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Since others have explained the reasons, which we had to undertake the project of the "Revised Silmarillion" better than I could have done, I only will add some info on the project that might still be missing:
One part of the project will be a large appendix. In addition to the rules, which would be laid bar, it, will contain the full source information for each chapter in particular and the complete project as a whole. Beside that it will give a short summary of the arguments we made in the discussions over the more arcane points in the texts and the conclusions we made in the end.
The reason for us to provide that appendix (which to produce will be a work of nearly as great effort than the text of the "Revised Silmarillion" is in it self) was exactly what davem put forward as his concerns about the effect of our work on "new readers". This concerns I can fully understand and I do share them. But they do apply even more to The Silmarillion published in 1977 by Christopher Tolkien. So I can't see how our work (even if it would be published, which is every think between more than completely unlikely and impossible) would enhance this "danger of it creating the false impression".
It might be (and I think that will happen in the end) that this appendix would be for many (imagined) readers of our work of greater value than the text it self. But to produce that appendix the text is clearly needed. Thus it is right that the project might be of much more value than the product it is aiming at, and I think most of the members do recognise that fact. But without the goal we are aiming at the project would not be in existents at all, and that alone would give the goal a value even if only for members of the project.
About the value to no members: I am very happy that even davem "can see it having some curiosity value". Isn't it that "curiosity value" that will in the first place make as read any book of fiction?
That the result of our project will not have any "academic value" beyond the point of being a collection of selected and arranged source material is absolutely clear to me and hopefully to any other member of the project.
Respectfully
Findegil
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