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Featured articleJ. K. Rowling is a featured article; it (or a previous version of it) has been identified as one of the best articles produced by the Wikipedia community. Even so, if you can update or improve it, please do so.
Main Page trophyThis article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page as Today's featured article on April 11, 2008, and on June 26, 2022.
On this day... Article milestones
DateProcessResult
June 3, 2006Good article nomineeListed
January 3, 2007Peer reviewReviewed
October 7, 2007Peer reviewReviewed
December 8, 2007Featured article candidatePromoted
April 15, 2022Featured article reviewKept
On this day... Facts from this article were featured on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "On this day..." column on July 31, 2017, July 31, 2021, and July 31, 2022.
Current status: Featured article

You know,

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More I look into this article, more I think some WP:OWN issues mean it shouldn't be a featured article. There's things that should be capable of being dealt with simply - Wikipedia voice probably shouldn't be saying things like "She often tweets about her political opinions using wit and sarcasm," using citations from 4 years ago, but everything, every-fucking-thing, "IT'S FINE TAKE IT TO TALK NO CHANGES ALLOWED!!!!1!!!"

Is there nothing about this article that's changeable? Is no source so patently terrible that it's not worth a month of discussion, even if it literally only has three sentences about J.K. Rowling and patently doesn't cite the text, but has people shouting about how it's the platonic ideal of sources and how the FAC process means nithing should change, and nothing's up for re-evaluation.

Seriously, this is the most toxic editing environment I've ever seen in my 18 years editing Wikipedia.


It's also the article where I'd say the most sources fail verification when checked. So many sources that almost say what they're used for, but are actually talking about an adjacent topic, or are about a specific incident but being quoted as if they're general sources Adam Cuerden (talk)Has about 8.8% of all FPs. 09:20, 30 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

many such cases on the project. An ever smaller group of enforcers guarding an ever larger stock of articles. It damages the recursive nature of the project which--in my experience--doesn't produce npov or good articles. To the point, I would support removing featured article status. SmolBrane (talk) 22:13, 30 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I do agree that the featured article status makes certain contributors way too cautious about changes. Sometimes it's reasonable to say a certain line in an article shouldn't be changed because it's the result of a hard-fought consensus, but the whole article should never be like that. Change is necessary to maintain featured article status, as a featured article that's out of date is not featured article quality any more. Loki (talk) 22:31, 30 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Agree with these concerns. Innisfree987 (talk) 23:42, 30 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
AC, could you please have a look at WP:FAOWN. First, I don't see a problem with four-year-old citations for the fact that JKR is a prolific tweeter; that hasn't changed, and many sources back it. Second, that content was specifically prefacing all of the sub-sections below it to avoid saying that all of those views were expressed via tweets, repetitively. Several of the sources discussed how JKR was among the first to make extensive use of Twitter to build her fan base.
In general, whether something is changeable, or what consensus or discussion went into certain content, might be something you could inquire about in advance, without using profanity that raises the temperature on what has been a most collaborative talk page. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:08, 13 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Style, and a lack thereof in the current version.

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1 Rowling is known primarily as an author of fantasy and children's literature.[1] Her writing in other genres, including literary fiction and murder mystery, has received less critical attention.[2] Rowling's most famous work, Harry Potter, has been defined as a fairy tale, a Bildungsroman and a boarding-school story.[3][4] Her other writings have been described by Pugh as gritty contemporary fiction with historical influences (The Casual Vacancy) and hardboiled detective fiction (Cormoran Strike).[5]

In my opinion, this is fine enough. It's an introduction to what she wrote.

2 In Harry Potter, Rowling juxtaposes the extraordinary against the ordinary.[6] Her narrative features two worlds – the mundane and the fantastic – but it differs from typical portal fantasy in that its magical elements stay grounded in the everyday.[7] Paintings move and talk; books bite readers; letters shout messages; and maps show live journeys,[6][8] making the wizarding world "both exotic and cosily familiar" according to the scholar Catherine Butler.[8] This blend of realistic and romantic elements extends to Rowling's characters. Their names often include morphemes that correspond to their characteristics: Malfoy is difficult, Filch unpleasant and Lupin a werewolf.[9][10] Harry is ordinary and relatable, with down-to-earth features such as wearing broken glasses;[11] Roni Natov terms him an "everychild".[12] These elements serve to highlight Harry when he is heroic, making him both an everyman and a fairytale hero.[11][13]

This is where we start getting into excessive detail. This paragraph is an exact quote from Harry Potter (series). We should be summarising briefly things better described elsewhere; four lengthy paragraphs is way too much. My inclination is to say touch on key things, the moment we start to get into excessive detail, it should cut. This whole paragraph should probably be the first two or three sentences, at most.

3 Arthurian, Christian and fairytale motifs are frequently found in Rowling's writing. Harry's ability to draw the Sword of Gryffindor from the Sorting Hat resembles the Arthurian sword in the stone legend.[14] His life with the Dursleys has been compared to Cinderella.[15] Like C. S. Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia, Harry Potter contains Christian symbolism and allegory. The series has been viewed as a Christian moral fable in the psychomachia tradition, in which stand-ins for good and evil fight for supremacy over a person's soul.[16] The critic of children's literature Joy Farmer sees parallels between Harry and Jesus Christ.[17] Comparing Rowling with Lewis, she argues that "magic is both authors' way of talking about spiritual reality".[18] According to Maria Nikolajeva, Christian imagery is particularly strong in the final scenes of the series: she writes that Harry dies in self-sacrifice and Voldemort delivers an ecce homo speech, after which Harry is resurrected and defeats his enemy.[19]

This is largely okay, but a lot of it repeats bits from J. K. Rowling#Influences. Why not mention comparisons with Lewis when talking about Lewis in #Influences? Why is this its own paragraph? Why is this article so badly written? Why are related thoughts not next to each other? Why do things get introduced, only to be promptly dropped before being reintroduced later with more detail?

Themes

4 Death is Rowling's overarching theme in Harry Potter.[20][21] In the first book, when Harry looks into the Mirror of Erised, he feels both joy and "a terrible sadness" at seeing his desire: his parents, alive and with him.[22] Confronting their loss is central to Harry's character arc and manifests in different ways through the series, such as in his struggles with Dementors.[22][23] Other characters in Harry's life die; he even faces his own death in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.[24] The series has an existential perspective – Harry must grow mature enough to accept death.[25] In Harry's world, death is not binary but mutable, a state that exists in degrees.[26] Unlike Voldemort, who evades death by separating and hiding his soul in seven parts, Harry's soul is whole, nourished by friendship and love.[25] Love distinguishes the two characters. Harry is a hero because he loves others, even willing to accept death to save them; Voldemort is a villain because he does not.[27]

This has absolutely nothing to do with J. K. Rowling, which is weird because there's also a section J._K._Rowling#Inspiration and mother's death which fails to say anything of significance about how her mother's death affected her writing. Why is this article so bad? How was this ever accepted as a featured article?

5 While Harry Potter can be viewed as a story about good versus evil, its moral divisions are not absolute.[28][29] First impressions of characters are often misleading. Harry assumes in the first book that Quirrell is good because he opposes Snape, who appears malicious; in reality, their positions are reversed. This pattern later recurs with Moody and Snape.[28] In Rowling's world, good and evil are choices rather than inherent attributes: second chances and redemption are key themes of the series.[30] This is reflected in Harry's self-doubts after learning his connections to Voldemort, such as the ability of both to communicate with snakes in their language of Parseltongue;[31] and prominently in Snape's characterisation, which has been described as complex and multifaceted.[32] In some scholars' view, while Rowling's narrative appears on the surface to be about Harry, her focus may actually be on Snape's morality and character arc.[33][34]

Wildly off topic deep into the Harry Potter literary analysis weeds. A little of this might be appropriate, but there's way too many examples. Again, most of this should be a "See also"


This article is such a mess. Adam Cuerden (talk)Has about 8.9% of all FPs. 12:45, 12 July 2024 (UTC) Adam Cuerden (talk)Has about 8.9% of all FPs. 12:45, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  • I have just reverted a removal of literary analysis from the lead. As with most of this article, content that was extensively workshopped at FAR needs active consensus to remove; and I oppose the removal of most of what I added back in, as the reception of an author's work is central to their biography. As I've said before, Harry Potter made Rowling a public figure. Without it we wouldn't have an article about her, and nobody would care about her views on transgender people.
    That said I'm open to trimming some detail from the paragraphs highlighted above, if we're able to move past excoriating it and actually engaging with the substance. The premise that literary analyses are irrelevant to Rowling's biography is plain wrong, but details that cannot be understood by a reader without a detailed recollection of the novels may need trimming. Vanamonde93 (talk) 17:12, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    It's more that it's not well-written. As I said, there's things where to understand it you need to combine two different sections no-where near each other. There's a failure to properly use subpages for more detail. It's a fundamental failure of structure.
    Further, it's one of those things where it's very narrow - pretty much entirely Harry Potter - and excessively deep. Only the first paragraph even mentions anything that isn't Harry Potter, but it dives very deep, to the point of a lot of discussion of Snape's arc (mainly only revealed in the last two books) and naming conventions in it. Adam Cuerden (talk)Has about 8.9% of all FPs. 19:08, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with Adam that this is way way too much detail on Harry Potter for an article on its author.
I also think that saying content that was extensively workshopped at FAR needs active consensus to remove is a classic example of what I objected to above as the featured article status makes certain contributors way too cautious about changes. Loki (talk) 19:24, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
LokiTheLiar, wrt to this specific issue (styles/themes/etc), it was explicitly discussed at FAR. I was from the outset strongly opposed to including themes, styles, etc related to Harry Potter, saying that content belonged in sub articles, and consensus was firmly against my arguments in a discussion that involved well more than the usual number of participants. So, I accepted consensus and we moved forward, with Vanamonde93 and AleatoryPonderings and Olivaw-Daneel doing the bulk of that work.
Given that the content was founded on a strong consensus against my view (and IIRC I was the only one with that view, but I could be misremembering), and workshopped in a FAR that included a couple dozen other editors, I suggest that Adam Cuerden should cease making sweeping unilateral changes to the article without discussion.
I also see mention that the theme/style content is included in sub-articles; I'm fairly certain it was all first written here as a concise stand-alone summary, and later copied over to sub-articles. As one example of how some of the undiscussed unilateral edits have damaged the article, the deletion of a description of Harry Potter from the lead makes the article less intelligible to readers (like me) who have never touched a Potter book.
Adam Cuerden could you please lower the level of hyperbole here, and work collaboratively with others ? Putting things like Why is this article so bad? in bold isn't advancing collaborative efforts, and you've been around Wikipedia long enough to have seen what BAD articles look like; I suspect you'll find that improvements will proceed more quickly without the unnecessary air of personalization.
I became convinced as the article evolved that styles and themes did fit here, so I do not support removal or tagging of this content. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:58, 13 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
For a featured article, this article is bad. I'm judging it on the standards of other featured articles, not by that of random terrible articles, but I will say, the coherency of this article structurally genuinely is very bad.
Look at the actual context for "Why is this so bad?": The section on death in Harry Potter feels out of place as it has no connection with Rowling. The section on the death of Rowlings' mother feels like it has an awful lot of detail for something that goes nowhere. In most sources I've seen, a path is laid out from the death of Rowling's mother to death being used as a theme in Harry Potter, but this supposedly-Featured-class article doesn't do that, instead splitting the two halves of that thought with several other sections between them, with no connection being drawn. That's what I'm referring to as bad.
Adam Cuerden (talk)Has about 8.9% of all FPs. 02:33, 13 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Your tone could be adjusted, as in, more helpful and concrete suggestions, less battleground and hyperbole. Paragraphs of complaining about things you personally don't like don't advance article improvement (in fact, they're more likely to chase off those willing and able to work on those improvements). WP:CTOP applies doubly to this article. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:51, 13 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I wouldn't mind cutting a sentence or two from each subsection, but I think the overall length and depth of detail is close to where it should be. Good articles about authors should include description of their major works and the themes they write about. I glanced at a few literature bio FAs, and this seems pretty common. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 14:29, 13 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • I have made these snips [1] to the Style and Themes sections. I am happy to discuss any of them; I am not wedded to any of those changes, but felt they were places were we could trim material that was either too specific for an overview, or so nuanced that a fuller discussion was out of scope. I am undecided about the last two sentences of "Style"; I think the first may be too general without expansion, the second, too detailed; but the christian parallels are a major topic in the sources, so I felt I'd ask first. Five paragraphs is far from excessive for an author whose works have received a lot of critical attention, and I would ask that the tags be removed. Vanamonde93 (talk) 20:03, 13 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    No-one ever seems to pay attention to the substance of what I say. I mention the death-theme section feels awkwardly split from a section on Rowling's mother's death earlier that peters out without making a point, and I get complaints about me saying the article's bad, and some mild trimming. I mention that the discussion of Lewis is all split up, and no-one reacts. Adam Cuerden (talk)Has about 8.9% of all FPs. 16:36, 19 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Perhaps there's a reason for this reaction? Since I've already explained multiple times, I won't repeat. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:45, 19 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I don't react because I have nothing to add to that; I simply disagree, and I've made my points about article structure at great length here and at the FAR. Since you ask: I don't think material related to Lewis should be grouped ignoring how it fits with the broader structure. A lot of sources discuss death as a theme; very few make the connection to her mother's death. Ideas and influences inevitably crop up in multiple places in an author's biography. This isn't necessarily a flaw; sometimes coherent structure requires it. Vanamonde93 (talk) 01:40, 20 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Indeed. I wonder why? (Possibly insert "Am I so out of touch? No - it's the children who are wrong!" Principal Skinner.gif here) BastunĖġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ! 07:50, 20 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Sources

References

  1. ^ Pugh 2020, pp. 11, 20.
  2. ^ Pugh 2020, p. 107.
  3. ^ Pharr 2016, p. 10.
  4. ^ Alton 2008, p. 211.
  5. ^ Pugh 2020, pp. 114–116.
  6. ^ a b Natov 2002, p. 129.
  7. ^ Butler 2012, pp. 233–234.
  8. ^ a b Butler 2012, p. 234.
  9. ^ Park 2003, p. 183.
  10. ^ Natov 2002, p. 130.
  11. ^ a b Nikolajeva 2008, p. 233.
  12. ^ Ostry 2003, p. 97.
  13. ^ Ostry 2003, pp. 90, 97–98.
  14. ^ Alton 2008, p. 216.
  15. ^ Gallardo & Smith 2003, p. 195.
  16. ^ Singer 2016, pp. 26–27.
  17. ^ Farmer 2001, p. 58.
  18. ^ Farmer 2001, p. 55.
  19. ^ Nikolajeva 2008, pp. 238–239.
  20. ^ Ciaccio 2008, pp. 39–40.
  21. ^ Groves 2017, pp. xxi–xxii, 135–136.
  22. ^ a b Natov 2002, pp. 134–136.
  23. ^ Taub & Servaty-Seib 2008, pp. 23–27.
  24. ^ Pharr 2016, pp. 20–21.
  25. ^ a b Los 2008, pp. 32–33.
  26. ^ Stojilkov 2015, p. 135.
  27. ^ Pharr 2016, pp. 14–15, 20–21.
  28. ^ a b Schanoes 2003, pp. 131–132.
  29. ^ McEvoy 2016, p. 207.
  30. ^ Doughty 2002, pp. 247–249; McEvoy 2016, pp. 207, 211–213; Berberich 2016, p. 153.
  31. ^ Doughty 2002, pp. 247–249.
  32. ^ Birch 2008, pp. 110–113.
  33. ^ Nikolajeva 2016, p. 204.
  34. ^ Applebaum 2008, pp. 84–85.

Citation errors and CITEVAR

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Since the rewrite of the transgender section was installed, this article has been riddled with harvref errors, and changes to WP:CITEVAR; could regular editors here please be more aware of WP:WIAFA, and the established citation style? Installing User:Trappist the monk/HarvErrors.js is one way to notice the harvref errors; ctrl-f on "cite journal" will point to others. I will begin working on repair now. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:15, 13 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  1. New book sources (Whited and Henderson) were never added to Source list, resulting in HarvRef errors and short notes going nowhere: done.
  2. Sources that were removed from the article were not removed from sources list. Why was this source removed; for now, I've commented it out.
    Now fixed by User:Some1,thx. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:21, 18 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  3. Someone added Taylor without adding it to journal sources (a WP:CITEVAR change), and with a change in date style, a URL that doesn't point to free full text, and missing the page number. Victoriaearle (or anyone else with journal access), could you please provide the page number or range?

SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:41, 13 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry SandyGeorgia I'm only working through notifications now. I don't have that journal, nor do I know when it was added - I unwatched here weeks ago. It may have come from the Wikipedia Library but dunno. Regardless, yes, that page number should be added. Maybe LokiTheLiar knows? Or someone else? I completely lost track as to who was working on what. Victoria (tk) 20:00, 17 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I hope someone will get on it; the install was pushed through prematurely, without tying up the loose ends -- just when we were so close to consensus. Thx, Victoria. Some1 I believe you did the install (I could be wrong as I stopped following closely -- are you able to complete this cittation?) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:10, 17 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Another user did the install [2], but I guess I did accidentally removed some sources in this edit [3]. I've restored them now; did that fix (some of) the errors? Some1 (talk) 23:20, 17 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thanx, Some1, sorry for the mixup. User:-sche, it seems you installed a draft with an incomplete citation. Are you able to cite that content? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:25, 18 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'll see if I can dig through the revisions (of this talk page and the article itself) later to see when/if the page numbers were removed, but for now I've just removed the 3 words in question (as a normal edit), because I do recall noticing when comparing revisions of the article that the 3 words were not present in the article for a good part of its history (though they were present at some points), and though they were in the draft that it was decided to implement (with the explicit note that normal editing should continue), I see no problem with removing them if there are sourcing issues. Cheers! -sche (talk) 21:17, 18 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thx! As you can see from the historical version of Talk:J. K. Rowling/Archive 21#Draft 8, we've lost the bulk of that sentence, as well as new sources I offered in the discussion. Why should we lose academic freedom, cancel culture, etc? I don't think the version was ready to be installed, people lost patience when we were almost over the finish line (so we don't have a strong consensus version), but I was too busy to say so then ... and the current transgender rights section has a lot of repetition (which looks like overdriving "transphobia" into the section). Slower and steadier was doing the job; I hope we can resume that mode of editing. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:51, 18 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry but I have to disagree with you on that last bit. Slower and steadier was very much not doing the job. Going "slow and steady" meant that we had an out-of-date section left in the article for months. Loki (talk) 16:26, 19 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
We ended up with text that says very little that is different from where we started (so any datedness wasn't urgent), but what we ended up with is less well written and had (still) citation errors. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:44, 19 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I very much disagree with all of that, except the citation errors. Loki (talk) 23:32, 19 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Leveson op-ed, stance and weight (should be easy to clarify)

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The article says In 2012, she wrote an op-ed for The Guardian in response to Cameron's decision not to implement all the inquiry's recommendations. Wouldn't it be more informative to say that she criticized his decision or said she felt duped, rather than merely wrote about it, particularly as the next sentence begins She reaffirmed her stance... but it's unclear what stance that's calling back to? (Is "her stance" that she "has a difficult relationship with the press and has tried to influence the type of coverage she receives", is "too thin-skinned", "had taken more than 50 actions against the press", and/or "dislikes the British tabloid the Daily Mail"? Genuine question; those are the only conceivably stance-ish things I spot in the preceding parts of the section.) The end of the paragraph suggests that the stance we're saying she re-affirmed might be "[safeguard] the press from political interference while also giving vital protection to the vulnerable", but I find it confusing that this mention of her "re-affirming" it is the first mention of her having it at all: it makes the section awkward to parse. Can we improve this?
I also notice that the only source currently supporting that sentence seems to be the op-ed itself. Sure, the op-ed is reliable for the statement that the op-ed exists, and one sentence is not much, but don't we want secondary sources about the op-ed to establish that this, of all the things she has written, is one which is due inclusion in this FA which should adhere most highly to best practices about writing and sourcing? (Or am I mistaken?) I expect such secondary sources do exist: here is a CNN article covering the op-ed which could be added to the references for that sentence, and better/'weightier' sources may exist.
(Given the issues that various prior and ongoing discussions have identified with various sections of the article, I decided to spot-check whether other sections had issues or not, and this was the first section I scrolled to... which suggests it might indeed be prudent to check other sections for things that could be improved...) -sche (talk) 14:51, 13 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I would go for something like "In 2012, she criticised Cameron's decision not to implement all the inquiry's recommendations and supported the Hacked Off campaign, pushing for further media reform." It would be good to cite both the op-ed and the CNN piece. If we want to add a bit more detail, I think it'd better to focus on the content of her criticism—mainly that Cameron didn't pursue more legislative regulation—rather than the venue of her op-ed and the exact timing of the criticism. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 17:03, 13 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That whole bit pre-dates the FAR, and IIRC, there was no specific discussion of that portion during the FAR, although several editors fiddled with it on copyedit (and in retrospect, it appears there was an attempt to shorten it all). Here is how it looked pre-FAR, if that's any help in the rewrite. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:42, 13 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Suggest attention at Pamela Paul

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I would suggest the very thoughtful and careful attention appearing here, from this Talk section's participants, may be soon needed at this referenced article. There, contentions are being made by new editor @User:Standing and Staring, using terms to describe this NYT Opinion writer (and Rowling defender), contentions that are not based on others' stating terms, but rather based on on the new editor stating terms (conclusions), then providing what they believe to be primary source evidence of their assertion.

I believe this violates WP:OR, WP:VERIFY, AND WP:NPOV. The discourse is at the 1RR stage. (I am a retired faculty member, and retired Wikipedian, and was looking in at that article to do WP:VERIFY type edits, and seem to have just mis-timed my presence with this red-letter editor's appearance and POV editing.)

98.206.30.195 (talk) 00:20, 14 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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