Lotro-Wiki.com talk:Lore

Subcategorization of Category:Lore

I've recently made some updates to Lore categorization and would like to establish a discussion around how this should be handled. I think categorization is a strong feature of a good wiki, where a user can actively navigate through related topics by browsing through the categories. This has been implemented to a certain degree here, but in my opinion there is much yet that can be done. Lore as a concept does not really mean anything specific, and has been used here as a way to categorize articles that do not fit anywhere else. Ie, if a person is mentioned in a quest or deed but is otherwise never seen in-game, it could be that person has an article that is tagged with 'Lore'. In other cases, the 'Lore' category is put on pages that have characters that do appear in-game, but that is also heavily associated with Tolkien's lore. This makes the Lore category into a jumble of different articles with no clear sorting. In my opinion, the Lore category should be a supercategory, with few or no pages directly in that category. Instead, pages that can be thought of as 'lore', should be put into one of the respective subcategories - people, places, historical objects, etc. This makes for a better classification of pages and makes uses able to browse through categories directly as a means of navigation between pages. Say for instance I want to know what ships in LOTRO are called - I can navigate into Category:Ships and there find pages of ships, such as the Night-jewel. Or, if I want to know, which elves are High Elves? Is Elrond a High Elf? I can navigate to Category:High Elves and see which pages belong in that category, or I can go to Elrond's page and see what type of elf he is based on his category. Rich subcategorization of articles makes for better navigating among them too. Rather than seeing a thousand pages of "People", it's more interesting and useful to subcategorize "People" again into different types of people. It's more interesting to see who are Beornings than who are "People". The category "Places" too can use some work, and has heavy overlap with "Category:Geography" which is not defined as a Lore category. If we put "Category:Places" on every page that describes a "place", this category would become massive indeed. Rich subcategorization is a way to avoid categories becoming too bloated, and should be used where there is a way to differentiate categories into smaller ones. --Varghedin (talk) 07:38, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

Sorry i am a bit busy at the moment, so took a while to reply, i will reply here also to your question on your user talk page. While i agree categorization is a strong tool and after adding lot of pages to the Lore category it could use organizing, I believe there were some mistake made in the process. In the ideal scenario categories should form a treelike structure where the root is the most general category and the subcategory of a category is something more specific. Pages in this structure should be placed in the most specific category as all parent categories are implicit.

Example of breaking this rule: Athelard is at the moment in both Category:Rohirrim and Category:Rohirrim NPCs but Category:Rohirrim NPCs is sub of Category:Rohirrim, therefor for the page to be in the Category:Rohirrim NPCs it does not need and should not have been tagged with Category:Rohirrim.

Another example of wrong categorization in my opinion is adding reputataion categories to category Lore. By doing so, the categories are like this:
Lore->People->Organizations->"Reputation Faction"->"Reputation Faction "(Items/Deeds/etc.)
so the following categorization for example suggests, that reputation faction items are people. If anything, only the reputation faction pages could be in organizations subcategory not the whole categories.--Drono (talk) 14:08, 11 March 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for the input, and that does make sense. I agree that the categories should form a treelike structure where the root is the most general category, and the subcategory is more specific, but I would also apply a level logic for the subcategories where all pages are on the same level of subcategorization. I also don't necessarily agree that the trees never cross into each other. I'd like to look at your examples to explain what my thought is.

For the Athelard example, - I would agree that this double subcategorization is not ideal for Rohirrim NPCs. We have characters who are Rohirrim NPCs like Athelard, and then we have Eorl the Young, who is a Rohirrim but does not exist as an NPC, but is specifically mentioned in quests. He should have a page, and there he would be a member of Rohirrim, but not Rohirrim NPCs. This would then divide Rohirrim into "Rohirrim NPCs" and "Rohirrim non-NPCs" or "Rohirrim lore characters" or something similar, and that category does not (currently) exist. So instead, we get a bunch of Rohirrim in the Rohorrim NPCs subcategory, and some lore Rohirrim directly in the supercategory currently, and that's a structure that's not logical to me. Ideally I would do away with the "Rohirrim NPCS" category entirely and have all Rohirrim placed directly in Category:Rohirrim to equalize them. I would like for Athelard and Eorl the Young to both be in a list of Rohirrim, and their "NPC-ness" is an artificial distinguisher between them that is unnecessary. If that's not feasible due to how the NPC templates are set up, I would have the "non-NPCs" have their own subcategory like mentioned above, so that all Rohirrim are nested at the same level of subcategories as each other - not a mix of people with different levels of subcategorization. Either of those would fix the double subcategorization problem.

For the Reputation example, I think that Grey Company items belong to the Grey Company faction, and the Grey company faction is an organization AND an in-game rep faction, and organizations are part of lore, without the implication that every single Grey Company item being a part of lore. Because I do firmly hold that the Grey Company is BOTH an organization as part of lore, AND a reputation faction with in-game implications, at the same time. In the concept of trees, sometimes branches grow together, and a branch can then belong to to trees at once. This happens both in real life and on wikis. Henneth Annûn is both a physical cave AND a place of lore. Shelob is both a raid boss AND a creature of lore. Frodo is both an NPC AND a lore character. And, technically, Dúnachar is both an in-game item AND a lore object, although the page with "Item:" in its name fits more poorly in the lore category. So here we'd have to choose between either duplicate pages throughout the wiki, where one describes the in-game form, and one describes the lore form, or have the categories cross into each other, with the result of pages belonging to more than one tree. With items, I think the duplication is fine. Item:Dúnachar and Dúnachar feels like distinct pages and belong to distinct category trees. But We NEED to have pages that belong to several category trees be an option, because the alternative is having a system for both Frodo (NPC) / Frodo (Lore), Henneth Annûn (Cave) / Henneth Annûn (Lore) and The Grey Company (Faction) and The Grey Company (Organization) page for every NPC or place or creature or organization with lore is a nightmare. --Varghedin (talk) 18:42, 11 March 2023 (UTC)

Firstly i think dividing Rohirrim into "Rohirrim NPCs" and "Rohirrim non-NPCs" is exactly what the categorization is for. In my opinion it is a good think. You will clearly see from it, which Rohirrim is actually NPC in game and which not. I am not sure why they should be all on same level, i do not think that is necessary.

For the second example, i might be wrong. I wasn't talking about the pages but the categories. Not sure why Dúnachar has two pages, in my opinion it would be fine to have it all on the Item page. In any case, the same problem is here, where the page is both in organization and its own category. But in this case, my personal preference would be the faction category not be in organization, that way you would have only pages in "Organization", and if you were interested about other things related to the faction, you can get there from the faction page. To be fair i am also not sure why not all reputation factions are "Organization" --Drono (talk) 23:38, 11 March 2023 (UTC)

I realized there is a third option to the Rohirrim example. I suggest we simply remove "Rohirrim NPCs" from the "Rohirrim" category, as the subcategory duplication then disappears. All Rohirrim NPCs can then belong to both Category:Rohirrim NPCs and Category:Rohirrim without issue. I think this is the best solution. I think this can be done to the reputation categories as well - removing the rep *category* from the organization but keeping the *page* in the orgainzations category would solve the problem. This is what you've suggested earlier too, but I forgot to comment on it. --Varghedin (talk) 07:12, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

Here's another issue - there are Orcs of lore, such as Bolg, Azog and Mazog etc. They tend to be in the creature Category:Orcs. For that reason I placed Category:Orc-kind in the Category:People. However, this makes it so that every "orc scout" or "globsnaga watcher" is a part of the lore category People, which doesn't make much sense. To avoid this, I created Category:Named Orcs and put that in Category:People instead. I also placed it in category:Orcs, because named orcs are orcs... but that creates a double subcategorization again where named orcs are in the category:Orcs twice (directly and indirectly). I could solve this by removing Category:Orcs from Category:Named Orcs but I feel like it doesn't make any sense that Named Orcs should not be a part of Orcs. It could be solved by having the Named Orcs NOT be a part of category:orcs directly, but that category is automatically assigned to them from their creature template, and it's also a creature category integral to the game. Not sure how to best solve this, but personally I don't see this kind of double subcategorization as a huge problem. --Varghedin (talk) 12:19, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

Everyone in Named Orcs can just also be in Orcs separately, without Named Orcs being a subcat both of Orcs and of People- one's a lore category, and the other's gameplay. I think it would work to let all these orcs get put into their gameplay category via template and then go through and pick out the important ones and add them manually to a separate lore category that's entirely divorced from the gameplay one- Orcs and Named Orcs are serving entirely different purposes and imo it doesn't make a ton of sense to actually have Named Orcs as a subcat of Orcs (as creatures you fight in-game)? The idea is "these orcs are important for Lore Reasons", yeah? The fact that some of them also serve as in-game mobs isn't really part of that. Thalion (talk) 18:38, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

The way you put it makes sense, Thalion, if "Category:Orcs" implies "Category:In-game Orc creatures", which I suppose it does, but it's not well represented in its name. In that case though, the lore category would have to make its whole own tree of named goblins, named giants, named gaunt-men etc etc, which creates a bit of redundancy. --Varghedin (talk) 06:57, 18 March 2023 (UTC)

What is [Category:Organizations] and why not all Reputation Factions are there? --Drono (talk) 07:37, 17 March 2023 (UTC)

The Organizations are to have a subcategory for organizations like The Bright Company instead of putting them directy into Category:People]]. I think *most* factions in-game can be put there, but some make less sense than others - ie The Grey Company is clearly a group of people with a common goal that has formed for a specific purpose (to follow Aragorn to the south), while Men of Bree-land seems more like a whole bunch of people who happen to live in the same place as each other, and no clear motivation to do anything specific. So I don't think that fits as well as an organization. --Varghedin (talk) 06:57, 18 March 2023 (UTC)

You linked to wrong page. The reputation is Men of Bree. They have a whole house that is accessible only after you reach Acquaintance standing. I would say every Reputation faction is in fact organization.--Drono (talk) 16:15, 18 March 2023 (UTC)

OK, that's fine - I don't really have an issue with every faction being included in the organizations category. --Varghedin (talk) 06:40, 19 March 2023 (UTC)

Lore content of Lotro Wiki

Another discussion to be had is do we draw a line of which of Tolkien's lore to include on this Wiki? I've included three options that I see here, there may be other ways of doing this.

• "LIBERAL RIGHTS": Are we free to create and update any range of lore content? Note here that use on a free wiki differs from commercial use by a company. The rules of a wiki are not as strict as the rules LOTRO's developers have to follow because the rights are monetary. The usage rights of the game's developers do not automatically translate to the free wiki's usage rights. This would not require control of content by administrators.

• "MODERATE RIGHTS": Is content that is exclusively found in the Simarillion (which LOTRO's developers do not have the right to use) restricted from this wiki? If we limit the content of the wiki to the content of the user rights, we should be aware that the usage rights are far wider than many believe, as the appendixes of LotR does include a lot of lore from far before the War of the Ring, and this content may be put into use by the developers at any time, as seen for instance by the mention of Tar-Aldarion in the Cardolan-Swanfleet release. This would necessitate a medium control of content by administrators.

• "RESTRICTED RIGHTS": Is content on the wiki restricted exclusively to content that is explicity mentioned in the game? This would mean that there should be no mention of anything that is not mentioned in the game in the form of quests, deeds, location descriptions, movies etc. This would necessitate a fairly heavy control of content by administrators.

--Varghedin (talk) 11:06, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

As far as i understood, it is the third case. As this is the wiki for the game, it should contain only game appropriate lore. If there is a need to mention lore outside of the game, it can be done by linking to one of the others lotr wikis --Drono (talk) 14:08, 11 March 2023 (UTC)

Is this written anywhere as a policy on the wiki? Because I see a lot of differing opinions out there and nobody seems to know the truth of it. --Varghedin (talk) 18:44, 11 March 2023 (UTC)

Not sure it is written somewhere, probably not. It is my understanding that i got from talking to some other admins (mostly discord). I would actually like to hear from others here what they think, and whatever is decided, have it written on the Lore project so we could refer to it later. --Drono (talk) 23:38, 11 March 2023 (UTC)

Regardless of official guidelines (I don't recall offhand if there actually is a unified page on it either), what we've ended up doing in practice is mostly sticking to things that only come up in-game, and expanding into additional book lore- including Silmarillion- where it's necessary for context- someone like Tamindur kinda needs information on Aulë & the other Valar for a full picture of what he is & what he does. A page on the Valar doesn't need to be extensive, and for sure should link to a proper LotR wiki- bc you're right! this is first and foremost about the game- but a basic "hey, this is the basic idea of the Valar, and if you want more information go here" is reasonable to have here- gives lore people a nudge in the right direction, and gets the basics across to people who aren't as familiar with all the Tolkien lore. I don't think we've really run into major problems with this approach- people who don't frequent the lore corners here have called it excessive from time to time, but opinions on how much/how little information is strictly necessary isn't really a functionality failure.

The only real restriction I'd be keen to impose as far as lore outside the text of the game is getting into the histories beyond the Silm- Nature of Middle-earth, Book of Lost Tales, lot of things like that. They very quickly start becoming contradictory and can spark a lot of unnecessary arguments. Thalion (talk) 03:02, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

As someone who doesn't care about lore at all (not read the books or watched the films and don't read any quest text) I'm not that bothered about lore existing on the wiki as long as it doesn't get too mixed in with the gameplay stuff making it harder to find actual info. I think it's nice for people that are into lore to have stuff that interests them here. A compromise could be to link to a page on one of these sites if they already cover the subject and only add lore here if it's lotro exclusive. Garlo (talk)

Drop me in the middle camp. I don't think we should be creating pages for characters or places that don't exist in game. With so much in-game stuff that's still undocumented, we should tend to focus on that rather than on Lore that's "Background". The page for Thingol is an example - it's got a dozen page links, and none of them are to in-game places or people. It is my opinion that this is a wiki to document the game, not the world. Lally (talk) 12:44, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

First, I think I'm in a kind of middle camp too. But I'd like to do the exercise of checking how bad Thingol really is. He links to the following, Doriath, Sindar, First Age, Sindarin, Quenya, Olwë, Alqualondë, Teleri, Aman, Finwë, Ñoldor Elmo, Melian the Maia, Menegroth, Belegost. Lúthien Tinúviel, Beren and Silmaril. All of that seems like stuff that's not from Lotro at all, right?

Doriath - Item:Penghest

Noldor - Flowers of the Old Forest

First Age - Item:First Age Relic

Sindarin - Item:Faded Sindarin Passage

Quenya - Quest:Instance: Into Darkness Falls a Star

Beren and Silmarils - Quest:Interlude: No Other Way

Beren and Lúthien - Quest:Elessar and Undómiel

Others, I find no in-game reference to. So that's about half of the stuff that's there. The point is, it's actually pretty hard to distinguish what's in the game and what's not. Something being in the Silmarillion does *not* mean it's not in the game. So if we're going to make some kind of policy here, it's going to be difficult to maintain it. I suppose we could put up a list of words that are "banned", which would occasionally have to be edited with newly added game content? Lore has a tendency to "scope creep" (to use a project manager term) - you flesh some out here, and it calls for a new page there, and it dominoes pretty quickly. In the end you end up with a fair quantity of content which is not from the game at all. --Varghedin (talk) 16:29, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

We should not make a page for the hint of a person who doesnt appear in game. If they are in game they are an NPC since there are 2 types of characters in game - us PCs and in-game characters NPCs. Whether or not they are questgivers, shopkeepers or just there for flavor they are all NPCs. If lore characters are not in game then its not relevant here. If we want to include those Lore characters then link it to one of the Lotr sites. This is a LOTRO wiki for the game not for the lore of the books or movies ect. Rogue (talk) 16:57, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

It's pretty relevant actually to have someone like Morgoth here? Who's directly responsible for several major creature categories (orcs, trolls, dragons, gaunt-men, balrogs*)? There's more than a hint about him- and you're not going to find anything about the gaunt-men on an outside wiki (unless they're in fact talking about lotro). There are also plenty of lotro-only characters that aren't npcs (or aren't npcs yet) that are worth a page. Not being an npc isn't enough on its own to make a character irrelevant. Personally, I use one step of remove from an actual in-game thing, two if it's very necessary for context- Ered Cernin isn't in-game, but they've been mentioned several times in the dwarf-holds and Gundabad storylines, so they should have a page. Ingór's father and brother? probably should have pages sooner or later! They're not npcs but it is actually pretty relevant to know who the current Zhélruka king is. (And they're also lotro-only) Thalion (talk) 18:38, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

Agree with Thalion - I think it's fine to have some pages and details on characters that are mentioned, even if they aren't present as NPCs. They might be a significant part of what makes the characters we do interact with tick. Only including NPCs is too restrictive. I mean, we wouldn't even have a page on Smaug in that case... --Varghedin (talk) 19:47, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

So I believe that's 4 votes for "moderate rights" (Thalion, Lally, Garlo and myself) and 2 for "restricted rights" (Drono and Rogue), and none for liberal. To be fair, moderate and restrictive have a fairly big overlap. They both moderate the use of lore terms, with moderate right just allowing for contexual lore articles, but still keeping it game-related. I think a rule most here can agree on is to allow lore articles for people, places etc that are mentioned in the game in some form, while toning down or even removing content that is not referenced at all in the game. A way to manage this could be to have a list of terms that is not allowed on the wiki until they are mentioned in the game. This list could be a page somewhere, or it could even be put directly here on this page. Any other suggestions? --Varghedin (talk) 20:50, 21 March 2023 (UTC)

Firstly, i do not consider myself voting for restricted rights. I believe it is what was used on the wiki until now, and i think is is sufficient, but lore is not my project and is not going to be, so my opinion on this is not very relevant. My main goal was to have a proper discussion about it before changing stuff massively.

My opinion would be probably close to what you label as restricted rights, but i dont have issue with pages outside of that, if they have content. As you noted, pages like Smug - it has some notable lore, but i would be against pages like [Gorhendad Brandybuck] which is not really used and is just one line, which can very well be just put on the [Buckland] page. Writing that, just noticed it kind of is there - in the Lore section, except he's called Gorhendad Oldbuck. Not sure why it does not mention the rename there. In any case, i think that either his page should have more content for supporting the existence of the page, or be just mentioned on the Buckland page.
Another reason for not fully supporting the lore is that it brings lot of debatable topics. For example i do not understand why Great Eagles and Dragons are in People category.

For categories, im going to cite some points from Help:Categorization to keep in mind:

• Use the existing category structure. Discuss changes with other editors before acting.
• Use the "most narrow" category. Never tag a page for a higher-level category too.
• Of course we should add a new category without discussions if it follows a common practice. For example, adding a new quest given in a newly added land usually requires new categories of various types. That is 'how we always do it'.
  However, adding a new category for a topic not yet supported on Lotro-Wiki requires a discussion. What is the purpose and justification for such a category? How much work is required initially and long-term, versus the benefits?
• Manual tagging for categories is quite common. However, always think: 'Must this page really have to be tagged for that or those categories?

--Drono (talk) 09:17, 22 March 2023 (UTC)

I've thought about the Great Eagles and Dragons being in the "People" category and I've concluded the issue is mostly about who we consider to be "People". We tend to think of people as humans, and readily accept elves, hobbits and dwarves as "people" as they are physically very similar to humans. Then we have orcs, goblins, half-orcs - still arguably people even though they are a bit more "monstrous". But when we get as far as great eagles, dragons, nameless etc - especially when they don't have the human standard amount of arms and legs it gets harder for us to accept them as people. But they *do* think, act, talk and interact with other characters just like "normal" people do - so what exactly is it that doesn't make them people? Do we discriminate them on their having scales or feathers? Their wings? Is it because they aren't humanoid? Exactly why aren't thinking, talking, interacting beings people? I think perhaps the issue could be solved by changing the name of the category "People" itself. If we called it "Lore characters" or "Races of Middle-Earth" or "Sapient species" or some such, I think maybe that would feel a bit more inclusive.--Varghedin (talk) 13:17, 22 March 2023 (UTC)

Renaming the "People" category to "Characters" or "Original Characters" is the easiest solution, in my opinion. --Tharondir (talk) 13:31, 22 March 2023 (UTC)

Eagles are clearly animals. The Great Eagles are "anthropomorphic personifications" - not sure if that is real term, but it is used by Terry Pratchett. Same with dragons, who have written on their page, that they originated from worms.

English is not my first language but if understand correctly "People" is plural form of "Person" which is equivalent to "Human" which in real world is only "Homo sapiens". In the lore of lotr, humanoids are described as race so i guess it makes sense to call them "People".

Honestly, this is a great example why people are against adding unnecessary lore to the wiki. And also reason, why we should maybe leave it for other lotr wikis, which i also used for some quick fact checking now to make sure i am not making same big oversight (still might have done some). Btw while doing so i found this about The Great Eagles Eventually, Tolkien decided that the Great Eagles were animals that had been "taught language by the Valar, and raised to a higher level — but they still had no fëar." Source: [1]--Drono (talk) 14:06, 22 March 2023 (UTC)

For my part, I think this is exactly what makes the lore of Tolkien interesting, and his lore is the reason why the game exists to begin with. Personally I think calling Dragons and Great Eagles simply "animals" on par with more normal birds and worms is a bit unbefitting. They might have been simple animals at a far earlier point in history, but they are something else now - as you say it, Drono - they were "raised to a higher level". Anthropomorphic, Mythical, Mythological or Legendary Creatures could be applicable terms. Tolkien also described them as "spirits in the shape of eagles" and even "bird-shaped Maiar", but as you say, decided on elevated animals in the end. --Varghedin (talk) 16:01, 22 March 2023 (UTC)