Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Novels/Harry Potter task force/Archive 10

Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Novels/Harry Potter task force/Archive 10/Archivenav

Possessions lists in character articles

What are some opinions on the lists of possessions that appear in many character articles? To me, they appear to be glorified trivia sections. John Reaves 03:06, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

I agree. Some possessions, such as Harry's Invisibility Cloak or Hermione's Time Turner, are quite notable because they are important plot devices. These, however, should be mentioned within the context of the rest of the character biographies, not in a separate little "Possessions" section. Others, such as Ron's Broom Compass given by Harry as a Christmas gift or Hermione's Revealer have no discernible importance other than as a small mention in the novels. If they aren't important enough to have their notability asserted in the main article, I don't think they'd be important enough to be mentioned in a separate section. --Deathphoenix ʕ 03:19, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I would only keep the ones that are important in the plot. 0L1 | Talk | Contribs

Tagging pictures

I just wanted to let everyone know that I taged all the book cover pictures that were not taged yet, as well as a lot more pictures. I hope that helps. Have a good day.--C J King 20:11, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, CJ King! Do you think we should add an "image" class to the template, and add an if: operation that will change all instances of the word "article" to "image"? --Fbv65edel / ☑t / ☛c || 21:06, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Are you suggesting a new template or suggesting somehow modifying the template so the changes are transcluded?John Reaves 23:34, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

That would mess it up a bit - all of the redirect pages are tagged with NA too. RHB 16:22, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

No, modifying all pictures so that they appear as {{WPHP|class=image}} and that would make the template read something like "This image is part of the WikiProject Harry Potter…" etc. --Fbv65edel / ☑t / ☛c || 16:48, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

I was talking about modifying the template to remove NA and replace it with image. RHB 17:28, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Oh, okay. No, as you say, we shouldn't do that, because we don't want all the articles with class=NA to change. --Fbv65edel / ☑t / ☛c || 18:00, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

BE warnings for user talk pages

These templates can be used to warn users about British and American English.

{{Lang0}}
{{Lang1}}
{{Lang2}}
{{Lang3}}
{{Lang4}}
{{Lang5}} (Admins only)

John Reaves 03:57, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Rewrite of Harry Potter fandom

I was starting to completely rewirte this page over break, but as I start back at school tomorrow I may not have enough time to focus on this. See the details at Talk:Harry Potter fandom#Further thoughts and the draft page of the rewrite at Talk:Harry Potter fandom/Rewrite. I've taken care of the sections "fan sites" and "conventions" and would like to handle "podcasting" and, if nobody else wants to "music," but as for "fanfiction" and "roleplaying games," I'm not involved enough in those fields of the fandom to write well about them. This rewrite is in the hopes of proposing an easier way of maintaining the external links in the article. --Fbv65edel / ☑t / ☛c || 05:26, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Category Issue

I noticed that some of our characters have been listed in cat 'Fictional English people', and cat 'Fictional British people'. They are all listed in cat 'HP characters', which is a sub cat of both the other two. Now, having every possible english or British fictional character as a direct member of 'english' or 'british' is just impossible. How many fictional characters are there? So they all ought only to be in a sub cat of either of those. Ok, they are, in 'hp characters'. The trouble with that, is that some HP characters are not English or even British. It seems to me the best quick fix is to delete all cat entries for HP characters into both of 'British' and 'english', but this still leaves some characters who are wrongly included. The difficulty is that dividing our characters by nationality is not very usefull as a brand new category. Sandpiper 11:57, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

I have removed the two categories Fictional British people and Fictional English people so that the cat. Harry Potter characters is no longer a sub cat of the two. Is it all right? PeaceNT (Talk | contribs) 05:42, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

it is rather the opposite of what I would have done. The difficulty with it is that all HP characters therefore ought to be entered individually as British/English. To paraphrase the commentary to the hitchhikers guide to the universe, 'this is, of course, impossible'. Not specifically, but in general it is impossible to add every fictional character individually to the category. Particularly a work like Hp which has maybe 100 entries, needs to be entered as a sub-category. So do you plan to create these? Sandpiper 01:22, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

I removed the cat. fictional English/British characters for the simple reason that they are erroneous categories, as you had pointed out not every HP character is English/British. Frankly, I don't think it's important to label every fictional character with their nationalities. But if this must be done, it shouldn't be a big problem to add the cat. directly. HP has lots of entries, yet not all of them are articles for characters. After all, a number of HP major characters have been individually included in the cat 'fictional English' for some time. PeaceNT (Talk | contribs) 16:31, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Hmm, sorry I didn't notice the above until the below came to light… :-/ --Fbv65edel / ☑t / ☛c || 23:54, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Cat: Fictional English people

I don't know where to propose this idea so I decide to talk to you. I have recently found this category in every character's article related to Harry Potter series and I see it such pointless information. Categories supply us the most remarkable characteristics, not a paragraph describing every minor detail about the character, and the "Fictional English people" one looks very crazy and sweeping. Thus I think we should remove this cat from all articles because it's really unnecessary. Moved from User talk:John Reaves. Originally posted by: _AbelinC A usesobad

Well, the HP articles certainly belong in the category, otherwise what's the point? If it's the category you don't like, take it to WP:CFD. --Fbv65edel / ☑t / ☛c || 04:03, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Of course I know these articles belong to the category, but it still looks preposterous. "Fictional English people" is a very general conception and plays no role in depicting the characteristics. This is a totally useless category. I suggest that we should remove it from all articles of HP first and I'll nominate it to "Category for deletion". Everyone agrees?_AbelinC A usesobad 06:09, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm not convinced that the general category 'fictional english people' is useless, but it is definitely not an invention of HP. It spans all fiction, so deleting it is not an issue specifically for us. I agree, I don't see the point of listing every character as a member of this cat separately, it just muddles the cat list at the end of articles, which is becoming rather full of not very exciting categories in some cases. Having too many cats listed makes the link box unhelpfull. Sandpiper 09:49, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Transwiki of information from "Harry Potter in translation series"

I'd suggest we transwiki all information at wikia:harrypotter:Harry Potter in translation series to Wiktionary, if there's consensus (and the energy) to do so. I don't think much of the Wikia HP site; it's not very well maintained. The info can of course remain there but I feel it belongs at a stronger source. --Fbv65edel / ☑t / ☛c || 03:50, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

I don't know much about Wiktionary's policies, but would this be acceptable? Does Wiktionary take lists of non-English words (which the article essentially is)? John Reaves 03:54, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Wiktionary doesn't accept lists, but each of the words would receive its own entry. And yes, just take a quick glance around Wiktionary (it's a lot of fun), and you'll see that words of all languages are on the en site. The only distinction between the "en" and all other subdomains is that the definitions are written in English. The only question is whether they'll accept all these proper nouns from a fictional series. --Fbv65edel / ☑t / ☛c || 04:02, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Well, I know I'm not going to do it. You can go ahead though. John Reaves 04:03, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Hermione Granger

From background below, the article has completely disappeared? Its not being hidden with those <-- > things. Can anyone point out/fix the problem? RHB 20:48, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Looks fine to me. John Reaves 03:31, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

It was just a <ref> link not being closed, cut off some of the article. Thanks anyway. RHB 20:16, 16 January 2007 (UTC) —The preceding unsigned comment was added by RHB (talk • contribs) 20:07, 16 January 2007 (UTC).

There, destroyed the rest of this page :/ RHB 20:16, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Sirius Black

Would we be able to semi-protect this article, to stop anonymous IPs editing it? I'm getting sick of these constant references to him being sodomised with broomsticks and having affairs with Barty and Bella. Michaelsanders 19:50, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

I doubt it - theres been relatively few instances of vandalism - I would say a candidate for protection might be HP7 because of the general spam/OR/unverified claims/vandalism, but I haven't looked at the history. RHB 20:16, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Harry Potter

Can I just point out the To Do list on the Harry Potter talk page. With that and a bit of prose checking/copyediting it should be good enough for FA. Thanks, RHB 13:11, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Also see its previous application for FA status at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Harry Potter. John Reaves (talk) 10:55, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Character template addendum

This is, in part, a response to the discussion at the top of the page concerning the possessions lists that seem to work there way into HP articles. Would anybody be opposed to adding a section for Wand (i.e. length/wood type/core) and Pet(s) (i.e. Crookshanks, with a link to its article if it has one)? This would eliminate two pretty common things from the lists that aren't easy to work into the text. John Reaves (talk) 10:53, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

I think that would really be too much information in an infobox, if you ask me. An infobox should be short and succinct. Information that really gets into the details belongs in the prose of the article. That information could easily be mentioned at the end of the lead, or, when we finally break down the biography part of characters from sections by book into sections by action, the information could be mentioned then. --Fbv65edel / ☑t / ☛c || 03:33, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Okay, just wanted to get some opinions. John Reaves (talk) 07:08, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Useful link to archived J.K. Rowling material

Hey folks, while glacing through my favourite Harry Potter article, I noticed that the first reference in Horcrux had a quoted definition of "receptacle in which a Dark wizard has hidden a fragment of his soul for the purposes of attaining immortality.", with the reference provided as Author's website, Diary entry, Sept 29th. Of course, the current entry (December 19 at the time of this post) does not contain a definition of Horcrux, so I set about looking for a real citation and found this gem of a web page: [1] This message thread contains a record of many (if not all) of Rowling's updates to her web site. We can also try using the Wayback Machine, but this page should definitely help us to find a cached version of Rowling's page (however, the latest version is "Jun 02, 2006", so the Wayback Machine would have been useless here). This should help us find citations for other Harry Potter articles. --Deathphoenix ʕ 03:14, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

That's a pretty interesting message board, and I suppose the Lexicon's Ultimate Guide to Jo's Site would be a reliable source to cite in case we can't find anything using Archive.org. I agree, it's rather frustrating that there's no official record of it now on her site as it currently appears. --Fbv65edel / ☑t / ☛c || 03:27, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Ah, thank you, I wasn't aware of that archive. Since it's a more notable site, I decided to change the link to that one instead. --Deathphoenix ʕ 03:54, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

CFD notice

The related Category:Harry Potter actors has been nominated for deletion, merging, or renaming. You are encouraged to join the discussion on the Categories for discussion page.

FUR for Image:HarryPotterCovers.jpg

Can someone stick a detailed FUR for this? Grab some ideas from other book covers if you need some help. Thanks, RHB ^{Talk - Edits} 22:14, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Well, it's a nice image, but is it qualified for fair use in that article? Perhaps in an article comparing/contrasting the book covers, but I wouldn't too readily tag a rationale onto that one until we feel it's necessary in the article. --Fbv65edel / ☑t / ☛c || 02:12, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Hogwarts seal image

Someone insists on changing the JPG versionof the Hogwarts seal SVG version. The JPG version is obviously a better choice (as the SVG is bland and cartoonish). Does anybody know a way to circumvent the issue of "SVG superiority" and include the JPG instead? John Reaves (talk) 23:21, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Is there something stopping us from converting the JPG image into an SVG file? I don't have a clue how to do it though… --Fbv65edel / ☑t / ☛c || 02:10, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

I think, maybe, that the new image is what happens when you convert. I could be wrong though, I know very little about images. John Reaves (talk) 22:24, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

My gross stupidity and laziness on article assessment

Hi folks, I did a few maintenance tasks related to the HP watchlist, and among these was adding {{HP-project}} to a whole bunch of talk pages to link them to the HP Wikiproject. Now, I'm not on the article assessment team, so I figured I wouldn't be in the position to make a judgement of these articles. Or rather, I'm too lazy to perform assessments, and I also made what might be a grossly stupid assessment of "NA" to the templates without really knowing where templates lie in the assessment scheme of things. FYI, I've summarised the articles I added to the Wikiproject below. Also, just a friendly reminder that if you see any articles related to Harry Potter, please add them to the HP watchlist. Thanks! :-) --Deathphoenix ʕ 20:30, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Here are the ones I marked as "NA" (this includes templates, I'm not sure where templates lie in the assessment)

Here are the ones I didn't assess (ie, are left "Unknown")

--Deathphoenix ʕ 20:30, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

'NA' stands for "Non-Article" or "Not an Article" (or something like that), so I'd say it's a correct label. John Reaves (talk) 22:27, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

I believe Deathphoenix was looking for the appropriate rating for the second part of the list – the seven articles of mostly soundtracks. --Fbv65edel / ☑t / ☛c || 04:57, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Family parameter in character template

I didn't even know it existed, but 209.244.188.194 has added a whole bunch of family members to the infobox on multiple character pages. I'm questioning most of the parameters now, like "eye color" and "hair color," which (though I can't find it now) Wikipedia policies on infobox suggest keeping only the most important information in an infobox, leaving out details exactly like those. I really like the WP Narnia infobox, and, though we'd need to adjust some stuff to make it fit for us, I wonder if we would consider remodeling. --Fbv65edel / ☑t / ☛c || 04:56, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

I like that info box too, though changing all of the pages is a very ambitious project. Do you think we should roll back 194's changes? They only put the info in for 10 or so pages, so it makes for an incomplete feel. John Reaves (talk) 22:46, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

"family" was inherited from {{HP Elf Character}}, one of the several templates which were merged into {{HP character}}. On Template talk:HP character it explains,

"family: The family to which a house-elf belongs."

Maybe we want links to a character's relatives in the infobox, but "Unnamed father/mother" isn't useful, and the formatting is wrong: to put multiple names on separate lines, they should be NAME_1 <br/> NAME_2 <br/> ..."

—wwoods 02:09, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Ah, I see, it was misused. Family is only meant for a house-elf's family, not a character's family… Anyway, I'll try to start designing a renovated infobox for discussion. --Fbv65edel / ☑t / ☛c || 23:54, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows rating

Does anyone else think this article should be rated higher than 'B-Class'? John Reaves (talk) 18:49, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Well, the next rating above that is GA-class, and the article is definitely not stable as the book hasn't been released yet. I'd wait until the beginning of August or so. --Fbv65edel / ☑t / ☛c || 23:55, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Oh, I thought it was A-class. Though this is one of the most well-referenced articles we have. John Reaves (talk) 00:01, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

I understand, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (film) is extremely well-referenced too but they suggested to wait until the movie comes out. I guess in the mean time we should really focus our attention to books and films that have come out… :-) --Fbv65edel / ☑t / ☛c || 00:02, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Move of "Differences" articles

I have med all the book/film differences articles (Differences between book and film versions of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, etc.) temporarily out of the main namespace, until we can cut down all the information and cite it. Then, it will probably be moved into the main film article. There was an AfD which only kept the articles for being torn between delete and merge. It was in August but I didn't learn of it until about a month ago, and I haven't really had the time to put any effort there. The pages can now be found at Wikipedia:WikiProject Harry Potter/PS Differences or whatever the two-letter book abbreviation is. Hopefully we can work on getting this information back up soon -- I didn't want to delete because of all my research that went into this, but then again, it was my research. So it's a good reference personally, but not encyclopedically.

If we can also start to remove all links and references to these pages, that would probably be good. --Fbv65edel / ☑t / ☛c || 05:41, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

I would be pretty hard to incorporate this info anywhere. Also, the cross-namespace redirects need to be deleted. John Reaves (talk) 06:27, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Well, some of the stuff is rather important and many film articles have sections about differences between the source material and the film. Also, I already re-redirected the articles to the main film article. --Fbv65edel / ☑t / ☛c || 18:42, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

I know that a least one of the talk pages redirects to the Project namespace, which I assume is the result of a move. I don't have time check/change them all at the moment, but the talk pages should also redirect to the movie pages, not the Project. John Reaves (talk) 20:36, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Well this sounds as if it is rather after the fact, but looking at two sources notionally about the same thing and making a list of the differences between them is entirely encyclopedia building and not original research. Sandpiper 09:39, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Err again, why exactly is this going on? where can I see the drelevant deletion debate? all it says on the page, tracking it back is that there was no consensus for deletion. So why are we deleting it? Sandpiper 09:43, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Actually, I'd like to know that as well. If the articles need to be rewritten to ensure that they are properly sourced or formatted, that's one thing, but moving it off the main articlespace when the result of an AfD was no consensus? When an AfD is closed as no consensus, that means that the AfD defaults to a "keep" (or whatever is the non-delete "second action" in the AfD). Moving the article and redirecting it to another article effectively erased the article history from the main articlespace, which requires a clear delete consensus in an AfD to do. Instead, you should have copied and pasted the article into the temporary version in the Wikiproject directory structure while leaving the article (or at the very least, the article history) in the main articlespace. I think I need to undo this damage by undeleting the article or merging the article histories, actions that take some time to do because of the complexities involved with moving an article back to an old article with an article history (and requires admin access), and providing a copy & paste version of the article (with no article history) into the new version. That way, the temporary article has no article history, while the original article still retains it. If we decide to keep the temporary article, we can then go through the effort of merging article histories from the temporary article to the main article. --Deathphoenix ʕ 18:09, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

I've restored the article back to the main articlespace. Since Fbv last had these articles redirecting to the main "book" article, I also did so since I'm not objecting to Fbv's decision to redirect the article (though not necessarily endorsing it), but at least now the article history is still in the main articlespace. As is normal for a usual merge and redirect result, I've left the talk pages intact (not redirected). Sorry for my testiness, but moving articles can take some effort to undo. What we do with these articles is up to us: As I usually note down when I close a keep or merge AfD (and as the AfD closer here noted), whether an article is kept or merged is a discussion that can be held outside of AfD. So let the discussions resume. :-) --Deathphoenix ʕ 18:40, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Major apologies to Deathphoenix for making you undo all of that, and further apologies to the WP for the confusion in this whole matter. I had seen an overwhelming AfD with only a half !vote for keep, and then it was prodded, so I figured action was really geared towards getting it away. I have absolutely no idea how to cite this appropriately – besides the fact that it is really difficult to reference occurences in films (since you don't cite a time in the film that a scene appears), do you have to cite a source that analyzes the critical commentary? Is this in violation of WP:NOT#IINFO or WP:OR? I certainly am hoping not, but I had seen so many others speak to the contrary that I figured it was. Sorry for the mildly hasty action, and I do hope that we can keep the info! --Fbv65edel / ☑t / ☛c || 22:41, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Oh, no problem. What it comes down to is that everything can be undone (except for the dreaded Wikipedia:Office Actions and Wikipedia:Oversight, of course), so there's no lasting damage done. I should probably work more on being less of a grumpy old man, especially when I'm not actually that old (I think). --Deathphoenix ʕ 14:50, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Portal:Harry Potter

Does anybody think this is worth keeping around? It's hardly ever updated and not really useful. John Reaves (talk) 05:58, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Yes, it is. At least Portal:Harry Potter/Harry Potter news is frequently updated. Pea ceNT 06:16, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Article Improvement

Given that we now have a Good Article in Lord Voldemort (and a belated well done to Onomatopoeia for that), I think it would be a good idea to choose another article to rewrite in the same fashion (rather than either everyone running off and creating poor/unnecessary/contradictory rewrites, or the progressive desire losing momentum). And then, if that one works, choose another. Et cetera. Anyone have any suggestions? Michaelsanders 12:38, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

I think Harry Potter is very close to FA standard. A couple of us have been doing some editing on that one, and its down to 47kb. Theres a to do list I created earlier too. RHB ^{Talk - Edits} 13:18, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the flowers! Harry Potter looks good indeed. Concerning chars, I propose Hermione Granger: main character in books and films, enough material to write about, appears in interviews by JKR, possibly also interesting to analyse as prime example of real-life "shipping wars". —Onomatopoeia 13:36, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

How about Severus Snape? Pea ceNT 17:08, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Depends whether we're up to the challenge. It would be very difficult to write an article to these standards on him without treading on peoples toes. And it would need substantial revision once we found out from HPDH whether he is truly evil or truly good (or whatever). On the other hand, if we could pull off a GA for him, especially under such circumstances, it would certainly be impressive... Michaelsanders 17:14, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

The only thing about Harry Potter, I've just realized, is that since the article has a "future" section, there's no way to get it to FA before July 21. But we should certainly try to get GA- and A-class articles in characters, all set to go to add on information from DH, like Onomatopoeia (further congrats!) did for LV. I think that the only articles we could hypothetically have at FA standard now would be those that don't deal directly with information found in DH, namely, the first six books, the first four movies, and J. K. Rowling. --Fbv65edel / ☑t / ☛c || 21:45, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Reliable Sources

This issue has developed out of a comparatively minor one on the Deathly Hallows page. And since it is going nowhere there, it needs to be discussed here, separate from the original issue. So here it is.

What do we define as a Reliable Source for use in Harry Potter articles? Where do we draw the line between wiki-OR and expert-OR? And to what extent do we allow Speculation if we are not the ones speculating? Michaelsanders 21:18, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Also, can the word "expert" in the Wikipedia context (that is, "professional researchers in their field of expertise") really be applied to unknown fans attempting mind-reading (ie guessing the content of a book that have not yet been publish) on JKR ? Folken de Fanel 23:02, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Main characters

Regarding Template:Harry Potter characters, I moved Dumbledore and Snape to Main characters, besides Harry, Ron, Hermione and Voldemort. Hope no one has any objections. Pea ceNT 04:38, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Harry Potter fandom -- another call

Hello all, I know I've brought this up before, it's just that I started this a month and a half ago and haven't finished yet, due to being busy with school. I'm trying to rewrite Harry Potter fandom and so far, the parts that I've finished could easily be GA status. However, the Roleplaying, Podcast, and Music sections I haven't completed. You can see the rewrite page at Talk:Harry Potter fandom/Rewrite. I know a fair amount about Podcasts and Wizard rock, and if necessary I could write a section on them. But I honestly know nothing about the roleplaying aspect of the fandom, and for somebody to write that would be tremendously appreciated. You don't really have to know too much, just a basic knowledge, and be good at Googling for references -- that's all it takes, if you know something is true and have a decent idea where you can find information on it. If you want, you can go ahead and write Podcast and Music sections as well. (I've also created, but not written anything in, an "Iconic landmarks tours," referring to the tours that go through England and Scotland that point out locations for the films and the café were JKR wrote PS, etc., so working on that too would be great.) I just have a lot of work, and would love to see this finally get done! --Fbv65edel / ☑t / ☛c || 04:42, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

What the hell, I've got the day off tomorrow, I'll have a go at it. TonyJoe 05:26, 16 February 2007 (UTC)