another moment of confusion

[corinthum]

Ginger wrote:

> > When you look at "mistakes/perpetuating mistakes" it says to 
> reject 
> > things that we know now that weren't known at the time (eg 
> the "married 
> > couple" to whom Sirius refered).
> > 
> > How far do we take that?  And what effect does it have on 
> predictions?  

And Jen added:

> I'm wondering this, too. I haven't rejected many with this 
> code, but just yesterday I debated over a post saying "how do we 
> know Snape was ever picked on in school?" Now, it's still 
subjective 
> in some poster's eyes, but I thought the Pensieve scene made it 
> clear that on at least *one* occasion, Snape was indeed picked on. 
> So I rejected that under perpretrating mistakes.
> 
> Am I putting my own bias on that one? The post didn't add much else 
> so I would have rejected it anyway. But I wanted to use something 
> other than my fave, "Adds nothing new" and this looked like a 
> legitimate opportunity.

Now me:

I'll echo the confusion on this one.  I use it only for posting 
mistakes, i.e. the poster should have known the detail at the time he 
or she posted.  I've mentioned before that I don't think we should 
toss well-developed theories (or even not-perfectly-developed) 
theories based on the fact that subsequent books proved them wrong, 
because these theories are part of the history of this list.  Someone 
may want to look up Fourth Man even knowing it was wrong.

-Kelly