Talk:Harry Potter/Archive 2

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Contents

Glossary

I don't know where this should go; but somewhere we should compile a glossary. Technical terms Words J.K. Rowling has invented or collected to describe her fantastic world of magic.

Apparate/apparation – magically disappearing from one place to reappear almost simultaneously in another.

Beaubatons – a school for magic, in France.

Bludgers – black balls which attack players during a Quidditch match.

Boggart – a shape-shifter, who assumes the form of whatever you fear most. It can be destroyed by laughter, using the charm, Riddiculus, forcing it into an amusing form.

Butterbeer – a drink which warms you up. House-elves find it intoxicating.

Cauldrons – basins for mixing potions.

Cobbling – excessive use of the elbows in Quidditch.

Crone – a type of witch. The difference has not yet been explained, has it?

Dementor – a wraith which can suck all the happiness out of humans. Can only be driven off by the difficult Patronus Charm.

Disapparate – first process of apparition. If not performed properly, the unwary may splinch themselves.

Elf – apparently an acceptable term for addressing a house-elf whose name you do not know. Also, a way of referring to a house-elf.

Firewhisky – a very strong drink.

Galleons – gold coins, the size of hub-caps. Are they very small hub-caps, or is magic used to carry up to a thousand of them around at a time?

Ghost – a magician who chooses to remain on earth after his/her death.

Ghoul – an unspecified type of ghostly being.

Half-blood – a magician with one parent from a wizarding bloodline, and the other a muggle.

Headless Hunt – a group of ghosts who, having been decapitated at the end of their life, engage in sports such as head-juggling and head-polo.

House-elf – a magical creature bound for life to serve a wizard family. They are dismissed from service when given clothes.

Knut – small bronze coin. 29 knuts to the silver sickle.

Mudblood – derisive term for a magician without magical bloodlines.

Muggle – a person without magical powers, and without a magical blood-line.

Pixie – a pesky creature which delights in causing mayhem.

Poltergeist – exact nature not yet explained. It is more substantial than a ghost.

Potions – magical mixtures.

Quaffle – the red ball used for scoring goals through the hoops in Quidditch.

Quidditch – a magical game, played on broomsticks.

Sickles – silver coins, 17 to the Galleon.

Snitch – small golden ball which must be captured to end a Quidditch game.

Splinch – leave part of your body behind when trying to apparate.

Squib – a person with wizarding blood, but unable to perform magic.

Veela – a female magic creature. Normally they look beautiful, and can charm wizards to do ridiculous things; when angry, their faces look like hateful birds.

Wand – a wooden instrument for performing magic.

Warlock – the distinction between a warlock and a wizard has not yet been explained, has it? Dumbledore is the greatest Wizard, yet he is (except doring Goblet) the Chief Warlock of the Wizengamut.

Witch – female magician.

Wizard – male magician.

Interesting idea. I think i'll make a List of Words created by JK Rowling. LordMooCow 12:20, 3 July 2005 (GMT+10)

Of possible interest, though not encyclopedia worthy: A woman in Madrid burns her house down in July 2003 trying to brew a "Harry Potter" potion. Lacking ingredients actually mentioned in the series, she brewed up water, oil, alcohol and toothpaste. Incendiaro!! -- Someone else 04:07 10 Jul 2003 (UTC)

That could possibly go in controversy? Maybe not.

LordMooCow 12:20, 3 July 2005 (GMT+10)


I recall mention of seventh years in the book, and that would make sense if the OWL/NEWT examinations are based on GCSE and A Level examinations, and I'm sure I've heard talk of seven books, not six, which the entry suggests (there should be two books to come, not one). Am I just not reading properly, or can someone confirm this? -- Steinsky, 18 July 2003

AFAIK, you're right. --FvdP 22:47 18 Jul 2003 (UTC)
Yep, there's 7, not six. 7 years of Hogwarts, 7 books.LordMooCow 12:20, 3 July 2005 (GMT+10)


Timeline

How did you get the dates? I've been reading all the books, but I cannot find any mention of the year.Andre Wong 18:21, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Sir Nicholas celebrates his 500th death day on October 31, 1492. From this all the dates are derived.

Oh, cool. I never knew that. Good info there. LordMooCow 12:20, 3 July 2005 (GMT+10)

Romance & Sex issues

I have fixed the spelling in the Fan Fiction section, but I am at a loss as to the meaning of nomosexual. My usual source (i.e. Google) turns up a bunch of pages which appear from the summaries to be entirely filled with variations on homosexual and related words which I find myself unwilling to drag across our Proxy Server here at work just in case our sysadmin has recently bought a clue and wonders what the fsck I'm doing :-) Any ideas anyone? Phil 10:17, Nov 14, 2003 (UTC)


  • A quick glance at the Google for "homosexual Harry Potter Fan Fiction" shows that this is undoubtedly what is meant. I would have bet that fan speculation would center on Ron and Harry, but it appears that at least one enterprising fan envisions an unusual relationship between the Weasley twins.... :) -- Someone else 10:31, 15 Nov 2003 (UTC)
  • A more thorough research would reveal that at least not one, but tens of enterprising fans don't envision, but innately believe in the moral superiority and eventual occurance of not only the Weasley twins but any given relationship in the Harry Potter universe.
I stopped taking the whole thing seriously when a specific group believing in the eventual romance of Harry and Hermione asserted that when the author said that they were "Very Platonic Friends" she meant it in the ancient sense- as in, "very pure, true, non-sexual yet romantic lover friends". To an audience consisting of ten-year olds. That one made me lose all hope for basic human rationality. -- AceMyth 16:57, 24 Nov 2003 (UTC)
I hate homosexual fan-fiction, I mean, what's the point, really? It's stupid. LordMooCow 12:20, 3 July 2005 (GMT+10)

In response to LordMooCow's comment - I assume you're a straight male. The point of fan-fiction is for the writer and their audience to read what THEY would like to see happen in the series. We slashers know it's not likely that, say, Harry and Draco will be sleeping together in the actual books any time soon. But is it fun to right about? You bet it is. - Shade1

Split into two articles?

I think it's a little weird having a single article for both Harry Potter (the character) and Harry Potter (the series). That way, we could move all the controvery, book, movie, etc sections off Harry Potter (say onto Harry Potter (series) and have more detailed information on just plain Harry here. Will be the mother of all disambiguation jobs, though, changing all the refs to the former to the latter. It might also just end up creating a lot of Pages For No Good Reason. Waiting for consensus before I bring out my editing shears - Gaurav 14:26, 27 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I've been thinking for a while that there needs to be more of a formula for pages about a series of books, maybe something along the lines of the (organised bits of) The Wheel of Time where there's a Characters in the ... series page, a Concepts in the ... series page, a Places in the ... series page ... you get the drift. The idea is that each named item within the appropriate page has a ==Header== so can be referenced using a #-type URL. If there's someone who needs a bigger description, the main Characters ... page can point at an extended article. So basically what I'm saying is that yes, this page needs splitting up, but actually what needs to be done is that a lod of pages need to be pulled together. The problem at the moment is that some people are treating Wikipedia as just another fan site, which is what we have the Lexicon for. Phil 15:20, Nov 27, 2003 (UTC)
Do you think a WikiProject will be helpful? I'll support you if you set one up. -- Gaurav 13:43, 28 Nov 2003 (UTC)
There's already WikiProject Novels which is probably a good starting point. Let me know what you think of that and maybe we could come up with a sibling project for Series of Novels or some such. What might prove interesting is deciding how many novels make a series worth applying the pattern to. Phil 14:29, Nov 28, 2003 (UTC)
Have set up WikiProject Fictional Series. Let's continue this discussion there? -- Gaurav 19:41, 28 Nov 2003 (UTC)
I agree that Harry Potter means two different things and we need to have two articles, one about the series in general and one a bio of the character. I've internally struggled with how to do that as well as the rest of you have. Right now it half-heartedly tries to do both and seems to lack focus and wander. "Harry Potter" is, afterall, the name of the character, and none of the books are called just "Harry Potter". But at the same time, a lot of people coming to a "Harry Potter" article would want general info about the series, instead of just a bio of Harry himself, since the term is generally used to refer to the series as a whole rather than just the main character (i.e. "Have you read Harry Potter?" or "Harry Potter sales set a new record."). Like Gaurav said, splitting is a tough thing to do, because some of the links out there point to this page in the context of the character, but I'll bet that most of the referencing links are used in the context of the series (take a look at What Links Here; I'll bet that most of the articles that reference the character of Harry Potter are from other Harry Potter articles). I personally think that there should be another page for a bio of the character Harry Potter, and this one should have general info about the series, and be a jumping off point to more specific pages. I don't think this should be a disambiguation page, because the two words aren't so unrelated that we can't just assume one; I think you only use disambiguation when there are two entirely different popular meanings, and I think that here a disambiguation would be too tacky and complex (too branchy, if that's a word). At the top of the page it could say something to the effect of: "For biographical information about the titular character of the Harry Potter series, see Harry Potter (character)." So there's my two cents worth. Thoughts? Is this worth it? I do think this page needs work. - Eisnel 00:06, 12 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I think it is unsuitable to have the entire synopsis for the series on this page. If I had not read the books, I would stop reading at the spoiler warning and miss out on the stuff below. I have fixed this by moving the synopsis to Harry Potter (plot). HappyDog 00:28, 31 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Hmm, I disagree with that. I mean this is an encyclopedia of information, information about everything, like books, and with books, the plot of the books. The encyclopedia is more like a summary than a blurb. LordMooCow 12:20, 3 July 2005 (GMT+10)

Inactive External link

I've commented out the link to http://www.hogwartsacademyofmagic.com because it seems to be inactive. --Phil 14:30, Feb 20, 2004 (UTC)

"The basic story of Harry Potter is strikingly similar to JRR Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. The Dark Lord Sauron's plan backfires on him, thus leaving him powerless with no physical form, and then searches for something to give him the power to take over the world and regain physical form. In Harry Potter, the Dark Lord Voldemort's plan backfires on him, thus leaving him powerless with no physical form, then searching for something to give him physical form so he can take over the world."

Hmmm, I think many people would dispute that this is the basic story of LOTR. Sauron is not searching for something to give him physical form: he just wants the power. He doesn't need physical form to achieve it. DJ Clayworth 15:24, 6 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Besides, films aside, Sauron had regained physical form over 2000 years before LoTR. He was also unbeatable in conventional warfare, with most of the world under his dominion, which puts him much nearer to world domination than Voldemort

Yeah, Wikipedia is unbiased. A lot of people disagree with that comparison. LordMooCow 12:20, 3 July 2005 (GMT+10)

Petrify has been listed on Votes for deletion because its a dictionary defintion. I was wondering if some info can be put regarding the chamber of secrets, the basilisk, and all about petrification. Jay 06:40, 14 Apr 2004 (UTC)

The "Catagory: Harry Potter Characters" link on every character page really squishes the articles. Since we have special factbox for characters, we could put the link into the factbox.

Doesn't work that way. No matter where the category link is placed in the wikitext, it appears in the upper-right corner (sort of like interlanguage links do). The problem with displacing upper-right floats is known (see William Riker and William Shakespeare for two random examples), and listed on the MediaWiki 1.3 comments: meta:MediaWiki_1.3_comments_and_bug_reports#categories_and_right-floats. The category link, ideally, will sit above the factbox. Which someday, maybe not too long in the future, will be replaced with a template. If I can figure out how to use them right. grendel|khan 04:32, 2004 May 31 (UTC)

HP non-wiki related question

Rosemaryamey's last edit brings up an interesting point that I never thought of. How could the sorting hat even consider putting Harry in Slytherin, if he's not pure-blood? - DropDeadGorgias (talk) 20:40, May 28, 2004 (UTC)

Lord Voldemort is/was also a mud-blood (even more directly than Harry - wasn't his father a muggle?), and was in Slytherin, if I recall correctly. Presumably it's more a matter of a snobbish attitude on the part of the Slytherinites than a hard rule. -- DrBob
I thought Tom Riddle was the heir of slytherin - DropDeadGorgias (talk) 21:06, May 28, 2004 (UTC)
JKR hinted in the World Book Day chat that the Sorting Hat can be mistaken about things:
  • Arianna: Can we believe everything the sorting hat says?
  • JK Rowling replies -> The Sorting Hat is certainly sincere.
So while the Sorting Hat did say in Order of the Phoenix that Slytherin House is for "purebloods" (I hate that term), given the examples of Tom and Harry it would seem that that is not quite correct. (And yes, it seems pretty certain that Voldy, although half-blood, was heir of Slytherin, since he could open the Chamber of Secrets.) Rosemary Amey 21:59, 28 May 2004 (UTC)
As a follow-up, where is it specified that Voldemort was in Slytherin and James Potter was in Gryffindor? I don't remember actually seeing that information anywhere. - DropDeadGorgias (talk) 14:09, Jun 8, 2004 (UTC)
Don't know for sure about Voldy, but JKR confirmed in the 2004 World Book Day chat that all of the Marauders were in Gryffindor. Rosemary Amey 17:20, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)
I was under the impression that Tom Riddle was a Slytherin. Is that not explicitly stated?
Voldemort's attendance in the Slytherin house is alluded to, if not proven (I don't remember the specific text, and don't have access to the books at the moment) in Dumbledore's explanation of Harry's scar. Harry mentions that the Sorting Hat wanted to put him in Slytherin. Dumbledore explains that in giving Harry his scar, Voldemort passed over some of himself, thus implying that Voldemort had given Harry some of the qualities necessary for entering Slytherin.

When Hagrid takes harry to Diagon Alley in Book 1, he tells him that V was in Slytherin.

There's also Hagrid's thing in the beginning of "Philosopher's Stone" where he says that there's never been a dark wizard that hasn't been in Slytherin (though this claim is not entirely proven, looking at Peter Pettigrew). I think he also says that Voldemort was in Slytherin as well, although I am not sure. I'll check it at some point. StellarFury 21:12, 12 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Actually Hagrid tild Harry that Slytherin produced more dark wizards than the other houses; this implies that they did produce some.

Go look at Talk:Lord Voldemort. The same discussion was being had over there, and my Hagrid reference was quoted. StellarFury 21:32, 12 Aug 2004 (UTC)

The sorting hat also considered putting Hermione in Ravenclaw. Her strength would seem to be scholarship, rather than bravery, though she does get braver later in the series.

Characters list

Why is the Harry Potter#Actors and Characters, when we have List of characters in the Harry Potter books? It's rather repetitive, and this article should primarily be on the character of Harry, rather than the series of books. -- user:zanimum

I agree, this is repetitive and this page should to stick to the general information. Of course, the #Actors and Characters list has actor names as well. The problem is, this page is probably the starting page for any information on the Harry Potter series, and long lists like that seem like they should go elsewhere. Also, I think that if you want to find out who plays Ron Weasley you can go to the list page and click on his name. It would be neat to see a list of actors for all the movies, but I agree that this isn't the place for them.
I disagree totally. This article is about the series as a whole That includes history of the writing of the series, characters and locations, and broad story arcs. We don't need a list of every character ever mentioned but we need to include the main actors (being Harry, Ron, Hermione, Voldemort, and possibly Dumbledore). Ttownfeen 10:34, Dec 16, 2004 (UTC)

Plot unification

There seem to be many places where the plot is retold with varying accuracy and fullness. I think we need to pull them all together in one place. Would Harry Potter (plot) be the most suitable place? This would certainly simplfy the spoiler problem :-) --Phil | Talk 13:12, Jun 9, 2004 (UTC)

I'd vote for making Harry Potter into an article about the series, and Harry Potter (character) about the character. Or maybe the first should be Harry Potter (plot), with Harry Potter as a disambiguation. Because it's really two different things, and smushing them together on the main Harry Potter page has lead to smushy results. Also, Magic (Harry Potter) is somewhat messy. It needs to be split up where there's enough information to split something up, using the Main article: Foo convention under the section headers, for the larger topics. grendel|khan 16:13, 2004 Jun 11 (UTC)
Here's my proposal: Harry Potter should be about the series in general, but without plot spoilers. Harry Potter (plot) is the logical place for that. Harry Potter (character) should be about Harry himself as a character. My justification is that when people say "Harry Potter" in conversation, they're more likely to be referring to the book and/or movie series overall than to Harry in particular, as in when someone asks, "What do you think of Harry Potter?" Wesley 16:38, 14 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Agreed. HappyDog took care of making the plot synopsis link to Harry Potter (plot). Now, if everyone wants to do this, we just need to seperate Harry Potter's bio off to Harry Potter (character), and point to that at the top of the article. Who feels adventurous? - Eisnel 00:15, 15 Jun 2004 (UTC)


Unauthorised Harry Potter book - suggested link

I have a page on my site concerning 'Harry Potter and the Ci Wa Wa', an unauthorised Chinese book featuring Harry Potter. Would Wikipedia be interested in linking? The URL is:

http://www.cjvlang.com/Hpotter/ciwawa.html

Webmaster, cjvlang.com

This article does have a lot of external links on the bottom, it's getting a bit cluttered. The "Ci Wa Wa" unauthorized book is such a specific subject that it might be better to make an article about it that is referenced from the Unauthorized books featuring Harry Potter section, like someone did with Harry Potter and Leopard-Walk-Up-to-Dragon. Then that article could have an external link at the end (note: articles that just exist to guide people to a website are discouraged). Of course, such an article couldn't contain the internal pages from the book, because even though the book is a rip off, I think it's still copyrighted. =o) I also think that a seperate article just on the subject of Harry Potter plagiarism would be nice... who knows, there might already be one. - Eisnel 01:47, 24 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Added to the Unauthorized books section (along with other Chinese HP ripoffs) with a footnote-style link to the page in question. Carter 00:12, 6 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Saturday Night Live

If, as I assume, the "Welcome back, Potter" sketch (which I have been unable to locate on any list of SNL sketches BTW) was not the same as that featuring Lindsay Lohan in May 2004 as a suddenly-buxom Hermione, then the latter needs to be added. If they are the same, then the entry needs to be altered. --Phil | Talk 13:14, Jul 1, 2004 (UTC)

MSN Links

Hi, Rosemaryamey. Evidently you find it important that the two MSN links be included. I won't remove them, but I'm just curious as to why you want them there. --Ardonik 05:24, Jul 16, 2004 (UTC)

More information is better. Rosemary Amey 05:40, 16 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Shrug. Fair enough. --Ardonik 05:47, Jul 16, 2004 (UTC)

Anti-Harry Potter

I cannot believe how much space has been wasted on a couple of books in an encyclopedia. None of this crap should be on Wikipedia, no characters, no place descriptions. An encyclopedia is supposed to be a place of knowledge, not a place where people write non-stop about some fantasy novel that they really care about. The truth is, Harry Potter teaches nothing, and there is really no benefit in putting all these damn articles on Wikipedia, a place to share useful things. I enjoyed the articles on DNA and Philosophy, but think articles like Hedwig and Lord Voldemort should cease to exist.

I'm sure most of you will want to keep the articles. Well, go start some fantasy site somewhere, talk about Harry Potter all you want, perhaps waste a few hours of your life trying to figure out whether Dumbledore is really Harry's father.

Honestly, what's the point?

Anti-Chen 00:34, 25 Jul 2004 (UTC)

If you want to nominate pages for deletion, then check out the guidelines for doing so and go right ahead. You don't have a chance in hell of having your request granted ofcourse, given that Harry Potter is read by hundreds of millions people worldwide, but do go right ahead. You'll give us a good laugh, trying to tell us that one of the most popular books in the last decades should be ignored as if it never existed.
But if you think that fictional characters have no place in an encyclopedia, then a better place to begin might be all those Olympian gods, and mythological heroes, like Hercules, Theseus and the like. And much of the bible, ofcourse.
Is the bible fictional though? Brianjd 10:14, 2005 Jan 2 (UTC)
And btw your personal opinions on the quality of Harry Potter are quite irrelevant, as are mine. Wikipedia isn't a literary magazine to use that kind of criteria: The 7 million google finds are a better way of judging whether something should be included or not.
Aris Katsaris 00:55, 25 Jul 2004 (UTC)
An encyclopedia, by definition, is a compendium of all human knowledge. Everything therefore has a place in an encyclopedia. In an encyclopedia with over three hundred thousand articles, I'm sure we can afford a few thousand words for some of the highest-selling books of all time. - Mark 02:53, 25 Jul 2004 (UTC)
It's also worth noting that "Wikipedia is not paper." What space has been wasted? Very little of Wikipedia's hard drive space has been wasted. There are parts of wikipedia that I find very interesting, some slightly interesting, and many that I could care less about. We have demographics for many small towns that most people care nothing about, for instance, but it's certainly factual and NPOV. Objectively speaking, Harry Potter is worth discussing to some extant at least if only for the literary and cultural influence the series is having. Perhaps if the series fades into obscurity 30 years from now it will be weeded out; time will be the judge of its worth, as it is of all books. Wesley 16:59, 26 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Copying a conversation about infoboxes...

Many of you will have noticed that character pages and such have little info boxes with colored headings. Recently I (Aris Katsaris) changed the color of some of them (e.g. Lord Voldemort and Draco Malfoy --- upon which the following conversation ensued in my talk page by 67.171.180.209. I'm copying it here, as it's relevant and others may want to butt in. (His comments are the unsigned ones), I signed my own. Aris Katsaris 22:26, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Okay, I had the whole Harry Potter info box thing worked out until you came along (I actually am the same person who created them, my number got changed from back then) and I invented some rules that you should probably know.
The color reflects the affliation of the character and an affiliation is not "Hogwarts teacher" or something like that but clearly defines to whom the character is loyal. For example, Arthur Weasley works in the Ministry, but he's listed as being an affliate of the Order, because, though he is a member, he is not loyal to the Ministry. Such is the case with Marietta Edgecombe as well (not that you have had any problems with that, but some people have.)
Also, the inputs on the factboxes aren't changed except under special cirumstances for certain character, such as house-elves for instance. Therefore we either need a separate category for Malfoy and friends or we need to change all the students to match.
Here are what the colors are meant to reflet:
  • Gold: the "good guys" basically. Either members of the Order or Dumbledore's Army or loyal to someone who is member of either.
  • Black(formerly green): a follower of Lord Voldemort or the Dark Arts.
  • Red: someone loyal to the Ministry in its propagandizing of Harry and Dumbledore or loyal to someone who is such as Filch for instance.
  • Pink: unknown affliation.
  • White: no affliation.
  • Green: well, I don't know exactly. Slytherins? If we define Slytherin as an affliation then all the houses will have to be affliation and we will have to start organizing the colors by house instead of affliation.
I don't mean to blame you for anything, on the contry it's nice to someone working on this half as hard as me, but I had this whole thing organized perfectly and I only had a few problems. I probably should have explained how my factboxes worked somewhere so problems like this wouldn't happen.
It seems to me the best solution would be for us to list an affliation other than the squad for Malfoy and friends.
Don't worry, I've fixed the problem now. Green is now someone is a friend of Draco Malfoy. Draco himself seems to be filled up to the ears with self-interest, so I changed his affliation to "none." The rest I listed as being loyal to Malfoy.
First of all, if there are specific rules about this, then they should be posted in the Harry Potter Talk page. So that others may discuss them to see whether they like them or not. Wikipedia is a common project for all. I figured out that you had made up a given set of rules -- but you have to remember that in a community project like this, rules are subject to public approval. And also -- such rules must be *shared*.
Secondly -- I think that if you meant "Loyalty" rather than "Affiliation", then "Loyalty" would be a better word to use. In fact I might have fewer problems with this, because "Affiliation" seemed very generic and bizarre to me -- I don't think it means what you believe it to mean. In which case a self-interested character like Draco Malfoy could also be Green, as he's loyal to himself, Draco Malfoy. Likewise, other characters that are only loyal to themselves like Voldemort, could properly have the color of the group that signifies them.
Thirdly -- my own preferred solution, (since especially on the student level there are many folk who don't have specifically declared "loyalties") would have been to group students by House and the adults by loyalty in either the Order of the Phoenix, the Ministry, or Voldemort's group. For example what exactly is Cho's "loyalty", or Zacharias Smith? I thought that on the student front, coloring by House actually gives us a more relevant bit of information.
Fourth why don't you register to get a name for yourself? It'd then become easy to remember you and not just that but also to have a talk and user pages of your own.
I'll be soon copying this conversation to the main Harry Potter talk page. And then I'll be probably changing most instances of the vague "Affiliation" to the much more specific "Loyalty". Cheers. Aris Katsaris 20:27, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I admit I should have posted the rules somewhere a long time ago. The format was based on that used for Star Wars characters by the official website and The Essential Guide to Characters, which use the word "Affliation." You're right that many students don't have real "loyalies," but the most importnat students, such Harry, Hermione, Ron, Ginny, Neville, etc. do. Even Cho had a clear pollitical beilfs, but there are also background teachers, like Sprout, Sinistra and Vector, who we know practically nothing about.
I put things on the table I thought, would be really interested to know. Obviously, one of the first things you would not to know about a character is whether they are good or bad. I think I should explain the rest of my format.

Color

I already explained this above. If someone is loyal to another person, then they have the same color is that person, like Dobby for instance. If a person is not loyal to anyone and someone is loyal to them, then for the affliate, a new color would be needed. I used this for Peeves.

Gender

I doubt many people will have trouble with this.

Eye and Hair Color

I don't care whether you spell it "color" or "colour," but I just want to point out that it has to be what the book says. Even though Ron has blue eyes in the film, it doesn't say what color his eyes are in the book, so it doesn't matter.

House

I added house after people started adding the character's house to the affliation and I realized I needed to list their house. Obviously, we don't know that Lucius Malfoy, but it very likely so we say, "Slytherin(?)."

Didn't Ron say that Draco claimed that his family had all been Slytherins? I think this was in Chamber of secrets when they were discussing who the heir was

-Actually Draco tells Harry in the first book that he is going to be a Slytherin, because he couldnt abide being something other, like a Hufflepuff-

The actual quote is as follows: "I know I'll be in Slytherin, all our family have been - imagine being in Hufflepuff, I think I'd leave, wouldn't you?" (emphasis mine) Sinistro 21:45, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Blood Purity

There has been so debat about whether we should keep this. While it is true that Rowling and the good characters are aganist this classifcation, it is a very important issue in the books, which has a lot to do with Rowling hating it. There is almost no way to know someone's blood purity without being told. Both Luna's parents are magical, but we need to know about their parents as well. However, it is still possible to some logical deduction.

Affiliation/Loyalty

Explained. However, you can't really say someone is loyal to themselves, as it has been done with Draco Malfoy.

  • If they have no more important loyalty than themselves, then yes, you can. And it's utterly crucial that they have the same color as their followers -- how can you claim color indicates loyalty when leader and follower have different colors? And please, this conversation and all the things you tell me and all your arguments belong to Talk:Harry Potter where I've moved part of what we've said. Aris Katsaris 22:54, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Look, loyalty/affliation was supposed to refer to an organisation, not an individual, which is why if I have a person, I say "loyal to blah blah." It doesn't matter, I don't care what you do anymore. Have all the fun you want!

Deleted link

I removed this recently added text:

*[http://TheErised.com/ TheErised.com]: A fantastic, new Harry Potter super site. Forums, News, Fan Submissions, Staff openings, and more!

It looks like a new site, next to nothing on Google, and looks like self-promotion to me. If anyone disagrees, feel free to add it back in. (But really, someone with more knowledge of the subject needs to weed out most of those links. There are way too many of them.) Aranel 16:19, 14 Aug 2004 (UTC)

How about moving most of the external links, and the sections Fan Art and Fan Fiction to a separate article Harry Potter fandom? -- Pjacobi 17:13, 14 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Sounds good to me. There are precedents (see articles for Tolkien and Star Trek fans). I'd like to see some material added about the reaction of Warner Brothers to fan sites, as that story is an interesting chapter in fan site history, so to speak. Are you volunteering? (I'm not really familiar with the fan community, alas.) Aranel 17:37, 14 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Trying to be a good WikiGnome, I always volunteer for cleanup work, but I won't be able to make big contributions to the content, only split as outlined above. Anyway, I would wait for some more comments. -- Pjacobi 14:32, 15 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I definitely think that the content of the Harry Potter series (basically the first half of the article) should remain while the rest—fans' and critics' reactions to the series (the Harry Potter phenomenon and fan fiction/art/websites/role-playing/video games/trading cards)—should be moved to a separate article. Maybe content should be classified based on whether it comes directly from J.K. Rowling/the Warner Bros. films or from the general public. neatnate 18:50, 15 Aug 2004 (UTC)
The external unofficial links are sorted by their Alexa traffic rankings, so if you remove any it should be the lowest ones. The top two or three should definitely stay on this article, though. - Mark 07:15, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)

As announced above. I transferred the fandom parts to the separate article Harry Potter fandom -- Pjacobi 07:48, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for your work! Does anyone think that Parodies or Unauthorised Books belong on the fandom page? --neatnate 19:25, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)
You could make a case for the parodies to be on a separate page (but I'm not sure the fandom page is the right place), but unauthorized books should stay on the main page. --Carter 21:25, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Isn't Alexa biased since only Windows/Internet Explorer users can install it? I don't believe it should be the only tool used in determining the sites the external links. --Ariadoss 04:53, May 13, 2005 (UTC)

Sorceror's/Philosopher's Stone

The section explaining the title change was just changed to say "in North America". Is it true that the version published in Canada used Sorceror? (I picked up a copy with the original titled while visiting in Quebec. Did it just depend on where you found yours?) I am, of course, not an expert on book titles in Canada. --Aranel 21:59, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Checking Amazon.ca, it looks like Philosopher's Stone is much more common, but some Sorceror's Stone versions pop up, too. Carter 22:07, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)
The Canadian publisher listed on J.K. Rowling's website is Raincoast Books, which lists it as Philosopher's Stone on their website. However, I have seen Canadian websites that refer to it as Sorcer's Stone (presumably some Canadians have the Scholastic version of the book). neatnate 22:28, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I have changed the article back to its original state to reflect this. If any Canadians wish to come forward now and tell us what their book is called, please speak now, or forever hold your peace. - Mark 00:55, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Mark, I changed it to North American specifically because a Canadian friend in the UK bought HP and the Soceror's stone in Toronto. I am prepared to accept that both versions were available, although I would suspect that logically for linguistic asnd marketing reasons, there would be one standard version for the US and Canada. However, I also acknowledge one could equally suspect that if Canada had the philosopher's stone then US books woould still be sold there. I will try to contact them to find out whether the book was a Canadian publication in which case I will revert it to North America, but until such an event, I will leave things alone! Dainamo 01:17, 22 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I don't know the answer to this question, so perhaps it would be good to add to the article; Why was the first HP book called Sorcerer's stone in the US, as opposed to the original title Philosopher's elsewhere?--takagawa-kun 17:43, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)

12 uses of dragon's blood

It has been said in the books that Dumbledore dicovered the 12 uses for dragon's blood.

So far we see that dragon blood has healing proerties (i.e.) Hagrid's steak for his eye

and J.K. has made several jokes about Mrs. Weasely claiming it works great as a cleaning solution (especially for ovens), so that's 2 uses. What are the other 10?

Anyone figure some more out?

Gnrlotto 03:02, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Sexual orientation

I am very skeptical that there has been much debate over whether or not Harry Pooter is homosexual -- is the article right to claim this? I've seen nothing about such rumors, and as Harry has had a girlfriend and no observable interest in boys, I can't imagine where the rumors come from. Would there be an objection to removing that sentence? Jwrosenzweig 04:14, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I shouldn't think that there would be any problem in removing that sentence, for exactly the reasons you detailed. The "much speculation" referred to in the sentence is not all that much, really. The sentence is misinformation at best and vandalism at worst, especially considering its persisent reappearance after reverts. Sinistro 08:13, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

smile i think this article is great

The last book on the list is written as 'still being written', but I seem to remember a television interview with the author stating she had finished them. Does anyone have any sources to back it up either way?

I think you are referring to when Rowling declared that she had written the last chapter of the last book so as to "know" she will eventually reach that point. Aleegedly, the last word is "scar", but she also said she is constantly rewriting...Sinistro 07:03, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Oh, a controversial story had been recently written about Harry Potter and doubts his sexual orientation. Go check http://www.winglin.net/fanfic/earthcheese. It has become very famous. Soilguy6 22:41, 17 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Fanfic has no standing whatsoever in this discussion! -- Arwel 23:40, 17 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Actually it would be more surprising if there were no slash fanfic about Harry Potter, since this is apparently just about the most popular form of fanfic. It is probably possible to find fanfic alleging that almost anygiven fictional character has a different sexuality than in the appropriate canon. Oh, and I took a quick look at the "earthcheese" story: it is difficult to tell whether the terrible spelling and grammar are deliberate; the terrible character names ("Moron Pukes", "Hanky Panky" and "Seen Action" for example) are enough to make fans of Jar Jar Binks hurl chunks. If that's a famous story give me obscurity. --Phil | Talk 09:49, Jan 18, 2005 (UTC)

External Links

Seeing that Harry Potter is a very broad and popular subject I don’t think just any link should be added to the “Unofficial Links” category. This is the reason I removed Harry Potter Fan Zone link, if you check its Alexa.com traffic rating it is not even top 400,000 (I think links should at least be top 200,000) and its Google page rank isn’t too great either. CoSForums is the lowest ranked (traffic wise) in the list and is almost in the top 100,000 on Alexa.com. I think certain requirements should be set forth and other popular sites that do not quite meet those standards should be added to the fandom links. These are my proposed requirements:

  • Minimum100, 000 unique hits a day
  • Must be in top 200,000 on Alexa.com
  • Must have a Google page rank of 3 or more

--Ariadoss|Talk 18:45, June 14, 2008 (UTC)

I think there are too many. WP is not a links directory. I'd go through right now and delete them down but I don't visit the sites to know. If anything, we should have a link to google for something like "Harry Potter fan site" and let that be the only link. Same goes for all the other HP articles. Cburnett 04:44, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I have already sorted through the Harry Potter external links several times and ranked them by Alexa Traffic Rank, and dropped off the sites that have so little traffic their listings here would appear to be mere advertising to a wider audience. At some stage, somebody broke off all but the most highly-trafficked links to Harry Potter fandom, and you can now find an extensive link list there. So if you fancy moving any newly added links to there, it would be acceptable. But I agree, only the top-ranked unofficial sites should be here, say the top 6 or something. Maybe we should also include sites that J.K. Rowling herself has given the fan site award, if they don't fit in the top 6 by traffic ranking. - Mark 02:06, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Harry Potter and Star Wars Connection

Star Wars and Harry Potter are both based off of mythology. J.K. Rowling tends to borrow names from mythology and other things to create her world. George Lucas, however, researched the similarities between multitudes of mythologies and created a story that falls within those guidelines. A quick reference to this would be the extras DVD on the Star Wars Trilogy DVD set along with many older sources including other interviews by Lucas and the book Lucas used to find the similarities between different mythologies. J.K. Rowling studied classical literature, so she would obviously have deduced her own theories about the similarities between works of literature.

Let's take Star Wars for example. Luke is raised by relatives other than his biological parents. Well, Frodo, is raised by a distant relative after his parents die from a boating accident in Lord of the Rings. So are we going to say that Lucas stole his story from Lord of the Rings? It's a pattern that turns up in many works.

I think it's irrevelant to mention similarities between Harry Potter and Star Wars when their stories come from similar means. You could find similarities between characters and plots in Harry Potter in many different pieces of literature.

--Khadgar

Seconded, and removed. If comparisons between Harry Potter and Star Wars are so common, preferably independent from Star Wars/Harry Potter fandom, we can include them with reference. Otherwise, there's really no end to looking up similarities between X and Y, and encyclopedia articles shouldn't be doing them or risk violating Wikipedia:No original research. It certainly doesn't warrant the amount of detail given here: all the other comparisons are summarized in a single paragraph. Why do the purported similarities with Star Wars deserve so much room? Have these comparisons been that much more common or notable? JRM · Talk 13:45, 2005 May 5 (UTC)
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