Talk:Mr. Potter

Untitled
This article needs to be more factual and less condemnatory. There is no point in having a go at him - he's a fictional character. DJ Clayworth 17:16, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Strategically called in loan?
Commentary here is based on a misreading of the film. It is the bank that called in a loan to the Building and Loan, and Potter rescues the bank. Only then does he acquire a controlling interest in the bank. The reason the loan was called in was the stock market crash of 1929, a moment all viewers would remember at the time of the film's release. Later dialogue confirms this, because Potter tells George "During the depression, you and I were the only ones that kept our heads." — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:1700:1A30:EF0:52A0:7437:52CC:E943 (talk) 06:46, 26 December 2023 (UTC)

Potter's end?
Is it true that Potter is the only character that does not appear in the happy ending sequence? An alternative-alternative ending would be that Billy remembers that he left the money in the newspaper he gives to Potter-and that its Potter who is arrested for theft and bank fraud! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.83.126.88 (talk) 17:46, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

Potter's Office Desk?
In Potter's office, his desk contains a variety of interesting items. There's the "creepy skull" but also a variety of other objects. Does anyone have an authoritative list (or even a non-authoritative list) of what's on Potter's desk? Atlant (talk) 15:32, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

Just For Laughs
Have added a link to Molitor's parody. If nothing else, it demonstrates that "Mr. Potter" is a recognizable cultural icon. Mannanan51 (talk) 01:22, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

Requested move 21 December 2019

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion. 

The result of the move request was: closed as not moved. Favonian (talk) 21:43, 28 December 2019 (UTC)

Mr. Potter → Henry F. Potter – Full names are preferable. Interstellarity (talk) 20:15, 21 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Oppose, per common name. The AFI's 100 Years...100 Heroes & Villains list Mr. Potter as the number 6 villain, and The Simpsons character Mr. Burns is partly based on evil rich Mr. Potter. Randy Kryn (talk) 21:27, 21 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Oppose per Randy Kryn. Full names are not always preferable — see List of literary initials. In this case, "Mr. Potter" is indeed the character's WP:COMMONNAME — see the film's credits. —Roman Spinner (talk • contribs) 06:12, 22 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Oppose as per WP:COMMONNAME, full names aren't always preferable.--Ortizesp (talk) 19:32, 22 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Oppose. WP:COMMONNAME. Even if this was a real person instead of a fictional character, Naming conventions (people) still lists several cases where the full name would not be preferable. Zzyzx11 (talk) 03:50, 23 December 2019 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

NPOV on Potter's Role
To conform with NPOV we need to include the view that Potter is the hero. Plenty of sources for this view are available.Teishin (talk) 13:57, 7 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Just reverted your edit which took up most of the lede praising Potter as the hero of the film. Mostly blog material, and filling most of the lede with this view seems WP:UNDUE. Hopefully more editors will join in this discussion. Randy Kryn (talk) 20:19, 17 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Good point that this doesn't belong in the lede. Part of it is duplicated in the Background. I've eliminated the redundancy.Teishin (talk) 20:52, 17 January 2020 (UTC)
 * See related discussion at Talk:George Bailey (It's a Wonderful Life). --Macrakis (talk) 21:56, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

Mr. Potter as “hero”
User:Teishin, you have reverted this change on numerous occasions, without explanation. None of the sources used to support this stunning claim come from reputable or neutral sources. The Post is an inappropriate source in any situation, and should not be given here. The last source given does not discuss Mr. Potter at all. For the other sources, I may mention (at the very least) that I would not expect valid literary criticism from RealClearMarkets.com, and the other two sources are duplicates. This leaves, as I have mentioned, no legitimate sources to support this claim. If you do not have other sources to mention, I will revert your reversion to the version I had emended, and will report further reversions by you as vandalism. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 18:44, 26 December 2020 (UTC).
 * TE(æ)A,ea. the removal of sourced content is basically the same removal reverted by earlier this week 06:39, 25 December 2020‎ by Ashleyyoursmile. You also appear to have missed the explanation given 17:46, 26 December 2020: "This same deletion has already been reverted by other editors this week. Interpretations of works of art you do not agree with do not qualify as a "false claim" nor can their sources be declared "inappropriate/excluded" because you don't agree with them". Besides, this issue has been dealt with before on Wikipedia. The film happens to have a long history of controversial interpretations, perhaps most famously by the FBI when it was first released.Teishin (talk) 19:28, 26 December 2020 (UTC)
 * User:Teishin: “This same deletion has already been reverted by other[s]” is not an explanation of why you reverted my change, nor is it a justification for the removal. I noticed your changes to another page in the same line, which change will also be subject to this discussion. I removed the claim because it the sources listed were not reputable and, as a thereby unsourced claim (of such contention), it should be removed. The sources are inappropriate, whether or not one agrees with that they say. A claim may be considered false if it is not cited, or if the citations given are to inappropriate or excluded publications. That is the reason why I removed the claim; I gave it in my edit summary, which you did not. Your first reversion did not even provide an edit summary beyond a notice of the reversion; this seems to be in line with similar types of automated reversions without summaries that you made immediately previous to that of my change. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 19:46, 26 December 2020 (UTC).
 * I quoted the explanation above and provided the time stamp. Teishin (talk) 19:58, 26 December 2020 (UTC)
 * This is not about "interpretations of works of art". Everyone (including the authors of the cited articles) agrees that the director presented Mr. Potter as predatory and malicious, not as the "hero". What those articles argue is that rich bankers like Mr. Potter should be considered to be economically valuable and not evil or predatory. They are arguing against the political position of the film, not about the portrayal of Mr. Potter.
 * What next? Is someone going to conclude that the "heros" of Der ewige Jude or Jud Süß are the titular Jews because the portrayal of Jews in those movies is deeply antisemitic and offensive, and that Jews should be portrayed as normal human beings? Of course not. Disagreeing with the premise of the movie doesn't change who it portrays as a hero or as a villain. --Macrakis (talk) 20:16, 26 December 2020 (UTC)
 * I read the summaries provided in both of the edits, both the one you made, and the one made by a different editor; neither provides relevant information or explanation. As such, this discussion will be closed, and your reversions reverted, if you do not object in a timely manner. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 01:43, 30 December 2020 (UTC).
 * I object. Teishin (talk) 01:56, 30 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Are you to use reason, or merely words? I do not want the resolution of this discussion to be delayed unnecessarily. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 02:36, 30 December 2020 (UTC).
 * We are dealing with Start Class article here for which a few years there was enough concern about the article’s notability that it was nominated for deletion. As a Start Class article for both the Film and Fictional Characters Wikiprojects, there are concerns about it being incomplete and having inadequate referencing. The bulk of the article at present just describes the story line. There are a couple of sentences about subsequent artistic influences, four sentences about casting, and just six sentences about the film’s reception, of which there’s one twelve-word sentence about interpretations of the film, referenced from multiple sources, giving an opinion you don’t like. Given the article’s already thin content, that would hardly seem to be a justifiable reason for removing those twelve words. This page gets around 40,000 views a year. A lot of users are interested in learning more about this fictional character. We have little to give them beyond recapping the story line they’re probably already familiar with. Why should we remove one of the few things in the article that they probably don’t already know about? Further, for the Fictional Characters Wikiproject the project guide aims to “attempt to provide sources indicating notability for characters.” Providing sources that discuss what an important role the character plays would appear to directly address that concern. Why then should such information and sources be excluded? Teishin (talk) 22:58, 30 December 2020 (UTC)
 * You say that “[a] lot of users are interested in learning more” about Mr. Potter—what, then, could be a better reason for removing false information? It is inappropriate to measure the value of the information you are seeking to have added to this page against the total content of the page—any new content found would be unrelated to the content you added. It would only be injurious to this article, and to the “40,000” “users” you claim rhetorically view this page annually, to add information cited only to “unreliable” publications such as the New York Post. Most of your comment here is rhetorical arguement, not policy discussion. The “concerns”—which have not been concerning, it seems, for over ten years now—would not be addressed by references to publications that are inappropriate to reference on Wikipedia. You seem to imply that my desire to remove the content you have sought to add is because I “don’t like” the “opinion” given—but I have objected only to the quality of the sources you gave in support. Can you cite any Wikipedia policy that would allow the citation of the type of sources you have used as references for the claims you make? If not, then the references (and the then-unsupported claim) must be removed. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 02:06, 31 December 2020 (UTC).
 * Absent a statement of yours to the contrary, the content of yours will be removed following a period of hours from your most recent comment. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 02:20, 2 January 2021 (UTC).
 * To say that 40,000 users a year view this article is a fact that can be discerned from the page statistics. It is inappropriate to dismiss it with a statement such as the one above (“you claim rhetorically”). Similarly, your claim that “most of my comment here is rhetorical argument” is objectionable, as it is mere disparagement and without any justification for your accusation. Regarding this, the policy in question on this matter is WP:AGF.


 * An example of an argument for which one could justify that it should be considered rhetorical rather than probative would be the argument above, that “The “concerns”—which have not been concerning, it seems, for over ten years now.” We all know that the kind of project that Wikipedia represents is inherently chronically incomplete. That there was a period when X was not included in Wikipedia is not relevant to whether X should or should not be included in Wikipedia. Editing Wikipedia is an ongoing project of expanding Wikipedia. Arguing that because X was not part of the article for the earliest part of its existence means that it should not be part of it now thus represents a rhetorical argument.


 * You argue “what, then, could be a better reason for removing false information?” The obvious problem with that is that the statement in the article which you want removed is true. Consequently, the real issue here is that the statement concerns something you do not like WP:JUSTDONTLIKEIT. The statement in the article is about interpretations of a work of art. The statement is not about that the character definitively is or is not something, as a matter of fact; it is about the existence of the interpretations. As such interpretations have been demonstrated to exist; the statement is true.


 * One policy issue here is WP:NPOV. Your argument to remove this content appears to be POV-motivated (i.e., that only your POV represents truth; therefore published POVs not in agreement with your POV should not be referenced) . Further, according to WP:NOCRIT in order to “[a]dhere to policy” we should “Always present positive viewpoints along with any negative information to give balance.” The position you have taken is directly contrary to that policy. You are arguing that positive viewpoints should be removed and that only negative viewpoints should remain.Teishin (talk) 01:29, 4 January 2021 (UTC)
 * I will respond to your arguements in order. I did not dismiss your claim that “40,000 users a year view this article” as rhetorical; I dismissed your arguement using that statistic as being solely rhetorical, and lacking of substantive arguement. I have not attacked you personally, as you have claimed; most of your previous comment consisted of persuasive rhetoric, and was not based in Wikipedia’s policy. [2¶] You claim that the sentence beginning with “The ‘concerns’” is a rhetorical arguement—but you ignore the full sentence, which states, “The ‘concerns’ would not be addressed by references to publications that are inappropriate to reference on Wikipedia.” This is not a rhetorical arguement; it is a response to your arguements. I don’t understand your arguement in the remainder of that paragraph; at least, not in how it relates to my comment. I have not claimed that your content should not be included because it was not, at some time in the past, a part of the article. My reference to the “concerns” you mentioned was relating to the deletion discussion regarding this article, which you mentioned in a previous comment. [3¶] You earlier accuse me of acting uncivilly, by calling your arguements rhetorical, and then proceed to accuse me of only wanting to remove statements from an article only because “[I] do not like” the statements you seek to include. As this is not true, and I have said that this is not true, your comment is most uncivil. I have already responded to this arguement in an earlier comment. [4¶] Your first policy you cited related to including your comment—rather than why my arguements are wrong—is “neutral point of view.” To this, I may reference WP:DUE, which is a part of that policy. My arguement is not motivated by a personal point of view, and if you continue to claim this, you will have no claim to be civil. Your reference to WP:NOCRIT—which is, if you were unaware, an essay and not a policy—is weakened by the beginning of the paragraph you cite, which says, “Most problems with negative material can be avoided by… using good sources.” I have made the claim that this content should not be included precisely because the sources you give in support are not “good.” You have not answered the question I posed to you in my previous response, where I said, “Can you cite any Wikipedia policy that would allow the citation of the type of sources you have used as references for the claims you make? If not, then the references (and the then-unsupported claim) must be removed.” Your policy citations were only done to support your viewpoint—which reminds me of WP:POLSHOP (which is, I understand, also an essay)—although I do not claim a violation of that policy at this time. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 13:18, 4 January 2021 (UTC).


 * I have not claimed that you have attacked me personally nor have I claimed that you have been uncivil. I claimed that your dismissal of my arguments as merely “rhetorical” is “inappropriate” and “objectionable” because as I said before, “it is mere disparagement and without any justification for your accusation.” The term “rhetorical” can be a legitimate term to describe an argument if it is justified. Without justification, it is just a term of disparagement. I gave an example of such a justification, above, to demonstrate what I meant by that. Without justification, the term is just a dismissal of the argument. This dismissal you have now doubled down on (“I dismissed your arguement using that statistic as being solely rhetorical, and lacking of substantive argument”).


 * Your comment “The “concerns”—which have not been concerning, it seems, for over ten years now” seemed to me to be talking about the subject slightly earlier in your paragraph (i.e. “the information you are seeking to have added to this page”). So, I thought you were talking about the information on the page. I see from your latest response you had intended a change of subject and that you intended it to be a comment on the article’s notability. This explains why my response appeared to you to be a non-sequitur. Sorry for the confusion. As there have been ongoing concerns about the notability of articles about the characters of “It’s a Wonderful Life” with editors proposing on the George Bailey article a few weeks ago that the articles for these characters should be rolled up into the article about the film, this seemed to me to be a topic of current concern and not one from long ago. So, when you said “not been concerning, it seems, for over ten years now” I inferred you had to be talking about the subject mentioned a couple of sentences earlier in the same paragraph.


 * I covered the issue with WP:DUE in the arguments above which you dismissed as “rhetorical.” This article drills down deeply, to a single character in a single movie. The article says little about that character. Indeed, the article is graded as Start Class – “Provides some meaningful content, but most readers will need more.” The issue of the article needing more meaningful content will not be solved by removing meaningful content from the article. Mere mentions of the existence of interpretations is not undue weight in an article that has little else to say. Under these circumstances, I suggest the most productive path towards changing the balance of the article in the direction you prefer is to add content rather than to remove content. One of the reasons this movie is so popular and people are so willing to watch it multiple times is because it is so philosophically and psychologically rich. Wikipedia has 40,000 users each year who want to know more about this subject. Shouldn’t we be building out the article?


 * I have pointed out that the subject here is about interpretations. You appear to be treating the idea of an interpretation to be something like an objective fact that is verifiable. Interpretations are opinions. On matters of opinion per WP:BIASEDSOURCES, “sources are not required to be neutral, unbiased, or objective. Sometimes non-neutral sources are the best possible sources for supporting information about the different viewpoints held on a subject." Perhaps the addition of in-text attribution would satisfy your concern? Such an approach would particularly make sense if effort were made to include other interpretations, such that it would be worthwhile to identify their perspectives. These would be valuable additions to this Start-Class article.


 * As for your question “Can you cite any Wikipedia policy that would allow the citation of the type of sources you have used as references for the claims you make?” I took it as a rhetorical question - a question asked in order to create a dramatic effect or to make a point rather than to get an answer. I justify that it is rhetorical because it seemed to be just for effect and not an answer. But, as you say you intended for it to be answered, the answer is that’s not how the policies work. The structure of the policies is not on the basis of things are not allowed unless they are specifically allowed. The policies directly to this point are WP:IAR and WP:5P5. The essay WP:NOCRIT also applies here, but, as you point out, unlike the other two it isn’t at the status of policy.


 * On your argument based on WP:NOCRIT, that argument isn’t relevant as the point you cite explicitly applies only to criticism, not to positive viewpoints. On positive viewpoints, here’s what it says, “Always present positive viewpoints, along with any negative information to give balance”, “Articles should include both positive and negative viewpoints”. If the content you wish to remove is removed, these criteria will not be met. Teishin (talk) 01:39, 6 January 2021 (UTC)
 * My comments on rhetorical arguement were urged against your comment of the 30th instant, which you have repeated, to a lesser degree, in your most recent comment; that the article should have this content added because the article needs more content—which I contend is rhetorical, and, importantly, unsupported by policy. I do not seek to make rhetorical arguement; I seek, as I have been (perhaps too keen on) making you aware, a speedy resolution to this discussion, which would be impeded by unnecessary rhetorical arguement. As to your personal attack, accusing me of “disparagement” and referring me to good-faith policy is an attack directed to me (a personal attack). We seem to have confused each other’s comments on “concerns”—but that is not particularly relevant to this discussion. The “most productive path” towards improving this article would be to add information not currently included in this article from reliable sources; my opposition to your proposed additions is that they are not from reliable sources. You cite WP:BIASEDSOURCES as a justification for including this content; however, the references you have proffered are not from reliable sources, which is required by that policy section. The non-reliability was determined independently of this situation, and it would be improper to challenge that determination in this setting. You fall at last upon WP:IAR and WP:5P5—truly, WP:POLSHOP is now relevant, as you rely on a rule without rule as a rule-based defence—which is no defence at all. Your counter-arguement for WP:NOCRIT is false; the section you cite is indeed in the middle of the paragraph, which begins, “Most problems with negative material can be avoided by… using good sources.” I may mention that you also misinterpret that section, which is actually requiring only the inclusion of positive content to balance a preponderance of negative content. You also say, “these criteria will not be met” if the content you seek to add is not is not added; but, as I may mention, WP:NOCRIT is not policy, but an essay, and its recommendations are not requirements, and thus may “not be met” without prejudice to an article. You say that policy justification is not needed to add content to an article; although this is false, I will admit that such additions are generally accepted. However, you seek to add information from sources which are not reliable; such information is usually not permitted to be added. I was thus asking if you could find any policy justifying the addition of information where the only source of that information is from sources determined not to be reliable, and it is this I ask you again to do, although I do allow for confusion—I combined answers in sentences, which may have led to confusion as to the nature of the question. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 03:15, 6 January 2021 (UTC).

The word "hero" is being used in two different ways. It can mean: The role of sypathetic-protagist Capra clearly intends George Bailey to be the sympathetic-protagonist. The commentators are not denying that. Rather, they are saying that George Bailey is not their admired-person; it is Mr. Potter who is their admired-person. So it is not correct to say "However, others view Mr. Potter as the hero of the film", as though we're talking about the same kind of "hero". Perhaps we should simply not use the word "hero" here and say instead "protagonist". Mr. Potter is clearly not the protagonist, regardless of how much one may admire him. --Macrakis (talk) 22:53, 6 January 2021 (UTC)
 * OED 4: "the central character or protagonist... in a story, play, film, etc.; esp. one whom the reader or audience is intended to support or admire" (call this a sympathetic-protagonist);
 * OED 3b: "an individual... lauded or admired by a specified person or group of people" (call this an admired-person).
 * This seems reasonable to me. Teishin (talk) 01:22, 7 January 2021 (UTC)