Talk: Hogwarts Houses

Set guideline for content in each of the House pages[]

Should there be a set guideline for content in each of the House pages? They seem very disorganised in comparison with one another.

For example

Ravenclaw

Hufflepuff

Gryffindor

Slytherin

Shouldn't there be a sort of universality with order of headers and names of these? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 14.200.251.92 (talk • contribs) March, 2012‎.

(The above is slightly modified, changing from url to using wikitext link, so that people would not be mislead into thinking they were external links.)

So I know people can probably argue that this isn't the place to discuss the matter, but short of starting a forum thread, I think since the Anon above found a related subject matter to discuss 4 articles at once, I'll just follow suit until someone point out a better place to do so. The above was noted back in 2012, since then, the articles have been modified, now looking more cohesive.

That said, when I went clearing redundant codes generated by Users using VisualEditor, I belatedly realized only Slytherin has Slytherin#Translations. Via looking up the editing history, I found out it was actually set up quite early on, accumulated over time, whereas the same thing was not done for the other 3 Houses. Since there's already List of wizarding terms in translations of Harry Potter#Hogwarts Houses and titles at hand, I'll be relocating the info, so Slytherin wouldn't be the only House page that has it. Figured I might as well document down how the decision came to me here lol. --Sammm✦✧(talk) 03:03, December 24, 2019 (UTC)

Cleanup?[]

I don't want to be nitpicky and cause more problems than it works, but I'd tentatively like to recommend adding a "Cleanup" tag to the article.

While it is fairly neat, there are some minor errors that could be tweaked, and a couple sentences that are, in my mind, half-canon and half-fan theory/perception (for instance, saying that the Hat uses students' preferred traits instead of their own by pointing out Crabbe and Goyle - who, I might add, turned against Draco in the battle - being stupid/lazy yet Slytherin.

I'd happily make the changes after school, but wanted community consent first :) --Hunnie Bunn (talk) 12:00, May 27, 2015 (UTC)

Behind the scenes: Primary colors[]

So, in Behind the scenes it was stated, that only Skytherin colors are not primary, and it really bugs me, cause I know only of RGB, that is Red-Green-Blue, so it doesn't make sense, only Hufflepuff color isn't primary, also, if we include additional colors, then, according to books, they'll be, Gold for Gryffindor, Silver for Slytherin, Bronze for Ravenclaw, but Black for Hufflepuff, which stands out again as the only non-metal based color. So I think either you should point Hufflepuff as standing out, or link to which primary colors it's referring to.

Nekokuza (talk) 11:21, December 19, 2016 (UTC)

Primary colours are the root from which every colour can be made by mixing them. The primary colours are blue, yellow and red. When you mix yellow and blue, you get green, making green a secondary colour. RGB is separate from that model - it is an additive colour model where by mixing everything together, you make lighter colours, ending with white. It subtracts instead of adding, unlike primary colours. So Ravenclaw, Gryffindor and Hufflepuff have primary colours while Slytherin only has a secondary colour. I hope that helps! --Kates39 (talk) 11:27, December 19, 2016 (UTC)

Well, I suppose, it's a british thing, cause I don't remeber yellow being a primary color in our physics class. However, there are still secondary house colors! Nekokuza (talk) 14:54, December 19, 2016(UTC)

It's not a British thing, it's the difference between primary colors for pigments (such as paint or ink) and primary colors for light (such as spotlights or computer screens). In a physics class you're likely talking about the light spectrum so would be using RGB primaries while in an art class you'd use magenta, cyan, and yellow primaries (commonly simplified as red, blue, yellow). It makes sense to use the primary pigments when describing house colors as they were defined by physical painted emblems. --Ironyak1 (talk) 16:16, December 19, 2016 (UTC)

Anyone (such as me) who has actually tried to use "red, yellow and blue" as "the" (subtractive) primary colours knows that they don't work; it's difficult to get a good green, and impossible (or almost) to get a good purple. When I grew a bit older, and learned a bit of history, I discovered that Edwin Land (in his experiments with colour) discovered that just about any three mutually-exclusive pigments will "work" as subtractive primaries, but the traditional primaries work far better if cyan (midway between green and blue) and magenta (between blue and red, if the spectrum is wrapped into a continuous circle) are substituted for blue and red. This makes sense in view of the way pigments work, by absorbing certain colours of light; and it was probably suspected long before Land scientifically established it, for Wikimedia Commons has an 18th century colour mixing chart on which the colours labelled "red" and "blue" are clearly what we now call magenta and cyan. It has been theorised that there has at some time been a language shift, and that what Newton called "blue" and "indigo" are the modern cyan and blue respectively.

I don't know why the misinformation that "red, yellow and blue" are "the" primary colours is still taught, when it has been known for decades to be false on at least two counts, but to my mind it has no place on a wiki which is seeking to be factual. — RobertATfm (talk) 15:37, April 18, 2017 (UTC)

This urban myth has appeared at least once before on this wiki, in a previous version of the etymology of the Colour Change Charm — RobertATfm (talk) 15:48, April 18, 2017 (UTC)

Someone reinstated the information on Slytherin on the grounds that "green is a secondary color, it is made of blue and yellow". As I already explained above, this is wrong on both counts; whether green is primary or secondary depends on which type of colour mixing you're doing, and in additive mixing blue and yellow make white, whereas in subtractive mixing, if the dyes were pure they would make black. (In actual practice, due to impurity, they make a weak green reminiscent of the green of early LEDs). — RobertATfm (talk) 17:09, April 18, 2017 (UTC)

The trouble is that if you use CMYK as primary colors, then only Hufflepuff is a primary color as the Gryffidor's red and Ravenclaw's blue as seen in Pottermore, the films, WWHP merchandise, etc... is most certainly not magenta or cyan. As such, the Behind the scenes text is wrong. Using a RGB additive system, such as used in stage lighting or electronic TVs & monitors, seems equally off when discussing pigments used in medieval times, and would require changing the text as well. Given this is just a BTS note, it can be reworded to reflect these differing systems of color, or just as easily be deleted entirely IMHO. --Ironyak1 (talk) 17:14, April 18, 2017 (UTC)

I agree with the above.. Both on this wiki and in general life, why are so many people insisting on a colour theory which is about a hundred years out of date? And looking at it form the mediaeval point of view, involving heraldic colours, it could be argued that Hufflepuff is the odd one out because it's the only one whose field tincture is a metal (Or), whereas the other three are colours (Gryffindor=Gules, Ravenclaw=Azure, Slytherin=Vert). — RobertATfm (talk) 17:28, April 18, 2017 (UTC)

I disagree that it's hard to make a good green, at least with paint (real paint, not on the computer). But if the majority disagrees with me, then they can do just that. I'm against the reasoning that contradicts mine - green is a secondary colour, whereas blue, yellow, and red are primary colours - but I can't think of any arguments to strongly oppose it. ― C.Syde (talk | contribs) 23:13, April 18, 2017 (UTC)

The reason you can't come up with an argument to "prove" that "the" primary colours are "red, yellow and blue" is the basic one that something which is false cannot be proved true by any valid argument. As I keep pointing out, Edwin Land disproved this old idea about a century ago; why do people (not including those who do colour printing) still persist in believing it? — evilquoll (talk) 19:17, May 15, 2017 (UTC)

Blue and yellow make green. Therefore it is a secondary colour. There aren't any ways to make blue, yellow, or red by mixing other colours that I'm aware of. That's why they are considered primary colours. ― C.Syde (talk | contribs) 07:43, May 17, 2017 (UTC)

Nonsense. Edwin Land demonstrated a century ago that just about any three pigments which are such that none of them can be mixed from the other two, "work" as primary colours — more or less. As for what have been established (scientifically by Land, probably intuitively before him) as being the real subtractive primary colours, blue is made by mixing magenta and cyan, and red by mixing yellow and magenta, as anyone who knows how a colour printer works will attest. — evilquoll (talk) 11:28, May 17, 2017 (UTC)