Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Novels/Harry Potter task force/Templates

Loyalty to Draco?
I see in the color-coded "affiliation/loyalty" section that Draco Malfoy gets his own color scheme (black text with green background). I guess this is OK with me - what with Crabbe and Goyle and Pansy all the time sniffing around his backside. But the only other Individual to get such distinction honors is Voldemort.

I am wondering, if Draco gets a section due to his 3 constant companions, shouldn't Harry get his own loyalty/affiliation and color scheme too? I mean he is THE main character, and is growing up with his own (sometimes erratic) following, with Ron and Hermione and Ginny and Fred and George and pretty much all the Weasleys (sans Percy) backing him up without question, not to mention nervous Neville, the creepy Creevy boys, and even suspicious Seamus seems to be coming around to Harry's side (albeit hesitantly). It is pretty clear that in Book 7, Harry will be the key challenger to Voldemort, and will have any number of "loyal" supporters backing up his cause. I think if Draco is allowed an "official entourage", then so should Harry, simply because Harry is more "important" in the overall scheme, and has "more" such supporters. On the other hand, Draco himself shows considerable (if perhaps "forced" and perhaps "failed") "loyalty" to Voldemort. Of course my prediction is that Malfoy and Potter will unite in the end to defeat Voldemort, giving the "leatherpants" fanatics an early Christmas present, but that's a subject for another day.

I am also concerned about the distinction between loyalty/affiliation to Voldemort, versus being affiliated with the Death Eaters. I just don't see a very strong distinction there.

I think the Loyalty and Allegiance sections need to be better combined and coordinated. I would propose affiliating and grouping the characters with something like: Of course this is not necessarily perfect, with characters all the time apparently switching sides, but this is meant to serve more as a discussion starter for the experts. T-dot 14:49, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Voldemort / Death Eaters / Draco Malfoy
 * Ministry of Magic / Inquisitorial Squad
 * Order of Phoenix / Dumbledore's Army / Harry Potter
 * Hogwarts
 * None / Unknown / Uncertain


 * I made a (probably low-visibility) proposal at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Harry Potter about bringing the colour scheme down to just three:
 * People with "Order of the Phoenix" as their allegiance
 * People with "Lord Voldemort" or "Death Eaters" as their allegiance
 * Everyone else, regardless of allegiance.
 * This could possibly be tweaked to include, for example, Voldemort himself in #2, and maybe Hogwarts teachers in #1. (confirming unsigned comment was by me. I mark the previous as unsigned, then forget to sign it myself. Duh) --Deathphoenix ʕ 16:56, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Hehe :) sorry but it made me chuckle. Death Eater Dan    [[Image:Flag of the United Kingdom.svg|25px|  ]] ( Muahaha ) 17:03, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

Okay, rather than working theoretically, let's actually work with the content that's in the Templates page. To merge T-dot's proposed scheme with mine, I'm going to create a new heading "workshop", where we can just modify it at will. --Deathphoenix ʕ 17:59, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

Workshop
Colours mentioned first have the highest priority. In other words, people who have allegiance (as noted in their infoboxes) to both the Order of the Phoenix and Hogwarts would have the colours of the Order of the Phoenix. For complex cases like Snape, who is marked as Unknown, we should give him either the "Unknown" colour scheme or the Death Eaters scheme (since the Death Eaters colour has priority over the Order of the Phoenix). These colour schemes would also apply to a character whose allegiance is presumed, sympathiser, or affiliate. Note that priority isn't fixed, it can be changed according to complex cases. However, listing it like this just means that we are more consistent.


 * Just for reference, here is the latest updated prototype being developed in a "sandbox" elsewhere. --T-dot 09:18, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

And yet another proposal (by SmokeyJoe) is to only use one infobox colour. I'd like to use yellow background with black letters, so for completeness, I'll list it here. --Deathphoenix ʕ 14:43, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

Workshop discussion
I have a hard time with the "Inquisitorial Squad" colour scheme. On one hand, it was founded by a member of the Ministry of Magic, arguably a complex organisation that has good intentions but sometimes engages in questionable practices. On the other hand, most of the people in the Squad are "not-good" people. I'm really not sure, but it probably helps to point out that those in the Inquisitorial Squad, while not exactly good, certainly aren't as "evil" as the Death Eaters, hence, my concurrance with T-dot's proposal that the Squad has the same colour scheme as the Ministry of Magic. --Deathphoenix ʕ 17:59, 7 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Looks good to me. I see your difficulty mulling over the Inquisitorial Squad, however I can't think of an alternative, so I'm happy to go with your reasoning. Death Eater Dan    [[Image:Flag of the United Kingdom.svg|25px|  ]] ( Muahaha ) 18:50, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

I like T-dots colors, Inquisitorial Squad probably should be left with the Ministry colors, but I think the order of the boxes from top to bottom in order of which comes first should be just like DeathPhoenix's- with Hogwarts second to last and above unknown. Just my thoughts. Emily ( Funtrivia Freak ) 20:42, 12 April 2006 (UTC)


 * The order of the color boxes (top to bottom) in the segment above is totally arbitrary and completely meaningless. These are simply a group of proposed color tile palettes, to be used to color-code highlight the various HP character's and organizations' names, in their respective infobox templates, on their respective Wiki-pages.  That Hogwarts is shown "above" the others is a leftover artifact of the earlier list, that also included the four houses with their own colors shown under Hogwarts, followed by the external "loyalties".  The individual Hogwarts House color codes were eventually abandoned, and Hogwarts may get dropped too as a loyalty affiliation, if it is decided the other categories are sufficient     --T-dot 01:29, 13 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Yeah, I know the order didn't mean anything- but at some point, I was saying, I would like order to matter, and in my opinion that would be what the order should be. That's all I was saying. I saw the other page- I know what's going on! Emily ( Funtrivia Freak ) 02:24, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

I think one colour for infobox is a great idea. It makes it consistent with the rest of the book, reduces the cruftiness factor of these articles, and eliminates original research on what side they're on. --Deathphoenix ʕ 14:45, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

Posible Addition to the Navigation box
I think it would be good to add "Harry Potter Events" in the Navigation box, where we could add article such as Snape's Worst Memory, Battle of the Departement of Mysteries, and Battle of Hogwarts

I know 2 of them don't exist yet but I'm planing to start them soon.

Halyks June 16 2006 8:55pm EST

Chapter citations
There is a big problem throughout HP article of not having citations. I recently nominated Ginny Weasley for GA status, and one of the biggest complaints seemed to be a lack of citations. The reviewer said that a [book+chapter] reference would be enough since there are so many different versions. My point here is that we need an inline citation template with both the book and the chapter cited. I don't know how to do this, but hopefully someone that does can help. Maybe this can help us get more articles up to GA status, and eventually FA status. John Reaves 19:26, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Actually, we already have those templates. For example, the template GF using the parameter ch (as in ) will yield . It doesn't put anything in the references section, but it can be manually placed in a Works cited section or something. I believe a template like that exists for every book. --Fbv65 e del / ☑t / ☛c || 21:58, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Okay, thanks. Now all we have to do is find the cite everything. John Reaves 22:06, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

NA to Non-Article
I tried to change Template:WPHP to say "Non-Article" instead of "NA" so that it made sense to anyone that saw it, but I couldn't quite figure out how to do it. So is there anybody that knows how to edit templates? I also wondered if anyone thinks a navigation template for the subpages within the project would be useful. John Reaves 02:33, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

Why
...Doesn't this colour scheme match up to what is actually used? Are all the Gryffindors - Harry included - giving allegiance to the Ministry? All the Hufflepuffs are OotP sympathisers? How do the Ravenclaws fit in? Michaelsanders 15:19, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
 * I don't think it was designed to reflect house colors, just conventions to be followed on Wikipedia. If they want to be changed, I'm happy to discuss, but Gryffindor doesn't mean red, in this case. Nor does Hufflepuff mean yellow. --Fbv65 e del / ☑t / ☛c || 05:04, 23 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Then why are they shown like that? If you go to Minor Hufflepuff's, for example, their boxes are all yellow - suggested them to all be loyal OotP adherents. And Harry is red.


 * Would it not be sensible, in this case, to introduce house-colours for those whose primary loyalties are to their own House (e.g. Mandy Brocklehurst - wasn't a D.A., so only a house member)? And to alter the Ministry and OotP colours to reflect this? Michaelsanders 12:30, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

The 5 colour schemes shown some paragraphs above, and more thoroughly discussed and developed here were generally agreed to back in April, but a formal staw poll or consensus was never really established, and the matter fizzled out and was dropped before the colors were formally implemented. I still like the 5-schemes as shown: Hogwarts Staff, the "Good Side" (eg: DA, OOtP), the "Bad Side" (eg: Voldemort, Death Eaters), the "Ministry Loyalists" (eg: Fudge, Umbridge), and the "Other / Unknowns". These colours were selected for high visibility, readability, fg/bg contrast, etc. One of the problems is some characters, like Snape, were ambiguously good or evil and setting a colour on them became a Point of View or Original Research argument. I think this is one of the issues that caused the house of color cards to tumble. Anyway I would have NO objection to using the 5-colour schemes shown as developed and agreed to above, if someone wants to take on the task (it is a big one). This would be far superior to just randomly shifting colours around, to match personal tastes and preferences, as has happened the last few days in several HP articles. Just be prepared to constantly defend your choices to those who challenge your POV and OR. For convenience, I'll repost the selected colours again below. If you select "edit", then you can see the bg and fg colour names. And dont forget the 2px black borders! --T-dot (Talk | contribs) 12:56, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Why Not? Michaelsanders 14:17, 23 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Please demonstrate on Harry Potter character article. I can't work the 2px.Michaelsanders 15:44, 23 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Oops - it looks like the "border" feature is not enabled in the HP Character infobox template. It should be possible to enable it though - it just needs to be added to the list of options.  Trying to remember how to do that now...  --T-dot (Talk | contribs) 16:08, 23 December 2006 (UTC)
 * I'm going to leave it until a)I know what to do, or b)I decide that the border is unnecessary. Thanks. Michaelsanders 16:11, 23 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Found it: Template:HP character. Added "border" to the list of options there, but it still doesn't seem to work as expected on the character pages.  I guess we need a higher expert in this.  By the way - it might do well to update the main article "project page" with the info on this "talk page" - it still shows the "outdated" colors.  This is bound to start some arguments as to which colors are "canonical" as it were.  Just while you are on a roll...  (Oops - I see you already did it.  thanks!) --T-dot (Talk | contribs) 16:17, 23 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Still doesn't seem to work. To clarify: I'm not going to change any more boxes until I know what to do (either how to add the border or that it isn't needed). Michaelsanders 16:32, 23 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Agreed. For now we can ignore the 2px solid black "border" feature, and just focus on getting the characters colors more or less consistant with each other and to their "loyalties".  The infobox "border" feature seems a bit elusive.  Thanks for your hard work.  --T-dot (Talk | contribs) 16:47, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Seems pretty much done now (though I expect there are still some people to change still). After this, the storm. Michaelsanders 23:08, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

No "Status" in infobox
I think there should be a "status" section in the infobox so people know whether or not the character is still alive. For example, on Sirius Black's page, it is quite difficult to find this important information. Supertigerman 15:59, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

Book references
WikiProject_Harry_Potter/Templates Might be updated to these. using > ? Chandler talk  14:08, 26 August 2007 (UTC)