Talk:Music of The Lord of the Rings film series

Original Research

Ah. I can see that a huge amount of work has gone into this article, and that someone has rated it as a "B", and that it contains much useful information, so I'm sorry to have to address this. The article is in large measure uncited or inadequately cited, and contains a substantial amount of material which goes far beyond what in a book article would be valid "plot description" (which doesn't usually need to be cited other than to the primary source). The section on "Principal leitmotifs", for instance contains more than 9000 words, far beyond what could reasonably be expected. Further, much of it is both uncited and full of opinion, and it is sometimes quite technical as well. That combination is Original Research, perhaps implying editorial opinion, or perhaps (given various mentions of Twitter as a medium by which the material was gathered from the production team) some unascertained combination of possible copyright violation, unattributed material, and inadequate citation.

Aside from the WP:OR question, the article as a whole is unreadably long at 165,000 bytes - an informal guide would be that we should not expect readers to cope with much over 100,000 and even that is for exceptionally big topics. The cure for that is simply vigorous copy-editing, preserving reliably-sourced material but cutting it down to "summary style", and boldly removing any uncited or apparently editorial material, and anything which might be a copyright violation.

In short, this article as it currently stands is very close to bringing Wikipedia into disrepute. It would require a large number of citations to reliable sources to bring it into like with policy (let alone to justify its "B" rating), and it is not at all obvious that such sources exist as we can't cite this sort of thing to Twitter or similar platforms, nor should we be writing anyone's opinions in Wikipedia's voice. The immediate solution must therefore be to cut down anything in the article that states an opinion without attributing it to a named and cited source. Chiswick Chap (talk) 17:05, 17 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I see nobody has commented on this, and I've been busy on other things, but in the meanwhile the article has acquired a "More citations needed" tag (in July 2022), which it would be hard to disagree with: and that is despite the fact that the article has 97 citations and 88 (largely uncited) explanatory notes. How could all that be true? Well, a *large* amount of the material is apparently a paraphrase - should that be "a plagiarism", I wonder - of Doug Adams's The Music of The Lord of the Rings Films, basically almost entirely without citing the book inline and certainly without specific page references. This is certainly poor practice; I think a copyright lawyer could quite easily make a meal of it, and call it unjustified copying. There is a second problem: it grossly unbalances the article, indeed the thing is floating belly-up in the water - I just added a "Reception" section with a brief bit of criticism: the only bit anywhere in the article - while the whole of the rest of it is vastly over-detailed musicological analysis a la Adams, at absurd length, with almost nothing on whether it works, what other people think, and barely anything in the way of reliable independent sources about the music as such. To give just one example of what's wrong, the promisingly-named "Documentation" section is ... you guessed it, entirely undocumented: I shall delete it now. In short, it's currently nothing like what a Wikipedia article is meant to be. Given that nobody has objected, and at least somebody has voiced agreement by tagging the article for citations, I shall start the necessary surgery now. Anyone who wants to help by finding books and journal articles that reliably discuss the music is welcome to join in. Chiswick Chap (talk) 13:25, 26 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

GA review

@Chiswick Chap: just noting here that I'd like to try a GA review of this article in the next few days, probably this weekend (I'll need to free up a good half day or so when I next get time), unless of course someone else wants to have a go and beats me to it before then, well that's fine! Cheers — Jon (talk) 00:33, 13 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Many thanks, that'll be great. Chiswick Chap (talk) 02:34, 13 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

GA Review

Passed. Jon (talk) 22:49, 20 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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Reviewing
This review is transcluded from Talk:Music of The Lord of the Rings film series/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Jonathanischoice (talk · contribs) 03:45, 16 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I think it looks pretty good from a first scan.

  • Many thanks!

Here are some initial comments before I use {{GAN/list}} or something similar to review against the criteria (although already I can see it is mostly fulfilling 1, 3, 5 and 6) possibly at the weekend. Let me know if you want to address these before that (or I do the criteria review a bit later to give you time?) or if you'd rather I put these in to the template. Also, in case this seems odd, I've not done a GA review before, but I'd like to get into it as I have nominated two that I'm working on for GA (contrabass trombone and cimbasso).

  1. Lead, second paragraph: "antiquated-sounding" seems a bit clunky; perhaps re-word the sentence: "Shore intended the score to be operatic and sound antiquated" and a different adjective perhaps, e.g. "ancient", "archaic" or "old-fashioned", or have (quote the Adams book) "a feeling of antiquity"?
    • Reworded and quoted.
  2. Lead, third paragraph: "The series music is widely regarded as a milestone in the history of film music" has weasel wording and no citation; may need to fix one or the other, or ideally both, see MOS:LEADCITE.
    • Removed.
  3. Citation: the "Shore (2004)" {{sfn}} source can use the YouTube URL as part of {{cite AV media}}, using the url and via parameters. Judging from catalogues, we also don't need "Howard Shore" duplicated in the title, e.g.
    • Shore, Howard (2004). Creating The Lord Of The Rings Symphony: A Composer's Journey Through Middle-Earth (DVD). New Line Cinema. SHORE-90-AW. Retrieved 14 March 2023 – via YouTube.
      • We could, but that makes it look as if the medium is YouTube, which is not a reliable source (and on many people's setups including mine, it gets coloured bright red!). I've formatted it as a DVD source, which is correct, and put the YouTube link on the side as a "by-the-way you can also".
  4. § Film scores: "the largest catalogue of leitmotifs in the history of cinema" wants a citation.
    • Removed.
  5. § Film scores: "On top of that, individual themes were composed to..." sounds like marketing; suggest "Individual themes were also composed to..."
    • Defluffed.
  6. § Film scores: "The score is primarily played by the London Philharmonic Orchestra" lacks the proper context and has the wrong tense; suggest "The soundtrack used for the films was primarily performed by..."
    • Edited.
  7. § Film scores: Peter Jackson played a tam-tam, not a gong, in the recording (in modern scores, "gong" means a bossed gong tuned to a specific note)
    • Done.
  8. § Film scores: links to instruments: contrabass clarinet, Wagner tuba, etc.
    • Added.
  9. § Film scores: "trumpets in C, F, Bb and rotary valve" should be "with rotary valves"
    • Done.
  10. § Film scores: The sentence in the fourth paragraph, "Shore spent 4 years composing and recording the score, constantly referring to Tolkien's book" repeats information from the previous paragraph.
    • Merged.
  11. § Analysis: "The films' writer/producer Fran Walsh writes that..." should state that she writes this in the Foreword of the book (and use loc=Foreword in the {{sfn}} citation).
    • Partly done, one mention is sufficient (and the roman numerals shout "front matter" too).
  12. § Leitmotifs: First sentence, "Adams states that Shore has woven over 100 themes or leitmotifs..." this is now the third time the prose has stated the use of a large number of leitmotifs; if p.11 of Adams is the citation to use, then it should be in the other two places, or better, remove the repetition so it's only in one place.
    • Removed.
  13. § Leitmotifs: paragraph 2, "instinctually" - instead of a made-up word, let's use "instinctively" but without quotes. That kills several parrots with one rock.
    • Done.
  14. § Orchestration: excellent work with the imagemap and SVG diagram, by the way! I'm totally going to yoink it as an exemplar and adapt it elsewhere.
    • Noted!

— Jon (talk) 03:45, 16 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Many thanks. I'll reply promptly to the individual items. I find it much more convenient to work with a list like this than with a template table. Chiswick Chap (talk) 05:12, 16 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
No worries. I'd also be keen to help add some music notation snippets with the Score extension. Hopefully some time soon it will be upgraded to display using SVG (if we ever get bug T49578 deployed). — Jon (talk) 07:53, 16 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. You'll see that I've put the quoted themes in footnotes, as they are currently web links. I don't think we should try to put all of these as score gadgets into the main text, but we could certainly do so with a selection of them. I agree that the current total - one visible playable gadget and two JPGs from the score - could be (ahem) judiciously augmented. Chiswick Chap (talk) 09:14, 16 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed, although in my enthusiasm I had forgotten about copyright, i.e. that even small snippets of notation will probably set off an alarm in a bunker somewhere in Los Angeles... — Jon (talk) 03:47, 17 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
They would have to be fair usage, which means they have to be for scholarly, critical, or educational discussion. The bits already pictured are instances, where I've discussed those points in the text. Several other leitmotifs are already discussed in the text so it'd be fine to notate those. It'd be best to wait until after this GAN so you remain an uninvolved editor, however. Chiswick Chap (talk) 06:12, 17 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

On criterion (6), the fair-usage images are a) a snippet of Shore's score, "The History of the Ring" theme to give readers a (very) small glimpse of the approach from a (very) long score; it's the only example of the multi-instrument scoring in the article; and b) the "Pensive Setting" from Adams's book, showing the start of his presentation of one variant of one theme of the music. Again, it's a fragment of a page from a large book. Both are used only in this article. Together with the free images, they provide a minimal glimpse of what the music is like, how it is constructed, and how it works. Chiswick Chap (talk) 08:54, 20 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Chiswick Chap yes I can see that (along with the still frame of the party from the film). I've never had much luck in the past with FUR. — Jon (talk) 09:11, 20 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The still is cropped and reduced from one of thousands (must be around 900,000) frames in the films, which have had 20 years to sell rather well, so not much concern about fair usage there really, given that it's discussed directly in the text. Chiswick Chap (talk) 09:41, 20 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that it all seems perfectly reasonable, but it isn't down to you and me, it's about whether "valid non-free use rationales are provided" (criterion 6a). They seem valid to me, but until an admin or image patroller tags the FURs with image has rationale=yes we don't know for sure. In other news I am passing the other criteria on scope and focus. — Jon (talk) 20:35, 20 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Jonathanischoice: Ah, the criterion says simply that "valid non-free use rationales are provided for non-free content"; this links not to a mandatory "policy" but to an advisory "guideline" (WP:FUR), which basically just says you fill in the NFUR template (or otherwise satisfy the NFUR criteria). For GAN purposes, checking that there is a sensible-looking template is all that is ever needed. It's not the case that we have to wait for an admin etc, which might take many months, way out of the GAN frame of reference. Chiswick Chap (talk) 20:40, 20 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
You are correct; I hope you don't mind but since this is my first review I wanted to check first. I'm super happy to pass this now, congrats on another well done article! — Jon (talk) 22:47, 20 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Assessment

Rate Attribute Review Comment
1. Well-written:
1a. the prose is clear, concise, and understandable to an appropriately broad audience; spelling and grammar are correct. This is well written, organised and easy to follow.
1b. it complies with the Manual of Style guidelines for lead sections, layout, words to watch, fiction, and list incorporation. We have addressed a few minor points in unsourced claims and puff language in the review process, and this is now satisfactory.
2. Verifiable with no original research:
2a. it contains a list of all references (sources of information), presented in accordance with the layout style guideline. Satisfactory
2b. reliable sources are cited inline. All content that could reasonably be challenged, except for plot summaries and that which summarizes cited content elsewhere in the article, must be cited no later than the end of the paragraph (or line if the content is not in prose). Satisfactory
2c. it contains no original research. A good job has been done of trimming the analysis section back to what's supported in Adams (2010).
2d. it contains no copyright violations or plagiarism. The copyvios tool results return a score of 27%, which should ideally be 20% or lower, but I'm satisfied upon inspection that it's because there are many matches of long title strings, such as 'The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring' and the like.
3. Broad in its coverage:
3a. it addresses the main aspects of the topic. The article covers aspects of the topic well.
3b. it stays focused on the topic without going into unnecessary detail (see summary style). I'm passing this but only just; I suspect that the sections on analysis almost go into too much detail, particularly for a general audience.
4. Neutral: it represents viewpoints fairly and without editorial bias, giving due weight to each. This has been addressed satisfactorily.
5. Stable: it does not change significantly from day to day because of an ongoing edit war or content dispute. I see no concerns in recent edit history or on the talk page.
6. Illustrated, if possible, by media such as images, video, or audio:
6a. media are tagged with their copyright statuses, and valid non-free use rationales are provided for non-free content. Most of the material is on Commons. For three non-free images, I've learned that it is not required to get an admin or patroller to confirm the Fair Use Rationales by adding image has rationale=yes to the image pages, however it is probably worth doing this anyway to avoid future disputes or speedy deletions.
6b. media are relevant to the topic, and have suitable captions. The assets have good captions and illustrate the topic well.
7. Overall assessment. Another good article, well done :)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
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