Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Harry Potter/Improvement/Archive 1

Archive 1

Archive 2

WikiProject Harry Potter Article Improvement Drive

Several users have expressed an interest in trying to improve a Harry Potter related article to a featured article level of quality.

Nominations

Please nominate an article you think the Project's members could focus on, to serve as a model article and potential featured article candidate.

1. Harry Potter --bjwebb 4 July 2005 15:14 (UTC)

Nominate:'I'd like to nominate this, the series article. It just recently made the good article category (though I'm not sure how long it will last). The Lord Voldemort article doesn't seem as active these days and today the HP article got some good feed back from User:Monocrat and it would be great to have some help (or at the very least debate) on these suggestions

• Synopses of the plot and major characters are needed, a few paragraphs each should do it. (See WP:FICTION)

• Regarding "Reception": "Literary Criticism" could be spun into its own "Criticsm" section, followed by "Controversies," which would include the "Injuction..." (title shortened to "Canadian injunction" or some such). A personal peeve of mine is the use of section headers for small sections, so consider using definition lists or just simple paragraphs to make a long section. The plagarism section could be cut down to two or three sentences and put in the controversy.
• The "Other analagous works" section is of dubious value for its length, and the dearth of inline citations makes it vulnerable to charges of original research. Remember: "any material that is challenged and has no source may be removed by any editor."
• "See Also": either make the formatting more consistent (and filming locations should not be its own subsection), or simply remove them all and refer to the category. You might also want to consider expanding the navigation box for this purpose.
• "Releases": What about the movies and games? What were their rankings and revenue?
• "Series" should be prosified for moved to the bottom of the page. Better yet would be to simply use {{further|[[:Category:Harry Potter books|Harry Potter books}} (I'm not sure on my coding there), or to generate a comprehensive list of HP media and make an article called "List of Harry Potter Media."
• "The Future": "The" generally should not go in headings (per the MOS), and this section should arguably go under "Overview."
• "Harry Potter the Brand": also per the MOS, the article name shouldn't be repeated. Something like "Commericial success" would be better. Perhaps you could list how many books, DVDs, games, soundtracks, etc. have been sold.

Any takers?TonyJoe 07:59, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

1. Remus Lupin -Hoekenheef 14:57, 14 July 2005 (UTC)
2. Sirius Black. I've done a little work on it, but it could be pushed up to FA status with some help. --Deathphoenix 18:55, 14 July 2005 (UTC)
3. Ginny Weasley --drak2 18:38, 17 July 2005 (UTC)
4. Lord Voldemort. Now that Book 6 has been published, there's plenty of information available about both his past and present in the books. As a major character, the article would appeal to non-fans, yet as a mysterious character, the article would appeal to those who are fans. Dmleach 16:32, 22 July 2005 (UTC)
   • Second this nomination. Hermione1980 21:08, 23 July 2005 (UTC)
   • Seconded. Chosen One 21:12, 27 July 2005 (UTC)
   • Seconded. Hoekenheef 21:10, 5 August 2005 (UTC)
   • Seconded. Tjss 12:10 (Seattle time) on 8/11/05
   • <Rubs his hands together> Excellent. --Lord Voldemort ^{(Dark Mark)} 20:31, 31 August 2005 (UTC)
   • Seconded. Krun 19:02, 14 October 2005 (UTC)
   • Seconded. --Ariadoss 09:00, 2 January 2006 (UTC)
   • Seconded. --Cremepuff 22:16, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Improvement Drive

I decided today I wanted to start work on an article to try and bring it to Featured Status, so I came here, thinking that this page had gone inactive. What I hadn't noticed until now was the apparent consensus for making Lord Voldemort the featured article drive article, and I was thinking Harry Potter, but I'm cool with either one. It looks like some good works been done on Voldemort, and it's been tagged as a Good Article. So I'd like to propose what I think needs to happen for the article to reach Featured Status:

1. Citation
2. Completeness
3. Copyediting
4. Peer Review
5. FAC Candidate

1. Citation: I think we need to make sure that the article is completely well cited, that is a very very important criteria for Featured Article status. We need to make sure we use the correct inline citation format, and we also need to find references for the assertions of the article.

2. Completeness: Does the article discuss everything that there is to discuss encyclopedically about Lord Voldemort? What should be discussed? That is a topic to explore further

3. Copyediting: The article text should be flawless. Personally, I feel I'm a pretty decent copyeditor, so that's something I'll be looking at a lot.

4. Peer Review: The next step in the process would be submitting the article to Peer Review. I think we need to get the citations and copyedits in before we take that step.

5. FAC" Once we've had a Peer Review on the article, take it to FAC.

I also propose that we use the article Talk page to discuss the text of the article itself, ie "This sentence should not be in" etc., and use this forum to organize and list out what tasks need to be done: ie, research and verify this assertion or copyedit this paragraph or here's things the article doesn't discuss that it should, etc.

Thoughts? Ëvilphoenix ^Burn! 05:40, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

• Sounds like a pretty good deal. We've already had one FA so the more can do the better. -Hoekenheef 11:24, 9 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Am I that out of it? What got featured? Ëvilphoenix ^Burn! 19:20, 9 December 2005 (UTC)
    • Sorry, my bad. I was thinking of when we had been talking about getting the Snape article FA'ed. -Hoekenheef 18:39, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

Well is this still on? I'm up for copyediting and whatnot to get Voldy featured. --Fbv65edel ^{(discuss | contribs)} 03:12, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

Eh, it hasnt seen much activity. Personally I'm focusing on J. K. Rowling, but that's just me. Ëvilphoenix ^Burn! 03:18, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

I'm up for either. Let me know where I should start. And is there a WP page that explains in depth the <ref> command? It's a bit confusing. Thanks. --Fbv65edel ^{(discuss | contribs)} 11:57, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

Well personally I prefer {{ref}} (as I used in J. K. Rowling to <ref>, and there's a bit of an argument about it going on here.

New Nominations

Regretablly, the Article Improvement Drive for WikiProject Harry Potter has been a resounding failure. Despite over a year and a half of good faith efforts, the consensus choice of Lord Voldemort, is little more than a plot summary. It is no better today than it was the day it was first nominated. I would therefore like to call for new nominations, along with a general recommitment from the project to HP article improvement.TonyJoe 20:06, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

well, this is not simply apathy. An awful lot of people have edited that article in that time, and vandals notwithstanding, I am confident most of them were good faith edits intended to improve the article as that editor saw it. The difficulty is that most people consider how it is now to be pretty good, and don't see ways to improve it, at least not ways to improve it which can steer clear of OR. This book is unfinished, so the topic of greatest interest to readers is how it will turn out, which is inherently speculative. The best way to improve the article would be to increase its analysis of the character, his motivations, and what this is likely to mean for book 7. But that is liable to conflict with the 'rules' of wikipedia. Sandpiper 12:30, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

I see. We've had problems writing the Harry Potter article mostly in the area of liteary analysis (characters, themes, motiffs, structure) and steering clear of OR too. That seems to be all of the articles' biggest problem. In order to bring an article to FA status, perhaps then it would be best to steer away from articles for which OR is too tempting and objectionable? I still support Harry Potter as a candidate because it's much easier to find scholarly analysis for the general literary stuff than it would be to find it for Lord Voldemort, but maybe we should consider going for and article more detached from the series' text itself like J.K. Rowling.TonyJoe 23:05, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

Harry Potter

I would like to nominate the main Harry Potter article for improvement. In my humble opinion, it makes sense that priority number one be the series article itself. It's the most visible article under the project's scope and with its 85 diverse references and A-Class status, I'd say it's the closest to a FAC the project has right now. It needs heavy copy editing (mainly for sentence structure and British Spellings), heavy referencing from reliable scholarly sources for the literary stuff, and the destruction of cruftiness and Original Research (which is minimal compared to other HP articles).

• Nominate and SupportTonyJoe 20:06, 25 December 2006 (UTC)
• Comment Can it be FA even though the series isn't finished? Wouldn't that kind of prevent it from being all-inclusive? --Fbv65edel / ☑t / ☛c || 21:12, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

Yes it's possible. I would point to the TV series The Wire (TV series) which is FA despite the fact that new episodes are forthcomming. This was a point raised during the failed FA candidacy and as one reviewer wrote . "Material can become incorporated later. And it's not like any subject is totally static; new developments can occur for just about any article. Besides, feature status isn't irrevocable." This was before the title came out though, and people might feel different now and there will be added stability questions too.

It's possible, but it's not 100%TonyJoe 22:56, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

All right then, Harry Potter would definitely be the easiest. Support. --Fbv65edel / ☑t / ☛c || 05:58, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Support - A-Class, but there is some way to go. RHB 17:27, 31 December 2006 (UTC)