Talk: Community Portal

Welcome

Welcome to the Harry Potter Wiki! I started this Wiki with the hope of constructing a huge encyclopedia of the magical world of Witches and Wizards described in J.K. Rowling's famous books, as well as the popular feature films they have spawned. I hope there are other potential Wikipedians out there with an equal love for the books, and that together we can make this the most comprehensive Harry Potter encyclopedia on the Internet. SeanR 11:06, 5 Jul 2005 (UTC)

Logo

To start off, I'd like to call out to all the artists among us and have a competition to create a suitable logo for our Wiki. The logo should be 135 pixels wide and 155 pixels high, and should immediately identify this site for what it is.

Please post links to your logos below, and the community can decide on the best one. - SeanR 11:12, 5 Jul 2005 (UTC)

Here's four (from the cover of the latest book): My Favourite Version, White Text, White Text Bottom, Text Not Centered. «Rainer » 01:47, 23 Jul 2005 (UTC)

I'd pick either the first or the last pics. My Photoshop was unfortunately wiped out by a virus, and I lost the CD, so I can't make any logos anymore, but I'd suggest something more all-encompassing. Don't ask me what that is - I'm still thinking. : ) Chosen One 17:32, 26 Jul 2005 (UTC)

Here's another design, from the poster of the second movie: [1]. «Rainer » 06:25, 27 Jul 2005 (UTC)

I like the first one best. The Chosen One ^{(Choose me!)} 12:55, 28 Jul 2005 (UTC)

My first attempt at a logo is here. - SeanR 02:01, 31 Jul 2005 (UTC)

Copying articles from Wikipedia

To get the content started quickly, I'll be copying a lot of the pages from Wikipedia. However, any pages copied should be edited to fit into the style of this Wiki. - SeanR 11:26, 5 Jul 2005 (UTC)

Hi, just found this wikicity today. Are you wanting all the Harry Potter articles from Wikipedia copied, or just some of them? I'd love to help with that and anything else. (A to-do list might be good to have on this page!) Hermione1980 21:26, 7 Jul 2005 (UTC)

Welcome! I think to start, we should move all the character pages and novel pages, then move on from there. A good place to start might be Wikipedia's list of Harry Potter characters. SeanR 09:00, 8 Jul 2005 (UTC)

To-do

1. Expand:

These articles have little or no text in them. Since we cannot build an encyclopedia out of infoboxes, I believe this is what we have to do first.

2. Upload

There are many file paths leading to nonexisting pictures. This is the next step to comprehensive reading material.

Check

for starters.

3. Write

The writing of completely new articles is necessary for the existence of this Wiki - it must not (may I repeat, NOT) be an exact copy of En articles, lest people take this to be an unnecessary carbon copy of the orig. articles. I myself have been frustrated many times when I searched for a topic on different pages, only to find that they contained the same text.

That's all for now. I'm sure this will keep us occupied for a couple of weeks or so. The Chosen One ^{(Choose me!)} 18:00, 26 Jul 2005 (UTC)

Inferius

I was wondering how I should categorize Inferius - it's not a magical creature, nor is it a spell. Any suggestions? Chosen One 10:44, 27 Jul 2005 (UTC)

Speculation/original research?

Someone asked on the WikiProject Harry Potter page on Wikipedia whether speculation and/or original research would be allowed on here. Is it? Hermione1980 13:25, 27 Jul 2005 (UTC)

I'd think a little won't do any harm. The Chosen One ^{(Choose me!)} 17:13, 27 Jul 2005 (UTC)

Copy from Wikipedia

What was the reason for not copying directly from Wikipedia? Is it only the busted links to ordinary words that's bad? Help your Dark Lord out. I expect an answer by tomorrow. --Lord Voldemort ^{(Dark Mark)} 20:59, 27 Jul 2005 (UTC)

Many reasons, originality being one of them. Another is the don't-bore-the-reader policy. The Chosen One ^{(Choose me!)} 21:04, 27 Jul 2005 (UTC)

Have people been putting the word out about this Wiki on mugglenet et. al.? --Lord Voldemort ^{(Dark Mark)} 12:50, 28 Jul 2005 (UTC)

No, and with good reason. We have to get this thing through "early development stages" first before we introduce all the grammar problems, typos, and vandals into the system. The Chosen One ^{(Choose me!)} 12:56, 28 Jul 2005 (UTC)

Okay, point taken. But it doesn't seem like there are very many editors here. I just thought it would be good to get some volume here. But if no one else agrees, that's fine. --Lord Voldemort ^{(Dark Mark)} 16:31, 28 Jul 2005 (UTC)

Yeah after doing a quick look, I only count about 20-25 editors, some of which are ip numbers making one edit. It would just help jumpstart this if we could get around 100 or so to make a few edits. Just my thoughts. --Lord Voldemort ^{(Dark Mark)} 17:01, 28 Jul 2005 (UTC)

Well, if we could get the article count to at least 150, it will be much easier to do damage control. Why don't we discuss this on Saturday, 22:00 UTC (Wikitime), over here? I admit that we are too few and too scattered to do any serious groupwork, so perhaps a little summons might work, won't it, Malicious Mass Murderer? ;) The Chosen One ^{(Choose me!)} 20:53, 28 Jul 2005 (UTC)

Dumbledore's Army

Should Cho Chang, Marietta Edgecombe, and Zacharias Smith be put in the Dumbledore's Army category? Hermione1980 18:52, 30 Jul 2005 (UTC)

And this is probably a stupid question, but should Peter Pettigrew be put in the Order of the Phoenix category, because he was a member at one time? Hermione1980 19:04, 30 Jul 2005 (UTC)

First Group Discussion

All right, so! Is everybody present? The Chosen One ^{(Choose me!)} 21:54, 30 Jul 2005 (UTC)

Currently, but I may be delayed in responding to anything. Hermione1980 21:56, 30 Jul 2005 (UTC)

Righto, so perhaps we better choose a better method of communication. Rainer suggested IRC, but it doesn'T work with me, 'mafraid. Any suggestions? The Chosen One ^{(Choose me!)} 21:57, 30 Jul 2005 (UTC)

Are we the only users here? I swear I invited more than one, at least. The Chosen One ^{(Choose me!)} 21:58, 30 Jul 2005 (UTC)

It's only just now 22:00, give 'em a minute. IRC? Que es IRC? I don't know of any other methods of communication, sorry. Hermione1980 22:00, 30 Jul 2005 (UTC)

Hmm, it's been 10 minutes already. IRC is a form of chatting, and makes use of a special server to do that. Wikipedia uses it, but I don't know how the heck they do it. Maybe we should start now, don't you think so? The Chosen One ^{(Choose me!)} 22:13, 30 Jul 2005 (UTC)

Well, Lord Voldemort has an account on Wikipedia and appears to have been active recently... I could leave him a message over there and ask if he plans to participate here. Other than that, yeah, I guess, go ahead and start. Hermione1980 22:15, 30 Jul 2005 (UTC)

Or, rather, he was active about this time yesterday. (note to self: check dates more carefully) Hermione1980 22:17, 30 Jul 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, I saw, anyway I posted him a telegram right now just to be sure... The Chosen One ^{(Choose me!)} 22:20, 30 Jul 2005 (UTC)

So, let's start. In the name of the High Admins, Wikilaw, and of course, GOD, I hereby formally start the first group discussion for the (bla bla bla) HP Wikicity. Now let's skip the formalities and get straight to the point. ;) The Chosen One ^{(Choose me!)} 22:20, 30 Jul 2005 (UTC)

Points:

Logo
Publicity
Approach to cleanup and article construction
Copyright/left
Et cetera...

First of all, let's talk about the logo (the picture at upper left). The logo we have right now is quite lame, nothing compared to the Star Wars Wiki logo [2] or the German HPWiki logo [3]. This problem has gone unanswered for the past few days, and it's quite hard to attract editors if the first thing they see is something uninteresting. Rainer has posted some choices up there. Any suggestions? The Chosen One ^{(Choose me!)} 22:24, 30 Jul 2005 (UTC)

Aw, you don't like our current logo? I do. Of Rainer's suggestions, I like the one from the Chamber of Secrets poster best.
As for publicity, do you mean posting about this on other websites or something?
Clarify the cleanup question please...
GFDL works for me, but IANAL so I don't really know anything.

Hermione1980 22:27, 30 Jul 2005 (UTC)

I was thinking of something more unique and catchy - lots of colors, maybe. You?
Yees, He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named (HWMNB) mentioned something about publicizing the Wiki on Mugglenet et al. Should we do this immediately, or wait until the article count reaches 150 or 200 or something like that? I'd prefer waiting and contributing because if we let them in too soon, we'll have a hard time driving out the vandals and trolls and bad spellers - and cleaning up after their mess is tedious, too. (P.S. Today, we had our first vandal on the main page! Too bad his spoiler didn't show up.) The good thing is that we could have more well-meaning editors to help us with cleanup (see below).
Cleanup means (see above). It also means inserting missing pictures, missing articles, expanding stubs, checking dates, spelling, punctuation, repairing broken links, templates, etc. All these things fall under cleanup, and if we have more editors, it follows that we'll get the job done in half the time or less. I think this Wiki is destined for greatness. Really. :)
Perhaps we should edit our copied articles a little to give a more Wikicity flavor, eh?

The Chosen One ^{(Choose me!)} 22:35, 30 Jul 2005 (UTC)

Perhaps we should postpone this for a more ... convenient time and date. It's not very comfortable talking to a gathering of mute ghosts. So much for organized editing. I guess some ideas really don't get accepted until after their time. The Chosen One ^{(Choose me!)} 22:48, 30 Jul 2005 (UTC)

Sorry, I got caught up with something else. Really, there's not much two, three, four regular editors — whatever we have right now — can do. Why don't we send a message to all the registered contributors and find out when a more convenient time is for them? Hermione1980 23:24, 30 Jul 2005 (UTC)

I guess we should. In the meantime, I listed our tasks here, using same layout as WikiProject Harry Potter page. You can sign up as regular contributor. Anyway, if no one else is coming, ciao, arrivederci, tschüs, goodbye (where did you say you were from again?). Till next meeting - The Chosen One ^{(Choose me!)} 23:37, 30 Jul 2005 (UTC)

I'm from the American South, so "bye" will work. :-) See you later. Hermione1980 00:04, 31 Jul 2005 (UTC)