Wikipedia:Peer review/Elf/archive1

Elf

By the combined work of a great many contributors, this article has successively evolved beyond the 33kb limit, and it is about time it had a peer review. Opinions on style, encyclopedic relevancy and references would be especially appreciated. --Salleman 17:42, 16 July 2005 (UTC)

Edit: Please give me your opinion as to whether I should add the 30 or so works of modern fantasy mentioned in the article to the reference list? How do I reference "the Harry Potter book series" for example? --Salleman 07:47, 17 July 2005 (UTC)

Not bad. Merge the tiny paras into larger, more readable, move all external links from main body to notes section. Perhaps a few more pictures could be added? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus ^Talk 19:31, 16 July 2005 (UTC)

Old PD images of elves are hell to find, really. Only the act of God directed me to that one by Richard Doyle. Promotional images of fantasy elves can be found in abundance, but I don't know if spamming that section with them is going to make anyone happier. I have added an image (of questionable quality) of Marcus from Bad Santa as an example of a Christmas elf, though. I'll start working on the short paras later.

Try using Wikipedia:Boilerplate_request_for_permission. Quite a few artists/companies are willing to give some images free (PD/GNU FDL/CC), provided they got some recognition (link back, name, etc.). --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus ^Talk 20:06, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

It looks good, but I agree with Piotrus that something needs to be done about the one sentence paragraphs. I would also like to see references from more than one author. - SimonP 22:36, July 16, 2005 (UTC)

We actually have two scholarly references, with a runner-up in Keightley. Schön is the reference for most of the "Scandinavian elves" section. I just don't see the point in ^noting every second sentence, and I don't know the academic system to refer a whole section to a particular work. On top of that we have a vast amount of original sources, mainly from the "fantasy elves" section. But I agree: references is the major problem with this article.

Edit: I have made the note system more homogenous and mentioned Schön in a note.

• I've seen mythical elves referred to as "trooping fairies" in English lore, as they were believed to travel in well-organized bands. But I don't see this mentioned here. Probably the modern fairy section could be split out into it's own page with a brief summary paragraph on the Elf page. Thanks. — RJH 22:47, 17 July 2005 (UTC)
  • Trooping fairies, as opposed to singular fairies, are fairies (whatever one puts into that word; usually mythical/folkloric beings of human-like manifestation in general) who appear in groups. It is not a synonym for "elves." --Salleman 20:19, 18 July 2005 (UTC)
• It seems to be written like some parts of the Witch article that I had been cleaning up a while ago, but the organiztion is fairly good and much better than the witch article. — Stevey7788 (talk) 17:23, 18 July 2005 (UTC)
  • Can you elaborate? Is it just the organization or is it the style and/or factuality that you are disputing? --Salleman 20:19, 18 July 2005 (UTC)

I think it is misguided to demand a lot of references, as most of the information on Scandinavian elves are common knowledge (at least to Scandinavians). But I am afraid that people will demand such references, since this subject is very sensitive to information from popular culture and original research. That said, I think the article is excellent.--Wiglaf 08:59, 29 July 2005 (UTC)

I completely agree with Wiglaf and I for one would object if the article was FAC:ed in this state. It is quite pointless to use footnotes for things like word etymologies or quotes from texts when it is already clearly stated in the text where the quote comes from. Footnotes are not supposed to be used to reference obvious, undisputable and uncomplicated facts like these. They're supposed to be references to quotes when the text doesn't disclose the source (but avoiding to mention this in the text is just silly) or explanations which would fit in the text for whatever reason. The type of footnotes used are also not helpful since you can't click one to get straight to the notes-section. Simply listing what works that have been referenced in the "Reference" section is enough. There's also a factual errors in the article:

• The helpers of the Swedish Santa are separate creatures from elves. The full term for them is actually "tomtenisse", where "tomte" is actually the key word and is the term for the Swedish "house gnome" (or something like it), which is a completely different creature. Nisse is often used separatly, though. To Swedes a "tomte" or a "nisse", or the two combined would under no circumstance be associated with elves like in English-speaking countries and including them in this article is very misleading and strikes me as very Anglo-centric. Furthermore the plural form of nisse is nissar, not nisser.
• The word "alv" in Swedish is these days only used for the elves in Tolkien's books and the latter day RPG offspring, and they are not male, but rather androgynous and used for both male and female elves. The older form is "alf", with "alv" being the modern spelling, and is considered to be more or less synonymous with älva. The Swedish elves of folk myth that are known to most people are refered to as älvor and are (historically) indeed feminine even by grammatical gender. Älva is never used to refer to Tolkien's elves, female or male.

Peter ^Isotalo 13:41, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

• Tomtenissar for Santa's helpers may be more common than plainly nissar in Sweden, but not so in Norway and Denmark, where nisse indeed is pluralized as nisser.
• Although there is a male elven king, I believe he is called älvkonungen or älvakonungen in the accounts, so you are probably right. Alv is just a reformed spelling of alf from Norse mythology. There is work to be done on the Scandinavian elves section. I'm in the process of reading some books. :) --Salleman 20:32, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

• Swap some of the image justification about, so that Post Tolkien Fantasy Elves looks neater... that image could do with being on the right OR shrink the text under the image OR expand the text to the right of the image, so the list below is all in line. Minor point on an otherwise great piece. --PopUpPirate 17:19, August 11, 2005 (UTC) - edit - done it --PopUpPirate 17:20, August 11, 2005 (UTC)