Forum:Canon Policy Discussion

With the permission of the wonderful moderators on this wiki, I would like to open up a discussion on the current canon policy. Across the wiki, I have seen notable discussions on talk pages that are openly antagonistic towards the canon policy. Many users, including myself, believe that only J.K. Rowling material – the main series, the supplementary books, the short prequel, the Daily Prophet newsletters, and any information released via the author’s official site, Pottermore, or an interview – should be considered canonical.

We believe this for numerous reasons, but here are the highlights:
 * J.K. Rowling may have allowed filmmakers and video game designers to interpret and adapt the Harry Potter series, but she never has accepted their new material as canonical. At times, such as concerning the Shrunken Head, she has said “I wish I thought of that” but did not consider it fully canon.
 * Most Potter fans do not consider anything but what I shall call the umbrella term of JKR Material canonical. If you did a poll on, say, Mugglenet or the Leaky Cauldron, or another notable site, very few Potter fans will accept non-JKR Material as canonical. As someone who knows many Potter fans, I have asked them this question multiple times, and nobody has said they consider the films to be canonical, let alone the video games. Why is this important, you say? We are aiming to create not the most complete, but the most USEFUL guide for these ardent Potter fans.
 * Some articles, which stretch the boundaries of the rules of the Potter world and sometimes clearly contradict canon, especially regarding information deriving from video games, lowers the quality of articles on this wiki. I personally like the wiki format more than, say, the Lexicon, as it is immediately updated, goes more in-depth and has more structure and images, but I am tempted to visit Mr. Vander Ark’s site when I see such articles on this wiki.

I also sense that it is possible, and I do not hold this against the character of anyone on this wiki, who has done excellent work, that some users do not wish to change the canon policy simply because that would mean deleting all of the wonderfully-written work they have researched and written that contains information outside of JKR Material. I ask people to look past the exemplary work they have done on this site in favor of, whichever policy it may be, betters the wiki and makes it more useful and logical.

So, again, with permission of the wonderful administrators, I would like to have a reasoned, pleasant, healthy debate concerning the wiki policy. If there is a resounding census that the wiki policy should stay as it is, after a lengthy discussion, I would also like to discuss the policy of the creation of a sister wiki that follows only JKR Material (but uses images from licensed sources and contains out-of-universe articles regarding major licensed content such as each of the films and video games.) I believe we could build a healthy community on both site, as major contributors would likely overlap, with some users preferring one canon policy over the other.

So, a lot to discuss, and hopefully both “sides” can share their thoughts. Yours,

 Ministry Notifications 00:13, October 30, 2011 (UTC)