User talk:Ifyffe

Welcome!

Hello, Ifyffe, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Unfortunately, one or more of your recent edits to the page Hobbit did not conform to Wikipedia's verifiability policy, and may have been removed. Wikipedia articles should refer only to facts and interpretations verified in reliable, reputable print or online sources or in other reliable media. Always provide a reliable source for quotations and for any material that is likely to be challenged, or it may be removed. Wikipedia also has a related policy against including original research in articles.

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I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you need personal help ask me on my talk page, or . Again, welcome.  Kleuske (talk) 15:39, 12 February 2022 (UTC)

Source?

I wanted a source for "which suggests that Shippey's argument is based on a selective reading of the text." Linking to the Wikipedia article of that work, and an online version of it is not a source. Kleuske (talk) 19:29, 12 February 2022 (UTC)\

Your more recent version omits that, but it's still no improvement. The creatures mentioned are all fairly well known in various mythologies. The odd one out is "Hobbit", and maybe Tolkien read it in that work, he may not even have realized he read it and may have thought it an invention of his own. But the connection between Hobbits in both texts is no more than the word itself. There's no similarities in the characters themselves between these works. Unless, of course, you think Tolkiens Hobbits are something to be feared. Kleuske (talk) 19:37, 12 February 2022 (UTC)

If I may, the problem here us that we can't use an editor's personal reasoning, that is forbidden original research as it is not a verifiable source. Shippey and Wikipedia aren't usable either as you are reasoning about Shippey, so you would need another scholar to cite. So, please, leave it alone, you're not getting anywhere useful. All the best, Chiswick Chap (talk) 20:04, 12 February 2022 (UTC)

(We'll have just one discussion, thanks, so I've brought this here:)

So ultimately, blatant untruths are allowable as long as someone published them in a book, and no one else has written in a book that it's wrong? Shippey is obviously incorrect in his claim that it's a list of incorporeal creatures. Ifyffe (talk) 20:14, 12 February 2022 (UTC)

No. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, i.e. a tertiary source which collates reliably-cited claims written by authorities such as scholars and journalists in (secondary) sources that can be verified, e.g. by going to a library and looking up books and journals. Those sources in turn discuss primary materials such as novels or historical documents. Shippey is such a scholar, and he has several decades of experience, based on long study of Old English and Middle English. Any scholar can be wrong, in which case later scholars correct them with arguments and evidence to show that the situation is, in fact, different. Very few scholars have managed to find fault with Shippey as he is careful, knowledgeable, and forceful in argument. I've read a lot of the secondary literature about Tolkien (there's an infinite supply), and hardly any other scholars are as useful and as accurate. I think we've reported him accurately here; and that (as it happens) he's also right: but that's just my opinion. To prove him wrong, you need citable scholarship, not editorialising: we call that WP:OR. Enough said. Chiswick Chap (talk) 20:32, 12 February 2022 (UTC)

Good idea. Kleuske (talk) 20:49, 12 February 2022 (UTC)

@Ifyffe: I reverted the second time, since it wasn't an improvement. You mentioned a number of creatures in your edit, and all of them are fairly well known. The find is mentioned as the source of the word "Hobbit". Whether or not the critters in the other work are "solid flesh-and-blood creatures" or not is fully beside the point.

Shippey's quote cherry-picks a very small bit of the text and draws a conclusion from it. Please read WP:OR and WP:SYNTH. We try to summarize what reliable sources say on a topic. Wikipedians do not insert their own conclusions.

Lastly. Please keep the discussion in one place. Things get very confusing of discussions are distributed over several pages. Use WP:PING. copied from my TP. Kleuske (talk) 20:49, 12 February 2022 (UTC)

February 2022

Hello. This is a message to let you know that one or more of your recent contributions, such as the edit you made to Hobbit, did not appear to be constructive and have been reverted. Please take some time to familiarise yourself with our policies and guidelines. You can find information about these at our welcome page which also provides further information about contributing constructively to this encyclopedia. If you only meant to make test edits, please use your sandbox for that. If you think I made a mistake, or if you have any questions, you may leave a message on my talk page. Thank you. Chiswick Chap (talk) 17:01, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

Could you please take the time to study Wikipedia policy on WP:V and WP:OR, as it is not possible to understand how we do things without having a clear idea of how we work without those. The core principle is that we rely not on editorial thought, inspiration, knowledge, intuition, or reasoning, but on what is printed in reliable sources such as major textbooks and academic journals. Any attempt to change what is written in articles without understanding that is doomed to fail. I and other editors have repeatedly tried to explain this to you. Materials that are reliably cited are not in doubt because an editor doesn't follow their logic. Feel free to write to the scholar concerned; feel free to publish a paper on the subject, or write a blog, or join a Middle-earth forum or chatroom, where you can say whatever you like. On Wikipedia, we work *entirely* from written evidence. All the best, Chiswick Chap (talk) 17:07, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

@Kleuske:, what is your view of this? Chiswick Chap (talk) 17:07, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

@Chiswick Chap: I think you may be a bit harsh on this one, warning and all. The agricultural addition is based on a proper source, so you can hardly claim that's OR. Despite Flowers not having an academic title, the Journal of Tolkien Research thought the paper was good enough to publish, presumably after peer review, and it's been summarized appropriately. While every proposed origin of the word is fundamentally speculative (Tolkien didn't know, so how should anybody else), Flowers does make a plausible point and the fact you found a different source making the same point just underlines that. I would object to describing Flowers as a "Tolkien scholar", though. if that's what you mean by OR, I agree, but more than a mild admonishment is not called for. Also the "Livingston 2012" produces a cite error, since it's defined multiple times. Kleuske (talk) 20:13, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

Fair enough. I would say that Flowers hadn't been added at that point, so all the detail about that wasn't applicable. I think we may be moving towards a reasonable solution, however, let's hope so. In that spirit, I'm striking the warning. Chiswick Chap (talk) 20:24, 16 February 2022 (UTC)