Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Students in Harry Potter's Year

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The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was keep, merge, and redirect to List of characters in the Harry Potter books. ···日本穣? · Talk to Nihonjoe 20:55, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Students in Harry Potter's Year

List and fancruft, admits to being OR, unencyclopaedic. Rory096 18:40, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

as the recipient of one of those 'advertisements' you are objecting to, I think I ought to be insulted that someone presupposes how I will vote on this, and uses that presumption to disparage another editor. More importantly, I think it very unfortunate that you consider it improper to advise potentially interested parties that a vote for deletion is taking place. For the record, I did not know this article even existed before I was asked to comment. Sandpiper 17:35, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
Er...what? Not OR in the slightest, it is an attempt to properly codify Rowling's list as a proper article for the benefit of readers who, at present, have to dig through other articles in order to get to the information (and who at present can't even find characters such as Moon or Roper at all). I admit that I am never the best at getting an article rolling - so make constructive suggestions of improvement. I am not even going to dignify 'fancruft' with a response. Michaelsanders 18:43, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete. Fails Wikipedia is not a directory ("Lists or repositories of loosely associated topics") and Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information. --DeLarge 18:46, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Put AfD on Hold - its been up for about 20mins, give it some time RHB 18:59, 10 December 2006 (UTC) (see below)
    • It's the concept that counts. This article doesn't have any hope of becoming encyclopaedic, especially considering things like "Fans who had recorded the documentary then used still images to read the names on the page, and discover the 'unknown students' and other relevant details" and "The information, dating from the early years of the inception of the novels, is dubious," both from the article itself. --Rory096 19:49, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
      • I'm so sorry. On the Voldemort page, and others, there was advice saying that the Harry Potter articles needed less 'in-universe', more external information. The information you have taken offence to is well-known - how do you think the classlist reached the internet? Look on the Lexicon if you want to cite it. Your attitude, I am afraid, suggests to me that you have a less-than-adequate working knowledge of Harry Potter (you can't even tell a fan-babbler from an inclusionist? How is that possible?). Would you like me to remove the information? Michaelsanders 19:54, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete, any worthwhile and referenced information can go in Hogwart's or whatever the article is called. Proto::► 19:19, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Merge with List of characters in the Harry Potter books#Students. Making this a separate article is actually making it harder to find this information by having parts of it in more than one place. --Dhartung | Talk 19:21, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
How much interest do any of you actually take in the Harry Potter project? Michaelsanders 19:32, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
How much interest does the Harry Potter project take in Wikipedia policy and guidelines? Proto::► 22:55, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep or Merge the information itself is reasonably, not overly detailed. It could be improved, and I wouldn't oppose merging to the list suggested above, but deletion seems excessive. FrozenPurpleCube 19:45, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep and Give Me a Break Merge per Dhartung's suggestion. Please familiarize yourself with the definition of 'list'. This is hardly a list. It has several sections of text and even mentions a source! Your deletionist anti-HP agenda needs to be stopped. John Reaves 20:51, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment. While this information is interesting to devoted fans of the Harry Potter novels, it is not interesting or important generally. Only the most devoted fans care about characters not even mentioned in canon. The purpose of Wikipedia is not to record everything related to Harry Potter, or every other work of art. This is a general encyclopedia, and such detailed information properly belongs in a Harry Potter encyclopedia. —Seqsea (talk) 21:36, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
Isn't generalising on the lines of 'all people think' weaselwording, and against wikipedia policy? Do you have hard evidence that 'only the most devoted fans care about characters not even mentioned in canon'? No? Then kindly keep it out of this discussion. Your opinion, since it is not remotely representative of what Harry Potter fans, or Harry Potter editors think, is worthless. Michaelsanders 22:15, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment lets keep this as a discussion about the deletion of this article and nothing else. John Reaves 22:59, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Redirect to List of characters in the Harry Potter books (which needs extreme copyediting, let's try not to get on that list's case) and merge any information into it, though I think most of it is there. Still, the article is not OR nor a list. I'd also like to repeat my comments from Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Harry Potter characters birthday list: Please watch the icy attitude that has been shown in the exchange between "Harry Potter fans" and "Harry Potter deletionists." Just keep a calm manner, please, it's really upsetting to see a feud over something like this. Incidentally, the merging of a number of small, unsourced articles that don't merit their own space is currently being discussed at the WP Harry Potter. Let's not attack the efficiency of the WP Harry Potter in conforming with policies and guidelines, that borders on bad faith. However, the project's scope should be seen in a wider spectrum, and obviously discussion is not and should not be limited to members of the project or fans of Harry Potter. --Fbv65edel / ☑t / ☛c || 23:16, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Merge with List of characters in the Harry Potter books#Students (Duane543 03:16, 11 December 2006 (UTC))
  • Merge with 'List of characters'. To address the comments about content above. This is actually a documented incident where the author let slip part of her own notes used to create the books. It is factual, not in any way OR. If the entire series of HP articles was scrapped and re-written from the perspective of literary analysis (which I am not advocating, and anyway something which is currently very difficult because essentially we are stil writing about an unfinished work), this piece ought to be included. It gives insight into the way the book was created. I anticipate that this will expand when the books are finally finished and Rowling will be able to talk about the story development... without being hamstrung as she is now by not revealing the ending. MichaelSanders is quite right that this is the kind of (currently relatively rare) information which ought to included in current HP coverage somewhere. These books have been a literary phenomenon and it is absurd to think that they will not become course material in future (I happen to know they are already included in reading lists for people doing teacher training in the UK). People will be sitting in classes analysing how she developed the storylines.
This information could be merged with 'List of Characters in HP, but that article is already generating an edit warning that it is 37K long, and frankly the logical conclusion from that is that it needs/will need subdividing into separate article. A considerable part of this information is already in 'list of characters', and I would myself prefer to see one article discussing students in the school rather than have this split/repeated in two or more. So I have persuaded myself to argue to merge, but with the possible intent of splitting off a slightly different article in the future. Sandpiper 17:35, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
You say that, "that this is the kind of (currently relatively rare) information which ought to included in current HP coverage somewhere", and I agree with you. The question, however, is not whether it is important information in the context of the HP universe, but whether it merits inclusion in Wikipedia, a general encyclopedia. We are not an encyclopedia of Harry Potter, nor are we an encyclopedia of every detail of every novel--or even every great novel. Our coverage of Moby-Dick, for example, has a short section detailing important characters, with a separate article for the most important one. Our coverage of The Lord of the Rings includes links to articles on characters important enough to be mentioned in a plot synopsis. The point here is not that we should have no information on HP, or that HP is not a good book; rather, that the focus of this article is not in line with the focus of the encyclopedia. When it comes to fiction, a general encyclopedia, such as WP, primarily should document the real-world significance of the novel, criticism, some plot summary, some information about the characters. (See WP:NOT and Wikipedia:Manual of Style (writing about fiction).) —Seqsea (talk) 20:19, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
Have you even looked at the article? Or are you simply concerned with antagonising anyone who does consider Harry Potter relevant to Wikipedia? After all, Wikipedia is limitless: it isn't paper, there are no restrictions on size. We can include anything if enough people agree that it is relevant. So what is your objection to an article which, if anything, should be preferable to you people, since it aims for an external mode of writing - to document what has happened in terms of revelations and development of the novels, as well as what 'Harry does this and that'. So what is your objection? Have any of you actually read the article you object to? Michaelsanders 20:53, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
Throughout this discussion, you've taken the view that anyone who disagrees with you hasn't read the article, has no knowledge of HP, and just wants to delete it on the grounds that it's about HP. I don't know how to convince you this is not necessarily the case, but... well, it's not. External with respect to fiction refers to its implications for the "real world", not the idea that the information in the article should come from the real world. That is, our fictional articles should focus on "the impact of HP on contemporary society" not "contemporary society's impact on HP". Again, it's a wonderful analysis of the origins of the HP universe, but it's too detailed for a general encyclopedia, having very little at all to do with the real world outside of HP canon. —Seqsea (talk) 21:18, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
If you think that, then clearly you haven't read anything of the above discussion either. Sandpiper, Duane543, fbv65edel, [deathphoenix]: none of these support my desire to keep the article. I have not accused them of not reading the article, nor have I taken offence at their differing stance. Do you know why? It is because they have actually earned my respect in the Harry Potter project. You have not. I take it as a given that they have read the article, the arguments here, and understood them. I take it as understood that we believe in the same basic purposes for wikipedia. We don't always agree, but we know what we're talking about, and we care about making wikipedia the best resource available for all readers - in this particular case, Harry Potter. They have, one way or another, earned my respect, and I hope that I have earned some small modicum of theirs. But you, and those of who displaying an intolerant attitude of "Fiction? NIMBY!", you have not earned my respect at all. You have my deepest contempt. Those of you who have expressed their opinion of the article so disparagingly and ignorantly("fancruft", "OR", "unencyclopedic"), who have taken a high-handed and arrogant attitude (claiming that I am 'advertising' this debate - should editors involved in Harry Potter not be informed?; "only the most devoted fans are interested"; "this article doesn't have any hope of becoming encyclopedic"), who clearly feel that various hard-to-find or paranoid "Hermione is Lily in another dimension" rubbish sites should serve as the main Harry Potter source of information, and that wikipedia should not sully itself with such topics (despite it being a paperless, limitless, encyclopedia for EVERYONE - that includes Harry Potter readers, you know) - you have given me no reason to respect you. If this discussion were taking place amongst only people who are interested in preserving the integrity of the HP articles: I would fight for the article (I feel that it is important) but I would automatically accept that the editors knew what they were talking about, and had the best interests of the project at heart. You give me no such assurance - this deletionist crowd has made its blatant snobbery towards this project clear, has insulted the work we do for wikipedia, and as such is deserving of no respect. You are welcome to prove otherwise, of course, but at the moment I see no reason to view of those contributors here who are not Potter-related as contributing anything other than an obvious distaste and terror of creeping fiction articles. Michaelsanders 22:09, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
I think perhaps things are becoming a little too heated and personal here for the objective of coming to an acceptable decision. But I would address the arguments above that HP articles have become too detailed. I'm afraid I don't buy this (at least in general), and I don't think others should either. Wiki is not paper. There is no point wasting cyberspace including false information, but the fact that it is not paper means we should not worry about including additional information. If editors feel that a disproportionate amount of our limitless space is being spent on fiction, then perhaps those editors should consider ways to increase the content of articles which they feel are proportionately too small, rather than reducing those they feel are too large. The size of HP articles directly reflects the interest aroused by the books. Topicality is an issue which any encyclopedia must take into account when choosing content. But particularly in our case, topicality means that many more people are intereted in writing those articles, and consequently they will be much better developed than others which might in the grand scheme be more important, but are regrettably of no interest to most. In this instance, the content ought to remain on wiki. The issue for me and some of the others I have read above, is where it ought to be placed. This is not necessarily a simple decision, as Hp is a large set of interrelated articles, and I am not certain the suggestion to consolidate into 'List of characters' will be my final word on this, but it seems the best suggestion at present.
Also for the record, HP has already surpassed just being a book, and has become a phenomenon. We will not know until it is finished how well it has been written: it is a puzzle piece littered with loose ends, and its genius will be measured by how well the story is concluded. It has been disparaged by a number of professionals, who have already had to eat their words, and I can see how they came to carelessly dismiss it. But it has already changed the literary scene.Sandpiper 00:32, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Merge and redirect unique entries to Students in Harry Potter's Year#Students, particularly since the tables list the students in Harry's year, as well as those above and below. This list is somewhat redundant given the existence of the target article, but since it contains a few new students not mentioned there, this article shouldn't simply be deleted: it's certainly appropriate to merge the content (Michael, please note that merging the article means that the original content is still kept, and the residual redirect ensures that you are still acknowledged for your work per GFDL requirements). --Deathphoenix ʕ 00:38, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
First off: there are plenty of articles which effectively quote other sources verbatim (the Hogwarts Layout recently added in an intro which I think was taken straight from the Lexicon) (this may be irrelevant: looking back, I may have misinterpreted your reference to target article). Second of all: standard procedure is to tag an article as suitable for merging. And then the issue is discussed on the relevant discussion pages between the relevant editors, until a decision is reached. Had that happened, I would have willingly discussed it with all the relevant editors. I might - might - have conceded the issue, provided I could be sure that the relevant information regarding the release of the list and the names on it was preserved and easy to find. But that did not happen. Instead, this pack of fools, who have no interest or understanding or respect for what we do, high-handedly said they should delete it. And considered it appalling that I should want relevant editors involved. It is very hard to think well of them. As for the article itself, I would - reluctantly - agree to merging: providing the information regarding the names, changes, corollary ramifications, and the general circumstances of the release of the list were all preserved and easy to find and read (there are no suitably well-organised articles at present). But only if.
Thirdly, I don't care about being acknowledged for my work. That isn't the point of wikipedia. I do care about protecting information I view as important or under my aegis, and take great offence at perceived prejudices against my edits, but that's another story. I take greater offence at the intolerance of those editors who originally took offence to the article. Michaelsanders 01:07, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
To your first point: yes, I think you interpreted my reference correctly after looking back. :-) Second point, yes, tagging an article for merging is an appropriate action; however, the person who nominated this for AfD genuinely (and in good faith) believed that this article was too trivial, and therefore needed to be deleted. Plenty of trivial articles get nominated for deletion, but the ones that should be merged usually end up getting merged. The one beef I really have with articles that get AfDed are those that clearly should be kept, but needed to be cleaned up instead, but that's not the case here. To your third point, it's not whether you want to be acknowledged or not, but that GFDL attribution requirements specifically state this. :-) --Deathphoenix ʕ 01:21, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
  • keep. This article is not about the students actually named in the books so far. The article is about the somewhat more extensive list the author made available, possibly not realizing the names could be deciphered. This is a notable series of books, of course, and the main characters are I think notable. This is about the author's composition of the books. It takes a very notable author indeed to justify a separate article on that. In this case it qualifies, and the evidence is that every one of us commenting here has undoubtedly gone to the page to examine the list.DGG 02:50, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment Here's the next page you'll have to delete if you delete this one: List of experiments from Lilo & Stitch. John Reaves 03:00, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete Crufteriffic 205.157.110.11 15:01, 17 December 2006 (UTC)
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.