0

HARRY POTTER WIKI

Welcome to the Harry Potter Wiki, an encyclopedic resource and community gathering spot for all things related to J.K. Rowling's Wizarding World. Whether you're looking for info on Fantastic Beasts, the book series or LEGO, we are the #1 Harry Potter fan database that anyone can edit.

The Harry Potter Wiki reveals plot details about the series. Read at your own risk! We are currently editing 15,059 articles since 5 July, 2005.
FRONT PAGE

In line with the question Is there any reliable source for Harry Potter other than the books and interviews?. There is an answer that states

Secondary Sources

Harry Potter wiki (different canon approach) Harry Potter Lexicon (similar canon approach) Old defunct Pottermore (similar canon approach) New Pottermore* (different canon approach) Muggles' Guide to Harry Potter Wikipedia Other SFF answers Anything else you find on the internet. To avoid being (as you put it) "burnt at the stake",

it's best to either avoid citing anything from the last two groups altogether, or if you do include them, then clearly label them as such and make sure that they aren't integral to your answer. Is there any reliable source for Harry Potter other than the books and interviews?

So I just want to ask if this website is canon? I can find more information here than the Pottermore website. Altough I can't verify if all of these are canon, the website states that the answers came from book or statements that officially came from J.K. Rowling. Thanks.

3
  • 4
    The HP Wikia is most certainly not canon: it's user-editable, meaning that anyone can write any rubbish they want into its articles. Furthermore, it's not even reliable: it contains a lot of mistakes and unsourced information.
    – Rand al'Thor Mod
    Nov 6, 2017 at 16:44
  • 4
    @Randal'Thor anyone can write any rubbish they want Just like this site!
    – Möoz
    Nov 6, 2017 at 20:06
  • 1
    @Möoz Well, yeah, but here we encourage proper sourcing, and we have votes to (hopefully) distinguish the good answers from the bad. On Wikia, someone could write random nonsense and it would look just like the rest of the article (which is often unsourced anyway) until someone else edited it out.
    – Rand al'Thor Mod
    Nov 6, 2017 at 20:18

1 Answer 1

6

I'm pretty sure you just answered yourself in your question.

As Valorum states in another answer to the question you linked,

there have been precious few announcements by Rowling herself (or the various publishers and studios involved in publishing and adapting her works) regarding the canon status of her works, so fans (like Ibid) have taken it upon themselves to define, to their own personal satisfaction, what counts as canon or not.

Sooo.... no, the wiki is not canon. It is assembled by people who are not JKR. And it does not always reflect the interpretation/intent JKR had for her world.

By and large, on SFF, WoG is the only thing that everyone will accept as canon. This includes the books, Pottermore, interviews, or other assorted JKR quotes (in that order, I'll add). Most of us accept that the wiki can be an acceptable secondary or tertiary source, but we also know that it is prone to being completely wrong at times, and so we use it as a start, rather than a source. If you use the wiki as a researching tool, always go to the citations at the bottom of the page and see where the information came from (and then use that original source if you need it).

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .