More on Keyword Questions

[ssk7882]

Ugh.  Well, having just nearly burned down my own *house* through a
foolhardy disposal of what turned out to be incompletely extinguished
cigarette butts, I am back.

Gee, they're right.  Smoking really *is* bad for you.

Some scatter-shot responses to various consistency questions here.


EVIL VS. ESE

There have been some truly superb posts written on the subject of 
Evil in the Potterverse.  In fact, there have been entire superb 
*threads* on this topic.  There was one back in the early summer of 
2001, and then there was the more recent "Midnight in the Garden" 
thread this spring -- and those are just the two that come to mind 
right off the top of my head.

So I think that we want to retain "Evil" to refer to those sorts of 
discussions, rather than to the "will so-and-so go evil?" ones.

I think that ESE is fine for the Flying Hedgehogs.  It's not nearly 
so obscure as, say, OFH, and while it's true that those unfamiliar 
with the list might not know what it means, how many of those people 
are likely ever to be using this database?  We will also be 
maintaining a list of keywords to help out those who can't seem to 
find the right word for what they want.  So I think that we can stick 
with ESE for the "is X secretly evil?" posts, and keep "Evil" as the 
designation for discussions of evil as a philosophical concept.  

I also see an advantage to retaining ESE as a designation because I 
can easily imagine someone someday wanting to write, say, a Flying 
Hedgehog FAQ, especially as speculating about the possibility that 
seemingly-benevolent characters are actually secret Evil-doers has 
*always* been a popular hobby on the list.  People have been doing it 
since the very beginning, and I really can't foresee it becoming 
any less popular a type of post any time soon.  People are going to 
be making ESE arguments until the very end of Book Seven.  So why not 
make it easier to call up those sorts of posts?


KIN-SLAYING VS. PARRICIDE

Cindy wrote:

> In my book, killing a family member should bear the key 
> word "Revenge."  ;-)

<Elkins, who tends to over-identify with Crouch Jr, grins 
appreciatively>

Heh.  

Yes, well.  As much gratification as I *do* take in the entire notion 
of kin-slaying (I've got a lot relatives who dearly need killing, and 
not all of them are my father by any means), I really do think that 
we should stick to "parricide" as the keyword.  For one thing, as 
Porphyria pointed out, parricide *can* be used to refer to the murder 
of any of ones relations.  For another, what sort of kin-slaying 
other than parricide have we ever *seen* in the canon anyway?  Riddle 
does off his paternal grandparents, true, but that's really just an 
extension of parricide, and besides, any post that focuses on that 
event is surely also going to be focusing pretty strongly on the 
parricide itself, no?

Eileen:

> I can definitely see someone wanting to search for in-family death 
> and destruction. After all, it seems to be key to the series. 

Yes, but if you were looking for posts on that topic, then 
wouldn't "parricide" be the very first word that you would think to 
try?  After all, is there much chance that a post on the thematic 
relevance of in-family death and destruction to the series as a 
whole would *not* talk about the motif of parricide in GoF?

Eloise wrote:

> The trouble with any of these terms (and I have to agree with 
> Porphyria, that parricide *is* technically the correct term for any 
> of these killings, although particularly of parents) that they 
> require someone coming along later to look through the list of 
> terms first, before deciding what to search for. I think I would 
> more instinctively look for parricide than I would for something 
> beginning with 'kin' and that we just have to explain any terms 
> that might be open to misinterpretation, or have a wider 
> application than at first appears.


Yes.  Precisely.  

I am really hard-pressed to imagine why "parricide" should not serve 
perfectly well as the keyword for post dealing with the killing of 
family members.

If the post is talking about the motif of parricide in Gof, or about 
parricide as a concept, then key it to parricide.  

If the post is talking about the possibility that other forms of kin-
slaying may prove relevant later on in the series (I seem to remember 
making that argument once myself), then you can still key it 
to "parricide," because any post making that argument is surely 
also going to be focusing heavily on the emphasis on parricide in GoF.

If the post doesn't actually mention parricide at all, but you still 
think that somebody compiling a list of posts dealing with the core 
concept of parricide shouldn't miss it, then go right ahead and key 
it to parricide anyway.  

If none of these apply, then don't bother keying it, even if the post 
does mention the concept.  

That's how I see it, anyway.  But I see now that Pip, Eileen *and* 
Cindy are all throwing their weight behind this "kin-slaying" notion.

<sigh>  

Demented.  You are all demented.  But I suppose that if you all 
*insist,* then I can swallow "kin-slaying," even though I think it 
fairly baroque and unnecessary.


JKR VS ROWLING

I prefer JKR as our standard designation for posts that talk about 
the author's life.  

I wouldn't use it, though, for questions of authorial intent, 
authorial inclination, or other such vague theoretical issues.  Just 
use it if the post is actually in some way biographical.

Eileen:

> Well, for example, there's Elkins' post in which she says Rowling 
> is a closet conservative when it comes to class issues. That has 
> nothing to do with Biography, but it's about Rowling.... I think. 

No more than any other post, though, really.  The question of the 
author's predilections and intentions is nearly ubiquitous, I'd say.  
It underlies nearly all Redeemable!Draco speculations, for example, 
and it's also prevalent in discussions of gender in the books.  I 
tend to consider "being about Rowling" pretty much a given.

So if I were cataloguing that post, I would key it to "Class," but I 
wouldn't bother keying it to "JKR," because while it did indeed 
suggest certain things about the author's bias, it wasn't really 
focused at all on the author as a private individual: didn't include 
any biographical material, didn't quote from interviews, didn't 
discuss her personal life, etc.  




TRIO

Cindy wondered:

> Um, should we be using "Trio" for anything, and if so, what?

It's hard for me to think of a situation in which one might be 
tempted to use "Trio" for which separate keywords for "Harry," "Ron" 
and "Hermione" would not be better.

Just pretend you're JKR herself, and you'll do fine. ;->


HEAD IN FIRE

Eileen:

> I can't for the life of me think of a keyword for the "Head in 
> Fire" thing Amos Diggory and Sirius Black use in GoF. It's not 
> exactly "Floo" and in fact, there's some posts devoted to the 
> difference. But can anyone think of a good alternative to "Head in 
> Fire?"

Hmmm.  I think that I'd be inclined just to keyword it as 
"Communication" and "Floo."  Anyone looking for posts about the Head 
In the Fire spell would surely try "Communication," and someone 
wanting stuff about "Floo" would probably want to see it as well.  
"Transportation" might also be a possibility, as the Head In Fire 
spell so often comes up in the context of discussions of the WW's 
various modes of transportation (is it an extension of Floo?, is it 
the same as Snape's ability to summnon Lupin vocally through the 
fireplace in PoA?, and so on).


READER RESPONSE

> I'm talking about posts that examine readers' responses to the 
> books.  Elkins's "Where's the Canon?" posts or in this case a post 
> by Cindy asking why people like to SHIP. 

Hmmmm.  Well, I see that you've settled on "Analysis" for reader 
response posts. That works fine for me.  I would have gone for 
"Theory" myself, as reader response is a major school of literary 
criticism, but I can run with "Analysis." 


CLASS

Debbie:

> Class or Elitism for class issues in HP

"Class" sounds good to me.  If someone's looking for class schedules 
and tries typing in "class," then one glance at the comments fields 
will show them that they've taken the wrong approach.  They'll then 
figure out that "class schedules" is what they really wanted.  If 
they get really stuck ("Timetables?"  No. "Schedules?"  No.  Darn!), 
then they can look at the final list of keywords (which we should 
make available as a text document when we're done with all this) to 
see where they've gone wrong.

"Elitism" refers to a slightly different issue, to my mind.


CHARACTER NAMING PROTOCOLS

Yes, it is counter-intuitive to type "Black" rather than "Sirius," 
but let's all try to do it anyway.  It will make our lives easier in 
the long run if we try to have at least *some* protocols in place so 
that newcomers can more readily internalize them.

I realize with sudden horror that I myself just used "Sirius" in my 
last post, when giving an example of how a hypothetical user might go 
about looking for posts dealing with Snape and Sirius' relationship.

<hangs head in shame>

Erm.  Well, sorry.  I *did* say it was counter-intuitive, didn't I?

Debbie:

> Founders' names vs. House names -- use the first names for the 
> Founders?  

Great idea!

So "Slytherin" refers to the House, while "Salazar" refers to the 
founder?  

Sounds good to me, although I suspect that for the most part a 
keyword of "Founders" would be sufficient for any post talking about 
Salazar Slytherin himself.

> Following the Riddle Rule, do we always code Scabbers as Pettigrew?

Yes, thus granting the poor wretch a degree of dignity that he 
receives neither in canon nor very often on the list itself.  (Has 
anyone but me ever noticed that I'm just about the only person who 
regularly refers to him as Pettigrew?)

But yeah.  He's an adult...well, chronologically speaking, anyway, 
and so he should probably go by surname even if the subject under 
discussion is Pettigrew-as-Scabbers.



SPELL NAMING PROTOCOLS

If there's already something in the keyword database for a given 
spell, then people should stick to what's in there already.  
Otherwise, they should use whichever keyword seems intuitive and 
natural to them, add the term to the database, and post here when 
they're done.  Eileen is right: we can always worry about cleaning up 
inconsistencies (Crucio vs Cruciatus, for example) at a later stage.



PRANK VS. THE PRANK

Prank.

Articles ("a," "an" and "the") should always be omitted.

(By the way, I am still *dying* to know which listie first coined the 
term "prank" to refer to this incident.  As others have noted, it is 
never referred to as a "prank" in the canon.  So where did that 
shorthand first come from?  I've already conveyed my burning 
curiosity about this odd little fanon trivia question to Cindy, but 
if anyone else happens to know the answer -- or is willing to take 
the time to figure it out -- I would just love them forever for it.)


DERIVATIONS OF CHARACTER NAMES AND OTHER PROPER NOUNS

Eileen:

> Didn't Cindy say we'd be using "Etymology" rather than "Name", when
> categorizing name meanings? That's what I've been doing at least....

Yes.  Although it may not be perfectly accurate, "etymology" was what
we had decided to use for derivations of the meanings of proper nouns
in the books.  There just seemed to be far too many things that 
"Names" could refer to, so we thought we'd go for something a bit 
more specific.

Although I must say that the idea of using "onomastics" never even 
crossed my mind, mainly because I'd, er, um... 

<shamed whisper> I'd never even heard of onomastics.  

Thanks for the new word, Gwen!




OT POSTS, MISSING POSTS, POINTLESS DRIVEL


Eileen:

> I thought we just skipped them.  Why are we painting them black 
> again?

We are skipping them, so you don't have to paint them black if you 
don't want to.  

The advantage to painting them black is that it makes it very much 
easier to keep track of what message number you've reached if you 
blacken out the lines or in some other way mark them as "done," 
rather than just not entering them at all.  

See, that way if you get hit by a truck tomorrow, we'll be able to 
find out from your grieving loved ones *precisely* what message 
number you last dealt with.  ;-)

Blacking out lines also allows one to take a kind of grim 
satisfaction in just how tedious the board does become from time to 
time.  The list has peaks and lulls, and it's rather interesting to 
see how things tend to cycle over the months and years.

Or maybe that's just me.  I can get rather weirdly obsessive about 
that sort of thing.



"FAVOURITES" THREADS, CHAPTER SUMMARIES, SUPER-COMBINED POSTS

Ugh.  The bane of the FAQster, these are.  And don't even get me 
*started* on the Derby posts.  ;-)

Pip, on discussions of peoples favourite scenes:

> My first poster on that topic mentioned so many scenes she might 
> just as well have said 'the entire series...'

Yes, aren't those threads just nightmarish to categorize?  I had to 
wade through a number of "what character would you most want to 
date?" posts when I was culling for Lupin, and I just wasn't sure 
what to make of them.  On the one hand, it was rather of interest to 
me as a FAQ editor to see that Lupin was *consistently* mentioned as 
one of the "characters I'd most want to date."  On the other hand, no 
single one of those posts, taken alone, was really in the least bit 
substantive or FAQ-worthy, or even particularly interesting (except 
on the base gossipy interpersonal level, of course).  "Which 
character do you most pity/envy/fear/hate" threads are often the same 
way, as are the Derby threads and the responses to the questions at 
the end of the chapter summaries.  You tend to see a lot of one-
liners, and only very occasionally anything of real canon substance.

I think that these posts fall firmly into the category of "threads 
that ought to be noted in the catalogue, but that for the most part 
can be ignored."  So since we've defined "Analysis" as our keyword 
for reader response, perhaps it would be best just to key it 
to "Analysis," mention in the comments field that it is a thread in 
which people discuss their favourite scenes, and leave it at 
that.

Of course, should someone actually come up with a nice bit of 
*reasoning* to explain why a given scene ranks as one of their 
favourites, then that should get its own entry.


Cindy, on chapter summaries:

> I've run across a certain type of post a few times, and I'm 
> wondering how others are handling it. The posts in question are 
> often (but not always) brief statements of opinion, sometimes in 
> response to Chapter Summary questions. . . .I'm torn -- if this 
> post were a stand-alone post, I would consider it too insubstantial 
> to include in the catalogue. 

I'd say that this should be considered on a topic-by-topic basis.  If 
the commentary on any given topic is so insubstantial that you 
wouldn't include it if it were a stand-along post, then don't keyword 
it to that topic.  If not a single *one* of the responses would make 
the cut, then leave it out altogether (unless you want to include it 
as your sample representative of the thread as a whole).

I think it's important to keep in mind here that not including a post 
in the catalogue doesn't really say anything about that post's 
*quality,* per se. It doesn't label the poster as inarticulate or 
uninteresting or incompetent. It doesn't mean that the post didn't 
contribute anything to the list as a whole -- threads like those 
serve a very useful community-building function, IMO, and I think 
that they are highly valuable for that very reason.  All that it 
means is that as personable and articulate and enjoyable as the post 
might have been, and as reasonable a response given the nature of the 
thread, it just isn't the sort of thing that moves along the canon 
discussion in any significant way.  

The thread will still be noted, though, so anyone who wants to find 
out things like which characters various listies most 
envy/pity/fear/adore, which rooms they would most like to visit at 
Hogwarts, who they would date, and so on can still learn where they 
can go to read them.  

(I always enjoy finding out what sorts of things really *scare* 
people myself.  But then, I can be just a wee bit sinister that way.)
 



Elkins