Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Harry Potter

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Contents 1 Move of "Differences" articles 2 Article Improvement 3 Reliable Sources 4 Main characters 5 Harry Potter fandom -- another call 6 Ron Weasley 7 What to do with Minor actors and actresses in Harry Potter? 8 Template:Harry Potter characters 9 Mr Borgin 10 New GA! 11 Impending doom 11.1 Core articles for protection 12 Harry Potter video game articles in major need of help 13 Deathly Hallows film article 14 Fan art 15 Dates in Harry Potter

[edit] 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)

Ok, well… Sandpiper restored these pages, what action are we now going to take on them? We should try to make it among our top-priority articles to work on. --Fbv65edel / ☑t / ☛c || 00:07, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Yes. I did restore them, because I don't think they should be nowhere and quitely forgotten. But I do see the point that was being made about them. Logically, they could be part of the film articles. They are big though, and I think that was why they were farmed out to their own articles in the first place. I have also inserted the whole of 'PS differences' into HP and the philosophers stone (film). See what people think about leaving it there just like that. I don't know about the other articles, but this one is not ridiculously long. Sandpiper 19:16, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps we should reassess how important some of those plot lines are, and then transfer it from list to prose. For example, in that table, the most important differences are Climax, Quirrell's Death, Snape/James, Tasks leading to Climax, and then maybe second priority is Neville's Role. While I thought it was cool at the time, a listing of all students who appear in the book but not the film may not be necessary. The same goes for the deleted scenes, though we should probably check with the WP:FILM on what their guidelines for that are. The omission of Peeves is important to keep, but the locations list may not be.

It's basically just a matter of assessing how much of this important is too fandomy, which a lot of it is, and how much is encyclopedic enough that a general audience would be interested. --Fbv65edel / ☑t / ☛c || 21:59, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

I'm afraid I don't understand what 'encyclopedic' means when used in that sense. Are you saying that an encyclopedic entry must by definition be short? Whatever happened to wiki is not paper? The advantage we have is that we do have the luxury of including small details for those who are interested. Articles should not be written for the lowest common denominator, rather for those interested in the greatest detail. Sandpiper 02:51, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

I understand this is a near-unlimited amount of space to use on Wikipedia. However, the question of notability arises when you wonder how important it is that only five students are Sorted in the film, compared to the near 30 in the book. An article will never reach FA or even GA status with that type of trivial information, which, as I said above, is too much geared at only devoted fans. Only great differences from the book, those that affect the plot or those that are quite notably contrasted to the source material, should be written about. Per your edit summary, I'm not removing because less people are interested, but rather because this has called to my attention that my original efforts, when I was still new at Wikipedia, were not entirely the most beneficial to this encyclopedia. You're of course welcome to save this work on your own computer. --Fbv65edel / ☑t / ☛c || 03:50, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Not all articles need to reach GA or FA status. Some are just there to be useful to those that want to know the information. This sort of information, whilst not necessarily useful or interesting to all readers, will be so to some, and as such should be retained. Michael Sanders 14:34, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] 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? PeaceNT 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)

[edit] 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)

My view would be that experts on the HP books are just as good at analysing them as any professor in an ivory tower. And I would hve to say that that some of the people running these webistes are precisely 'professional researchers' writing about their own 'field of expertise'. Sandpiper 23:22, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

We're speaking about speculations, here, absolutely no one can be an expert on an unpublished book, except the author.

Analysing is a thing, trying to guess the content of the next book is another.

No one writing for these websites is a "professional researcher" (meaning that it's their official job to study literature, and that they have all the knowledge to do it, a knowledge that was evaluated and recognized by official professors and all) in their "field of expertise" (ie having studied HP for years and having presented various works to academic authorities).

"Expertise" is not defined by how many times you've read the book and searched on the web for etymologies. It's defined by studies supervised/approved by an academic expert.

As the rules of Wikipedia say, "anyone can pretend he's an expert", so it takes more than a few etymologic researches and a thorough compiling of facts from the books to be called an "expert". Any fan that has time to lose can reference the 6 books and do some minor etymologic researches.

And even if these persons were to be concidered experts (which is not the case), the speculations they write would be out of their field of "expertise", since the said field is in that case, the referencing of published books and not reading the mind of JKR about book 7 (and mind reading isn't officially concidered as a competence yet). Folken de Fanel 01:06, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

I've been following this discussion a little, and though I haven't participated and read absolutely everything, my feeling is that there is no verification for listing connections to "deathly" and/or "hallows" unless the author of the speculation (research) has deliberately linked them to the Deathly Hallows in JKR's seventh book, which is not possible yet. I think only the brief definition of the words is all that can be included without creating original research – original research because, though the speculation has been done by others and has been published, it is we, Wikipedia editors, who are drawing the parallels to the book. --Fbv65edel / ☑t / ☛c || 01:14, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

I think most professional researchers would be very disappointed to learn that it is impossible to research something which does not exist yet, or write respected, accepted, referenceable material about it. No rocket to Mars, then. Since it doesn't exist yet, obviously no one can write anything worthwhile even about how one might start to build one. Sandpiper 19:16, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

For the last time, DO NOT even try to compare kids making guesses about the end of Harry Potter, and scientists who have studied many many years.

And please, try to understand that your comments, if they do not contain any valid argumentation, but merely nonsense fueled by frustration, are absolutely uninteresting and do not help us in any way. Folken de Fanel 20:19, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

If the subject does not interest you, then perhaps you might find your time better spent working on articles which do interest you. I also think you will find that the sort of research which goes into creating rockets to Mars is precisely the same as that required to develop a good scenario of the necessary content of book 7. Except, as i said somewhere else, you only need 6 books to work on extracting HP information, not a fully equipped physics lab.Sandpiper 21:36, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

I return the comment to you : obviously you have absolutely no interest in Book 7 whatsoever, you're just here to boast about how you and your friends have solved the secret of HP, and you're just trying to make Wikipedia your own personal blog in order to spread your Gospel, the Gospel of those genious fans who can see the future.

Since you're interest here is clearly not providing Wikipedia with encyclopedic content, but merely writing your own unsubstanciated personal theories, I suggest you to leave Wikipedia and to start your own website.

By the way, speaking about your comparison between book 7 and scientific research about rockets on mars...Haven't you forgotten than it's not the fans that are writing book 7, but only JKR ? And that it has already been written ? In that case, original-researching about the content of book 7 is useless.

By the way, if you pretend the fans that are writing theories about book 7 are equal to people researching rockets on mars, then I suggest them to drop HP and to work on something more serious than that. Because if they have such a scientific knowledge, their really waisting their time, and instead of writing about children novels they should work on a way to solve famine and poverty problems in the world. Folken de Fanel 00:48, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

Funnily enough, I don't claim to have originated anything I have ever added to wiki. Sandpiper 20:52, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

You have stated your personal opinion several times, indeed. And that you're using outside unsubstanciated and unreliable original research doesn't change the problem. Folken de Fanel 22:19, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

Ah, precisely the problem. It is your opinion that the sources are unreliable. I generally use those recommended by Rowlings, at least for inclusions here. Sandpiper 23:23, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

It is not my opinion. I merely follows Wikipedia's criteria for reliable sources. Because you see, it's not us who decide which source is good, which is not. It's Wikipedia itself.

As for JKR, when she'll go public about "Lexicon being right in every single of their theories", I will take it into account. But for now, she has never said anything of the sort, and you should stop trying to alter her words on this subject. She has praised Lexicon for being accurate about published material, and only that. And Wikipedia is very clear, sources must be "in their field of expertise", and theories on book 7 aren't lexicon field of expertise, since they aren't expert on book 7, since they have not read it. Folken de Fanel 13:51, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] 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. PeaceNT 04:38, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] 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)

[edit] Ron Weasley

I recently rewrote a lot of Ron Weasley to match the new, out-of-universe design on Lord Voldemort, but the Ron article is still a little lacking in stuff besides role in the book. With just a little more time we could get it up to GA level. --Fbv65edel / ☑t / ☛c || 00:09, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Looks very solid. Some minor points: 1) it probably needs a copyedit in "Attributes" (as a GA patrol guy, I can say that sections with only 1 sentence are frowned upon), 2) a dedicated "Appearances in Film" section would be good, 3) as you said, more out-of-universe statements, from JKR or Rupert Grint, if available. But these minor things aside, it is a big step towards . —Onomatopoeia 13:07, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, I didn't have time to flesh out those one- or two-sentence sections, but I wanted to create at least a foundation. --Fbv65edel / ☑t / ☛c || 21:50, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] What to do with Minor actors and actresses in Harry Potter?

I'm debating whether to send this article to AfD. When the proposal to create the article was tossed around, I was all for it, but now I'm seeing that, if an actor is only notable for small appearances in Harry Potter films, they probably don't pass WP:BIO. I don't think anybody on that page is currently notable elsewhere, so they wouldn't be lost if the article was deleted. Besides, they're all mentioned on the individual cast pages and List of Harry Potter films cast members. The article also posed some problems with having a plethora of FU images, which I eventually just got tired of and temporarily put comment markers around until something was figured out. Any thoughts on this? --Fbv65edel / ☑t / ☛c || 22:53, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

I say send it to Afd, it's especially redundant given the main list. John Reaves (talk) 23:19, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

All right, nobody else has anything to say so I'm going to send this guy to AfD… --Fbv65edel / ☑t / ☛c || 22:25, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

Well, I'm rather surprised to see that this passed an AfD. I really didn't count on that happenning, and was expecting a deletion. So, what do you want to do with it? If we can't delete the article as a whole, we can keep the more notable of these already minor actors, and delete the ones where the only information on them is one sentence, redirecting their individual articles to List of Harry Potter films cast members. --Fbv65edel / ☑t / ☛c || 22:00, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Template:Harry Potter characters

I have added NavFrames to {{Harry Potter characters}}. Comments? John Reaves (talk) 09:41, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Mr Borgin

Hi, why is there no article about Mr Borgin? / 81.226.194.196 21:05, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

See Borgin and Burkes, its merged into that article. RHB ^{Talk - Edits} 21:22, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] New GA!

Hey guys, Harry Potter fandom has been promoted to GA status! Thanks for your help with it! It's now currently in peer review. Any changes you can make to the article (specifically expanding the lead) would be most appreciated.

In the mean time, Controversy over Harry Potter is a GA nom. This article was just listed as a GA! Fbv65edel / ☑t / ☛c || 00:32, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

And on a slightly unrelated note, let's offer our congrats to John Reaves, whose RfA was recently passed! --Fbv65edel / ☑t / ☛c || 02:54, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Impending doom

As July approaches, we need to start thinking about the massive amounts of vandalism that will occur. I think one of the first things we need to do is create a boilerplate message that we can crosspost to various places (e.g. WP:AN and WP:CN) that informs the community that we will be reading Deathly Hallows and will be unable to keep watch on the various HP articles. John Reaves (talk) 15:36, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

That makes sense. Also, as I brought up at Talk:Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows#Immediate Edit Lock, we could assign certain editors to watch (more closely than usual) certain articles. We could take a look at User:Deathphoenix/HarryPotterWatchlist to get a list of articles (though it might be more productive to take an equal amount of articles by quality, found at Wikipedia:WikiProject Harry Potter/Assessment) and start choosing which ones we'd like to cover. (By the way, very amusing section name, John.) --Fbv65edel / ☑t / ☛c || 17:28, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

(I thought it would be a good title) I think the idea is that most of us will be completely inactive for however long it takes to read the book so we won't be available to watch any articles. The assignments would be useful for once we come back, because I'm sure the vandalism will keep on for a while. John Reaves (talk) 17:41, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Also Agree. In addition we need to be careful not to feed the trolls by telling them what we will be doing and not doing around "D-Day" the weekend of July 21. I do not have any statistics about the X killed Y trolling and other early spoiler vandalism that happened after Book 6 came out, but I would estimate that it will be an order of magnitude larger this time around - as the Wikipedia user base has probably doubled and redoubled since then. I am still unsure exactly what should be done about the possibility of editors who get hold of "illegally distributed" or stolen early copies, obtained from unscrupulous book store owners or employees, who might then start to reveal plot details which are temporarily unverifiable. And who will be the sacrificial lambs, willing subject themselves to monitoring and reverting the spoilers and vandalism, and "approving" plot details for truth and verifiability? How can anyone do this job without first reading the books? I am tempted to request that JK and the Publishers to please send a few copies to some trusted key speed reading wiki-editors and administrators a few days early, with the understanding of an iron clad confidentiality agreement, just to keep the articles "clean" right up to "D-Day", and then to monitor and maintain the appropriateness of the articles after D-day. The only alternative I can think of is to lock the articles down perhaps a day or two in advance of the release date, to avoid embarrassing publicity from the inevitable vandalism, spoilers, and trolling. The Wikipedia is already a laughingstock worldwide after falsely reporting and spreading the death rumors of Sinbad a few days ago (see). --T-dot (Talk | contribs) 17:59, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

My suggestion (for what it's worth) would be to totally block pretty much all the major articles from about the 18th (and politely request that admins think about anything they add), and ignore the talk pages (talk pages are less important in terms of vandalism, so we can just not look at any alterations there). Set up a list of available editors. When we have 'enough' available, or willing, editors (10 or 20 or 50 or whatever), or (if no-one bothers) it reaches 1st August (nice dividing line), the unimportant articles are unprotected, the hotspots moved to semi-protection, and we start integrating new information. And then, when about 2-3 weeks more have passed (and the vandals and over-enthusiasts have lost interest, or are prepared to work sensibly), and we can be sure of being in control and up to scratch, we (provisionally) unprotect all the articles, and get on with adding in the new information. I mean, it's hardly the best way of doing things, but I don't see how we can otherwise cope with the days surrounding the 21st unless we simply prevent damaging additions (I mean, really, how many people are going to be here on 21st?) Michael Sanders 19:07, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

A complete lockdown is a pretty radical thing. We'll have to get some outside community input on this. I think it will probably be best to semi-protect and have people aware that full-protection might be needed. I for one will probably not be available on the 21st, I might take a break and check the pages, but spoilers are a pretty big worry of mine. I'm starting a list of the core article to be protected in a subsection below (feel free to add to it). John Reaves (talk) 09:37, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

I read HBP in a day and got around to fan site discussions and Wikipedia updating within the next day or two. --Fbv65edel / ☑t / ☛c || 14:49, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

But if you're reading a book solidly in a day, I'd assume you won't be on wikipedia at all that day (I know I won't...) - and the same could be said for plenty of others here. And many people I talked to after OotP and HBP took more than a day. So we need to make sure we are on top of the issue. Michael Sanders 15:01, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Some people actually can read that quickly, though. I remember reading HBP in nearly 3 solid hours the night it came out. I know not everyone can read that quickly, but a lot of people will finish it within the first week, so I think that allowing editing around July 27 should be reasonable enough. Sonya 20:48, 27 March 2007

I'm afraid I think you guys are getting a bit carries away here. Perhaps I have a different slant on wiki than you do, but it is supposed to be the encyclopedia anyone can edit. I agree there is an issue about pre-publication leaks, but I can't really agree about the post-publication position. The moment the book is officially released, then our articles will almost certainly all be totally out of date. Never mind whether anyone is trying to vandalise them, they will be wrong anyway. So why exactly are you requesting special protection to prevent anyone correcting them to conform to the new book? There may be an issue about tactfully writing articles so that people have a chance to bail out and stop reading because they havn't read the last book yet, but honestly, think about this. No one is going to be unaware that the book has just been published. What would they expect to find here if not information about what is in the new book? Sandpiper 20:22, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

If anything, I think imposing full protection on the pages would hinder their being properly brought up to date. I hadn't planned this, but it sounds horribly like I shall be queuing at midnight. So suppose I'm insane enough to read it by the next day. Then I'm prevented from editing? Sandpiper 20:25, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

If protection isn't imposed on the crucial days, then the pages will be flooded with vandals, and there will be no-one here to deal with it - because we will all either be reading the book, or too afraid to check for vandalism in case it contains spoilers of the book we haven't read yet. I don't know about you, but if I were the casual reader - coming here fully aware of the spoiler risk - I'd prefer to read non-updated but at least trustworthy encyclopaedia entries, than discover that the Harry Potter wikipedia pages had collapsed, leaving chaos reigning.

As for editing the next day - might I venture to suggest that a few days of reflecting on what we want to add would do more good than diving straight in (someone, after reading HBP, hurriedly added to the Luna Lovegood article that she wore turnips as earrings. Took over a year - and a trail of misinformation sprawled across the internet leading back to wikipedia - before anyone noticed, or bothered to correct it.)? Michael Sanders 20:37, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

So we should leave the article blocked for a year in case the turnip poster is lurking out there to make their post? If the articles are out of date - frankly hopelessly out of date in a sense which was not true after publication of HBP, because the series will have reached its ending - then they can not be described as trustworthy any more. If someone wants to read the pre-publication page then they can look it up in the history. People need to learn how to use wiki as an information source, and that includes understanding that any page at any time may be in the middle of a vandalism attack. And as to that, many pages get vandalised, and most are simply reverted by people who look at the the new stuff and make a quick decision on 'dumbledore stinks'.

Now, as an alternative suggestion, how about a tag on the pages saying that they are a 'current event' and may be subject to change/unreliable? Sandpiper 00:13, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Hmm, I see your logic, Sandpiper, and I am tending to agree with you. Everybody will know the pages are undergoing a lot of changes, and, after all, we're not the only reliable people who can edit HP articles. Don't forget, besides the vandals, there are plenty of non-registered users (who, even if they did register the day the book came out, they'd have to wait 4 days until they could edit semi-protected pages) who are actually trying to be beneficial.

Also, if there's not already a template for it, something like the current event template except for "newly released book" might make sense to have on most articles. --Fbv65edel / ☑t / ☛c || 04:58, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Core articles for protection

1. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
2. J. K. Rowling
3. Harry Potter
4. Harry Potter (character)
5. Lord Voldemort
6. Severus Snape
7. Hermione Granger
8. Ron Weasley
9. Albus Dumbledore (maybe? probably have to wait and see)
10. Horcrux
11. Bellatrix Lestrange
12. Peter Pettigrew
13. James and Lily Potter
14. Draco Malfoy
15. Hogwarts

[edit] Harry Potter video game articles in major need of help

All of them (with the exception of Order of the Phoenix, which isn't out) are just mainly made up of lists. Has anyone played them enough to help clean them up? RobJ1981 14:17, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, never play video games. I do agree that those often go ignored though. Perhaps we can recruit from the Videogaming WP. --Fbv65edel / ☑t / ☛c || 17:23, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Deathly Hallows film article

It's been created again. I just checked WP:CRYSTAL and technically, since it's been announced, there's no problem with it. But there's not much to say, except that the trio will be back, and Heyman and Kloves are involved. Can we just move it into a subsection of the book article? Or do people think it should stay? --Fbv65edel / ☑t / ☛c || 02:56, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Move it into the book??? Isn't there enough hassle there already? I don't mind if it exists or not, but if you are set on deleting it, well it is something which is going to happen. Sandpiper 21:53, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Never mind, it's been (appropriately) redirected to the book article for such little information on production. --Fbv65edel / ☑t / ☛c || 02:34, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Fan art

Harry Potter fan art is up for deletion on Commons. Harry Potter Fan art. Bryan 12:24, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Dates in Harry Potter

This article's been nominated for AfD. Please check the article page, and then go over and assess neutrally whether it should keep or be deleted, or something else. What might be best is to source the page right now: note how the filmmakers use dates, and Jo checks them, and it is generally important. We don't need to up it to FA status, but at least show that it's worthy of keeping, in my opinion. --Fbv65edel / ☑t / ☛c || 02:36, 29 March 2007 (UTC)