Wikipedia:WikiProject Harry Potter/Notability/Characters

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There is currently no consensus

Articles covered by this discussion

• List of characters in the Harry Potter books
• Minor Harry Potter characters

Discussion

This subpage is for articles that are currently lists of characters. We talked about cleaning up and merging these lists on the main project talk page a bit ago, and we seemed to think one page would be good. Characters that are truly minor would be lost, and characters which are mid-level would be merged into a single article. There has been discussion about how to organize these character articles, but I think something in line with Characters of Final Fantasy VIII, which is FA and recommended on WP:WAF, would be good. There will need to be some kind of meshing with the Hogwarts teachers, the families, and the full article characters. – Basar (talk · contribs) 05:49, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

As was mentioned in several Article for deletion nominations, it is very vague what constitutes "minor", and that is only one of many problems these articles have, but of course the chief problem is the inability to have a discussion of them in out of universe terms with anything but fan sites. We need to cease having the topic of the characters of harry potter spread over 50 articles and create one Featured level characters article. Judgesurreal777 04:08, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

I added two more, must have slipped off the list :) Judgesurreal777 18:37, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

The Students in Harry Potter's year article gets already redirected to the List of characters article, therefore I took it from the list. And I'm of course for keeping the minor character articles, if only for practical reasons. Because as soon as this information is completely deleted from Wikipedia, new articles about them will pop out in no time. It would, all other reasons aside, simply be unpractical to delete that information completely. As for the rest, merge all the articles about the different students (which includes most characters from the Quidditch characters article as well) into one article. If there's any semi-important character from the Quidditch article left, merge the information to the minor characters article, than delete the rest of the article. I'm neutral about the other articles and will go with either decision, though I want to point ou, that these articles in their current form are already results of some mergers and therefore pretty big. Merging them all into one article would make that article very big indeed. Neville Longbottom 22:59, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

I moved the Minor Quidditch characters to the List of Gryffindors because almost all of them were Gryffindors, except Dai Llewellyn, Kennilworthy Whisp and Gwenog Jones. I redirected these three to the Minor HP characters article because they are extremely incidental characters. The Minor Quidditch characters article redirects to Minor Gryffindors. I also created two new pages for Dark Wizards and OotP members, without the word "Minor", the same way as someone did with the Ministry officials, because some notable but not main characters are included in there (Bellatrix and the Malfoys in Dark Wizards, Tonks and Kinglsey in OotP members, or Fudge and Scrimgeour in Ministry officials). I am then for Keeping all the articles listed above. If we merge all these articles into just one, that would be extremely annoying because of its length. Also, merging all the students would give us an article with 34 characters (12 Gryffindors, 8 Slyterins, 8 Ravenclaws and 6 Hufflepuffs, plus a number of other incidental students just mentioned once like Fawcett or Daphne Greengrass). Lord Opeth 21:23, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

The minor lists need to go in my view. They are basically catchalls for anyone that isn't listed somewhere else. Wikipedia shouldn't be a guide to every little detail for Harry Potter (or any other popular subject for that matter). There is a Harry Potter Wiki, if you want to have those massive minor lists (if they want it, that is). If articles get recreated: an admin can protect them from recreation, so that's not a problem, it's an excuse to keep the minor lists. Minor people show little notability, except for the fact they were in Harry Potter. Let's face it everyone: NOT every character in Harry Potter is notable. RobJ1981 17:01, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

The characters listed there are not that "Minor". Some of them include Viktor Krum, Rita Skeeter, Aberforth Dumbledore, Andromeda Tonks, etc. That list is for characters that could not fit in everywhere else but are worth a mention. Lord Opeth 23:06, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Keep- This site is actually used for information. Without those articles, where's the info we need? Keyblade Mage 15:01, 30 September 2007 (UTC)Keyblade Mage

What about creating a page for Dumbledore's Army (members) which would include most of these characters? That would include from Minor Gryffindors: Katie Bell, Lavender Brown, Colin and Dennis Creevey, Seamus Finnigan, Angelina Johnson, Lee Jordan, Parvati Patil, Alicia Spinnet, and Dean Thomas. From Minor Hufflepuffs, the DA members page would include almost everyone except Cedric Diggory. From Minor Ravenclaws, Terry Boot, Cho Chang, Michael Corner, Marietta Edgecombe, Anthony Goldstein and Padma Patil would be featured.

This would be a strong article featuring 20 characters, some of which have lots of appearances in the series. The problem of this is that some characters from the Minor G/H/Rs would be left without article, some of them including Diggory, Cormac McLaggen, Romilda Vane, Oliver Wood, Penelope Clearwater, Roger Davies, and the Minor Slytherins.

I think that the Minor Slytherins are not that important to have their own article, so I would suggest to move the sections about Cedric Diggory, Oliver Wood, Pansy Parkinson, Crabbe and Goyle to the "Minor Harry Potter characters" article, and the rest (McLaggen, Romilda, Penelope, Davies and some other Slytherins like Millicent, Montage, etc.) just to be mentioned as "Minor students" in the Minor HP characters the same way as the Peverell brothers are listed. Lord Opeth 02:00, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

Keep. Why do you want to delet them? they are categories designed to manage the rather large number of characters in a very long series. Sandpiper 09:05, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

No one is trying to delete anything, it is just merging. All those characters (Dean Thomas, Pansy Parkinson, Cho Chang, Cedric Diggory, etc.) will be featured somewhere. I support the idea of creating a Hogwarts students article, containing all the house in there. Lord Opeth 23:18, 4 November 2007 (UTC)