For many years, J.R.R. Tolkien's fans have discussed and debated aspects of his "subcreated world" of Middle-earth. It is important that newcomers to these discussions be able to catch up on what has gone before, so over the years the Tolkien newsgroups have given rise to several different Frequently Asked Questions lists. They are all valuable, but finding the answers you want can be a very time consuming process (particularly as each FAQ is organized differently).
The purpose of the Tolkien Meta-FAQ is to make it easier to find
what you're looking for in all those documents. It is a compilation
of all of the questions about Middle-earth from my own Tolkien
Newsgroups FAQ, the Tolkien FAQ and Tolkien LessFAQ by W.D.B. Loos,
and the more specialized "FAQ of the Rings" by Stan Brown. References
to many sections of the Letters FAQ by Mike Brinza (aka "Stug" on the
Tolkien newsgroups) are also included, but not its individual
questions (because of the nature of that FAQ, including the questions
would come very close to including the entire document). Links to a
small number of well-researched and largely unbiased essays are also
included. For ease of reference, some questions may appear in more
than one place in the list. I hope that you find the Tolkien Meta-FAQ
useful!
My Tolkien FAQs and
Information page gives more detailed information on the
source documents of the Tolkien Meta-FAQ. The following abbreviations
are used:
The Tolkien Meta-FAQ is only an index to the other FAQs, so it only
changes when questions are added to or removed from those documents.
It would be helpful to know which questions in the underlying FAQs
have been recently updated, but unfortunately the burden in
maintaining such information would be quite high. Until and unless I
shoulder that burden, it may be most useful to look at the update
information in each FAQ. The relevant links for the actively
maintained source FAQs are: