Forum:Canon Policy Discussion

Forums: Index > The Wizengamot > Canon Policy Discussion

With the permission of the wonderful moderators on this wiki, I would like to open up a discussion on the current canon policy. Across the wiki, I have seen notable discussions on talk pages that are openly antagonistic towards the canon policy. Many users, including myself, believe that only J.K. Rowling material – the main series, the supplementary books, the short prequel, the Daily Prophet newsletters, and any information released via the author’s official site, Pottermore, or an interview – should be considered canonical.

We believe this for numerous reasons, but here are the highlights:

• J.K. Rowling may have allowed filmmakers and video game designers to interpret and adapt the Harry Potter series, but she never has accepted their new material as canonical. At times, such as concerning the Shrunken Head, she has said “I wish I thought of that” but did not consider it fully canon.
• Most Potter fans do not consider anything but what I shall call the umbrella term of JKR Material canonical. If you did a poll on, say, Mugglenet or the Leaky Cauldron, or another notable site, very few Potter fans will accept non-JKR Material as canonical. As someone who knows many Potter fans, I have asked them this question multiple times, and nobody has said they consider the films to be canonical, let alone the video games. Why is this important, you say? We are aiming to create not the most complete, but the most USEFUL guide for these ardent Potter fans.
• Some articles, which stretch the boundaries of the rules of the Potter world and sometimes clearly contradict canon, especially regarding information deriving from video games, lowers the quality of articles on this wiki. I personally like the wiki format more than, say, the Lexicon, as it is immediately updated, goes more in-depth and has more structure and images, but I am tempted to visit Mr. Vander Ark’s site when I see such articles on this wiki.

I also sense that it is possible, and I do not hold this against the character of anyone on this wiki, who has done excellent work, that some users do not wish to change the canon policy simply because that would mean deleting all of the wonderfully-written work they have researched and written that contains information outside of JKR Material. I ask people to look past the exemplary work they have done on this site in favor of, whichever policy it may be, betters the wiki and makes it more useful and logical.

So, again, with permission of the wonderful administrators, I would like to have a reasoned, pleasant, healthy debate concerning the wiki policy. If there is a resounding census that the wiki policy should stay as it is, after a lengthy discussion, I would also like to discuss the policy of the creation of a sister wiki that follows only JKR Material (but uses images from licensed sources and contains out-of-universe articles regarding major licensed content such as each of the films and video games.) I believe we could build a healthy community on both site, as major contributors would likely overlap, with some users preferring one canon policy over the other.

So, a lot to discuss, and hopefully both “sides” can share their thoughts. Yours,

^{Ministry Notifications} 00:13, October 30, 2011 (UTC)

I think a bit of historical precedent might be useful here. I would be curious to know what discussion, if any, there was before the current canon policy was created. From what I can tell, DarkJedi613 (an admin who is no longer active on the Wiki), was the one that originally developed the policy, possibly along wih Cavalier One. But I can't seem to find much of any discussion about it before it was created, but if there is any, I'd be interested to see it. As for me, I personally am just fine with the current policy. Rowling may not have personally written everything related to movies, etc., but she was intimately involved in their creation and even personally vetoed certain things like "little people" - saying "no, that's not part of this universe." So I personally don't have a problem with the idea of including information so long as, as the policy says, it's not contradictory to what we all agree is the primary source, which is the books. ProfessorTofty 00:35, October 30, 2011 (UTC)

Oh, no, I was referring to discussion after the creation of the canon policy in angst over the inclusion of several items. My argument is that, while she did veto certain things, she allowed the filmmakers to take numerous choices that she might not have used, even if she can realistically accept them for the purpose of telling the story cinematically, or for a video game. If we asked J.K. Rowling what her policy would be, and this is purely speculative, she would probably say that it is her universe, and that only her creations were the true creations. What say you, then, of a possible sister wiki? Although we should probably get a few more opinions first.

^{Ministry Notifications} 00:47, October 30, 2011 (UTC)

I'd like to point out that most wikis cover all official content, regardless of its canoncity. A Super Mario Wiki would have articles on the old TV shows and movie that fly in the face of game canon, Wookiepedia has articles covering the whole spectrum of the expanded universe (I don't think we yet have anything as weird as Buick or Simon the Killer Ewok), etc. Now, I know we are not a Super Mario Wiki, nor are we Wookiepedia, nor any other of the various wikis out there. But general consensus across Wikia and the other wikifarms seems to be a wiki should cover all official content within its scope, regardless if it is non-canon or even completely is against established canon. I don't see why we should be any different.

Now, perhaps a template indicating an article consists entirely of content from a non-Rowling source might be in order, but I am against removing any of our flim/video game/whatever else content. -- 1337star (talk) 01:09, October 30, 2011 (UTC)

A valid point, but we must customize our rules to fit our wiki. The Star Wars universe was intended to include all content, and Mario hardly has a canon of its own, our "geekdom" has much more of a plot and established continuity. I agree with the template idea, however what of articles such as, say, any major character that is not entirely non-Rowling, but contains non-Rowling elements? There would be no way to completely de-non-Rowlingize (wow) the wiki without either deleting all the material or splitting into two wikis.

^{Ministry Notifications} 01:13, October 30, 2011 (UTC)

I currently like how the policy is and how the wiki is. Like 1337star said, we aren't any of those wikis. I completely think that our flim, video game, and book articles are completely fine, even though if they are outside JKR material. I do not want to remove any articles, this wiki is completely fine at the moment. Whether its not canon or canon, I don't think we should be any different.  Speedysnitch   Talk  01:24, October 30, 2011 (UTC)

Something similar to this was proposed and voted on two years ago. The overwhelming consensus (17 to 1) was for maintaining a canon policy that allows for the inclusion of material from the films and games.

Now, I understand the perspective that Harry Potter "canon" should be considered to include only material produced by JKR herself (I call this the "core canon"), but I'd like to think that the Harry Potter Wiki doesn't presume that the definition of "canon" it uses for its own purposes should be considered the one, true, correct definition of "canon."

In the early days of this wiki, a decision was made to incorporate material from the films and games because no other Harry Potter site did at the time, and doing so would set us apart. The goal of the canon policy isn't to tell Harry Potter fans they should rightly consider non-JKR-produced stuff "canon;" it's basically to lay the groundwork for creating an encyclopedia that includes material from the HP franchise as a whole.

In addition, not only would shifting this wiki's coverage to strictly the core canon take away its unique "draw," but, realistically speaking, it would be prohibitively difficult to carry out at this stage in the game. It would kind of be like trying to implement a "no Extended Universe stuff" policy on Wookieepedia. I can think of more worthwhile ends to which editors could dedicate their time. We need to work toward setting up a notability policy, because the "unidentified X" articles are getting out of hand, to say the least.

Setting up a core canon-only sister wiki to this one seems like a good compromise. ★ Starstuff ^{(Owl me!)} 01:36, October 30, 2011 (UTC)

That would probably be the best idea. I can see why, yes, this would take time to implement, and would slim the articles currently on the wiki. Discussion can still continue on this thread, of course, but do you mind if I set up a thread in the Wizengamot to "recruit"/discuss for the creation of a sister wiki?

^{Ministry Notifications} 01:45, October 30, 2011 (UTC)

I, personally, wouldn't object to this, but I can't speak for other admins. The sister wiki idea seems like the best solution here, because that way there would be a wiki-format, core canon-only HP resource available without having to seriously alter the scope of coverage on this site. ★ Starstuff ^{(Owl me!)} 02:16, October 30, 2011 (UTC)

I don't think making a sister wiki would be um I dont know i just don't really like the idea. I still love the way all the characters were casted and I would love to include pictures of them. I think changing this wiki's policies would work more. I mean the series is over only grammatical errors and further pottermore continuation can be updated. If people wanted more edits they can work on changing it to book format, but continue to list the differences between them. Like LuciusMalfoy777 this is JKR's universe I don't think anything that isn't from Jk should be canonical. I mean she created it all so why even consider others?User:MinxelfinforeverI Love Boulderon|User talk:Minxelfinforever 06:44, October 30, 2011 (UTC)

Well, for the next few years or so, information from Pottermore will have to be added, and the kick-off of a new wiki would draw editors. There are always things to be done, even if you're not adding new articles: you're rewriting them as part of a featured article system or because they are poorly written, adding images, making sure they confer with the wiki's manual of style, etc. As for images from the films, I completely agree. Whether anybody likes it or not, most people think of the actors and set/prop design when re-reading the books, including myself, mainly because I think they are fantastic. On a less subjective note, the sister wiki articles would be bare without them, so yes, there will definitely be images from the films simply to illustrate and add life to the articles.

^{Ministry Notifications} 12:55, October 30, 2011 (UTC)

There is one thing that you must realise overall. If you were to strictly follow your own words there would not be any images from ;

A. the books

B. the films.

,or,

c. the games allowed.

Doing so may lead to the wiki looking very bland. Also it would be silly to start up this wiki and then come back to this one and copy every single article. The information that you publish would have to be purely from the books and nothing else. My question is would you be prepared to follow such guidelines. Dave Stewart 17:23, October 30, 2011 (UTC)

Um, did you not see he wrote to he would add their images to add life to the articles?User:MinxelfinforeverI Love Boulderon|User talk:Minxelfinforever 20:19, October 30, 2011 (UTC)