[HP4GU-FAQ] Neville FAQ

Simon simon.branford at hertford.ox.ac.uk
Sat Mar 31 21:14:26 UTC 2001


The Goat: "I posted my first draft of my Neville Longbottom FAQ a couple of
weeks back. Has anyone had a chance to have a look at it? I'd appreciate
any comments, since I plan to get to work on another FAQ again next week
and would appreciate any pointers. (Three months ago I claimed I'd have
them all donw within a month. <sigh> My apologies ... )"

I have just got round to reading it and have a couple of comments to make.
Sorry I didn't look at it sooner, it slipped my mind. I will answer the
comments first and then make a couple of comments on the FAQ below. I
wouldn't worry about apologising for lateness. I was hoping to have
everything wrapped up by the beginning of October. That is now looking like
quite a good comment, shame about it being a year out.

I have had a quick look at the database Paul has done. This seems a good
idea to me. I have updated it to reflect the fact that the Harry FAQ
uploaded is only an in progress draft. It is there so I have a back up
copy. Computers do occasionally go wrong and I have no intention of losing
this FAQ as it has taken a lot of my time already.



Mike: "It's fairly short. Is it skimpy? I haven't included a character
sketch, but referred reader to others already written."

It seems about right for the character in question. It looks of a similar
length to the Dursley and Wand FAQs that I have done. It is of similar
importance so I guess this length is about right. At the end of the day the
number of messages written on the character will control the length. If
nothing has been written then we get a short FAQ and if we have lots (c.f.
Harry) then the FAQ ends up being very, very long. I similarly link to the
character summaries done for the group and I think this to be the best
option.


Mike: "How up-to-date do we want these to be? There are already quite a few
new Neville posts I could hunt down and index in. (Though I don't believe
I've seen any earth shaking new interpretations.)"

I am working to message 15000, or there abouts. This was the number of
messages when I left Oxford last week and hence when I last went through
looking for messages for my FAQs. Before this I had gone through up until
message 9000. Over the last few days I have updated the FAQs I have already
done and this I found to be a lot easier than doing them for the first
time. I now have four of them done.


Mike: "I also posted it in HTML (generated by Frontpage). Is that OK or
should I have left it in Word form?"

Thinking about this it may be better in html format. John uses a mac and I
am not certain if he can read Word files or not. If not then it would be
more helpful to stick with html, which he can read. From what I have seen
and heard he is a fairly good at proof reading and the more people that can
check through and make comments the better (relying on me, as a
mathematician with little ability in regards to the English language, is
not a totally reliable idea). I plan to convert all mine to html as well
(might happen one day!). Maybe an even better option is to put the files up
in both formats. Then each person can look at and correct the easiest
format for them, and as long as they make sure it is known about which
version they have looked at then things should be ok.



Neville FAQ:

In the Neville's Character section you have written, in the second
paragraph, 'True, Peter is frightened of Snape'. I believe that this should
be 'True, Neville is frightened of Snape'.

There is no link to the fortitude essay by Peg. It is message 4797, if my
notes are correct.

I am not happy with the use of the word triumvirate, but will leave that
argument for now (I have written messages on PoU, HpfGU or both about
this).

It may be worth linking to another comment that explains about the FFA
clinic. Else anyone new to the group, or reading these documents with no
knowledge of Neil, will not have a clue what this is going on about.


Simon





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