which are more in passing to the idea, contain more actual analysis of this. As such, I want you to know I appreciate you finding those sources, but I don't think they change my view on notability of this topic (however I am pretty open to considerations of merge, probably to Middle-earth peoples#Istari (Wizards), with a see also at least from Magic_(supernatural)#Magicians. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 01:04, 15 November 2019 (UTC)

{{clear}}

: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.