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I would like to include dates in the timeline section. It seems incomplete to have a timeline without them. There were some dates in the timeline already before I edited this page, and I added more. User:Chiswick Chap took them out, stating that the inclusion of Second Age dates would make the article "way too technical for general readers of Wikipedia" and that readers would find them "incomprehensible, nerdy, and repellent". What do other editors think? 172.100.117.24 (talk) 22:52, 27 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for discussing. The desire to add technical in-universe detail is in its own way admirable. However, such dates are deprecated throughout the WikiProject. They cannot be expected to be understood by the general reader; and supposing that they were, would very likely be seen as ridiculously redolent of Tolkien fandom, nerdy, and hopelessly over-detailed, all of which is to say, unencyclopedic. Since Wikipedia is a general, global encyclopedia, it must not attempt the role of a fan-specific website: fans are already well served by several such sites, such as Tolkien Gateway and Ardapedia. Our role here is instead to provide an outside view of the literature, films, and literary criticism of Tolkien's work, and the WikiProject already does that in considerable detail; indeed, it is remarkable that it devotes an article to such a minor character, who would not even be notable except for game and television coverage. I do hope this gives you some idea of Wikipedia's perspective and why, therefore, we don't use Tolkien's in-universe dates. He created detailed timelines to help avoid inconsistencies in the plot; this was essential to him as author, but that does not make them desirable to a general audience at first reading. All the best, Chiswick Chap (talk) 03:25, 28 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
By the same token, the article body describes scholarly analysis of how Tolkien came to devise the character, something for which there is remarkably solid evidence cited. This is rightly summarised in the lead. Since the lead is designed to for total newcomers to the topic, it is necessarily brief, non-technical, external not in-universe, and covering each major section of the article. Chiswick Chap (talk) 03:41, 28 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Here's a copy of a table that may make clear why Wikipedia can't be written like a fansite: in a word, its audience is far wider.
