Talk:Ginny Weasley/Archive 1

message: Shouldn't the section about Ginny's appearance in the books be marked spoilers? Especially for CoS, where she plays a key role. 62.178.0.135 16:41, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Spoilers

message: Do we really need a section on the author's view of the charcter?  Surely it is the job of the reader to come to such conclusions without being told them.
*You are making the assumption that everyone who looks at this article has read the books.... not so, some may have only seen the films or played the games. I think JKR's views are more relevent than anyone's being the author. Death Eater Dan 14:52, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: So giving the credit due to authorial intent as an inherent element of the character's essence is PoV but choosing not to lest we remind the deconstructionists that an author indeed exists and hurt their feelings is objective? You do realise that by this logic the current article about Albert Einstein is PoV because it assumes that he ever intended to say anything negative about Quantum Mechanics by declaring that "[God] does not throw dice", and stating this view gives the impression that to think otherwise of this quote makes one automatically incorrect?... -AceMyth 22:25, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

text: The analogy did not concern Einstein's authority over quantum mechanics but rather his authority over his own statements, including the fact that they deal with quantum mechanics at all rather than, say, Dungeons & Dragons. To illustrate the point I choose to interpret your statement as being in utter agreement with what I've said earlier, my view of what you said and countless possible others thus rendering your own a value judgment, not inherently correct by definition and something that should be left to the reader. --AceMyth 23:56, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

text: Yes, an analogy equating Rowling's opinion of Ginny with Einstein's of quantum mechanics would be false. Except that's exactly analoguous to what YOU'RE suggesting is the case, as if Ginny were some objective entity and Rowling's opinion of her has no more bearing on her essence than yours. What I was trying to say is that Rowling's opinion of Ginny is analoguous to Einstein's opinion about his own opinion about quantum mechanics, but let's not take this analogy further because methinks you've just killed it with overanalysis. Suffice to say, the purpose of an encyclopedia is to be informative, and just about any valid concept of what defines a character I can think of considers authorial intent as a central pillar - and rightfully so, because the same rationale that claims that authorial intent has no importance to interpretation of characters, taken to its logical conclusion, also applies to communication as a whole (as in, I have as much a say in what you said means as you do). Yes, the section does suggest `here is what others have said now here is what Rowling has said and as she is the author she must be right`. She is the freaking AUTHOR. Sure, add a paragraph under "fandom view" that states that some fans' opinions on Ginny disagree with Rowling's if the glorification of this regrettable contrast means that much to you (I would advise moving on), but outright ignoring the author's own authority over the meaning of their creation is something that blatantly defies the brand of logic I'm used to (and so, I suspect, are many others). --AceMyth 02:01, 23 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: On the whole I think including an authors statements about intent and even interpretation is encyclopedic when available.  The reader who had read the piece of literature in question or will in the future is free to decide how well the author achieved their goal.  The main point being that the goal of the author when they wrote something if properly sourced is worthy of inclusion (even if there is a general literary consensus that they author failed in that goal ... in which case that consensus would be appropriate along side it).  In this case the article is filled with so much "the fans think" garbage that the idea of excluding the authors opinion borders on absurd.  In any even if as a policy you were going to exclude authorial comment from all articles about literature on wikipedia you would probably have to start a new wikiproject to rewrite the articles. Dalf | Talk 02:43, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

text: You make a good point aobut the trumping.  But, I think its a good comprimise trumping all the stuff that has no bussness in the article anyway.  For the most part the Harry Potter articles suffer from the fans of the characters and the books.  WIkipedias consensus format prevents cleanning them up so we have to make do.  Plus the content in question is worth of inclusion I think (as I said above) even if you are right aobut the context that it is included in. Dalf | Talk 10:35, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

text: Which is all well and true, if the writer has done thier job then there is no need, but that does not make the writers intent irrelvent, it simply means that we can decide how well the writer achieved teir goals (and in some cases even discuss what the writers goals were.  That is the basis of discussing symbolism in litrature. Dalf | Talk 03:14, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Exactly. People can debate whether or not she succeeded - that's a matter of opinion (and even she herself only says "I hope I succeeded," she doesn't actually try to claim success). Her intent itself cannot be debated, however. When she says, "here's what I tried to do," that is a statement of fact. We can't challenge her and say, "no, you were actually trying to write it that way." That would just be silly; only she knows what she was planning as she wrote it. I fundamentally disagree, however, with the notion that author intent is irrelevant to understanding. On the contrary, for an unfinished series like this one especially, knowing the author's intent is crucial to any attempts to understand what direction she is going in future books, and not drift off down the wrong path. That's where some (not all, but some) H/H people by their own admissions miscalculated - when they rejected the author's obvious intent, namely the R/Hr and H/G clues that were right there on the page, in favor of looking for hidden layers and deeper meanings that turned out to be all in their own heads and nowhere in Jo's. That's an example of disregard for author intent leading to an unprofitable outcome. I also find it rather ironic that someone would use a Pullman quote to try to undermine Jo's authority on her work, considering that Pullman has been one of the most vocal critics of Jo and her writing for a long time. And I suspect that may be partly because the straightforwardness of her writing annoys him, given his deconstructionist tendencies (not to mention that despite his criticism she still outsells him 50-1). But I'm just guessing at that; I don't know.--Zequist 04:50, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Rowling's view 

message: Ok. The article is now requested for a peer review. As an editor/user, what can I do? --Jotomicron | talk 11:37, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: You could see if you can find any decent quallity pictures of Ginny from PoA if you want. I can't find any :( Also, I'm not sure if I put the images I added in the right place, as I put a movie pic in the area about the books...but I felt it needed some more colour, so put it there. Feel free to change it people. --drak2 11:46, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Peer review 

message: JK Rowling gave an interview recently that contains some interesting information about Ginny. She also said that there was not a bond created when Harry saved her life in book 2.
"MA: Does she have a life debt to Harry from book two?
JKR: No, not really. Wormtail is different.  You know, part of me would just love to explain the whole thing to you, plot of book seven, you know, I honestly would." (From part 3)
Here's the interview: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3
I wish you put spoiler tags on that... JONJONAUG 21:17, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  JKR Interview.  

message: I have removed twice the phrase describing Ginny's hair as "a mane of vivid red hair" I have removed it for the followign reasons:
# It does not clearly describe her hair in a way most readers will understand accuratly.  There are lots of diffrent kinds of red hair and which ones I think are "manes of vivid red"ness are probbly diffrent form teh ones someone else does.
# Its not how the books describe Weasley hair most often.
# It is POV, in this case even if you can find a refrence from the book, it is still Harry's POV and not an objective statment.  Some other character may not describe it just so.  
# It reads like purple prose and this is an encyclopedia.
# Oh yea and sice it was deviating from standard phrasing into the land of creative prose I think it needs to be refrenced even if all the other reasons to keep it out failed.
Tone is a big problem with a lot of articles on fictional works and I think we should strive to keep this article in an encyclopedic tone. Dalf | Talk 02:09, 30 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: 
# It is the way it is described in the book and, therefore, should be described likewise here.
# I'm almost completely certain that the Weasley's hair is always described as "red," and never as "ginger."
# A reference for "long mane" is from Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Chapter Four: Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place: "The door opened and a long mane of red hair appeared." - pg. 66, U.K. edition. A reference for "vivid" is from Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Chapter Eight: The Deathday Party: "The steam pouring out from under her vivid hair gave the impression that her whole head was on fire." - pg. 94, U.K. edition. If we discounted everything because it was from "Harry's POV", we'd have to remove most of the information from all the Harry Potter articles. The books are from his point of view. Hermione's hair is described as bushy in her article and Cho's is described as long and black in hers. Those are from Harry's POV but are still valid.
# Again, the author describes it as vivid red and a long mane. You can't replace it with other words because then it's no longer accurate.
# See number 3.
If you still have a problem with this sentence, perhaps we should get a few more people to weigh in. :)
70.48.165.92 02:59, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

text: Actually, now that I re-read those quotes from the books, I've come to realize that they're not directly from Harry's POV. They're just stated. And, lol, I'm not adding these words "simply because I like them." They're from the books and that's where the information for this article should come from. 65.92.205.115 17:37, 30 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The whole series with the exception of TWO chapters (the one in GOF was still observed by Harry) are told form Harry's perspective.  Simply because it does not say "Harry thought" does not change this.  Things which are simply stated are the things that he observes but does not consciously think about.  Please see third person limited omniscient for more details on how this works.  But, none of this changes the fact that for thousands of readers from hundreds of places "a vivid mane" is less descriptive, more ambiguous, and significantly more subjective than simply "long red". Dalf | Talk 22:17, 30 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Hair color 

message: I added the weasel words tag to the "Ginny in the Harry Potter fandom" section, due to the frequent use of the weasel words "many" and "some." 70.52.230.152 00:11, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The Wikipedia Guidelines includes examples on avoiding weasel words, and converting weasel wording to a more encyclopedic format - see WP:AWW.  For example, if a prominent and reliable source, such as Time magazine, published some statistics on how readers and fans of various age groups "felt" about the Ginny Weasley character, and perhaps included some quotes from various fans, then that would satisfy WP:RS, WP:V, WP:NOT, and WP:NOR all at once.  Verifiability trumps "the truth" and "common sense" every time in the Wikipedia.  It would probably be best to just clean out all references to "how some people feel" about various fictional characters, because it is really unencyclopedic to go there - it becomes more of an editorial than a news report, again unless some reliable source has conducted a survey or opinion poll on the subject, and notable results from that could be mentioned, with citations.  --T-dot 23:29, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  I am pretty sure whoever first wrote that paragraph is basing this on the posts about her on livejournal, several message boards etc. I did not write that part, but I think it gives a correct and balanced overview on how Ginny is seen in fandom. Neville Longbottom 09:22, 20 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: For those who are interested in the old section before it was deleted, it is here: .--2001:A61:260D:6E01:19AF:F2F1:CFC2:AA9A (talk) 19:24, 23 February 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Weasel words tag 

message: Substituted at 20:12, 26 September 2016 (UTC)
thread_title: Assessment comment