Talk:Harry Potter influences and analogues

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Harry Potter influences and analogues article.
This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject.

Put new text under old text. Click here to start a new topic.
New to Wikipedia? Welcome! Learn to edit; get help.

Article policies

Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL

Harry Potter influences and analogues is a former featured list candidate. Please view the link under Article milestones below to see why the nomination failed. Once the objections have been addressed you may resubmit the article for featured list status.

Article milestones
Date	Process	Result
May 10, 2007	Peer review	Reviewed
July 25, 2007	Good article nominee	Listed
November 15, 2009	Good article reassessment	Delisted
December 4, 2009	Good article reassessment	Not listed
December 26, 2009	Featured list candidate	Not promoted
Current status: Former featured list candidate

Children's literature Mid‑importance

This article is within the scope of WikiProject Children's literature, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Children's literature on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Children's literatureWikipedia:WikiProject Children's literatureTemplate:WikiProject Children's literaturechildren and young adult literature articles

Mid

This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.

Tasks you can do:

Here are some open tasks for WikiProject Children's literature, an attempt to create and standardize articles related to children's literature. Feel free to help with any of the following tasks.

Add {{Portal|Children's literature}} to the See also section of related articles.
Tag the talk pages of related articles with {{WikiProject Children's literature}}
Join WikiProject Children's literature and list yourself as a Participant in the project.
Cleanup: A cleanup listing for this project is available. See also the list by category, the tool's wiki page and the index of WikiProjects.
Deletion discussions: listed at Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Literature
Notability: Articles with notability concerns, listed at WikiProject Notability
Rate the Unassessed articles in the Children's literature WikiProject.
References: Add references to Unreferenced BLPs.
Requested articles: Create a requested article on literature
Stubs: Improve a stub-class article

edit

Novels: Harry Potter Mid‑importance

	Novels portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Novels, an attempt to build a comprehensive and detailed guide to novels, novellas, novelettes and short stories on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the project and contribute to the general Project discussion to talk over new ideas and suggestions.NovelsWikipedia:WikiProject NovelsTemplate:WikiProject Novelsnovel articles
Mid	This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.
	This article is supported by Harry Potter task force (assessed as High-importance).

Mythology

	Mythology portal This article is supported by WikiProject Mythology. This project provides a central approach to Mythology-related subjects on Wikipedia. Please participate by editing the article, and help us assess and improve articles to good and 1.0 standards, or visit the WikiProject page for more details.MythologyWikipedia:WikiProject MythologyTemplate:WikiProject MythologyMythology articles
???	This article has not yet received a rating on the project's importance scale.

Women writers Mid‑importance

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Women writers, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of women writers on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Women writersWikipedia:WikiProject Women writersTemplate:WikiProject Women writersWomen writers articles
Mid	This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.

Archives

/archive 1

The Attic[edit]

Enter the Attic

This is an exceptionally touchy topic, in which the temptation towards original research is overwhelming, so I have established some very strict rules as to what can and cannot go into the main article. Top of the list is uncited material, by which I mean a comparison made without a third party reference that also makes said comparison. If you have a work you wish to include that is uncited, please place it on this subpage, and it may be cited and included in future. Please be sure that any such analogues were published before Harry Potter. Thank you. Serendipodous 13:07, 26 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Very nice page[edit]

Great job, authors of this page. Very useful, well-cited and enjoyable to read. jengod (talk) 19:21, 28 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I will take this to the talk page[edit]

Nadrail, you are effectively accusing Rowling of plagiarism, which is a crime. It is not Wikipedia's job, regardless of the evidence, to accuse people of crimes. Wikipedia can report others' accusations, but it cannot make those accusations itself. If you want to quote your sources claiming that Rowling took these ideas from Star Wars, feel free. But do not make those claims yourself. Serendi ^pod ous 23:26, 21 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Oh please, the whole article is accusing her of plagerism. Everyone quoted is accusing her of that. A crime? LOL. But seriosuly, the soruces have pointed out it. I put possibly to keep it neutral. Please stop telling me Star Wars also borrowed from others, because itś irrelevant to the discussion and Lucas has already has spoken of inspirations, we also have a sperate article for that.

Also a lot of the borrowings are WP:DUCK, but since policy requires I put reliable sources, which is more than enough. The hero´s journey fails to distinguish the similarity of names in the villains and terminology.--Nadirali نادرالی (talk) 23:38, 21 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

No, the article is not accusing her of plagiarism. The article reports many people who have accused her of plagiarism, but it makes no claims on its own. I don't really understand why you find it so difficult to do what I'm asking. Some of your sources must directly accuse Rowling of stealing Lucas's ideas. Just frigging quote them! Oh, and before you laugh; accusing someone of a crime in a published source is libel, and you do NOT want to fall afoul of British libel laws. Serendi ^pod ous 23:41, 21 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

We don´t necessarily quote sources from wikipedia, we cite them. The sources do argue the borrowings. Iḿ laughing at the last bit since I dont live in the UK, never have. Even if I did, it would take a lot more than that to prosecute me for an undesirable edit--Nadirali نادرالی (talk) 23:52, 21 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I have added a number of sources to support my edits, which aim to be neutral and not directly claim it, even though itś obvious. Itś now up to you to find some counter reliable sources claiming this is untrue.--Nadirali نادرالی (talk) 00:03, 22 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

How very like you to remove my comment. Serendi ^pod ous 00:05, 22 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

About your Third Opinion request: Someone has requested a Third Opinion in regard to this dispute, but the foregoing discussion does not make it clear what edits are in dispute and the article history over the last few days is too complex to dig through to figure it out. It would be very helpful to getting someone to give a Third Opinion for each of you to give a diff to the contested edit and to say in a paragraph no longer than this one why you think that it is appropriate or inappropriate. (I'm not "taking" nor reserving this request and any other 3O volunteer should feel free to take it first.) Regards, TransporterMan (TALK) 13:09, 22 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The line under dispute is: "The Harry Potter series shares many possibly borrowed similarities with George Lucas´s Star Wars

The issue I have with it is that it is a direct accusation made in the article, rather than referring to someone else's accusation. Serendi ^pod ous 13:14, 22 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

In literature, borrowing the ideas of other authors is not considered plagiarism and is not an accusation. That is my opinion, and I will remove the third opinion request. If there is disagreement, an editor can go to the dispute resolution noticeboard or publish a Request for Comments. However, borrowing the ideas of other authors is not considered plagiarism and is not an accusation. The identification of the borrowing should be made by literary critics or other sources; if it is made only by Wikipedia editors, it is original research. Robert McClenon (talk) 17:21, 22 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I also found this page on WP:3O. I checked the sources, and none of them appear to claim that J.K. Rowling "borrowed" from Star Wars. The recently added book reference does not provide a page number, but here is the likely page based on a Google Books search. Nothing about borrowing there. That makes the borrowing suggestion WP:OR. The WP:DUCK essay mentioned above is about sockpuppet detection and explicitly says "the duck test does not apply to article content". KateWishing (talk) 17:39, 22 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

So do you think that the phrase "possibly borrowed" should be removed? Serendi ^pod ous 17:55, 22 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Yes. KateWishing (talk) 18:00, 22 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you; I appreciate the effort you went to to sort this out. Serendi ^pod ous 18:27, 22 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

¨A variation of the duck test in conversations can be found in community discussions where consensus is required, most obviously Articles for deletion.¨ I was applying it in that sense.--Nadirali نادرالی (talk) 19:59, 23 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Lastly I don´t see the idea of borriwng from Star Wars as an accusation of plagerism given there is no lawsuit against Rowling by ucasfilms or Disney. The sources say she took it. It doesn say she took it without permission.--Nadirali نادرالی (talk) 20:11, 23 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Where do the sources say she took it? Quote the line. KateWishing (talk) 20:17, 23 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The source you just added is better. Unlike the other sources, this one does claim borrowing ("the story of Harry Potter is based as much on Star Wars as it is on any other text" on page 44). I would personally attribute that opinion with something like "Deborah Cartmell has suggested that Harry Potter's story was partly based on Star Wars." Also, you should add the page numbers directly to the citation per WP:Page numbers, ideally with the Google Books link for easy verification. KateWishing (talk) 20:48, 23 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

External links modified[edit]

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just added archive links to one external link on Harry Potter influences and analogues. Please take a moment to review my edit. You may add {{cbignore}} after the link to keep me from modifying it, if I keep adding bad data, but formatting bugs should be reported instead. Alternatively, you can add {{nobots|deny=InternetArchiveBot}} to keep me off the page altogether, but should be used as a last resort. I made the following changes:

Attempted to fix sourcing for http://www.channel4.com/science/microsites/R/real_wizards/myth_t.html

When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true or failed to let others know (documentation at {{Sourcecheck}}).

This message was posted before February 2018. After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{source check}} (last update: 18 January 2022).

If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.

Cheers.—^{cyberbot II}_{Talk to my owner:Online} 17:16, 28 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

External links modified[edit]

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 7 external links on Harry Potter influences and analogues. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

This message was posted before February 2018. After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{source check}} (last update: 18 January 2022).

If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.

Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 22:13, 4 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

External links modified[edit]

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 11 external links on Harry Potter influences and analogues. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

This message was posted before February 2018. After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{source check}} (last update: 18 January 2022).

If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.

Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 02:51, 27 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

External links modified[edit]

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 3 external links on Harry Potter influences and analogues. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

This message was posted before February 2018. After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{source check}} (last update: 18 January 2022).

If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.

Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 19:37, 30 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Table[edit]

I've added a section on top of the article with a table summarizing the similarities of HP with the unacknowledged analogues. It's handy for people looking for quick info. If they wanted to know more details about specific analogues, they would read their respective sections below, which contains long paragraphs. - Alumnum (talk) 21:48, 26 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The addition only repeats information already in the article, and synthesises material from it. It is basically an essay. It also clutters up the article and makes it difficult to navigate. Serendi ^podous 12:09, 27 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

If you're not going to carry on this conversation I shall interpret your silence as agreement. Serendi ^podous 13:19, 28 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

RfC: Is the "Overview" section needed?[edit]

For me, it violates WP:SYNTH, overbalances the article and just duplicates information already in the article. Serendi ^podous 17:52, 4 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Serendipodous Did you think about trying WP:3PO before jumping to an RfC? Especially given that the current version does not include the overview section? Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 14:29, 5 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

For the record, it does; he just moved it down. Serendi ^podous 10:14, 6 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

WP:SYNTH forbids drawing a conclusion from multiple sources, but it does not forbid creating neutral syntheses on tables. Many articles have "Overview" sections. - Alumnum (talk) 09:39, 7 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Sent here by a bot. To me, the overview is an unnecessary duplication of already existing material, which is better explained and cited within the main body of the article, and as such, should be removed. --Killer Moff (talk) 10:45, 18 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The table seems a bit off, a bit intrusive and unlike the first section, plus having some comments not readily apparent in the lower text. I’d lean weakly towards removal. Cheers Markbassett (talk) 03:10, 19 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]