Talk:Muggles' Guide to Harry Potter/Books/Half-Blood Prince

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[edit] Copyright violation

This was copied from Wikipedia, where it has been deleted. I've copied the article history of the original article here.--Eloquence 05:13, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

Please get rid of it at once. It is a copyvio. Do you want the Wikimedia Foundation to be paralyzed by a massive lawsuit? 217.44.22.221 12:58, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

Summarizing information does not violate copyright.--217.83.124.146

You obviously didn't follow the debate on Wikipedia. This is a derivative work as confirmed by lawyers like Michael Snow. It should have been deleted and instead was forked over here to avoid it. That makes it speedyable I would say. J.K. Rowling is going to close down this whole thing if her lawyers come across it. 86.136.0.255 01:52, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

I don't think that this page should be speedily deleted. List it on VfD to get the opinion of the Wikibooks community instead. (_Donovan|Geocachernemesis|^Interact) 02:14, 1 August 2005 (UTC).

Make that, see the ongoing discussion on WB:VFD about Harry Potter plots instead.;) (_Donovan|Geocachernemesis|^Interact) 03:48, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

A quick sanity check.

First of all, is it just this book's plot that is considered copyvio, or all of them?

Secondly, can the user who marked the copyvio please link to the appropriate thread on Wikipedia, or I may have to consider this a hoax copyvio?

Aya ^T C 02:55, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

Just this one (Half-Blood Prince) as far as I know, but I've only known about this from its WP Vfd. And see w:Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince - Full Plot Summary for Michael Snow's legal advice. It's not a word-for-word in any way hence the WP copyvio system was never used for it, but still derivative enough to sue over. Also some stuff on the talk page I think. Garrett^Talk 12:02, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

Hi, I'm user Withinfocus over at Wikipedia and I've been organizing the plot information there. A large movement I made was to trim the plot summaries at Wikipedia and leave all extensive summaries to Wikibooks. The plot summaries for the books are currently being trimmed. It was shown through several Wikipedia votes, such as the one linked above, that lengthy plot summaries are not encyclopaedic and the HP WikiProject seems to agree. An effort is being made to cut all long summaries from the site and full plot summaries are now deleted or well on their way. The Wikibook seemed appropriate for explanations and so content was moved here. As referenced in the Wikibooks' vote for deletion, these plot summaries will function in a similar manner to an instructional resource. By no means do the summaries give the reader full understanding of the entire book but are instead a general overview, as I thought they should be. MANY Wikibooks should be deleted if the idea is that anything that gives detail is copyvio for deterring purchase of the original material, etc. I would consider this a hoax copyvio and more a user or users who just don't like the idea of plot pages. Your original HP Wikibook VfD was started by Kappa and if you take the time to look at what his actions have been over at Wikipedia regarding Harry Potter pages then you might be as confused as I am. He wishes to keep full plot summaries (voting keep) but then VfDs a Wikibook with the same or even lessened information. -Matt 13:50, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

Okay. I've read the content of the Wikipedia VfD page, and and it seems unclear as to whether derivative paraphrased works are legally grounds for copyright violation. You could argue that all the books pertaining to completing specific computer games are also derivative paraphrased works as well.

I've also taken a look at http://copyright.gov/ which seems to imply that only direct quotes constitute a copyright violation, and not paraphrasing. Obviously the use of proper nouns (such as 'Harry Potter') are direct quotes, but seem to be covered under fair use.

Words or proper nouns are not quotes. Otherwise, "the" would be a quote, which it isn't. A quote is a specific portion of the text intended to show the reader what the portion actually says for some reason. "Harry Potter" is simply how all writers refer to the character. It neither copies a specific piece of the text nor does it make a point about the specific way the author refers to the character. — 131.230.133.185 07:43, 3 August 2005 (UTC)

However, if an official legal representative of the copyright holder should make a formal complaint, then we should swiftly remove the content to avoid expensive litigation. I don't think this is unreasonable. I shall remove the speedy deletion and revert to the last version.

Note also the whole book Harry Potter plots and all its subpages are currently listed in Wikibooks:Votes for deletion anyway, so please vote there. - Aya ^T C 17:53, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

Thank you for being reasonable. I agree that any official complaint of copyright will be grounds for possible deletion. The HP world is especially open to the sort of overview like what is here on the Wikibook and I don't think an issue will come about but the plan still seems fair. I myself plan on working with the HP Wikibook in an attempt to clean it up. I wish the plot pages could simply be taken off the VFD list but I guess votes will need to decide that. Hopefully your comments end the discussion here. -Matt 20:18, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Organization

I'm about to put all the chapters on one page. While separating them onto subpages is a good idea to make writing easier, it makes it much harder for a reader to find the information they want. Subpages force them to remember chapter numbers, which isn't the way people remember things. If someone wants to recall, say, what the first pensieve visit revealed, they can't just remember what happened near to it in the book ("it happened right after Harry went to potions for the first time, but before they went to the cave"), they have to guess it happened around, say, chapter 10, then try it, then 11, then 12, then 13, then 14, then 15, until they find it.... If it's all on one page, they can just scroll naturally.

There's a way to make the table of contents jump into the article, though. Just use [[#section heading]].

I've just noticed that the subpages had different sections for analysis and Rowling's comments and such. I don't believe we currently have or will ever have this information for all chapters. The information we do have can be inserted in the appropriate chapter section. For instance, the plot "John Smith destroys the tree." and the analysis "The tree symbolizes life." can be combined into "John Smith destroyed a tree which symbolized life, showing that he does not value life." — 131.230.133.185 07:31, 3 August 2005 (UTC)

• I've undone your reversion and restored the new version. This isn't Wikipedia, where they are trying to make the plot summaries smaller. This is Wikibooks, where we are expanding things, and are writing a detailed annotated text, doing so chapter-by-chapter in order to avoid the pitfall of not writing an annotated text but writing a Readers' Digest condensed book (which Wikibooks isn't in the business of doing). If you want to give readers a way to find things by topic when they don't remember what chapter of what book they are in put the topic into the index. That's what it's there for. It needs topics. Contracting everything into one big lump and making it smaller is going in entirely the wrong direction. We are trying to expand this module. We want the summaries separate from the analyses. Firstly, that's how several other annotated texts at Wikibooks are structured. And secondly, we want more analyses, in order to make this a proper annotated text. At the moment, it is only the beginnings of such, since it contains only summary and little analysis. Uncle G 10:31:02, 2005-08-03 (UTC)

While I don't agree that organization and size are necessarily welded together (both organizations have the same information) and a few other objections, I believe the timeline link you added will work fine. — 131.230.133.185 11:25, 3 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Spoiler warning

There is a ridiculous spoiler warning at the top of this page, that gives the plot twists away. Why? I'd get rid of it myself but for some reason this page seem to be uneditable. What is going on here? --194.106.62.126 17:02, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

I have to agree with this user, even if his concern is by now outdated and gone. The "Title refers to:" entry on the main page is an egregious spoiler, and should not be left there because by identifying Snape, we remove one hell of a lot of the mystery of the book --- Harry spends a lot of time wondering who the Half-Blood Prince is, and Snape's name is never mentioned in that context until the end. I have edited it to reflect as much as the reader will know about it until Snape's departure. Chazz 20:20, 22 August 2006 (UTC)