Talk:J. K. Rowling

UNDUE and low-quality source on Galbraith name

Outnproud, please see the message on your talk page regarding this edit warring on a contentious topic. Featured articles must use high quality sources, Rowling has explained her choice of the name, the addition is WP:UNDUE, and this article was the subject of a deep and broad recent Featured article review. You should gain consensus before reinstating text removed once. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:27, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

The article, published by Time, doesn't strike me as particularly low-quality. Is there a specific problem with it? -- Maddy from Celeste (WAVEDASH) 13:48, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

Not a particular problem; do a preponderance of highest quality sources (translation: scholarly) raise this issue ?

Rowling chose the name before 2013; it stretches credibility to think her reasons were anything other than what she stated. If the consensus is to add text about this issue, it needs to be decided a) whether it is added here or the sub-article Political views of J. K. Rowling; b) a comprehensive survey of highest quality (scholarly) sources undertaken to assess due weight; and c) prose issues.

Regardless of that outcome, edit warring on a contentious topic is a problem. Discuss first. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:18, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

I'm trying to remember who has the full Pugh article (I have only the first chapter); @Victoriaearle: I believe you do? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:18, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

I'd be happy to purge this article of all non-academic sources (my aversion to the use of newsmedia as a source on Wikipedia is well known I think) but it'd likely leave it nothing but a stub. Which would be fine for me if that's the path you want to take this article. Requiring a higher standard for some content within an article than for other content seems a perilous path. Simonm223 (talk) 13:09, 22 August 2023 (UTC)

Different kinds of content requires different kinds of sources. Further, we don't use lesser quality sources to refute higher quality sources. If you find something incorrectly sourced here, please point it out. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:45, 22 August 2023 (UTC)

I wouldn't describe Time as "low-quality", but it isn't high quality. The mention of the Robert Galbraith Heath controversy gets a passing mention in the Time article, and it goes on to restate Rowling's method of formulating the name.

From a process perspective, both inclusion and exclusion of the content are not so drastically problematic that this is worth editing over. I urge Outnproud to self-revert. We're likely to reach rough consensus soonish. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 15:24, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

Correct; taking the time to get it right is the fastest and best approach. My scholarly source search is only turning up masters theses, and quite a few articles that mention Galbraith without mentioning this controversy, but I don't have full journal access (hence my ping to Victoria, as google search reveals that Pugh does mention Galbraith). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:28, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

Regardless of that outcome, edit warring on a contentious topic is a problem. Discuss first. – Mind you, I'm not the same person as Outnproud.

I couldn't find any online news sources by websearch, but it didn't turn up the Time article or the one I'm about to mention either, so it might be a search term problem. The Time article links to this article in Them (which we AFAIK haven't had any problems with as a source) which does focus on this. This is still not that much, so might not be worth including, but I'd like to note that we have After the revelation of her identity, sales of Cuckoo's Calling escalated. in there, seemingly based on a two-sentence mention in the Guardian. The bar for including critical content shouldn't be higher than for content of laudatory nature. If we do include it, I think it'd be sensible to have it here where the pseudonym is also otherwise discussed, but Political views of J. K. Rowling does have a paragraph on Troubled Blood, so it could fit in there, too. -- Maddy from Celeste (WAVEDASH) 15:49, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

I'm unclear why you view that content as "laudatory"; it gives context for her donation of all of the proceeds to a charity (if I recall the story correctly, it's pretty astounding for a paralegal at a law firm partner to leak client-privileged information such that the law firm then has to make a charitable donation to avoid a malpractice suit ... as well as Rowling giving all proceeds to charity ... I could be misremembering, though, since I read all of these sources a year ago). Those are plain vanilla facts verifiable to many sources (that is, due weight; that only one source is listed does not mean only one source exists). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:15, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

SandyGeorgia, I sent the Pugh chapter that discusses her adult fiction. See page 116 for an explanation of the name. In my view what we had here is fine for this article; anything else can go to a subarticle. Apols for short reply; will try to look over it later. I had a bit about this in a sandbox that might need to can be undeleted if we know an admin willing to do so. Victoria (tk) 16:29, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

Struck re sandbox. It's still there. Will trawl through as soon as a I can. Victoria (tk) 16:31, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

Regarding After the revelation of her identity, sales of Cuckoo's Calling escalated – this is covered not only in the Guardian but also in Pugh and many other sources (eg. BBC). It's not comparable to the Heath issue. Olivaw-Daneel (talk) 17:22, 28 June 2023 (UTC)

Not a problem with using Time as a source. Insisting on "scholarly sources" seems to be an unreasonably high and arbitrary bar. Also a single reversion is not an "edit war", so let's tamp down on that particular unfounded accusation./ Zaathras (talk) 16:56, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

Do you want to test that (1RR) on a contentious topic ??? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:54, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

Giving due weight to scholarly sources is not unreasonable on a Featured article (that's part of what an FA is). If we've got one or a few mid-rate reliable sources mentioning something that scholarly sources don't even consider, that's a WP:DUE consideration. But let's wait and see what others come up with from scholarly sources. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:56, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

@Vanamonde93, AleatoryPonderings, and Olivaw-Daneel: re other sources (I've found two-- please number sources below for discussion purposes). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:25, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

1. (Ravell): I have found this 2023 source:

• Ravell

Could others give opinions on the quality of this source? Next, if it's a good source, how much weight (if any) do we want to give to what some fans think based on a tweet (notice the careful wording and attribution in the source):

Nonetheless, a tweet from the theme ‘transphobia’ brought to light that this pen name Rowling chose is the same name as an American psychiatrist who ‘experimented on a gay individual through the process of gay conversion theory ... [claiming] that homosexuality could be “cured”’ (see Figure 21). Rowling is yet to comment on this correlation, however according to tweets from this hashtag fans appear to not believe this name similarity was mere coincidence.

That's one source so far, making it clear it's an opinion based on a tweet. If we're going to start introducing opinions from one source based on one tweet, that's a floodgate. (Keeping discussion focused on sources has been the way we've resolved all content matters for two years now; there's no rush, and I also recommend that Outnproud self-revert and collaborate on talk. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:03, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

2. Pugh: I now have Chapter 7 of Pugh (the chapter devoted to Galbraith) and while it mentions how Rowling benefitted from the name, there is no mention whatsoever of this controversy, as far as I can tell from skimming. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:14, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

3. New York Times, 2013, [1].

The name she chose, Ms. Rowling explained, is a mash-up of that of one of her heroes, Robert F. Kennedy, and Ella Galbraith, a fantasy name she chose for herself as a girl.

Ms. Rowling wrote the book under a man’s name, she said, to take her writing persona “as far away as possible” from herself. She said she remembered too late that the American economist John Kenneth Galbraith, who died in 2006, shared her first two initials, and feared that might be a clue to her identity.

Victoria (tk) 19:36, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

That's one source so far – The relevant section already cites popular sources liberally. Is there a good reason to insist on only academic sources here? As for the source itself, well. It's in a real journal. The author is a PhD student with an h-index of 0. The article itself has not been cited anywhere, though it is only a little over a week old. If we're just talking reliability, I'd say it's good enough to say that some people on Twitter think the name's an intentional reference. For considering weight, I did a little review of a few queer news sources/magazines (off the top of my head) to see what they have to say on this. Them has the article I mentioned above, plus two more that mention it ([2],[3]). Them seems like an okay source to me. I can't tell if it's been on RSN before as the title makes it very hard to search for. LGBTQ Nation mentions it ([4]). According to this RSN discussion, LGBTQ Nation has a tabloidical bent, and might be WP:MREL. PinkNews and The Advocate did not make the connection when discussing Rowling's work under the pseudonym. -- Maddy from Celeste (WAVEDASH) 19:33, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

The relevant section already cites popular sources liberally; what is an example of what you refer to from the relevant section? Yes, there are places in the article that use popular sources; generally all well discussed at the FAR and supported by multiple sources (DUE weight) and not controversial. If you see something different, pls give an example. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:39, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

For considering weight, I did a little review of a few queer news sources/magazines (off the top of my head) to see what they have to say on this; I could be misremembering (but I don't think I am). Whenever we used such sources, it was because they were saying the same things most other sources were also saying; we were giving a good representation of all sources, but not undue weight. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:42, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

The matter has been discussed and consensus appears to be that most editors don't have a problem with this information and it passes FA requirements. Cheers! Outnproud (talk) 13:07, 28 June 2023 (UTC) [5]

I don't see how you come to that conclusion, unless you are misunderstanding the discussion above relative to both WP:DUE and the WP:WIAFA requirement for high-quality sources. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:37, 28 June 2023 (UTC)

And we haven't yet heard from the three main contributors of the article, who are the ones most familiar with and who have access to all the highest quality sources: @Vanamonde93, AleatoryPonderings, and Olivaw-Daneel:. I suspect the reason we haven't heard more is that the onus is upon you to come up with due weight from high-quality sources to support the content you want to add, and since you haven't done that, there has been little need for further discussion. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:41, 28 June 2023 (UTC)

At least at first glance/first research the "controversy" over the pen name feels rather hyped and constructed to me. As long as this isn't seriously considered in scholarly sources, I'd strongly oppose the inclusion. Finding a "bad" (but not particular well known) person with similar name and few people speculating in social media or a few press outlets, that Rowling might have picked her pen name intentionally after that person (despite her giving a different explanation) is imho borderline ridiculous and certainly no reason for inclusion into an encyclopedic biography. At this point the whole thing is essentially a baseless rumour/speculation, which deserves no mentioning. Unless it becomes a rather highly publicised/well known meme, that describing it might be justified, but the judgement for that would be via scholarly literature dealing with it in a significant fashion.--Kmhkmh (talk) 14:10, 28 June 2023 (UTC)

Your only major edit to this article (April 2019) [6] didn't require a scholarly source and was poorly formatted and appears to be borderline puffery. Furthermore, that non-scholarly source remains in the Philanthropy section including a REPETITION of the exact same info in the Galbraith para. Even after an April 2022 FAR.

The same info TWICE. Which also begs the question - How did this article pass an FA review? Outnproud (talk) 12:54, 24 July 2023 (UTC) [7]

The information is not duplicated in the two sections, and that sort of uncontroversial content does not require a source any better than the one used. The article passed a five-month FAR, with more than five pages of discussion, with a record number of participants. Hope that helps you understand. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:57, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

(Redacted)

Link to the previous time this issue came up. I don't see much change in the sourcing since then, so I agree with the consensus there (don't include). Olivaw-Daneel (talk) 17:02, 28 June 2023 (UTC)

Previous discussions don't hold precedence, particularly when there is more info. Outnproud (talk) 12:58, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

Unless I'm missing something, the Time article, which grounds the new content, is remarkably thin. It says, "And Rowling’s choice of pen name has also been subject to controversy—Robert Galbraith Heath was the name of a mid-20th century anti-LGBTQ conversion therapist. (Rowling has previously said that the name was a conflation of her political hero, Robert F. Kennedy, and a childhood fantasy name ‘Ella Galbraith’.)" So there is controversy because unnamed people are drawing a connection there is no other basis to draw? A Them article cited above ([8]) makes a similar "there is controversy" assertion without explaining who has drawn this connection and if Rowling or others have responded to it. And. "Robert" and "Galbraith" are common English names. Ultimately, I'm not concerned about the quality of the sources providing these assertions—I have no reason to doubt the credentials of Them and Time. I doubt the quality of the assertion they are making: it is unattributed innuendo. I no longer have university access to Pugh's book; he's likely the only scholar who would have commented on this (or not). AleatoryPonderings (talk) 17:31, 28 June 2023 (UTC)

I understand your misgivings about what defines the controversy, but that's how it was reported, therefore a matter of record. As a Wikipedia editor, you can't define the content based on your own interpretation. Therefore, your acceptance of JKR's account at face value as the only viewpoint, then justifying it with "Robert" and "Galbraith" being common names was incorrect. Whilst "Robert" is a very common name in the UK, "Galbraith" is not. Also the similarities in the name requiring disambiguation should have been in your consideration. However, your analysis on the sources being of sufficient quality is correct but worded negatively. Pugh's book was published in June 2020, therefore unlikely to have a record from late 2020 onwards when these articles came out. JKR publicly acknowledged the controversy in a tweet, claiming the accusations were unfounded, making this notable. Outnproud (talk) 13:16, 24 July 2023 (UTC) [9]

• {{rpp}} I lack the time to explore this issue at present, but I would generally say that I would need to see multiple high-quality sources for a certain line of critique before incorporating it. Vanamonde (Talk) 16:28, 29 June 2023 (UTC)

You may need multiple sources but Wikipedia doesn't. One reliable quality source is sufficient. However, here are many more quality sources: [10] [11] [12][13] Happy reading... Outnproud (talk) 13:11, 24 July 2023 (UTC) [14]

Those are not high-quality sources. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:59, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

One high quality source has been provided, which editors don't have a problem with, and that is sufficient. Outnproud (talk) 12:18, 22 August 2023 (UTC) [15]

In summary, consensus remains that most editors don't have a problem with the information. A previous discussion's consensus was to exclude with the caveat to provide more information from reliable quality sources and evidence of coverage in future. In the current discussion, with quality sources provided, some editors disagreed with the inferences of the controversy from their own POV. However, their NPOV conclusion is that the sources are of high enough quality in the absence (i.e. there is no requirement) for a "scholarly source". Cheers! Outnproud (talk) 13:20, 24 July 2023 (UTC) [16]

I'm not seeing any sort of consensus here for inclusion, nor am I seeing a consensus that the balance of the sources provided have been high quality, or that this content meets WP:DUE. Sideswipe9th (talk) 22:06, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

The consensus is that one high quality source has been provided, which editors don't have a problem with, and that is sufficient. Outnproud (talk) 12:22, 22 August 2023 (UTC)

Blocked, [17]. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 12:10, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

Proposal on Galbraith name

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

Current, 31 words

Proposed, 68 words

Rowling later said she enjoyed working as Robert Galbraith, a name she took from Robert F. Kennedy, a personal hero, and Ella Galbraith, a name she invented for herself in childhood.

Rowling later said she enjoyed working as Robert Galbraith, a name she took from Robert F. Kennedy, a personal hero, and Ella Galbraith, a name she invented for herself in childhood. Followers of the hashtag #RIPJKRowling believed that the name was similar to Robert Galbraith Heath, a psychiatrist who had experimented with gay conversion therapy in the 1970s; Rowling's spokesperson said the claim was "unfounded and untrue".

Sources

References Pugh, Tison (2020). Harry Potter and Beyond: On J. K. Rowling's Fantasies and Other Fictions. University of South Carolina Press. doi:10.2307/j.ctvs09qwv. ISBN 978-1-64336-088-1. OCLC 1142046769. S2CID 225791872. Ravell, Hannah (2023). "#RIPJKRowling: A tale of a fandom, Twitter and a haunting author who refuses to die". Public Relations Inquiry. 0 (0): 1–32. doi:10.1177/2046147X231180501.

• Oppose any addition, and certainly oppose the addition of 37 WP:UNDUE words to add a topic that is not mentioned in a preponderance of reliable or high-quality sources and is basically based on a tweeted rumor. The best source, Pugh, omits it altogether. I agree with Kmhkmh that "the whole thing is essentially a baseless rumour/speculation, which deserves no mentioning. Unless it becomes rather highly publicised/well known meme ... ". I concur with Olivaw-Daneel that nothing has changed since we last visited the topic in terms of it earning due weight. I agree with AleatoryPonderings that it is "unattributed innuendo". As Vanamonde93 states, in accordance with Kmhkmh, we should "see multiple high-quality sources for a certain line of critique before incorporating it", because it is nothing more than a tweeted rumor. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:54, 22 August 2023 (UTC)
• Support: the sourcing for this is as strong as anything else in this article. There's no reason to exclude it other than the general reluctance of editors to say negative things about WP:BLP subjects, which, while understandable, is against WP:NPOV. Loki (talk) 23:39, 22 August 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose Absent something beyond speculation this sort of content is undue. I also agree with the "unattributed innuendo" aspects. Springee (talk) 23:44, 22 August 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose per wp;undue as linked above. This essentially boils down to "some people on a social media site started a rumour, let's republish it." There's nothing to suggest the rumour is true or that the opinions of the #RIP contributors are inherently notable enough to guarantee inclusion in an encyclopedia. Unsubstantiated internet rumours are also a dime a dozen; if we set this as the bar for inclusion we'll end up copypasting half of reddit. -- Euryalus (talk) 00:48, 23 August 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose While the sourcing is OK, and I'd weigh the paper by Ravell quite high, on balance I'm not convinced that this is due. While there is certainly a vocal subset of commentators on social media speculating as to whether or not there is a deliberate link between the names, beyond the surface level similarities, I don't it raises to how DUE describes a significant minority. The lack of easily identifiable prominent adherents beyond a subset who contributed to the hashtag is what clinches it for me. If there was, for example, one or more prominent feminists or activists who mentioned the link between the names, and this was reflected in high quality sources like Ravell, then it might be due per If a viewpoint is held by a significant minority, then it should be easy to name prominent adherents. Sideswipe9th (talk) 17:17, 23 August 2023 (UTC)
• Strong oppose Definitely undue and really seems to be included to disparage the subject. — Czello ^(music) 17:21, 23 August 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose generally per SG. The fact that even the highest-quality sources identified can point only to "followers of" a X-fka-Twitter hashtag without any uptake by mainstream sources or named persons—let alone experts—confirms that giving this theory encyclopedic airtime is UNDUE. AleatoryPonderings (talk) 20:29, 23 August 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose. Of the many sources that discuss the Galbraith pen name (Pugh, NYT, etc.), only a small fraction mention this issue. And even they seem to mention it only in passing (both Time and Ravell focus more on anti-trans tropes in Galbraith's writing). So it seems undue. Olivaw-Daneel (talk) 18:07, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

wording change

−

She rejects these characterisations and the notion that she holds animosity towards transgender people, saying that her viewpoint has been misunderstood.

+

She says that her viewpoint has been misunderstood.

i am proposing this change in wording, as saying that her viewpoint has been misunderstood already implies the deleted text. ltbdl (talk) 07:05, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

I don't see how the proposed change tells the reader anything useful. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 11:05, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

fewer words are better. ltbdl (talk) 13:35, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

@sandygeorgia: how am i supposed to get consensus for my change, then? ltbdl (talk) 13:58, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

Did you see the lengthy discussion above at #Re-raising the neutrality issue? If anyone agreed with your change here, only shortly after that discussion, they would have said so. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:31, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

and if anyone disagreed with my change, they would have said so. ltbdl (talk) 03:51, 20 August 2023 (UTC)

It would be better to have the explanation on why she thinks her viewpoint has been misunderstood. - Rajan51 (talk) 05:16, 20 August 2023 (UTC)

It might, if the sourcing for it existed. However from when I last looked at the sourcing, I don't think that it did. That aside, the length of this section needs to be carefully balanced, as this Rowling's biography is not the primary article for her views on trans rights. If we were to go into more detail anywhere, it would probably best be elaborated in Political views of J. K. Rowling#Transgender_rights. The content that is here is largely a summary of the other article. Sideswipe9th (talk) 20:54, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

I am not entirely clear on the details of this controversy, so if the current statement is not accurate, correcting it would be a good idea. - Rajan51 (talk) 13:40, 26 August 2023 (UTC)

If you can't understand what is meant by the wording there, given that it's all explained in the entire section, I don't see how either adding verbosity, or subtracting context, will improve that. Her viewpoint is laid out throughout the section (she rejects changes to laws that she believes degrade women's rights), as are the characterisations of her viewpoint (she holds animosity towards transgender people) that she disagrees with. It's her BLP; we can't omit the right of response to characterisations. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:26, 26 August 2023 (UTC)

As much of a fan of a KISS as I am, I don't think this is a good simplification. While you could argue that the text you're removing is implicit from the rest of the sentence, when you look at this in context it is not overly implicit from the sentence prior. When reading the two sentences together I think the more explicit version we currently have is better overall. Sideswipe9th (talk) 20:51, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 28 August 2023

"The primary antagonists of Harry Potter, Voldemort and his followers, believe blood purity is paramount, and that non-wizards, or "muggles", are subhuman." - § Gender and social division

"Subhuman" strikes me as a dubious word choice here. It implies that one group think of themselves as normal humans, and of the other group as worse than said norm. But due to their being a tiny minority, Rowling's wizards typically think of themselves as special, and so maybe as "superhuman", instead of vice versa. Plus, neither of the accessibile refs uses the term, AFAI can tell. Replace with simply "inferior"?

- 2A02:560:59AD:9900:C006:3167:F814:E377 (talk) 17:11, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

 Not done for now: please establish a consensus for this alteration before using the {{Edit semi-protected}} template. Tagging this as not done for now, as it'll require a consensus for change. We can discuss it in this section though.

Going largely off memory here, as it's been a couple of years since I actually read the books. With respect to Voldemort and the Death Eater's perspectives on muggles, and to a lesser extend, muggle-born wizards, either "subhuman" or "inferior" strike me as accurate terms to use. Voldemort's position is that both muggles and muggle-born are there to be dominated by his followers and himself. They are definitely seen as lesser than pure-blooded wizards.

The content in the article is currently cited to a bundle of sources, that I unfortunately don't have access to. If someone does currently have access, what do those sources say on the cited pages? Do they use "subhuman" or some synonym? Or do they use different terminology altogether? Sideswipe9th (talk) 17:19, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

@AleatoryPonderings: from looking at the page history, it seems you added the text during the FAR? Any chance you still have access to the sources on this sentence, or recall what they say? I checked the FAR archives to see if this text had been discussed, but my quick search came up dry. Sideswipe9th (talk) 17:30, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

I will take your word for it that I am the one who added "subhuman" and the accompanying text. I no longer have access to Barrat (gone are my university days) but Nel and Eccleshare are on archive.org and your summaries of them (and Barrat) below are helpful. I agree in part with the IP's distinction between "inferior" and "subhuman"—that is, one human being could be inferior to another in some putative hierarchy without being any less human than the other. But I think the sources support using "subhuman" and not "inferior". If, according to HP's baddies, muggles are no better than animals and occupy a lower order of being, "inferior" doesn't capture the depth of their hatred. They think of themselves as humans (or the only beings worthy of respect) and muggles as mere animals. I think "inferior beings" could work, if we needed a compromise? AleatoryPonderings (talk) 20:19, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

How about using "lower order of being" as is? It occurred to me in the meantime that my dislike for "subhuman" may have to do with the source material occasionally using phrasings like "It is my job to arm you against the foulest creatures known to wizardkind!" (Chamber of Secrets), where "wizard" (et cetera) directly replace "human" (et cetera). Which is not to say that this article should use a coinage like that, of course, just that the reference point for the claimed inferiority or superiority ought to be the group making that claim. The explicit reference point of "subhuman" is suboptimal, unlike the implicit one of "inferior" or "lower order of being" or anything along those lines.

- 2A02:560:59AD:9900:C006:3167:F814:E377 (talk) 21:18, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

Giving this some more thought still, tribalism is commonly described as viewing only members of one's own group as entirely "human", and everyone else as more or less "alien". Applying that sense to "subhuman", I suppose it works well enough, irrespective of context.

And then again, the circumstance that it only works well in one sense and not in another, and only when one makes one assumption and not another, and so forth, supports my assertion that it is suboptimal, doesn't it. :P

- 2A02:560:59AD:9900:C006:3167:F814:E377 (talk) 22:24, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

What I remember from the text is wizards saying things in the vein of "muggles are little better than animals", and it's surely safe to assume that they do not believe the same to apply to wizards. My quibble is that while this does directly translate to either "muggles are subwizard" or "wizards are supermuggle", replacing those more specific labels with "-human" isn't straightforward.

For a clearer-cut case, saying that a Star Trek Vulcan believes that humans are subhuman makes very little sense to me, and saying that a Star Trek Human believes that Vulcans are superhuman makes a lot of sense. Here, it's murkier, but in a way that makes the usage more unfortunate, not less.

Two of the three refs link to archive.org, and I searched those for the term, with no hits. I found the third at Google Books in the meantime, and got one relevant hit there:

“ Just as some wizards consider nonmagical folk to be subhuman, many Muggles believe it is the wizards who are abnormal and unfit to rule. If the two sides hold such extreme and diametrically opposed views, how factually based can they be? ”

A second hit uses the term in the, to my mind unproblematic, context of magical creatures. I don't think that's a fulltext version, though, so that may not be the only occurrences there.

- 2A02:560:59AD:9900:C006:3167:F814:E377 (talk) 18:44, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

What I remember from the text is wizards saying things in the vein of "muggles are little better than animals", and it's surely safe to assume that they do not believe the same to apply to wizards. For Voldemort, his followers, and those sympathetic to his views, there are two "classes" of wizard kind. Pure-blood, and muggle-born. At some extremes (see Umbridge and the muggle-born trials she presided over on behalf of the Ministry of Magic during Deathly Hallows), muggle-born wizards were viewed as muggles who had simply stolen their powers.

As for the books, I'd tried searching for them through archive.org earlier, but the site was down and kept returning empty pages. Reading those two now, Nel contrasts Voldemort's views against Hitler's "Aryan ideal", which did have a concept of subhuman (see untermensch), though the source itself stops short of explicitly using those terms. Eccleshare meanwhile discusses briefly Voldemort's hatred of both muggles and those with mixed-muggle parentage, and how that was expressed in his views on wizarding blood purity. Unfortunately both Nel and Eccleshare were written when only three/four of the books had been published.

I've also now found a copy of Barrat. It also makes a comparison between Voldemort's views on wizarding purity and superiority, and Hitler's views. On page 67, it does directly support the text in the article; Finally, we know that for many wizards, nonmagical humans are not fully human at all—and may be no more than animals, that alone would support using "subhuman" as terminology for muggles, even if it doesn't use the term itself. As for muggle-born wizards, page 72 of Barrat mentions how Malfoy treated Hermione as an object, rather than a person in the fourth book, along with a selection of quotations from a portrait in the Black household, which Barrat states [implies] that they are a lower order of being. On pages 73-76 it goes on to describe the effects of the muggle-born registration committee during the Deathly Hallows, how muggle-born wizards were excluded from nearly every aspect of society, and how Umbridge used the legislation to take wands from muggle-born wizards as based on the twisted, biologically deterministic logic that no Muggle-born can be a real witch or wizard, and therefore could not have been chosen by a wand at Ollivanders.

After reading through all of this, I think subhuman is a reasonable term to use here. Even if much of how the sources are describing this is oblique, we are supposed to summarise what our sources state in our own words. Using subhuman here seems to succinctly encompass much of what these three sources are discussing without losing or adding meaning. Sideswipe9th (talk) 19:39, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

Changing alleged “fairytale” inspiration to “gothic literature”

The parts of the summary that claim the books are, in any specific or notable way, inspired by “fairy tales” or are primarily “about good vs evil” morality seem like simplistic additions made by someone who is not actually that familiar with Harry Potter.

Rowling has repeatedly mentioned, specifically, how authors like Dickens and Brontë have inspired Harry Potter and her writing in general, but never any specific “fairy tales”. This connection to Charles Dickens, tonally, in terms of world building and storytelling conventions, has been frequently noted in media. All of the connections drawn to fairy tales seem relatively superficial.

Also, in keeping with what is written on the Harry Potter page, I think it would be more meaningful to describe death and love as being central themes of the series. Prejudice is also a more specific theme of the series, in a moral sense. Threefrgy (talk) 00:23, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

Have you read all of the sources upon which the text in this article is based? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:31, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

yes, and none ever mention explicitly how Harry Potter resembles a "fairy tale", or what specific fairy tales significantly inspired the series. Threefrgy (talk) 04:53, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

Rowling's most famous work, Harry Potter, has been defined as a fairy tale, a Bildungsroman and a boarding-school story.

References

• Heilman, Elizabeth E., ed. (7 August 2008). Critical Perspectives on Harry Potter (2nd ed.). Routledge. doi:10.4324/9780203892817. ISBN 978-1-135-89154-1.
  • Alton, Anne Hiebert. "Playing the genre game: generic fusions of the Harry Potter series". In Heilman 2008.
• Berndt, Katrin; Steveker, Lena, eds. (22 April 2016). Heroism in the Harry Potter Series. Routledge. doi:10.4324/9781315586748. ISBN 978-1-317-12211-1.
  • Pharr, Mary. "A paradox: the Harry Potter series as both epic and postmodern". In Berndt & Steveker 2016.

• Pharr: "Rowling’s books were both praised and criticized as fairy tale, bildungsroman and schooldays ... "
• Alton: "The significance of certain numbers also invokes folk and fairy tale motifs,"

And if you go to scholar.google.com and search on "Harry Potter" "fairy tale", you will find scores of other scholarly sources supporting this text. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 06:22, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

AleatoryPonderings is there any significance to "understood" as a fairy talk versus the current "defined" as a fairy tale, and does it matter ? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:40, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

I don't think it matters. To my ear, "defined" is stronger than "understood", but both would summarize critics describing HP as, e.g., a fairy tale. I have little skin in this game; the text stands or falls with the sources cited, and as you note immediately above, the sources say "fairy tale". AleatoryPonderings (talk) 02:57, 25 September 2023 (UTC)