Talk:Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince/Archive 1

message: When will this book be released in the US & UK? --Gafaddict 8 July 2005 22:58 (UTC)
:Midnight, Saturday, July 16, 2005. Hermione1980 8 July 2005 23:01 (UTC)
::To disambiguate, that is the midnight between Friday and Saturday: at time of writing that is some 4 days and 11½ hours. HTH HAND —Phil | Talk 11:24, July 11, 2005 (UTC)
:So the British release is five hours before the first release in North America--is that correct?
::Due to time zones, I believe so, yes. Sonic Mew | talk to me 19:16, July 13, 2005 (UTC)
Is the thing he said about *** and *** true?
:I want to make this perfectly clear:  Whatever vandals try to add, no one knows what is in this book, and no one will know until Saturday!  (The few people who have read it, aren't going to spoil it for us.) Sonic Mew | talk to me 17:31, July 14, 2005 (UTC)
Shouldn't the release times be in 24-hour format? I was going to change it if I knew what 12:01 am is. Is it in the morning or night? I'm sure all non-US people are equally confused. User:EliasMartenson
: Feel free to change it.  FYI, AM is before noon (12:00 AM is midnight, 1 AM is the next hour).  PM is noon (12:00 PM) and after (1 PM is the next hour).  See 12-hour clock. — 131.230.133.185 02:27, 16 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Release Date 

message: Can anyone verify these? I'm currently about fourteen hours away from getting my copy, because I'm getting it from the library and the library doesn't open until 10:00 am tomorrow morning and… [/gripe] Anyway, these just don't quite sound right, so if anyone up at midnight in the UK right now could verify this (not expecting it, but maybe…). Hermione1980 00:13, 16 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I've currently removed the table of contents.  After a few days, when we no longer need the chapter titles as section heads (to expedite adding new plot details), I'll (or someone else will) reorganize the sections and reinsert the table of contents.
I just commented out the whole lot of them. I'm currently siding with the "No spoilers!" crowd, and the titles just sound fishy to me. Hermione1980 00:49, 16 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Chapter titles? 

message: It seems to me that the rule for the release time is: all releases are at midnight UK time, except in time zones earlier (East) than UK, where it was released at midnight. Is this correct? --Taejo 08:15, 16 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Seems to me that it's time zones west of GMT (e.g. the Americas) that see releases at midnight local time, while time zones east of GMT (e.g. Asia and Australia) see releases at midnight GMT. Steven Luo 08:20, 16 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: No, it was midnight BST, not GMT. David Newton 09:57, 16 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Release times 

message: * http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1691805,00.html
: Reading ban on leaked Harry Potter
: ... Raincoast Books, the book's Canadian publisher, was granted a "John Doe" injunction prohibiting the buyers from even reading their copies before the publication date.
This injunction thing is totally bull****. A book waiting to be published is at most a trade secret. If you cannot keep the secret, you are screwed by no one except you. You have no one but yourself to blame.
: The supreme court of British Columbia issued a court order preventing anyone from "displaying, reading, offering for sale, selling or exhibiting in public" their books. J. K. Rowling's legal advisers said that the author was entitled to prevent buyers from reading their own books even though they had not broken the law.
A book legally sold is the buyer's property. The buyer cannot duplicate the book, but he/she shall be allowed to resell that copy to anyone. J. K. Rowling has every right in the world to buy the book back if she pays the money.
This "DO NOT SELL IT OR YOU"LL BE DEAD MEAT" rule is nothing but a contract. J. K. Rowling might ask her book distributers to sing a contract, but that's not binding to the book's readers. If I did not sign the contract, I am not binded by it. To hell with J. K. Rowling and her lawyers.
: '"The fact is that this is property that should not have been in their possession," said Neil Blair, a legal specialist for Christopher Little, the author's literary agent. "Copyright holders are entitled to protect their work. If the content of the book is confidential until July 16, which it is, why shouldn't someone who has the physical book be prevented from reading it and thereby obtaining the confidential information? How they came to have access to the book is immaterial."''
With very few (unfair and unjust) exceptions, nemo dat quod non habet is nothing but bullshit today. If I buy the book legally from a book seller, I have the right to keep it. I don't care if the book seller breaks whatever contract, that's none of my business.
: British lawyers ... added that the reader did not have a right in law to read the book. Korieh Duodu, a media lawyer for David Price Solicitors and Advocates, said: "... property rights often trump civil liberties. There is no human right to read."
There is also no human right to impose copyrights on others. Personally, I think freedom of speech is much more natural and important. Korieh Duodu should be disbarred.
: Raincoast Books has attempted to persuade buyers to return their books by offering a bookplate signed by J. K. Rowling and a T-shirt. ...
Raincoast Books is giving them peanuts. If I were anyone of them, I'll ask J. K. Rowling to pay me a million dollar at least. What a shame. -- Toytoy 10:58, July 16, 2005 (UTC)
: As mentioned above under the Stallman bit, I put a link to the injunction, and some links to news articles and a law professor's take on it into Harry Potter.  Hopefully when the storm of edits dies down something similar can be added.  — Hobart 18:42, 16 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  The Canadian fiasco 

message: to the Crystal ball website. It only makes sense to have it there, in the short-term.
The information WILL become available sooner rather than later----but we ought to place the spoilers elsewhere.
*Thank you very much.
*Nonsense. The spoilers should only be in the HP+THBP article itself, not in any other article. If there indeed has to be such an artificial article as Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Crystal Ball), it should indeed, as the intro states, only contain "what was known about [the book] prior to its release on July 16, 2005." The spoilers have only become known after the release, so they have no place in the Crystal Ball article. Aecis 13:59, 16 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  I added the spoiler information... 

message: Okay folks, CronoDroid here, I hope you have enjoyed my editing and summarising! I really need sleep and I just thought I would tell you guys that I can't edit for about another eleven-twelve hours (sleep is important). So could someone else become summariser, please? I have done about 17 chapters in 13 hours, so someone (or many people) can do the next 13, I'm sure. Thank you and goodnight!! 
I hope that everyone out there has appreciated my summaries. 
CronoDroid 23:00 16 JULY 2005 (GMT +10, Daylight Savings)
*I think the summaries are way too detailed.  We need to shorten them further, but they're a good start.
**I think they are great just the way they are. CronoDroid did a fantastic job.
***They are great summaries, but they cover way too much materials.  I'm more worried that the chapter-by-chapter summaries are serious violations of some copyright laws, and I have a strong feeling that they are.
*If you go to "edit this page", it'll tell you that the main article is way over the recommended/typical length of a Wikipedia entry.  Way over.  We need to shorten it.
**Chapter-by-chapter summaries can in no way, shape or form be a violation of copyright legislation. Furthermore, this page is only 5kb over the recommended size. That is nothing, and there is no need to shorten this article. Aecis 13:50, 16 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Finished my stint as summariser 

message: ... not a reference to Plato is it by any chance? Just wondering. - Ta bu shi da yu 15:47, 16 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Chapter 26, The Cave... 

message: The article is a total mess. There are duplications everyone. I deleted it. We should copy and paste the important parts from History.
*I think it's time this article is protected, so that an admin can sort this out and sift through all the additions, tests, errors and pieces of vandalism, without being disturbed. Aecis 18:20, 16 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Spring Cleaning 

message: I was just trying to remive some repetitions, but as soon as I did so, they were redone. Someone or more probably some bot is trying to vandalize the article. Administrators please take notice of this.
* I have noticed the user 24.17.197.243 has had many warnings and has done much damage to this article. I agree that is is quite annoying and I think it unacceptable on the vandels' behalf. --Cameron 01:23, 19 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Vandals 

message: A vandal took a copy of the article and spliced it in a second time. I removed the second copy of the text, but it is possible that some edits were made to that copy, so if that was the case, and I deleted anyone's edits, I apologize.  --Arcadian 18:57, 16 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Doesn't take vandalism, there's a MediaWiki bug that does that. -- Cyrius|✎ 19:22, 16 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Duplicate copy 

message: How come in some edits the plot synopses for Chapters 1-9 appears twice? --66.214.243.237 19:02, 16 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Duplicated sections is a sign of edit conflicts on sections, not vandalism. Any admins trying to fix this should lock the page, fix it, then unlock the page, as I have just done. ed g2s • talk 19:11, 16 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  2 plot synopses 

message: Err, that is not a 'plot synopsis'. It is a set of chapter synopses. I recommend a synopsis of the synopses that gives a very brief outline of the plot of the novel as a whole. ZephyrAnycon 20:07, 16 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Synopsis" 

message: Does an in-depth summary of a newly released work of children's fiction really contribute to encyclopedic knowledge? It seems more like a tribute to a particular feat of speed reading to me.
:This is a very silly piece of elitism. If you don't like Wikipedia you can always subscribe to Britannica.com, but Wikipedia currently gets about 40 times as much traffic.
While I may have accidently let my prejudice against children's fiction show through the last post, there is a valid argument to be made that Wikipedia is not an institution for helping people write 5th grade book reports. A much shorter rundown of the plot is all that is needed, for the sakes of both the article and possibly, Wikipedia's legal budget.
:Let it fly for now. It's only been 24 hours since the book was released. In a few days the ruckus will have died down enough for Wikipedians to begin condensing or transwiki-ing the material (yeah, I bet you never thought of that, did you.) — Ambush Commander(Talk) 04:30, July 17, 2005 (UTC)
:Also, I'm sure there is another site on this internet devoted to finding every typo in a given work. --B. Phillips 13:46, 17 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Wikicliffsnotes? 

message: The book just came out at 12:00 this morning. How are people reading it this fast?   ‡  Jarlaxle 23:52, July 16, 2005 (UTC)
:The person that did most of the summaries is in Australia, where it was released at 9:01 AM local.  It's easy to read all day. :)
::I did it in about nine hours. 12:40am EST to 9:38am EST. I did hear that some people did it in five or so hours. -Hoekenheef 01:01, 17 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Fast reading 

message: Is there any good reason for having a 47 kb summary of a book? It's not exactly unencyclopedic, I guess, but it's pretty useless. Facts about the book are appropriate, and a brief plot summary, (with massive spoiler warnings dotted all over it, of course) - but what we've got is just ridiculous. At the moment its probably still getting massively edited, but I think in a couple of weeks someone should come along and cut the size down quite considerably. Inebriatedonkey 10:33, 17 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Too large 

message: What the? How come Serbia gets it 3 months ahead of Montenegro?
They're trying to start another World War. The first two have been terribly good for the publishing industry. --B. Phillips 07:17, 19 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Balkans

message: Another non-mistake, in my eyes at least, just after the burying of Aragog Ron is refered to as Rupert, putting this in the mistakes section (as opposed to being an inside joke, if you will, in reference to the actor) implies that it is JK Rowling who made the mistake.
:Yeah, I edited the Rupert thing out, as Slughorn misstates Ron's name several times during the course of book, and it's clearly intentional on Rowling's part. SS451 17:18, July 17, 2005 (UTC)
It was a mistake. She was thinking about Rupert and accidentally wrote Rupert instead of Ron, which people do every so often, and the editers were unable to catch it in time because of the same reason.
It was not a mistake, as SS451 has stated it was intentional by JK Rowling, I was merely moving it around as someone had stated it was a homage which does make sense. Don't be foolish enough to think the editors wouldn't catch something like that, Pettigrew
Guys please sign your notes with "~~~~" . Rich Farmbrough 18:39, 17 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Rupert

message: There's a place where Harry asks the Fat Lady what's going on in Latin. It's not otherwise explained. Is this an error, or is it supposed to be the password, or was anyone else taken aback? - Violet Evans 03:03, 18 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Password, surely. --Telsa 08:15, 18 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Latin

message: *Can the person who mentioned swill/swirl please provide the page number? Because it's entirely possible that this too is not a mistake.  
*: This from a mistakes page about (IIRC) Azkaban talking about how to read tea leaves - "Swill these around the cup" should be "Swirl these around the cup""  - wrong again!  I've removed swill/swirl. Rich Farmbrough 13:59, 18 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Swill

message: As for the clues: clues to what? Who Stole The Cooking Sherry? The Mystery Of The Next Book's Plot? This is sheer speculation and some confusion of clues with foreshadowing, hinting and general plot. The guesses about book 7 should move to the article about it; I'd like to lose the rest as unencyclopaedic.
--Telsa 08:15, 18 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I've tried to fix some of the phrasing, but I'm giving serious thoughts to removing the "Clues" section as well. It's very easy to analyse these things to death (no pun intended). After knowing the ending, one can see shadows lurking in every corner. I'm giving some thought to removing the section and only allowing clues that J.K. Rowling herself will acknowledge (in other words, don't include this section until such a time that J.K. Rowling decides to tell other people which clues were intentional, and which are codswallop).  --Deathphoenix 13:47, 18 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Likewise.  I'd rather not chuck out a section that must be of interest to someone, unless anbsolutely necessary. Rich Farmbrough 13:59, 18 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  I've gone out on a limb and removed it.  I would support re-adding a "clues" section, but the first thing it should do is explain exactly what it is giving clues about and how that differs from everything else in the book (which is, after all, a narrative). Nandesuka 14:15, 18 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Clues

message: Some people on Talk:Main Page have been wondering why this is on ITN, including me.  Could someone add some information that someone who is not a Potter fan would find interesting, e.g. size of printing, etc that might be added to the ITN blurb?  Thanks, BanyanTree 15:00, 17 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Scholastic, the book's American publisher, is printing a record 10.8 million copies. TheCoffee 16:12, 17 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  historical import 

message: does any one know at what time (something at least resembling) a summary of all 30 chapters appeared on wikipedia?
if you can, don't forget to state which timezone you mean, and thank you very much! (i am so confused by al the time zones today...)
:The summaries appeared gradually over the course of the day, apparently as people read the book. The excessively detailed summary is now at Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince - Full Plot Summary. TheCoffee 17:01, 17 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  timeline of events - day of publication 

message: I put a general spoiler warning on the article so that folks who don't want to read any info before they finished reading the new novel receive their warning in time. --85.74.183.237 21:13, 17 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  spoiler warning 

message: IS there anoyone who doesn't think this section is deleteable? Rich Farmbrough 14:03, 18 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm sure you know by now, but it's been deleted by Nandesuka, and I have no problems with it. Thanks to Telsa for your backing of my thoughts, I think you brought out a good expansion of this: if there's no source for these clues and speculations, they go out. --Deathphoenix 17:45, 18 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Clues