Talk:The Wheel of Time/Archive 1

On the last edit, the comment logged was along the lines that something in the previous version was a spoiler.

Wikipedia explicitly permits spoilers in articles (in fact, a full wikipedia article on a creative work will inevitably contain spoilers) - however, it's been recognised that users should be warned about this before reading articles. See Wikipedia contains spoilers for details of the policy. --Robert Merkel

61.9.73.249/61.9.73.250 has been changing links to point to [[Wheel of Time, the]]. If you are this person, please see Wikipedia:Naming conventions. --Brion 11:30 Aug 16, 2002 (PDT)

While we're at it, Brion, these are individual books, aren't they? I mean, one can go into a bookstore and purchase "The Great Hunt" by itself, right? If that's the case, then the series name should be removed from the title--titles are only for identification, and should not express any relationships. --165.79.13.191

The slash-subpage titles are hideous, yes. --Brion

Nothing in the Wikipedia:Naming conventions specify conventions for articles. Besides, the correct name of the series is "The Wheel of Time" not "Wheel of Time." --61.9.73.249

It specifies nothing but conventions for article titles. If the "the" must be included (itself debatable, see Wikipedia:Naming conventions (common names)), it should be The Wheel of Time, not the insane Wheel of Time, the (which is an ugly hack for paper encyclopedias which must sort themselves alphabetically -- we in the 21st century have a search function which is far more powerful). If we wanted to cripple people through extra typing for no reason like that, somebody would have mentioned it. We also don't say anything about "don't poke yourself in the eye with a stick." ;) --Brion 12:06 Aug 16, 2002 (PDT)

Yes, Brion, this *should* be moved to The Wheel of Time, as "Wheel of Time" is ambiguous. (I can't do it myself, as the destination has an edit history.) Mkweise 23:09 1 Jun 2003 (UTC)

---

I've converted the article to the standard format, i.e. a small number of decent-sized articles. All those red links were a disaster waiting to happen. 50 one sentence stubs were on their way, as soon as a sufficiently motivated fan happened along.

Still to do: huge amounts of delinking. -- Tim Starling 09:13, 25 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Hmmm... maybe I should be linking to fragments rather than delinking. Anyone else have any thoughts on the matter? -- Tim Starling 09:20, 25 Sep 2003 (UTC)

fan nitpick

The Strike at Shayol Ghul was actualy web-published on the Tor website several years before the illustrated guide was in print. archive.org lists December 1996. http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.tor.com/shayol.html

this can probably be ignored...

Intro

As a rule, the intro should just introduce the topic and perhaps roughly summarize the remainder of the article. The current intro is going on about his naming schemes and such, small details that may be important but don't really deserve intro space. I'm not sure how to reorganize this. Deco 21:12, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Inaccuracy

Instantenous madness? The duration of the Time of Madness or The breaking Of The World is unknown but believed to have lasted one hundred years after the Dark One's counterstroke according to the book. So its a bit odd if everyone went mad instantenous. Perhaps they gradually went mad instead and eventually dies because of the taint? Aes Sedai are the wielders of the One Power although the survivors of the Breaking Of The World are all females. I made a minor edits. The Red Ajah are the particular faction in the Aes Sedai that hunts down male channelers and gentle them in fear of another Time Of Madness. Therefore, is culling appropriate? Since the male Aes Sedai are not inferior but actually more powerful then female Aes Sedai. They just gentle the males in fear of their madness.--C2Sane 00:35, Dec 26, 2004 (UTC)

Regarding The Introduction:

The inclusion of WOT as well as WoT seemed like overkill, so I excised it.

I removed extraneous detail from the second paragraph in the introduction and added a few relevant facts, including the date of our latest information on the length of the series.

The first paragraph contains the sentence:

'Jordan is considered in some circles to be the spiritual heir to the high fantasy style popularized by J. R. R. Tolkien.'

While I personally believe that this statement is out of place in a non-biographical article, and a possible violation of NPOV even in a biographical article, I decided to get public comment prior to modifying it.

I agree that this sentence is completely inappropriate. I've read all the books in the series, and I've read other fantasy as well (including Tolkien). I very much doubt Robert Jordan is the "spiritual heir" to Tolkien. I think the sentence is POV from the point of view of someone in this circle of fans. --Firsfron 05:22, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)

It's certainly a true statement — but it's also a classic example of Wikipedia: Avoid weasel terms. Vague attribution is worse than none at all. --Deco 05:39, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Since we seem to be in agreement regarding the unsuitability of that statement, I have removed it effective 26FEB2005. If there are no further comments in the next few days regarding this recent edit, I'll remove this thread from the discussion page. --The Confessor 15:11, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)

We don't usually remove discussions unless the page is getting full, and then we put them into an archive. --Eric119 19:07, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)

On second thought, I think I'll just sit down, shut up, and follow Wikipedia procedure. ;-) --The Confessor 23:06, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Regarding Linking

Given the relatively large number of concepts introduced in The Premise section, it's entirely possible that the whole section could become a veritable forest of irritating links. Fortunately, there is a glossary of WoT concepts linked lower in the article. Should we make the presence of that glossary evident in the Premise section itself as an elegant solution to the link forest problem?

Regarding the Glossaries

The current Character/Place/Concept glossaries seem a bit too inelegant. For starters, many of the characters and concepts are deserving of their own articles. Can somebody point me to another Wikipedia subject with a large internal vocabulary that uses a Glossary, so I can see about possibly 'borrowing' its format? --The Confessor, posted 18FEB2005

• Part of the problem with the "Concepts" page is that it acts as a "None Of The Above" page covering anything that isn't places, history or characters. I think we should combine the "Concepts/Races" and "Concepts/Societies" sections with the "Places" page, creating a comprehensive "Cultures (by peoples and geography)" page instead. Concepts can then remain as a place to talk about the intangibles: the Power, the Prophecies, etc. Marblespire 01:39, 13 July 2005 (UTC)
  • As to "Characters," there isn't much we can really do about that until RJ finishes writing; his penchant for taking redshirts and nobodies and making them important, at least for a little while, complicates categorizing the "Major" and "Minor" characters to the point of insanity. I think the smartest thing to do is just wait until the dust settles after Book 12. (Though the existing articles are free game. I really want to know why somebody un-merged Morgase into her own article, while Faile still languishes in Minor Characters and for the longest time wasn't even listed. o_O) ~Mbsp
    • Edit: Oh: the responsible party is in the process of merging Faile out as well. ~Mbsp

Alleged criticism of "Old Tongue"

An anonymous user added this:

This has brought a good deal of Critcism to the series by conlang enthusiasts however, who see this approach as sloppy and uncoordinated, especially as Jordan tries to pass the Old tongue off as a fully constructed conlang.

I have removed it pending substantiation. --Phil | Talk 14:31, Mar 21, 2005 (UTC)

Visit either [www.spinnoff.com/zbb spinoff], the conlang mailing list, [Langmaker.com Langmaker.com] or [Artlangs.com Artlangs.com], and the answer will be the same -the opinion is that it isn't a proper conlang (simply a jumble of words) or, if you count that as a conlang, it is an incredibly sloppily done one. Indeed, amongst conlangers, it is the main example of exactly what not to do. --Referenced Anonymous user

I think he's right about this, that the Old Tongue is not a properly or fully constructed conlang. On the other hand, I don't really believe it was ever intended to be, any more than the random smattering of alien or fantasy language encountered in various movies. It's just too much effort for so little dialogue. Here's a page with a quote from RJ and some links:

http://www.steelypips.org/wotfaq/2_nondark/2.4_yore/2.4.05_old-tongue.html

http://www.drosi.de/wot/wt_tongu.htm

Deco 21:59, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Book Merge

The separate pages for the various books in the series were all but one stubs. I have merged the content into this article, and converted the stubs into redirects pointing here. This reduces the number of stubs, and makes this article more substantial. it also allows parrallel structures in the various books to be more evident, and should help encourge further development of the article. DES 01:13, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)

The detailed list of the forces at the battle of Dumai's wells I moved to the "events in" page.DES 01:15, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I strongly agree with this merge. The books compose one story that should be described as a unit, or we'll just be expounding on redundant context in twelve locations. Deco 00:40, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)

• I agree with this merge, but "without prejudice" as a judge might say. The individual articles were stubs, and they'd been given plenty of time to develop but didn't, and for that reason I think it's appropriate to roll them up into this one page. However, if (or rather, when) any individual book's section should grow to a length that's appropriate for a novel article, I'd support detaching it back into its own article at that time. I don't think that they have to be in one article simply because they tell one long story. There are numerous examples of book series that have well developed articles for each book. -Eisnel 18:16, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

• I'd say that Eisnel has a healthy take on this. Any book section that gets to be substantially overgrown can–without prejudice–be broken out. Leaving a synopsis here (under those circumstancse) will mean that any multi-book themes or narratives aren't lost. --TenOfAllTrades

(talk) 19:05, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

• Oh I don't disagree. I came to this in an attempt to clean up the fantasy-book-stub category. i had previosuly don a similar merge on the books in the "Dark is Rising" series. Again in that case the individual articles were mainly stubs. I think that we should usualy start with a single article in cases like this, and split out topics when there is enough content to justify it. In particular when a group of related stubs can be merged into a single article, I think this is a good idea. The Fiction wikipedia project seems to have the smae general idea. DES 17:33, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I agree also. Sorry if I seemed unilateral. Any book about which a substantial amount of material has been written deserves its own article, although it might make sense for that article to direct the reader here, or to the pages of previous books, for some background. Deco 19:15, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I wouldn't go quite as far as that. If there is as a substantial amount of quality, encyclopediac content, the book is a reasonable candidate for its own article. On the other hand, if the total content for the series is not excessive, and the content reads better when assembled together, then a single series page might well be better. I was about to suggest that separate pages for the volumes of The Lord of the Rings wouldn't make sense, only to find that they exixt. Hmm maybe they should be merged? No, that would bring on endless cotoversy. In short, the judgement must be case by case, and subject to change when the case changes. Because WoT is so often referd to by the series anme, a merge seemed particualrly appropriate.DES 23:15, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I strongly disagree with the book merge. Most of those articles, while not exactly long at this time, are several paragraphs and not stubs either. I think being #1 on the New York Times bestselling list is sufficient for our standards of notability. And most other series of this prominence (in terms of sales) have their own articles. Some of the users above have conceded that these articles could be encyclopedic; the argument that these articles are notable but should be merged because they are not sufficiently long yet is something of a self-fulfilling prophecy, as merging discourages expansion. Those eager to merge might be better served taking a look at such articles as Twinkle and Icingdeath (which in my opinion should be merged into Drizzt Do'Urden). The criteria for merger should be whether the topic should be merged if they are not notable on their own. Thus, I would argue that books are notable, but that most items within fictional books do not. Thus, for example, Drizzt Do'Urden books would meet meet the criteria for notability, but his personal weapons would not. Similarly, Wheel of Time books also meet the criteria for notability. To make another comparison: publishing numbers prove that Wheel of Time books sell better than Song of Ice and Fire books, and yet we have articles on A Game of Thrones, A Clash of Kings, and so forth (which series is better is irrelevant, since that is a value, rather than objective, judgment). Sales are, to some extent, a measure of impact/notability, and if Song of Ice and Fire books are notable, then so are Wheel of Time books. —Lowellian (talk) 14:05, July 12, 2005 (UTC)

The question, in my view, is not whether the individual books are notable. Clearly the series is notable, and it is at least arguable that individual books in a notable series are themselves notable. But it is my strong view that a series of stubs are of less value than a single longer article. These articles are all stubs or barely more. (note that three paragraphs or less, or ten sentences or fewer, count as a stub according to WP:STUB.) Furthermore, The Wheel of Time is a single long story – the separate volumes are not really separate works, and can't really be appreciated apart from the series. To me this means that they are better discussed in a combined article unless the length of the article (like the length of the books) is so large that separation is required. The default position, IMO for any series should be a single article, with splitting only when there is enough content to justify it, or the works stand on their own sufficiently to make separate articles worthwhile. Neither is the case with these articles as they currently stand.

On merges in general, You might note that I have in fact merged several stubs into the Drizzt Do'Urden article. More might perhaps be done there, and no doubt there are other places were merges would be highly desirable. There is no rule about doing things in any particular order on wikipedia. If these merges are justified on their own merits – and I am perfectly convinced that they are – there is no reason to wait on them simply because other merges might be even more justified. DES 15:42, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

I also note that in undoign the merge by simply reverting, you lost all the content that had been added to the sections on the individual books since the merge.DES 16:05, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

Actually, I readded some of the changes to the sections to the individual articles. This is also a reason why merging is bad for articles that once expanded some, can stand on their own: if ultimately, the article will stand on its own, then merging into another article will require re-merging out of history later. —Lowellian (talk) 21:02, July 12, 2005 (UTC)

I'm glad to hear it -- it didn't appear to me that you had copied revised text onto the reverted articles. As for the point about history, if a section grows to the point where a split is a good idea, history need no more (and no less) be copied than in the case of any split. A note on the newly split out page such as "Some text on this page was originally dervied form the article on The Wheel of Time. Consult the history on that page for more detail." would be ample, IMO. You are also assuming tha tthe only plausible way to re-split would be book by book -- articles on particular themes or narrative arcs (which tend to cross multiple books) might possibly be created. In any case you don't disucss my point that unless there is too much content for a single article, the information about the series is better conveyed in a single article, since the series is a continuing unified story. DES 22:02, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

Given that The Wheel of Time is not written in book arcs, there is no plausible way to divide the series up other than book-by-book. And I did address that point: Information grows. Just because there is not that much content at the moment does not mean that there will not be more content in the future. That is the precise justification for stubs — otherwise, articles should never be created unless users wrote out long articles at once. The question to ask is not "Is the article long enough yet?" but rather "Is the topic encyclopedic?" If the answer is yes, then the article should stand on its own regardless of its current length. —Lowellian (talk) 10:32, July 13, 2005 (UTC)

I have added proper mergeto and mergefrom notices, to indicate to a wider readership that a merge has been suggested. DES 16:05, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

— I'm partial to the merge until healthy book articles are created. I don't think the notability of these books is in question, this is one of the most notable fantasy series in recent times. The proposed book merge is simply an organizational issue. I certainly realize that if a topic in Wikipedia is notable, then it's allowed to keep a stub article in the hope that somebody expands it in the future. But that policy is refering to VfD, and there wasn't a proposal here to delete these book articles, simply to change the layout so that the short book descriptions are in one healthy article instead of ten emaciated ones. It would have been innapropriate to VfD those articles because they're stubs, but merging them (with redirects) because they're stubs certainly isn't against the rules. No data is lost or hidden, and I think putting them in one place encourages their expansion by making them more accessible.

Perhaps comparisons to other similar topics is in order. From what I've seen, I think that there is no standard for topics like this that contain multiple episodes, but rather the decision to put each episode in its own article or inline in the central article is made on a case-by-case basis. Obvious, ASoIaF is a great comparison since it's also an epic fantasy series, but the articles for each book in that series are larger than the WoT book articles, and included a fancy table with cover art and review links, along with a healthier description paragraph (still a bit sparse, though). On the other hand, there's the article for the Dragonriders of Pern series, which lists all of the books inline, and cuts out only the very few that have enough info for their own articles (3 of 19).

I'd love to see each book in the WoT series have its own article, if the articles could be at least as good as the ASoIaF book articles. We should aspire to the quality of the Discworld articles: 36 or so books, each with a nice book article. But since, for the time being, our WoT book articles are short, stubby things, I prefer putting the descriptions inline in this main article. It's much more accessible to the interested reader (and potential contributor); I wouldn't support something that I thought would stifle expansion. Maybe this merge proposal will light a fire under somebody and prompt them to expand these book articles beyond their current stubby state. If this merge lasts for all of six days before somebody comes in and makes ten healthy WoT book articles, so much the better. -Eisnel 22:18, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

Attempts to develop general guidelines for this situation are in progress at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Fictional_Series. Specifically merges have been discussed at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Fictional_Series/General#Merges. But that discussion has only just gotten started. In fact WoT may turn out to be something of a test case for this issue. DES 22:32, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

I'd say merging the book stubs is a good idea, per WP:FICT. Radiant_>|< 08:27, July 13, 2005 (UTC)

Have you taken a look at these "stubs" lately? —Lowellian (talk) 08:57, July 13, 2005 (UTC)

I just did. Yes, they are a lot bigger now. But the vast majority of what you have added is plot summary, rather more than we need IMO, and very little is analysis or commentary, and virtually none of it is sourced or cited analysis or commentary. See Check your fiction where it says: Articles about fictional topics should not be simple book-reports, rather the topic should be explained through its significance on the work. I frankly think the shorter, merged version was better. i think a better version yet could be created through merging and significantly cutting down the articles as they now stand. DES 14:46, 13 July 2005 (UTC)

What more do you want? First you complain that these articles are stubs. So, I sit down, do a little research, and incorporate: (1) relatively detailed plot summary (2) book cover images (3) ISBN numbers (4) publication dates (5) information about status on bestseller lists (6) information about unusual publishing mechanisms such as ebook previews (7) links to other summaries (8) links to other reviews (9) some cross-comparison between books, such as comparative analysis of length, use of prologues/epilogues, and character reappearances/disappearances. And all this in a single day, for twelve books. Go take a look at The Fellowship of the Ring as it currently stands; I dare say the Wheel of Time book articles currently are rather more complete. "Sourced or cited analysis or commentary"? That's precisely why I searched for fairly complete, well-written reviews, both positive and negative ones, and included links to them! Encyclopedia articles should give factual information, not make a value judgment about whether a book is good or bad; that's what the reviews should do.

I'm not saying they could not be improved; certainly, these articles could be improved further, and that's exactly what this Wikipedia process is for; I encourage other editors, including you, to expand upon these points you think are lacking and improve upon these articles! But I certainly think that these articles are now more than good enough to stand on their own and not be merged. —Lowellian (talk) 18:28, July 13, 2005 (UTC)

In my opnion one way to imnprove them would be to reduce the amount of plot summary by a sizable percentage -- wikipedia is not a book report. So your point (1) is IMO a defect, not a plus. I also still feel that mergeing the articles even as they stand would be an improvement, simply because this is one single story, although published in multiple volumes. Frankly i think the creation of a separate article on The Fellowship of the Ring is a mistake also -- JRRT said often enough that LOTR was not a trilogy but a single work, with the only meaningful division being that into Books and Chapters. I will agree that the case for a merge is far less clear-cut than it was, however. Your energy is impressive, but IMO it has been expended on a misgiuded task. But that may not be a widely held opnion, we will see. DES 22:51, 13 July 2005 (UTC)

As for your other points, ISBNs, publication dates, bestseller status, ebook previews, and links to reveiews and summeries could just as well have been added to the merged version. Some of this would have worked better in that way, because bestseller info, for example, could be in a single section where the user could compare the info for multiple books more easily. Similarly, multiple occurances of the same review sites would be more obvious. "cross-comparison between books" pretty obiously works better in a series article than in articles about the individual books. In short, I didn't want the merge just because the seperate artivles were stubs, but because I think a single series article is inherently superior for this topic, and a split should only be made 'IF' the volume of content is SO large that a single series article becomes unwieldy.DES 23:02, 13 July 2005 (UTC)

By the way, thanks for your sugestion above that Those eager to merge might be better served taking a look at such articles as Twinkle and Icingdeath (which in my opinion should be merged into Drizzt Do'Urden). I have just done that merge. DES 23:02, 13 July 2005 (UTC)

The bit you quoted (Check your fiction) regards fictional topics. This is only tangentially relevant to articles on the books themselves, having more to do with articles like Rand al'Thor. The principle that the articles shouldn't be just a plot summary stands, but I hardly think the plot summaries that exist now are too substantial. As it stands I oppose this merge, but summaries of the book articles could be brought onto the main page. Christopher Parham (talk) 20:31, 2005 July 15 (UTC)

I think it would be a bad idea to merge the separate articles.

Either it would create a tremendously long article or the amount of information in the article would have to be reduced. Both ways it would be a bad idea.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

"Amok" User:168.209.97.34

Lowellian, I think you did a great job updating the book articles. So, now that these articles aren't stubs (I mentioned that they should be at least as good as the ASoIaF articles, and they've easily met or exceeded that standard), I don't think a merge is necesary anymore. The merge idea was a good proposal, because without it the book articles might have stayed in stub form for months more. The main page can still have short summaries for each book, making the daughter articles a place where somebody goes to get detailed infomation. -Eisnel 10:52, 17 July 2005 (UTC)

It's now been well over a week since the merge proposal was suggested, and most users seem to be against it, so I am removing the merger notices from the pages. —Lowellian (talk) 23:33, July 22, 2005 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I was initially in strong support of the merge but now I think separate articles are fine, as long as not too much context is repeated in each one - they should be referred here for the general introduction/overview. Deco 21:58, 23 July 2005 (UTC)

Typo

I just corrected a typo, in the Winter's Heart synopsis it should read "Ebou Dar" not "Tarabon". User:KrisWood