November Progress and Status Report

[Cindy C.]

Hi, all,

It's almost December, which means it is time for the November 
Progress and Status Report.

Fortunately, most of the news is quite good indeed.  We launched the 
FPs right on schedule.  They look good, and they are good.  
Hypothetic Alley loads much more quickly than it has in the past.  
And I suspect that quite a number of list members have read the 
Snape FP, judging by the way new members are suddenly citing some of 
the best Snape posts from many months ago.  

We have two more new FPs we're hoping to launch fairly soon.  Ali 
has agreed to put her cataloguing on hold and update the Quidditch 
FP.  Neil's draft was quite comprehensive, so Ali will use the 
catalogue and do a few searches to add some newer material.  Elkins 
and Amy are writing the Lupin FP, and they hope to have something 
pulled together in a matter of weeks.  When those FPs are ready to 
go, we'll do the administrative work required to move the FPs from 
the Lexicon to Fiction Alley. 

In the meantime, the cataloguing continues.  As of today, we 
completed around 1777 messages in November and no new message 
blocks.  These numbers added to our October numbers (about 6000 
messages and 5 complete message blocks) means that we have 
catalogued a total of 7777 messages of the 21,000 (37%) we set out 
to do.  

Those numbers reflect a great deal of hard work by the team, of 
course.  There's no denying, however, that our November pace has 
slowed considerably from October.  If we improve upon November's 
pace a bit and manage to catalogue 2000 messages a month in the 
future, completion of the catalogue will take 6.5 months, so we 
would finish the catalogue at the end of May.  If that happens and 
if OoP is released in the late spring or early summer, there is a 
good chance that we wouldn't launch another new FP (other than Lupin 
and Quidditch) before OoP arrives.  We would have a catalogue of 
21,000 messages but no new FPs for list members.

For that reason, we have decided that we should establish a date 
certain for completion of the catalogue.  We certainly believe that 
having a completed catalogue will be an indispensable tool for 
writing new FPs, but we do feel that we have to allow the group a 
reasonable number of months to sit down and write new FPs before OoP 
is released.  

We think it is reasonable to establish February 1 as our deadline to 
complete the catalogue.  If the cataloguing is not complete by then, 
we will decide at that point how to move forward.  We might, for 
instance, have someone make a cursory review of the unfinished 
messages looking for messages that are truly exceptional.  This 
means that a great many messages would be skipped and not 
represented in the catalogue, even though they really should be.  
That is not our preference, of course.  But if we cannot meet our 
February 1 deadline, this may be our only choice.

In light of the time pressure we are facing, this would probably be 
a good time to take stock and see if we can make adjustments in how 
we are approaching things.  

One idea we are considering is breaking up the unfinished message 
blocks into smaller pieces –- say, 250 messages instead of 1000.  
This might enable some FAQers who don't have time to do a full 
message block to take on a more manageable obligation.  After all, 
if a FAQer catalogues 25 messages a day (about 30 minutes of time), 
the FAQer could finish 250 messages in just 10 days.  

At this point, it would be helpful to hear from some of the 
cataloguers who have completed less than half of their message 
blocks.  Can each of you check in with us, either on-list or off-
list, and let us know how you are doing with your message block and 
whether you think you will finish by February 1?  If you don't 
believe you will finish, can you give us a realistic idea of how 
many messages you expect to be able to complete each month between 
now and then?  Once we have your estimates, we'll put up for grabs 
the messages you think you won't complete so that others can 
catalogue them.

Does anyone have any suggestions or reactions to the issues we have 
raised?  Go on, don't be shy.

Cindy and Elkins