Portal talk:Harry Potter/Archive 1

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

You have new messages (last change).
Archive This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Contents

Discussion on Did you know

Regulus Black middle name is rumoured to be Acturus because it is seen in the recent Black family tree released by JKR, this is not substantial proof but it is enough to include it as a fact Ghingo

Ghingo, it was widely reported on several fansites, but then retracted. The prevalence of the name "Arcturus" on the Black Family Tree would seem to support this theory, and it appears that perhaps the fan sites revealed information that JKR didn't want to reveal, but since she has not confirmed this, it is, in my opinion anyway, still unconfirmed rumor. -- Danahuff 02:54, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

Please read WP:V, WP:OR, and WP:CITE. You cannot publish uncited speculation you found on a fansite. Jtrost (T | C | #) 16:22, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

colour

Sorry, but bright yellow is terrible. if I knew how, I would change it. Sandpiper 23:44, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

I think so. --Mataga 11:28, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

eeek somebody change it MrDark 14:51, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

Is this better? Just changed it to green and white, after a brief stint of red and white (which, while optimal for a HP page, caused problems with the blue links)... --HPNEWIK 04:10, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Isn't there anything a bit more pastel, but I'll think about it. Sandpiper 08:42, 24 May 2006 (UTC)
I thought of a pastel, but it seemed a little... like it wouldn't be quite right. A pastel red would come out an ugly pinkish, a pastel green may look alright... a pastel yellow would look interesting... --HPNEWIK 14:17, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Green looks better than bright yellow, but another colour will be better.

--Mataga 12:41, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Metaga: Which color would you prefer? I wanted to do red, as it was Gryffindorish, but I had to settle with Slytherin green... Ravenclaw blue would make it impossible to see the 'edit' link... You can edit it by editing Portal:Harry Potter/box-header, by the way...

I am considering rewriting the entire box-header template specifically for use in the Harry Potter part, as there is no option to change link colors in the main template (something like Portal:box-header...), and I, not being an administrator, cannot edit that page to add the ability to change link colors. --HPNEWIK 14:14, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Everyone can edit that portal, but it will be better if all of Potter's fans say what colour they like. I think green is good, but too bright. I made polish portal about Potter, and I think colours which I chose are good. --Mataga 12:34, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Not everyone can edit that portal template. They can edit the Portal:Harry Potter/box-header template, but this template references Portal:box-header, or something like that, which cannot be edited by most people, I think. So, the only way I could change the link color is to copy the entire template and put inside the link commands... or something like that. Which would be a little bit of work. --HPNEWIK 15:00, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

I thought about colour of tables. --Mataga 14:19, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Just changed the link color to white. I copied the template and put in custom values, and put a 'font' tag around the text... --HPNEWIK 14:32, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Just changed several of the colors now. There should be a red header, for Gryffindor, a bunch of Slytherin green boxes on the left, two large ravenclaw boxes on the right (both of which are book-related, so it is fitting), and at the very bottom is the 'associated wikimedia', which is now a yellow (though a less annoying yellow than the older yellow). I thought it fitting because that is like a group of friends, other wikimedia projects, so it is kinda Hufflepuffish. They are easy to change, though - just edit the main page, and each /box-header include can have the color coded in. --HPNEWIK 14:48, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Web Links Discussion

The web links area threatens to get too large - as it is, there are no guidlines in comments even for what is acceptable there. I made a discussion page for that area: Portal Talk: Harry Potter/Web resources.

Planning moving smaller sites from that area to a separate list, possibly with a link "Other Sites", or "Smaller Sites". --HPNEWIK 04:11, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

I don't see why the discussion can not be on this page, so I have copied across the comment posted there: Sandpiper

(I thought it could not be on this page because What kind of sites can be added? What kind of sites do we want to be in this area? I tried adding my own but it was deleted because of low page-rank... which kind of makes it a catch-22 because no one will visit my site unless they know about it and the site can't be posted (Here at least) until it has good ranking.

So what kind of sites are we looking for here? Just the main ones, perhaps? Mugglenet, Veritaserum, HPANA, and The Leaky Cauldron, and FictionAlley - the others, I'm not sure about.

What about a page for smaller sites? (To keep it reasonable, perhaps non-Yahoo groups, etc, but only accepting ones on a domain name.) I'll make the page...

Alex

And in answer to the question, Wiki is not an advertising service. Something is mentioned because it is important, not because someone wants to make it important.
Myself, I would not query any website mentioned in an article at all if there are only a few links, and it seems to be sensible. I would add something with a negligible page rank (well, I wouldn't even check) if it was the only relevant link I knew. For example, a page I know lists an EU official document, and I imagine the number of hits on that is tiny. I imagine many pages have links to obscure websites which hardly anyone looks at. But here there is a big choice, so it does become a question of listing the famous ones. I have added more obscure websites (and others do too) on some of the specific articles about characters where there is something interesting directly relevant about that character etc. But I can see why on an intro page people would want to just list the main ones. There is (or was, anyway) a page about HP fansites. (though that might actually be more obsessed with page ranks, I don't look at it much) Sandpiper 08:58, 24 May 2006 (UTC)
I see. That makes sense, but the truth is there are hundreds of HP fan sites out there. Who picks what goes there? What criteria do they need to meet? For instance, one could say that a particular site is a high-quality site, so it should go there. Or should we only list the big sites, such as MuggleNet, The Leaky Cauldron, etc.?
I did add my site to the "smaller sites" page, but perhaps it should be removed... it is a very large site, with tons of pages, up-to-date news, but there are basically no visitors, so I'm not sure if that is the proper place for it. I did not mean to imply that Wikipedia was an advertising service - I do not think it is.

--HPNEWIK 14:13, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Notability (web) contains good information on how notable a web site is, but this policy page is for individual articles on web sites. I would set the bar quite lower for an external link. If you want some discussion in more practical terms, specifically with Harry Potter fan sites, I suggest you take a quick gander at this discussion.
Personally, I think it would be best to simply provide a link to Harry Potter fandom (or Harry Potter fandom#External links) without making any external links to unofficial sites in the Portal page. Basically, I think the "web links" section should only include links to official sites (those mentioned in Harry Potter#External links), and a link to Harry Potter fandom. That way, we don't duplicate our efforts in discussing the notability of fan sites and simply provide one article to show links to fan sites. I'd much prefer this solution as it takes the least amount of time, and also wastes the least amount of time to duplicate work. --Deathphoenix ʕ 18:51, 24 May 2006 (UTC)
Well, as you know by now death, I instinctively cringe when anyone says that only one particular 'official' view is allowed. That's the worst kind of censorship. While Warner bros or even JKR are not trying to take over the world, they certainly do have commercial interests to plug on their own sites. From that POV, I would much rather we plugged Alex above than added to Warner's profits by advertising their site. There is an issue with HP fandom, it really does not give a comprehensive review of websites. We are not advertisers, but the whole point is to tell people which are good sites, that it valid information. We are failing if we dont do that, although I agree it is difficult to choose. It is rather to the point that there are very many websites, so we should be offering quite a big spread for people to choose from. So having ranted a bit, I think we should have such a list somewhere, but not really on the main portal page. It should be advertising wiki's offering rather than others. The sub-page link is fine, and a couple of the big reference is also fine. JKR herself posts commendations on her own site of other websites she recommends. I don't have a list (they may change from time to time), but this is another measure of quoteability. Sandpiper 19:56, 24 May 2006 (UTC)
No, "official" doesn't mean censorship. There are several "official" and "unofficial" things out there. "Official" means it's certified, it's published, or whatever. "Unofficial" means everything else. If your argument is that we're adding profits to a site by linking to it, well, to paraphrase someone who had his own version of WP:WEB: if a web site will benefit substantially from being linked from Wikipedia, it doesn't deserve to be linked. In other words, web sites that are notable enough to be linked from Wikipedia don't need to be linked from Wikipedia. I don't think we're necessarily adding substantial profits to Warner Bros. They'd do just fine without our help. Therefore, they're notable enough to be included. Oh, and as for needing an extensive list of links to Harry Potter web sites, I'm sorry, I completely disagree with you there. Wikipedia is not a collection of external links. I'm actually not terribly happy with the sheer number of sites we have right now, but am willing to include them based on notability. Perhaps the solution is to put these Harry Potter articles up for a formal peer review so we can get these articles edited to Wikipedia standards, I don't know. --Deathphoenix ʕ 20:59, 24 May 2006 (UTC)
Deathphoenix: I agree for the most part. However, according to guidelines, all except Mugglenet and HPANA (and perhaps The-Leaky-Cauldron) should be removed, as they are the only ones which have been noted by J.K. Rowling. However, I think we must include the Harry Potter Lexicon, because it has basically a complete library of information on Harry Potter (one that will probably never be built here on Wikipedia). So, I'm planning on removing the link to my website. I think any links on the Smaller Sites should be deleted, but I won't remove any but the ones I added.
According to the guidelines, we should be linking to sites where more information can be retrieved - and the best sites for that. --HPNEWIK 21:10, 24 May 2006 (UTC)
JKR has mentioned others. There is even a nice quote from her about nipping into an internet cafe to consult hplexicon. The policy says There is nothing wrong with adding one or more useful content-relevant links to an article; however, excessive lists can dwarf articles and detract from the purpose of Wikipedia. I rather think the policy says that links should not be listed if their only relevance is that they are a 'fansite', but that they should be listed if the number of links is in proportion to the size of the article, and they have useful content. The whole point of this page is that it is a general list of sources of information, that is what it exists to do. I tend to find that 'links' is interchangeable with 'references', and I do not see an advantage in removing references from articles. I also think 'one or two' is not a very good spread of sources and is certainly not an 'excessive list'(nor is 5 or 10).
I think my point about the 'official' sites is that they are biased, which they are if you define them as the ones who 'own' HP. I am saying that your definition of good sites appears to be based upon financial interest in the series, which is a very bad way of selecting what should be included. Financial interest should not be of any interest to us in choosing who to reference, either for or against. It is a question of content. Sandpiper 23:17, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
You know what? I'm tired of arguing about this, especially if I'm wrong, because this is just my opinion, just like you have yours. Do you mind if I bring subject up for a content RfC? I'd like to know what the Wikipedia community as a whole think of what web links should be included. I don't want to spend so much time reading and arguing, especially if it turns out that the Wikipedia community as a whole disagree with my opinion. --Deathphoenix ʕ 00:20, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
i don't know whether they would agree or not. But I suspect there will be a division between those who hate fandom and think no mention of it should be made on wiki, anywhere, and those who think that a popular passtime is a suitable subject for a detailed mention. I think that wiki deals much more comfortably with factual topics than fantasy ones. I also think that there is a 'man the barricades' mentality to this issue and arguments tend to be made with an eye to preventing an invasion if a precedent is set, rather than to the merits of the case. I think that in a case like this where there are loads of websites to choose from and very many interested readers, it is ducking the issue not to mention, effectively to recommend, some sites. I agree with you that making a choice is very difficult, that accepting 'official' sites has the merit of being a simple clear rule, similarly page rank or other hit counts. But popularity does not necessarily equate with merit. I don't know what is out there, myself, so I adopt a policy of leaving a list of links until it gets to a certain size, then looking more closely at it if it needs to be culled. Maybe not so different to yourself.Sandpiper 09:16, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
Perhaps it's not so different, but I greatly object to people inserting spamlinks in an attempt to increase traffic on their web sites. It happened a lot in one of the Wikis I was on, and it happens even more here. My opinion is pretty simple, and is based on what someone else wrote. If a web site is notable enough that it doesn't need to be linked from Wikipedia, it is notable enough to be linked from Wikipedia. Of course, the opposite applies. A good measurable way of determining whether a web site is notable enough is to look at a combination of Google PageRank and Alexa Rank. We came up with some pretty decent approximate numbers on Talk:Harry Potter fandom. I've already beaten this topic to death and, to be honest, I'm getting pretty tired of continuously having to argue my case, especially if it turns out that what we agreed on is contrary to general consensus and Wikipedia policies. That's why I'm willing to bring this up on RfC and face whatever results come up, whether I agree with them or not. --Deathphoenix ʕ 12:53, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
We might also agree that official consensus is what was settled by the six people paying attention at the time, and on a different day a completely different consensus might have resulted. If some policy is wrong, then it is a responsible action for wiki editors to argue against it. I am well aware that success breeds succes: if a site has somehow reached the top of the google search list, then all new searchers will go there first, and completely miss the really fantastic site at number 8764 in the list. These people may even be well satisfied with what they get from that site which was first on the list, and never realise what they missed. That is the difficulty with your plan. I am certainly not advocating including everything, but I am arguing that it is necessary to use editorial judgement on whether a particular site is good, rather than an arbitrary measure. Not really different to any other decision about what to include, or not. My criterion is to list the best site(s) which I know about. With regrets to Alex above, I think his site needs a bit more work yet before it will qualify to be the best. This judgement is not based upon any formal ranking, but from having actually now had a look at it. My view is absolutely not to dismiss something without giving it a fair chance. I am not really sure that the official policy mention of 'fandom' really disagrees with this. It does not define what 'fandom' means in this context, one might argue that members of political parties constituted a 'fandom', but I doubt editors on political pages would believe it applied to them. The point as far as I am concerned comes back to what a particular site has to offer and to keep total mentions to a sensible level.
Since we are nearly on the subject, I also mentioned elsewhere the arguable 'Further reading' section. Under this I classify material which is interesting but not necessarily verifiable, or indeed wholly speculative, or non mainstream. The sort of thing I would expect to be included in a serious and complete discussion of something. 'Dumbledore is not dead', springs to mind. Wiki has policy to try to maintain the acuracy of what is here; that is as close as wiki gets to having an editorial position. But we do need to show that some wild and wooly stuff does exist. Always good to throw in a challemge for the students. This, as well as what might accurately be described as 'references' all tends to get lumped together under one heading at the end, exactly which heading may vary depending on the article. I don't like having three separate chunks of similar sorts of things with fine distinctions between them, but there are different reasons for including different sorts of links. Sandpiper 14:57, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Something on "Did You Know"

On the R.A.B. fact, where it says it is Regulus Arcturus Black, perhaps it is Regulus "ALPHARD" Black, or maybe someone in Malfoy's family, I forgot who it was, but his name had "rab" in it. The reason I think it is Alphard, not Arcturus, because women tend to (yes, I am currently looking at the tree) name the second child, unless you don't know, and it is possible that she named Regulus after Alphard. I think it is approximately year 1996 in the Harry Potter's world, considering the fact that Malfoy would be 16-17, and in the book, it is year 6, and yeah. Unless I am mistaken, Regulus IS the second son, right?

The reason it is named Acterus because recently a leak and mugglenet reported that RAB was acterus, however it was soon pulled down thanks to someone at the publishers asking them to take it down. the clowns protect

Can we have a list of famous Harry Potter fans?

i would create one but I dont know how, if someone does oblige, the first person should be Wayne Rooney Behind the veil

Did you know..

The "Did You Know" section is not a list of facts which are each followed by a summary of the characters/events mentioned within it. It should be a (much shorter) list of brief questions, complete with question marks. There should be no need to cite the information's source in this box if it is easily obtained elsewhere. If the reader wants to know more, they can easily find the appropriate article, but let's try and keep this box a little smaller. I think 4-6 questions, updated regularly, should be more than enough.

Edit: Sorry about clipping the tail end of that last post. I had a run-in with my header text. ;) I went ahead and fixed it, hope you don't mind. AlmenCrosse 05:17, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Did you know...

that until this morning the Harry Potter Portal was not mentioned at Harry Potter?

I added it. I expect that's about all I'll be bringing to the Harry Potter feast, I just don't 'get' the Harry Potter phenomenon. However, cheers to you for your work. Pedant 15:49, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

wands

The German Wikipedia has a table details of individual wands. The english wikipedia hat a List of wands in Harry Potter, but it is a redirect to Wizarding world and in Wizarding world there is nothing about wands, but a link to List of wands in Harry Potter. --° 08:55, 10 August 2006 (UTC)


Edit a 'Did you know...'

I am almost positive, as I read it in Looking for God in Harry Potter by John Granger that Albus Dumbledore means 'albino bumblebee' in Latin. Is that correct? WickedWitchoftheWest:)

Adding a site

Hiya

I think Room of Requirement (http://www.roomofrequirement.com) should be added. It has news, information, but it is its network sites that is amazing. They have the most amazing non-forum RPG out there, they also have a forum based rpg, a design section for free layouts, pre-made graphics, a job center and so much more! I absolutely adore this site and think it would add to the links section.

Another Did you Know...

"... in the first American printing of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, the order in which Voldemort's victims appeared from his wand was wrong? "

Ive just come across this in my edition of GoF, which is the Brit printing (bloomsbury) and AFAIK,is not a first edition!! Anyone else notice this?? Shado.za 09:19, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

R.A.B

I've just finished re-reading Harry Potter and the Half-blood Prince.

Does anybody have a clue about who R.A.B can be? It is definitly somebody who is not afraid to stand up to Voldemort. And I do belief that altough we do not know to whom the initials belong, both Dumbledore and Voldemort do.

In my personal opinion I think that the initials may belong to a Black. Yolani 10:08, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

The Seventh Book

Something about the seventh book should be mentioned on the portal.... wht do you think? 59.162.116.140 04:39, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/James Utechin

Someone has proposed that the article about James Utechin, an actor in the next Harry Potter film, should be deleted. Please take a look at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/James Utechin. -- Eastmain 00:28, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

About using an image on this portal

An amendment to the fair use policy on portals is now being discussed here: Wikipedia:Fair use/Amendment/Fair use images in portals --GunnarRene 22:33, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org../../../h/a/r/Portal_talk%7EHarry_Potter_Archive_1_822b.html"