Forum:Verb tense

I noticed that the pages for Harry, Ron, Hermione, Hagrid, Ginny and quite a few others all start in past tense: (name of character, birthdate) "was a" and then it continues with the description. For the ones that have not died as of the last official publication in the series (Deathly Hallows if JK hasn't released any supplemental information), should this be changed to "is a" to indicate they are still alive? The past tense "was a" generally is used when talking about someone that has died and the epilogue of Deathly Hallows verifies that specific characters are still alive in the same timeframe that we're currently in (2012 for us, 2017 in the book).

Probably doesn't need to be changed, but I'm just curious as to why past tense is used. —RRabbit42 ( leave a message ) 11:07, February 24, 2012 (UTC)