Template talk:Harry Potter/Archive 1

Archive 1

Archive 2

Woggly's suggestion

I think this box could be used to greater effect if it linked to all Potter-related pages, as opposed to just the book titles. The links could be indirect, via lists. Something like:

J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter books: Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone; Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets; Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban; Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire; Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix characters|places|translations|related articles

See for example Template:Middle-earth and Template:Oz.

Any objections? --Woggly 10:40, 20 May 2004 (UTC)

Phil's suggestion 1

How about

J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter series:
Books: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7	Movies: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7
Characters - Places - Translations - Related articles

--Phil | Talk 11:23, May 20, 2004 (UTC)

I like the formatting you did for the bottom line, not as sure about the top part, at least for now, for two reasons: 1. I think the titles are more eye-pleasing than lists of numbers, and 2. the movies don't actually have their own pages, they're all redirects to the book pages. --Woggly 11:54, 20 May 2004 (UTC)

Check the Edit Histories for those REDIRECT pages: I made them whilst editing my suggestion above :-) As annotated thereon, the REDIRECTs are to reserve space for possible future separate articles (which I think would be more appropriate anyway). As for using numbers, it's either that or huge great wide titles which looks kinda messy. A further idea occurs: watch this space ... HTH HAND --Phil | Talk 13:13, May 20, 2004 (UTC)

Phil's suggestion 2

OK, let's try this:

J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter series: Harry Potter and the ...
Philosopher's Stone	book - movie
Chamber of Secrets	book - movie
Prisoner of Azkaban	book - movie
Goblet of Fire	book - movie
Order of the Phoenix	book - movie
Book Six (as yet untitled)	book - movie
Book Seven (as yet untitled)	book - movie
Characters - Places - Translations - Related articles

One minor change, I'd italicize "Harry Potter and the..." but otherwise nice. Lets give people about 24 more hours to raise any objections or suggestions before we go ahead and apply this. :) --Woggly 14:03, 20 May 2004 (UTC)

I really think we ought to remove the Category designation from this since it's making the pages which transclude it show up in Category:Harry Potter as well which is confusing and not according to guidelines on categorising as narrowly as possible. --Phil | Talk 14:10, Jun 16, 2004 (UTC)

Games

I've added links for the games related to book/movie 1 & 3, but I'm a bit doubtful as to this new column: where would Quidditch World Cup go? --Phil | Talk 14:18, Feb 21, 2005 (UTC)

Adding it is better than whomever moved all book articles to "(book)" and made the page a disambig to the book and movie (except CoS which had the game listed). I also removed the use of ! since that designates a header row. If you want to center a non-header row then do it correctly with align="center" or something. :) Cburnett 14:55, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Renata3's change

I changed the template. Hope you are not angry, if you are just revert. But templates look much better if they are horizontal rather than vertical. It would please my eye if my current template would take even less in width, but I could not figure out how to do it. (posted by Renata3 15:35, 15 July 2005)

Renata3 has decided to change the template, and I can't see a consensus for it, so here goes.

I prefer the one we had before:

J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter series: Harry Potter and the ...
Philosopher's Stone	book	movie	game
Chamber of Secrets	book	movie	game
Prisoner of Azkaban	book	movie	game
Goblet of Fire	book	movie	game
Order of the Phoenix	book	movie
Half-Blood Prince	book	movie
Book Seven (as yet untitled)	book
Characters - Places - Translations - Related articles
Spinoffs
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them Quidditch Through the Ages		Harry Potter: Quidditch World Cup

But Renata3 has decided to change it to this:

J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter series: Harry Potter and the ...
Philosopher's Stone	Chamber of Secrets	Prisoner of Azkaban	Goblet of Fire	Order of the Phoenix	Half-Blood Prince	Book Seven (untitled yet)
book	book	book	book	book	book	book
movie	movie	movie	movie	movie	movie
game	game	game	game
Characters - Places - Translations - Related articles
Spinoffs: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them - Quidditch Through the Ages - Harry Potter: Quidditch World Cup

Opinions? Sonic Mew | talk to me 15:38, July 15, 2005 (UTC)

I like the one-title-per-line version for a few reasons :

• It fits better on small screens and follows the common standard of making long lists scroll vertically (as with *-lists in Wikipedia) rather than horizontally (horizontal scrolling is evil, and in some browsers, difficult).
• It looks better to me because it follows the standard way people read English: left-to-right. If I want to get the article for the Chamber of Secrets movie, I'd rather find "Chamber of Secrets" to the left and scan right until I see "movie". While I can adjust to scanning vertically, forcing me to do it is impolite.
• The titles seem to almost run together when they are printed horizontally: "Philosopher's Stone  Chamber of Secrets..."

— 131.230.133.185 21:23, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

If we keep the first template, is there a way we can make it longer horizontally? Zscout370 (Sound Off) 23:26, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

Inclusion of the changed US title of Philosopher's Stone

There has been a recent push by some editors to include the US title, Sorceror's Stone, in the template. This has been reverted back to the original format but is repeatedly changed again. The subject of which is the more appropriate British/English when dealing with Harry Potter has been discussed several times on various HP articles and always the consensus is that, in an encyclopedic context, the books are written by a British author and originally published in Britain. Therefore the British titles, book covers, spellings etc are the more appropriate. Any countries versions are translations of the original British published book, regardless of how many readers any particular version may have. The change from Philosopher to Sorceror is discussed sufficiently in the relevant articles. I have no desire whatsoever to engage in edit warring (after reverting twice already) so I will bow to the judgment of my peers and let the matter be discussed here. Death Eater Dan (Muahaha) 16:48, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

There shouldn't even be a debate. How many times do we have to say this? No U.S. alternative title. No U.S. alternative title. No U.S. alternative title. No U.S. alternative title. This was written by a British author. Every other English audience and reader sees "Philosopher's Stone". History has the legend as the philosopher's stone, which has its own article. There is no such article for "sorceror's stone" because it doesn't exist, neither in history nor in myth. "Sorceror's stone" was the invention of some dumb U.S. publishers who think that Americans are dumb people who don't know what a philosopher's stone is, would be too lazy to find out, and whose enjoyment of the book would be detracted by this lack of knowledge, while publishers from the rest of the world thought differently. All the "Philosopher's Stone" articles already note the U.S. alternative title. There is no need to mention the US alternative in the template because that is not the Wikipedia style to mention all alternatives in an infobox template like this one. It just adds unnecessary clutter with no purpose. I will revert back, and if anyone wants to edit war over this, they will have to argue with months and months of consensus from many respected Wikipedians. --Deathphoenix ʕ 17:02, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

Yep. Ëvilphoenix ^Burn! 17:48, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks guys. Death Eater Dan (Muahaha) 17:56, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

I suggest, as a compromise, that a footnote be added to philosopher's stone to note the USA variant. Some feelings of anti-Americanism have been expressed here. Can we avoid that please? Isn't the statement "There shouldn't even be a debate" somewhat authoritarian? SmokeyJoe 02:11, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

We do not need a footnote to add clutter to the template. The American version is quite explicitly stated at the top of every single article that uses the "Philosopher's Stone". No, there is no anti-Americanism here, but there is plenty of anti-American-publisherism, because I know that Americans are much more intelligent than the American publishers give them credit for. And there is no need for a debate because this has already been debated to death for the past few years, let alone months. This needs no more discussion. --Deathphoenix ʕ 04:01, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

I myself am American (Death's Candian), and I fully support not having the Sorcerer's mention. Ëvilphoenix ^Burn! 04:10, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

I'm British but my grandfather comes from Pennsylvania, and I certainly don't consider myself anti-American. Death Eater Dan (Muahaha) 07:51, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

JKR said she regretted allowing the change of title.Sandpiper 15:10, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

So do most of us, I'd wager. ;-) --Deathphoenix ʕ 14:36, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

Who decided to put all the main characters?

In another sign that I'm getting to be a grumpy old man, whose idea was it to put links to all the "main characters" in this infobox template? It makes this template unnecessary large, and creates a lot of clutter. Not only that, but it's also inviting some edit warring over which characters in the Harry Potter universe are "good" enough to be called main characters. There are already links to each of the main facets of the Harry Potter universe, including characters. I want to nuke this entire section and keep this template clean. Thoughts? --Deathphoenix ʕ 17:12, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

This has been happening alongside the US title editing being discussed in the section above, despite Evilphoenix and myself reverting, to remove the glut of characters, they have just been re-added without discussion. My opinion is that if any characters are to be included at all then it should only the big 5 main characters i.e. the trio, Dumbledore and Voldemort. Death Eater Dan (Muahaha) 17:43, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

I agree. Personally I was kind of trying to ease into that, by trying to cut out some of the less major "Major" characters, but I'd be perfectly happy to lose the section altogether, or at most go down to just the Big 5. But really I'm for Deathphoenix's nuking plan. Ëvilphoenix ^Burn! 17:51, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

I'd go along with that, I mentioned the big 5 as an option if it was decided to include a minimal amount of characters, however the nukes good for me. Death Eater Dan (Muahaha) 17:56, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

I've nuked the whole section to keep clean all the articles that use this template. Thanks for your quick feedback, folks. --Deathphoenix ʕ 18:35, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

well, I havn't concerned myself with it much, but since someone asked for coments, I rather liked the addition of links to the main characters. It made quite good sense logically, in fact in many ways rather more sense than including links at the bottom of a character page to the book articles. These really only contain general information. Someone researching a charater is more likely to want to look up a related character next. Sandpiper 15:07, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

One alternative is to just create a new template with the characters. It'd be easy, just some copy-paste work, and could be useful for the few pages that need it. Tuvas 20:00, 9 June 2006 (UTC)