The Humongous Bigfile:

Posting Rules You Never Knew You Had to Follow and How to Conform to Them Now That You've Signed Up

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We expect that you will fully understand the beauty of the softly humming computer with its shimmering screen, the delicate power of energy that can creep through human nerves, bewitching the mind, ensnaring the senses... we can teach you how to bottle words, brew theories, even stopper boredom...

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1. INTRODUCTION



1.1 Welcome Message

Welcome to Harry Potter (HP) for Grownups! The purpose of this group is to provide a fun, friendly, interesting place for adults to enjoy discussion of the Harry Potter books. Before you jump on your Firebolt and owl us your burning questions, amazing new discoveries and morsels of wisdom, we highly recommend (actually, we require) that you read this document, which answers almost every question about HPforGrownups (HPFGU) you might have, including our slightly idiosyncratic posting conventions. Yep, it's a few pages long, but you've probably read over 1400 pages of Harry Potter, as well as sat through five hours of movie. This is much more worthwhile! (Kidding, folks...)

HPFGU is a mailing list-based community hosted by Yahoo!Groups. Our members are a diverse group of individuals who love in-depth, thought-provoking and fun discussions of the Harry Potter books (and the movies, merchandising and other aspects of the HP phenomenon). Most of our members are over 18. Mature teenagers may enjoy the group, but we cannot, for legal reasons, accept members under the age of 13. We are a large group (over 10,000 members), and we usually post between 50 and 150 messages a day.



1.2 Getting Started: Finding Your Way Around HPFGU

HPFGU has four main groups -
* HPforGrownups (the "Main List") is for discussion of the HP books.
* HPFGU-Movie is for discussion of the HP films.
* HPFGU-Announcements is for announcements of new sites, merchandise, etc.
* HPFGU-OTChatter is for off-topic discussion of just about anything.

We also have the HPFGU-Convention list, where you can learn about HP conferences and other gatherings; various regional groups such as HPFGU-NewYork, HPFGU-London, HPFGU-Germany, HP4GU-GreatLakes, and many others; and HPforGrownups-Archives, which contains the searchable archived messages posted prior to our move to eGroups (YahooGroups' predecessor).

All these groups can be found through our Portkey, at http://www.hpfgu.org.uk/. You'll note that some of the groups have "HPFGU-" at the front, while others have "HP4GU-" or even "HPforGrownups-". We're sorry -- they were created by a variety of people and are not standardized. Oops. Our bad.

We have also recently opened HPFGU-Feedback, a forum for discussing list policies and administration. This list is currently operating on a trail basis, from 20 November to 19 December, 2003, and can be found at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPFGU-Feedback/.

We have a weekly chat on Sundays from roughly 2pm US Eastern (7pm in the UK, 11am US West Coast). To get to the party, go to any Yahoo Chat Room (for example the one on our main list), then type "/join hp:1" (without the quotation marks). You can also use CheetaChat (for PCs). Upgrades for these programs can be found here.



1.3 Receiving Messages

You can read group messages in several different ways.

A) By email: messages are sent to your inbox and the subjects are prefixed with the name of the list. When you hit "reply" the reply will go to the entire list.

B) Digest: you can also opt to receive digests of list discussion. Each digest is a long email containing up to 25 posts.

C) Web View: many people like to read the messages on the list websites. This has the advantage of not clogging up your inbox, but the disadvantage that you can't download all the posts and then go off-line to read them. You go to "Messages" on each site and read them from there. It's fairly self-explanatory. However, if you are *particularly* irritated by pop-up and banner advertising, text-only email might be better for you. If you click on "expand messages" you'll avoid the pop-ups, at the cost of losing the threading function.

D) Special Notices: This is like webview, except that we can send emergency emails to your mailbox. The List Administrators use the Special Notices feature responsibly, only sending Special Notices in the case of critically important ADMIN messages, so they prefer that members are on "Special Notices."

If you have any questions, feel free to email your List Elf, or email the list administrators directly at HPforGrownups-Owner@yahoogroups.com.



1.4 Legal Issues

By posting on any of the HPFGU lists, you agree to adhere to the Yahoo Terms of Use located at http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/.

Further, in so posting, you also grant the HPFGU LIst Administrators the license to use, distribute, reproduce, modify, adapt and publicly display such post(s) for the purposes of providing and promoting the various HP4GU groups and sites.

Links to electronic texts (etexts) of any Harry Potter book and any file containing the audio versions of the books or the movie(s) may violate the Yahoo TOU, so please do not post any or we'll have to delete the post. It's also a copyright violation to reproduce substantial portions of any article or book, but you can post links to them.



1.5 List Administration

List administration is handled by a team of List Elves and Poltergeists. The admin team is collectively responsible for all administrative and policy decisions governing the entire HPFGU community. List elves take care of the day-to-day administrative duties. Poltergeists (or "Geists") are former list elves who have remained as advisors to the admin team.

The present team consists of:

Abigail (Bookish Elf)
Ali (Merry Elf)
Amanda (Amandageist)
Debbie (Debby Elf)
Dicentra Spectabilis (Dicey Elf)
Eloise Herisson (Weezy Elf)
Grey Wolf (Fluffy Elf)
Jen F (Jenny Elf)
Jim (ex-Jimmy Elf)
Jo Serenadust (Dusty Elf)
Joy (Help Desk Diva and ex-Joysie Elf)
Judy (Judey Elf, on sabbatical)
Kelley (Kelley Elf, ex-Mod)
Kimberly (ex-Moony Elf)
Kirstini (Teeny Elf)
Maria Alena (Manya Elf)
Marina (Filky Elf)
Melody (Aphrael Elf)
Michelle (Shelly Elf)
Mike (Aberforth's Goat, ex-Mod)
Paul (technoGeist)
Petra Pan (Penapart Elf)
Phyllis (Poppy Elf)
Pip (Pippy Elf)
Pippin (Peppy Elf)
Saitaina (Saity Elf)
Sheryll (Rylly Elf, The Birthday Elf)
Steve (Keeper of the Lexicon)
Tabouli (Tooly Elf)
Wendy (Hebby Elf)



1.6 Posting by new members

To help members adjust to our list's unique posting conventions, all new members are automatically placed on what Yahoo! calls "moderated" status. This means that your first few posts will take a detour to our List Elves. One of the elves will review the post to make sure it is formatted correctly and conforms to the posting guidelines, and may make some minor edits, such as correcting typos, adding a signature, or fixing the subject line, before sending it on to the main list. If your post was edited, the elf will let you know what was changed. The substance of the post will *never* be changed, but if you'd rather we not make *any* edits, please let us know. If the post doesn't comply with our netiquette standards and posting conventions, and the elves can't fix the problem, it will be sent back to you with a note of explanation.

Moderated status doesn't apply to the OTChatter, Movie or Feedback lists; however, the Announcements list is a moderated list and all posts there will be reviewed by an elf or geist. Initial posts on all lists may be subject to moderation to eliminate spammers, and from time to time, list administration may use additional moderation on any of the lists, if deemed necessary.



1.7 Communications from List Administration

On-list messages from the admin team will always have the prefix "ADMIN" in the subject line, and they will be signed by a list elf on behalf of the admin team. The admin team uses Admin messages primarily to announce new policies and other matters of interest to the HPFGU community, and to issue periodic reminders of our posting guidelines. Please read these messages.

Members should not query an Admin message onlist. If you have a question or comment about an Admin message or any policy, please contact the admin team at HPforGrownups-owner@yahoogroups.com and we will get back to you within 48 hours. General questions about list policy or administrative matters may also be discussed on the Feedback list.

The list elves also send messages offlist to members, for example, to welcome new members, answer members' questions, provide posting guidance for new and old members, and send howlers. These are also official communications and will be signed with the list elf's elf name on behalf of the admin team.

List elves and poltergeists are also list members ourselves and post on threads the same as all list members do. When we list elves are speaking for ourselves, we will sign off with our own names and not our elf names. Geists have special dispensation to use -geist names, but do not post in an official capacity.



1.8 How to Get Help

Simple. Email your personal List Elf, who will have contacted you within a couple of days after you joined. If you're an older member who joined before the advent of list elves, email the list administrators at HPforGrownups-Owner@yahoogroups.com to request an Elf.

We want all of our members who wish to post to be able to do so without it being a burden, but we realize that our standards for spelling and grammar might be problematic for some. So, we offer members with any issues that might make posting difficult (such as dyslexia, visual impairments, English as a second language) the services of our Help Desk. The Help Desk would be happy to proofread your posts, or help work out the best way for you to participate fully in our community. If you think you could benefit from their help, please contact them at HPforGrownups-Owner@yahoogroups.com.

Please, *use* these resources. List Elves love getting mail. Contact us with *anything* you're not sure about. Technical problems. Book questions. Legal issues. If we don't know, we can find out for you. Really, email us!



2. GENERAL COURTESY, "NETIQUETTE" AND HPFGU-SPECIFIC CONVENTIONS/POLICIES



Our posting conventions may be summarized as ordinary netiquette plus a few quirks that we think are particularly worthwhile in our community. Please observe the following:

-BE COURTEOUS. Do not flame, send obscenities or spam, engage in other discourteous, disrespectful or illegal behavior or discuss list policy onlist (send comments to HPforGrownups-owner@yahoogroups.com instead). Before posting, consider how other members of our diverse international community might react to your post. Remember that sarcasm can be difficult to convey in written form, and that expressing opinions as fact is a sure way to provoke Snape-like responses. When in doubt, save your message overnight and reread it in the light of dawn.

-USE THE RIGHT LIST. Put on your Sorting Hat and send your posts to the correct list. All posts to the main list should discuss the “canon,” that is, the works of JK Rowling. Discussion of the HP films should go to HPFGU-Movie. Any post that does not discuss the books or movies should go to HPFGU-OTChatter.

-SPELLING AND GRAMMAR. Use standard grammar and spelling (especially character names!). Don't use all lower-case letters or ALL CAPS - it's like SHOUTING. And please don't indulge in netspeak (e.g. "2" for "to," "4" for "for"). Many of our members speak English as a second language or have reading disabilities such as dyslexia. Using standard English keeps your post from looking like Parseltongue to them, and it makes reading your post easier on the rest of us, too.

-SUBJECT HEADINGS. Use appropriate subject headings so that others can find the topics that interest them most (e.g., not "Digest 5000," and not "Snape's greasy hair" if the topic has changed to "Lupin's gray hair"). Not everyone has a good threading function on their e-mail. If you are combining responses to more than one post, please change the subject heading to reflect that (e.g., House Elves/Hogwarts Plumbing/Evil! Albus).

-PREFIXING

"Harry squeezed himself through a crowd of sixth years and saw a sign hanging in the farthest corner of the shop (UNUSUAL TASTES). Ron and Hermione were standing underneath it, examining a tray of blood-flavored lollipops. Harry sneaked up behind them.

'Ugh, no, Harry won't want one of those, they're for vampires, I expect,' Hermione was saying."
--Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban


We've found that some topics provoke a strong reaction. Some people hate 'em, while others can't get enough. As a courtesy to other readers, please use the prefixes listed here.

FF: - Fan Fiction - for cites to or short excerpts from derivative works or ficlets used to illustrate canon points, or the relationship of fanfiction to canon; discussion of specific works of fanfiction should be posted to OTChatter.

FILK: for HP song parodies

SHIP: Cann-supported speculation about romantic relationSHIPs between the characters

TBAY: HPfGU's wild and wacky role-playing posting style, featuring cyber-action role-playing (CARP) using fictional settings such as Theory Bay and/or extended metaphors to make a canon point. For more information and examples, visit http://www.hpfgu.org.uk/faq/hypotheticalley.html#history.

-QUOTED MATERIAL. In replying, be clear about whom you're quoting. Please put quoted material *before* your own comments, and identify the author at the beginning of the quote. And to be kind to those who have limited mailbox capacity, please snip (edit down) all quoted material, leaving only the minimum necessary for others to understand what you're replying to. If you've quoted more than a paragraph without inserting a comment of your own, or if the quoted material is longer than your own remarks, you probably haven't snipped enough.

-INTROS AND SIGNATURES. Don't post just to say "Hi, I'm Melanie from Wisconsin". We do want to get to know you, but conventions have to be adjusted for a list that gets an average of 20 new subscribers in one day. Instead, include your introduction within your first substantive post, or post it to OT-Chatter.

We request that you sign all your posts with your name or a pseudonym-it helps people to refer to you when quoting you in a reply onlist if we know what you'd like to be called.

-ONE-LINERS AND 'ME TOO' POSTS. Send comments like "me too!," "LOL!," or "Great filk!" to the poster offlist, or cleverly insert them into longer, more substantive posts. One-liners that would be fine on a low-volume list get burdensome on a 10,000-member list that averages 50 posts per day, so please try to combine them, especially if they pertain to a single thread.

-FACTUAL QUESTIONS. For the same reason, don't post to ask a simple factual question (e.g., "How do you pronounce Hermione?," "What's the best way to get OoP (Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix) at the moment it's released if you live in Tahiti?"), as this tends to cause a small avalanche of identical replies. Instead, check the VFAQs (see below) or ask your List Elf.

-OBSERVE SPOILER RULES. If any spoiler rules are in effect, observe them, lest your enraged fellow listies, whose enjoyment of OoP has been ruined forever by your spilling the fact that Rita Skeeter is the new Slytherin Keeper before June 21, send you bubotuber pus through the internet. Please be considerate when revealing spoilers from other works (such as the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy, keeping in mind that many members will not have read those books.

In other words, observe basic netiquette and the conventions of the list. If you're not sure of either, ask your List Elf. We lives to serve, sirs and misses!

What happens when a member fails to observe our guidelines?

"Should tell Filch, I should," said Peeves in a saintly voice, but his eyes glittered wickedly. "It's for your own good, you know." - Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone

No, not quite. We all make mistakes from time to time, and occasional lapses, such as spelling and grammar errors, will not earn anyone detention. However, ignoring our netiquette or posting conventions will result in an offlist reminder. Repeated violations or more egregious ones, such as personal attacks on other listmembers, or doing anything that could be construed as illegal, will result in an offlist Howler. Receiving too many Howlers could result in you being placed on moderated status. For security reasons, we will place anyone who sends spam or viruses to the list on moderated status immediately. If this was inadvertent on your part, please let us know so your privileges can be restored.



3. OTHER USEFUL INFORMATION



3.1 What All Those Abbreviations Stand For

We've collected a list of the most common abbreviations used at HPfGU, including internet abbreviations, HP abbreviations, fanfic terms, emoticons--and put it into a separate file which can be found here.

And don't forget to check out Inish Alley where you'll find a complete list of acronyms coined by HPfGU members to memorialize their favorite theories.



3.2 Very Frequently Asked Questions (VFAQ)

HPfGU has put together a list of Very Frequently Asked Questions. Please read them before posting.

They can be found here.



3.3 HPFGU's accumulated wisdom: Fantastic Posts and Where to Find Them

HPFGU's Fantastic Posts series of topical essays based on the great posts of yesteryear can be found here. They cover a wide range of topics, from JKR to the HP world to the characters, books and fans. All members should read them -- they're witty, entertaining and informative (low-calorie, too!).



3.4 The Files and Polls Sections

Many things can be found in the Files Section, which is larger than Mad-Eye Moody's trunk. These include old contests, pictures, photos of various things, including list members, film locations and possible geographic locations for places in the books. And check out our polls, where you can register your opinions on a variety of topics. There's even more material in the OTChatter Files Section.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/files
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPFGU-OTChatter/files



3.5 The Archives Group

HPforGrownups-Archives contains all the messages which would not fit in the Messages Section of YahooGroups, including messages from our old Yahoo Club. Thanks to Paul Kippes for the wwwizardry involved :)

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups-Archives



4. OTHER AREAS OF ONLINE HARRY POTTER FANDOM



The online HP fandom is wide and mainly child-focused. However, we at HPFGU know of many places where Grownups And Other Mature People are in the majority. Check out this list. You may find some names you recognize!



5. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS



Various incarnations of this document were written by Amy Z, Debbie, Kelley and Queer as John, with many contributions, blatant nickings, and edits from various sources, including the wonderful List Elves, Poltergeists and Members Like You.

We would be remiss if we did not acknowledge all those who have worked tirelessly over the years to build and administer HPfGU, including:

*Our retired List Elves: Barb (babsgeist), Carole (Carolegeist), David (ex-Davey Elf), Ebony (ex-Ebby Elf), Gwendolyn Grace (ex-Gwenny Elf), Heidi (ex-Heidi Elf), Jen P (ex-Jenny Elf), Jenny from Ravenclaw (ex-Smarty Jenny Elf), Joywitch (Curmudgeon), Luke (ex-Lukey Elf), Mahoney (ex-Honey Elf), Mary Ann (ex-Dizzy Elf), Porphyria (ex-Ashey Elf), Simon (ex-Simey Elf), Andrew MacIan (ex-Drewy Elf), Amber (ex-Alley Elf), and Suzanne (ex-Rainy Elf).

*Our former Mods: John Walton (queerasjohn), Catherine Coleman , Parker Brown Nesbit, Jim Flanagan, Neil Ward (FlyingFordAnglia), Cindy C (cindysphynx), Jeralyn (Voicelady), Melanie Moore (Ravenclawlady), Amy Z, Elkins and Penny Linsenmayer. We express our profound gratitude and appreciation for their hard work and dedication to this community. We especially express our appreciation to Penny, our Founding List Mother, whose vision and drive to carry it through has made this community what it is today.

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Do you have comments or questions about this file? Do you have a question not answered here? Ask your list elf or e-mail the list administrators directly at HPforGrownups-Owner@yahoogroups.com. We will make changes to anything written here from time to time as needed, and will notify list members of those changes at our discretion.

Updated 5 December, 2003