The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. 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.

The result was no consensus. - Mailer Diablo 15:53, 29 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This article violates WP:NOR, and WP:RS. Whispering^(talk/c) 21:04, 19 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete without prejudice against a properly written article about secondary literature on LotR. - CheNuevara 21:17, 19 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete as pure OR. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 21:21, 19 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete per WP:OR. --Supermath 22:40, 19 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• Defer vote until some tidying up and improvement has taken place. Keep (changing vote). See comment below. Carcharoth 23:04, 19 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment - there is a wide range of secondary literature on The Lord of the Rings, and it would be possible to create a well-referenced article on this subject. Would it be possible to revert the article to a stub until such time as someone can work on it? The argument here is that this would make it easier for someone to work on it at a later date (maybe copying material to the talk page or a subpage so that it can be reworked and properly referenced). Merely deleting makes it harder to incorporate and/or reorganise the existing material. Carcharoth 23:04, 19 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep (Defer) Don't see any violation of WP:NOR, which in a nutshell is:

Articles may not contain any previously unpublished arguments, concepts, data, ideas, statements, or theories. Moreover, articles may not contain any new analysis or synthesis of published arguments, concepts, data, ideas, or statements that serves to advance a position.

Everything that I saw in this article has been published elsewhere. This is a nice, but far from fabulous, complilation of analysis of themes in LOR that can be pulled from an abundance of secondary literature. Indeed in principle, (though not in execution), this is nicely encylopedic. But of course they have not cited any of their of these possible sources and so this article is in violation of WP:RS. First, I think the violation is not as severe as some might claim. A lot of this could arguably fall under "common knowledge" at least as it relates to LOR. A great deal of what an encylopedist does is organize common knowledge about a subject in interesting and informative ways. Second, how do we get some movement on improving the citations? Looking at the history, a number of people are working on this article. The prompt for citations has only been out there for 10 days. My understanding is that "good faith" requires that an article with potential, that has had a good amount of work done by multiple contributers should be given the benefit of doubt and be given a chance to become better. 10 days is not a chance. Keep the WP:RS on the page and come back in a couple of months. Jdclevenger 04:59, 20 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Point of clarification to both Whispering and Jdclevenger - I don't think the article contravenes Wikipedia:Reliable sources, rather it contravenes Wikipedia:Verifiability and Wikipedia:Cite your sources. An article that contravenes WP:RS would be using unreliable sources. This article uses no sources, and hence verifiability is not possible and WP:CITE and WP:V are being contravened. In fact, the article does mention several sources by name (though not in standard reference format): namely, The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien and the Foreward to The Lord of the Rings. But obviously a lot more references are needed. I agree with Jdclevenger - leave the "no sources" tag on there and leave it for someone to tidy up later. Carcharoth 11:36, 20 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Comment I agree with Carcharoth that WP:CITE and WP:V are the issues involved. Jdclevenger 14:38, 20 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep Needs sources and such like, but see also Themes in Star Wars and Themes in Blade Runner. I'd say merge back into the main article, but that's long enough as it is. FrozenPurpleCube 00:48, 21 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep (Defer) Per Jdclevenger, Carcharoth, and FrozenPurpleCube. I've never seen articles on themes of books being discouraged from creating as long as there are references to back it up. I also beg patience to my fellow Wikipedians: somebody will clean it up and perfect it. After all, writing a solidly good article that describes the themes of a novel is not an easy thing. The article just needs a lot of work and sources to back up its claims. —Mirlen 01:28, 21 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep Per Carcharoth. The sources are out there. They are not cited in a traditional reference section, but they are in the text and I'm sure there are more out there. It needs heavy style editing, but I think it's salvagable. Irongargoyle 02:41, 21 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep Any flaws in citations are reasons to improve the article, or (if you do not have info) ask someone else to do so. They are not reasons to delete. If we deleted everything which is not currently properly sourced 90% of Wikipedia would have to go. Information on this subject certainly belongs in the encyclopedia (you'll find it in Britannica article on LotR) and this page was properly split off due to length of the main page. Deleting content which we should have because it isn't footnoted properly yet is counterproductive. --CBD 14:04, 24 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep per everyone else voting likewise. Just needs a lot of rewriting. Uthanc 04:12, 25 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• keep please this needs some rewriting but not erasing Yuckfoo 20:57, 25 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep, but needs a large rewrite and comply with WP:CITE Bryan 11:20, 29 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

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.