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My calendar just reminded me that we're very close to 2017-09-01, the day described in the epilogue of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, when Harry Potter's children get on the train to go to the Hogwarts school.

How will we celebrate this special occasion on Sci Fi SE or chat?

(See my question for a reference that 2017-09-01 is the correct day. The train starts at 11:00 British Summer Time, which is 10:00 UTC.)

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  • 21
    Let's mark the epilogue of Harry Potter's time on this site by closing all the HP questions!
    – Rand al'Thor Mod
    Commented Aug 30, 2017 at 10:18
  • 1
    let's not m'kay? I like Harry Potter and all that but leave that to BuzzFeed
    – NKCampbell
    Commented Aug 30, 2017 at 14:41
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    Let's watch all the HP movies from PS to DH2, then wash off the ugly taste of it by reading all the HP source material in the order of canon,, first the main boks PS to DH, FBaWtFT, QTtA, Pottermore articles, JKR interviews, Q&A's, chats, video games, etc etc etc, then top it all off, finish by reading all the assorted fan fiction; Levels of canon: scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/117948/…
    – user13267
    Commented Aug 30, 2017 at 23:01
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    @user13267 Not sure how serious your comment is, but you've inspired me to suggest an HP movie-night in chat.
    – Rand al'Thor Mod
    Commented Aug 30, 2017 at 23:39
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    @randal'Thor it's verry serious
    – user13267
    Commented Aug 30, 2017 at 23:41
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    @user13267 Well, it'd be hard to fit all of that into one day (1/9/2017), given that the films alone are 20 hours long :-) Unless we go full Cursed Child and find a Time-Turner which canon said didn't exist (and then use it to construct a weird fan-fiction that contradicts the spirit of the canon all over the place).
    – Rand al'Thor Mod
    Commented Aug 30, 2017 at 23:42
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    @Randal'Thor ...construct a weird fan-fiction that contradicts the spirit of the canon all over the place Oh my gosh...( ﾟoﾟ) is that even possible??
    – user13267
    Commented Aug 31, 2017 at 0:28
  • Interestingly, zero questions in the harry-potter tag so far since UTC 0:00.
    – XYZ
    Commented Sep 1, 2017 at 16:01

3 Answers 3

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Main Site

There is not much you can do here beyond the normal functions. Ask questions and provide new answers to old questions could be focused on Harry Potter posts. Edits would be tricky as they should not be trivial and we do not want to flood the front page.

ETA: Topic Challenge - We can do something similar to our sister site M&TV and encourage people to ask new question and give new answer based on the topic, then at the end of the challenge possibly some award is given. Might not be the best idea...

This of course would be all based on a user's preference, but you may be able to coordinate in...

Chat

Chat is really the best place for this "celebration". Talk Harry Potter all you like for as long as you like. Maybe go in there soon and invite people to join you on that day. Ask one of the ROs to pin a message or even create an event.

Meta

Beyond this post, I am not sure what else can be done on Meta. The only other types of posts that are related are the posts which "celebrate" the life of recently deceased member of the SFF community. You might be able to get away with a "Happy HP Epilogue Day" posts but my initial reaction is it may get closed or down-voted.

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  • Extra question: which chat room(s)?
    – b_jonas
    Commented Aug 30, 2017 at 19:54
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    @b_jonas Any I would say. Either use The Restaurant or if you have enough traction create a new room to keep the discussion focused. My opinion, due to general decline of chat activity, would be to just use the main room.
    – Skooba
    Commented Aug 30, 2017 at 19:56
  • A topic challenge seems like a very bad idea
    – Valorum
    Commented Sep 1, 2017 at 7:04
  • @Valorum care to elaborate? I not overly familiar with them, and so I am being earnest asking for any insight you have.
    – Skooba
    Commented Sep 1, 2017 at 15:08
  • @Skooba - HP is (with the exception of Story-ID) our single largest tag. No additional push is needed to get people to ask questions about it and is (in my humble opinion) likely to lead to a bunch of low-quality duplicates and hurt feelings, especially from those who feel that they're eligible for some kind of prize.
    – Valorum
    Commented Sep 1, 2017 at 15:10
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How about a film night in chat?

Movie nights have been a thing in SFF chat for a long time. I know the HP films are neither primary canon nor, honestly, very good, but this would be a nice way to coordinate a bunch of people together in a group activity of a type that's already been tried and tested.

All of the Harry Potter films watched end-to-end would be about 20 hours long, so I don't know exactly how we'd organise this.

  • One possibility would be to set up a viewing room to show all the films one after another, and people could drop in throughout the day when they're around (our European and American users probably wouldn't catch much of the first few films, but the later ones are more exciting anyway).
  • Another possibility would be to have a poll to choose the best HP film and watch that at a scheduled time. But there might not be enough time for voters to see such a poll before Friday.

Please comment with your thoughts! This needs people to be interested and proactive if it's going to work. Especially since I won't be able to take part - I'm going to be busy IRL this Friday.

I don't like the idea of a topic challenge on the main site for this. People ask dozens of HP questions all the time anyway; a topic challenge would hardly make a difference in the tag stats. (If you can come up with a single really relevant question, and it gets to HNQ, that might be nice, but maybe it's already been asked.) Topic challenges could be a thing to do one day (it's an idea a couple of the mods have had on a back burner for a long time), but they should be a way to bring attention to less popular tags, so Harry Potter is the very last tag we should use for a topic challenge.

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  • I really like the idea of a topic challenge to promote less known works. There could even be a monthly challenge we'd propose and vote on...? We could do YA books, hard sci-fi, following series like stranger things or midnight texas, anything really. ..
    – user68762
    Commented Aug 31, 2017 at 10:52
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    @D.O.B.Y2.0 Yes, that'd probably be the best way to do it - a poll to decide the challenge of the <time period>, like other sites do. (There's a similar thing going on at Literature already.)
    – Rand al'Thor Mod
    Commented Aug 31, 2017 at 10:55
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Meta

We have these meta posts in which members of the community share what inspired their usernames and avatars.

We could make a similar one, only HP themed, for example 'Which character you identify with and why?' or a 'How you thought the series would end?' in which the user can write (in max twenty sentences) an alternative epilogue.

Main

We post questions about the seventh book then vote on meta about the best questions / answers and maybe give bountries?

Chat

We dont have time to plan a game I think... if we can't find a victim who'd volunteer to create one, maybe just chat about HP and create an event as @skooba suggested?

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    The only problem I have with your Meta suggestion is that the username and avatar posts are about how the site work, since we are part of the site. Opening a line "what character are" opens the gates to doing that for every franchise. Your other suggestions for main and chat are on point. I have seen other sites have a topic challenge.
    – Skooba
    Commented Aug 30, 2017 at 19:59
  • Yeah, good luck trying to make a meta like that last more than about half an hour before being closed ;-)
    – Rand al'Thor Mod
    Commented Aug 30, 2017 at 23:40
  • @Randal'Thor depends how you frame it. If there is a new post on meta about userpics 2017 and in 1/9/2017 some users happen to chose to display HP character avatars and explain why they chose them, then it's perfectly legit. mind you, i am not that into all this, it was a suggestion, as in Friday ill have a few other things to do, max will have time to ask one-two questions. ..
    – user68762
    Commented Aug 31, 2017 at 8:01

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