1.that peter,sirius,james had acomplished to become animagi........and were running around every one night a month.........
2. he had no idea of marauders map........it was in filchs cabin for such a long time
3. the secret passages..........he was the headmaster.....
4. didnt knew that rita was an animagi .........although she was getting interviews,she was not supposed to enter hogwarts

LoL! I totally agree!!!

I have another one:

He could SOOOOOO totally see that Tom Riddle was a evil git from the beginning, so WHY did he take him to hogwarts??? Are you seeing hte sense in that???

may be......but he was a boy then............and as i say........the only people the devil is scared of is kids......... he cant handle them if they are in bunch....... especially the naughty ones........ when you look around..............you see kids whom you think shall surely turn into......dictators or .....not good......but you cant be sure.....
i think dumbledore deserves benefit of the doubt.......

I suppose, but you know, how many kids do you know that hang bunnies and traumetise other kids? Actually, no, scratch that, I live in South Africa where six-year-olds murder 14-year-olds.

But anyway, I gots another one. Did Dumbledore know about Aragog? I think that it would be a useful thing to know that there are a family of gaint spiders breeding on your grounds...

lol......yeah!..... i wonder whether hagrid told dd about aragog..........but i am sure dd has a little idea abt the creatures in forbidden forest.........it really amazes me ......that he was abt 150 years old and must have spent over 70 years for sure in hogwarts...... may be over a 100......including his years as a student........yet he himself says that he doesnt know everything abt hogwarts...in gof........and in poa says.........it was a big acomplishment...for turning in to animagi and hiding it from dd??.........strange bloke

and what......six year olds doing what you-know-who does..........thats shocking..... even with my interpretation of kids.........no wonder satan uses kids to torture adults ....

Yeah. Another thing is, why didn't Dumbledore become an animagi? I mean, I'm sure that Dumbledore would want to do it all official-like, because he just seems to be that kind of dude, and in POA Hermione says that McGonagal was the only person out of four people who were registered as animagi that she had heard of. Unless...he became a animagi in the 1800's...

yeah..........maybe he did......after all he was the transfiguration teacher........
he is sooo good at it that he used to use it against voldy.......as if it was a piece of a cake............turning the statues to protect.........in ootp........
also the proffesor marchbanks said that he did things she never saw before in his newt's........i would be surprised that mcgonagall could do it but not dd.............or may be he thought it was not very important..............or better to not register it.......... ........but i would want to know what more things he should have known but didnt..........

i think dumbledore was just slightly absent minded. Like all the important and powerful things he knew, but like it was the little things he was out of tough with

Absent mindedness could account for a lot of it. He may well have forgotten about a few secret passages and things like that. But he really should have known about the Chamber of Secrets and the Basilisk.

that was one thing that.......i am positive that dumbldore could not have known..........
firstly it was in girls bathroom........thats the least place dd would ever go .......... also it was very clever of slytherin to keep the entrance in girls bathroom.......... everyone would probevly expecting it to be a male heir........so no one would be searching that..... even if they suspected it to be a female heir............. how many parseltounges were there .............
may be dd realised that when myrtle died in bathroom that,it was the entrance.......... riddle said it himself that..... he could not open it again .....dd was watching him..........but he did not have the one thing.......... parseltounge

and i know one place that dd himself said that he did not know.....everything as an example ........look in gof.......filch knows this place

I don't think that Dumbledore knew where the chamber of secrets was. I mean, look at it this way. If he did know about it, why did they have to search the castle again and again and again and again? It doesn't make sense to me. Sure he didn't know parseltoungue or whatever... but when he found out that Harry could, why didn't he ask him to open the chamber so that he could fight Tom Riddle? The answer is, he didn't know the location of the chamber.

wow kitty.....thats very clever ...i knew i was missing something........and i got another one--- there is one secret place that Dumbledore didnt knew of before gof........ and came to know it by hbp
......well , i guess that cos was a little too much for even Dumbledore to decipher..... hey.... now we know that there were limits.......or i know.

I wonder how Tom Riddle found the location of the CoS and how to open it, when he was only a student. Perhaps he could hear the Basilisk, because he was a parseltongue. But Dumbledor never found it.

hey.....yes..... i wondered abt that ........i put a thread on it....and few other things in that thread.......the thread is TOM MARVOLO RIDDLE....in potter discussions........
alright can you guess this....it is quite simple....there is a secret room which filch knows of...... but dumbledore found it only later......

Oh, now, I just can't say these things of Dumbledore. And I can definatly say that “absent minded” does not at all come to mind when I think of him.

I mean, we're rather putting the man a a pedestal by saying with some omnipotent power he should have known all of these facts. After all, only Riddle and Slytherin ever knew about the Chamber of Secrets, what omnipotent power does Dumbledore have that he would know about it too? Nihkil makes some excellent points on this as well.

And the Mauraders map, well, Filch I'm sure has confiscated all sorts of interesting things from the students over the years. The mauraders were just particularly ingenious in covering their tracks. I don't think Dumbledore needed to know bout it at the time.

And about Rita, I'm going to say Dumbledore was much concerned with whomever had put Harry's name in the Cup and about the boy's continued safety and survival during the tournament to really put much stock or effort into what ever rubbish Rita Skeeter knew about and was publishing. It was a little below his interest right then, I'd say.

I would argue, that perhaps he did know a few of these things though. While he may not have known about Arogog specifically, I would bet he suspected the Hagrid was not the cause of the death of Myrtle all those years ago. He couldn't prevent the expulsion though, with Hagrid not wanting to own up to Arogog and all of the points apparently set against him, he was stuck. Aside from that, Dumbledore was only a Transfiguration Professor then, with out the sway of a Headmaster title to throw into the fray.

You think he didn't know about the Marauders and their animagi abilities? I really doubt he didn't. But Dumbledore also would be the sort who would not share what was not directly told to him. It was not his business to “rat” them out either. I'm not saying he knew what sort of animals they were though.

How do we know that Dumbledore doesn't know about the secret passages? He wouldn't bother blocking them though, as until Harry came to school at least they were quite harmless and little known in general. Well aside from that, when students, such as the twins, found them, these passages suddenly became the path to far more interesting pranks. And Dumbledore does love a good joke!

Anyway, I just thought I'd try a valid argument for Dumbledore's cause. Call it my fondness for the quirky old wizard .

thats the real problem that all authors face...... they make some really exceptional characters with above ordinary capabilities........... and then it becomes hard to show that even they make mistakes just like anyone......... . ...... and a few of us who have seen so much of him...... trick ourselves in thinking that , may be his mistake is a tactic???.... we fool ourselves...
but i do believe that there are things that dumbledore should have known....... and DD himself says that it was amazing that they became animagi
and most importantly.....without DD knowing it........ otherwise DD would have caught sirius in poa.??

However, what is now a mistake could at the time of implementation well have been a tactic. After all, Dumbledore held facts from Harry all those years intent on saving him. That tactic rather lead to a mistake.

Your right in saying the Dumbledore was surprised about thier becoming animagi, and I appreciate the reminder ;) I'd still say he suspected something though, even if he didn't know exactly what they acomplished. Those friends were just the sort who would stick together, and work to help Lupin however they could, I think Dumbledore must have taken that into account.

But Dumbledore must have some kind of magical way of knowing what's going on.

Look at it this way. In the first book, Dumbledore knows exactly where Harry is at all times. I mean, he even knows which ROOM he stays in. And in the second book, when Harry flies to the Burrow, Dumbledore addresses the mail to the Burrow. I don't know if he only uses this thing for Harry, but even so, he should be able to do it for other things...

If I had to take a stab in the dark about how Dumbledore knows what's going on with in the school, I'd point right at the portraits in all the halls. And the portraits of the old Headmasters that line his office.

I'd think a good headmaster would know the portraits talk, and would be certain to engage them about what they've seen. At least, that's what I would do.

But Dumbledore does seem to have some rather remarkable tricks up his sleeve, doesn't he? He may have all sorts of toys and gadgets just about his office that could help him too....

well.... in harrys 1st year...its sure that harry was being watched quiet closely... for example....(mirror of irswed.....DD asked.....you came again harry???)..... and in cos....thats easy....cause he was warned by ministry.... and they must have mentioned it to the DD.... they were fine then.
but i dont know how exactly they knew that harry was staying in the room below the stairs???