Talk:Christopher Tolkien

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A news item involving Christopher Tolkien was featured on Wikipedia's Main Page in the In the news section on 20 January 2020.

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Update, editor / author

Hello, I do not know if it is the right way to open a discussion, but I'd like to address the editor / writer issue, after the 'Christopher Tolkien Centenary COnference" https://www.tolkiensociety.org/events/christopher-tolkien-centenary-conference/ I suggest that this article should be updated, even it seems to be 'minor revisions'. Starting with the first paragraph:

"Christopher published 24 volumes based on his father's unpublished work" would be more appropriate than

"edited 24 volumes of his father's posthumously published work"

for some volume are "editions" (see the dedicated section) like "The Monsters and the Critics" and some volumes are books written by Ch. Tolkien ("The History of Middle-earth") that contains texts by his father, and some are co-written books ("The Silmarillion"). what do you think? VincentMFerre (talk) 08:25, 25 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Vincent, thanks for discussing. The key distinction here is between lead (simple overview for new readers or people passing by in a hurry) and body (the meat of the article).

The body of any Wikipedia article is read by people with an interest in the subject, basically a non-technical audience who may be assumed to know little of the subject but who wish to be informed, and who have time to spend say half an hour reading (and possibly even looking up a reference or two).

The lead is read, possibly by many more people, who have a passing interest and who want to gain a quick and simple overview of the subject. They do not have time for complexities, exceptions, and academic niceties. Perhaps they will glance at it for a minute or less.

There is a third thing: the top of the lead is available to readers of other articles who have pop-ups switched on: they see a very brief summary of the start of the lead when they float their mouse over a link to the article. Further, Google and maybe other websites present a summary of the topic in reply to searches, based on the first paragraph (maybe the first sentence) of the lead. This must necessarily be a really brief overview, ignoring all forms of subtlety and complexity.

I hope you will easily see from this that what may be clear to an academic conference, or to an editor who has spent years reading around this subject, will be invisible, impossibly complicated for a first take, or simply academic pussyfooting to a wider audience, in particular to the audience of the lead section. In a nutshell, the lead must be short and clear; the start of the lead must be even shorter, and clear to the point of intentionally overlooking all the exceptions, caveats, and hard cases ("Hard cases make bad law", say the lawyers) that experts are inevitably concerned with.

You may like to note that WikiProject Middle-earth devotes substantial space to the question of Christopher T's contributions, including the extent to which he should be called an author rather than just an editor. However, his preparation of an extensive collection of edited versions of his father's writings can hardly be disputed! All the best, Chiswick Chap (talk) 08:40, 25 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

15-16/01

another point: can we clarify the date of his death? It is usually "Thursday 16th", not the 15th: some newspaper articles mentions 'the night between the 15th & the 16th' but see for instance " Christopher Reuel Tolkien, editor and scholar, born 21 November 1924; died 16 January 2020" https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/jan/20/christopher-tolkien-obituary

I was 'corrected' but I think that it is not accurate

"Revision as of 14:53, 19 January 2020 edit undo thank FlightTime (talk | contribs) m Reverted good faith edits by VincentMFerre (talk): You're incorrect"

best wishes, vincent VincentMFerre (talk) 08:30, 25 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Um, you should not let antique reversions rankle. The Wikipedia article, like The Guardian, states the 16th, and this should be good enough really. If there is an hour or two's doubt about the actual time, so be it, it won't change the price of bread. Chiswick Chap (talk) 08:45, 25 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]