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Should we change to ?

Reason(s) for:

  • I feel that doing so removes the confusion about character tags, in that we're not asking about "Harry Potter" the character, we're asking about the body of work or the whole fictional universe / franchise.
  • Looks neater

Reason(s) against:

  • Major restructure / effort required
  • Not everyone recognises "potter-verse" immediately


Related: Harry Potter tag cleanup

8
  • @amaranth I disagree with character tags in general, plus the consensus seems to be against them too. Additionally, if people want, then they can use the 'harry-potter' tag to refer to the character, they can't right now.
    – Möoz
    Apr 12, 2017 at 4:07
  • 5
    Or potterverse (one word)?
    – Valorum
    Apr 12, 2017 at 9:13
  • @Valorum Yeah I thought of that, but for some reason it doesn't look as good to me.
    – Möoz
    Apr 12, 2017 at 12:01
  • 3
    The problem is that most people I know use "Harry Potter" to refer to the universe, not necessarily to the character. The character is referred to as the "Boy Wizard" to differentiate.
    – Chenmunka
    Apr 12, 2017 at 13:43
  • 3
    the brand, marketing, business, etc..have moved to "Wizarding World of JK Rowling" - should it be [wizarding-world] instead? I agree with the premise of the question, whatever tag ends up selected
    – NKCampbell
    Apr 12, 2017 at 14:07
  • 4
    @NKCampbell - Based on the downvotes it would appear that the status quo is liable to win.
    – Valorum
    Apr 12, 2017 at 19:37
  • Instead of changing [harry-potter] to [potterverse], please just add [potterverse] as a separate tag. Somebody just added [harry-potter] to a question about the Fantastic Beasts movie, and the question has nothing to do with the character, Harry Potter, or the original 7 books. scifi.stackexchange.com/posts/158235/revisions
    – RichS
    Apr 28, 2017 at 6:11
  • Dear God, NO! I beg you to leave the [harry-potter] tag intact. I would wonder if we changed that tag, if gold tag badge holders would lose their badges. That would be bad juju :( Yes, just add [potterverse] as a separate tag. My $0.02. :) Aug 22, 2017 at 12:50

2 Answers 2

7

Nope

Remember the main purposes of tags:

  • To aid in searching, especially when the topic of a question may not be apparent from the title or body.
  • To create feeds for the chatroom.
  • To enable interested users to subscribe or block certain tags.

I’m not sure this proposed tag change helps fulfill any of these purposes.

  • I think it should go without saying that replacing , a commonly known term for J.K. Rowling’s universe among fans and laypeople, with , a much more narrowly recognized one, will make searches much more difficult. That is to say, people are almost always going to search by appending “harry potter” to their queries, not “potterverse.” The two bring up significantly different results, too: searching for “most powerful wizard allegedly harry potter” brings up our well-known question about why Dumbledore worked “at a glorified boarding school,” whereas just substituting “potterverse” brings up a bunch of listicles. We want the people searching for “harry potter” to come to our site.
  • There doesn’t really seem to be any problem with the current feeds, which scoop up main series questions, Cursed Child questions, and Fantastic Beasts questions. That is, we’re not missing questions.
  • The same goes for subscriptions. Some people might want to subscribe to only main series questions, but it’s easy enough to do that simply by blocking the Cursed Child and Fantastic Beasts tags.

As for potential confusion with character tags, I think this is a non-issue. I’ve never heard of someone believing that they should only use the tag for questions about Harry himself.

And of course, when it comes to it looking neater, that’s something of a matter of opinion. I personally think that, given that “Harry Potter” is the generally accepted name of the universe/franchise, it looks a whole lot neater. “Potterverse” is a somewhat ad-hoc coinage, and “Wizarding World of J.K. Rowling” is a mouthful, designed for advertising, and virtually unknown.

4

Based on our current usage, it makes sense to me to create as a synonym of . I know I personally find it easy to think of it as the Potterverse than any of the other terms, but that term shouldn't supplant what's the most widely-used way of referring to that universe (see Adamant's answer). A synonym is a good compromise, as it complements the main tag by improving searches for the tag, and also when selecting the tag:

enter image description here

The nice "also: clark-kent" in this example shows that visually, you get a strong indicator that the synonym is how we refer to the universe here. So anyone accustomed to using the other term will see "Ah, his name stands for the whole thing." (a scenario that'd surely make Snape sneer with disdain for Potter's ego)

If for some reason we needed a tag specifically about Harry's character (and I really believe that we don't), we have the option of making a new tag, such as to separate him out.

5
  • I dig it. Good suggestion.
    – Möoz
    Apr 13, 2017 at 12:26
  • 1
    Somebody just added the [harry-potter] tag to my question about the Fantastic Beasts movie. That's off topic since I didn't ask about Harry Potter. scifi.stackexchange.com/posts/158235/revisions If the person added the tag, [potterverse], that would be okay.
    – RichS
    Apr 28, 2017 at 6:10
  • @RichS FB is part of the franchise so it gets the franchise tag, which in harry-potter, thus this discussion. It's like the marvel tag.
    – user31178
    Apr 28, 2017 at 6:15
  • @CreationEdge I understand that it is the franchise tag. I am questioning whether it should be the franchise tag as well as the tag for the character and the tag for the original 7 books. From your answer, it seems like you also support separating it out into separate tags.
    – RichS
    Apr 28, 2017 at 6:31
  • @RichS No, I support leaving it as the franchise tag and adding another as a synonym of it. I don't think we need a character tag, and I don't think it's really used as one now, but if we ever do I suggest Harry's full name, as pointed out above.
    – user31178
    Apr 28, 2017 at 6:36

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