[HP4GU-FAQ] Re: New and Improved Guidelines for Cataloguing Posts

[eloiseherisson at aol.com]

Elkins:
>>Some people find TBAY posts rather confusing.  

Tell me about it! Did I not mention the need for fortification with tea, 
single malt, tranquillisers...Have you *seen* the grey, nay *white* hairs 
I've developed?

>>Using the prefix as a 
keyword will give those FAQ editors who just can't cope with them 
fair warning when they are assembling their material.  I can imagine 
that it could be very frustrating for a FAQ editor to pull up a bunch 
of message numbers for what look to be perfect illustrative posts, 
only then to find that they are all written in a style which the 
editor finds opaque.  Keywording makes it easier for people to weed 
them out, if they so choose, or at least to have them all clumped 
together in the sorting array.<<

I agree. But it *does* clutter up the topics columns in the way I indicated, 
particularly when it's also a SHIP post.
My suggestion of putting TBAY as the first word in the comments column would 
solve both problems, I thought. But I'm a Luddite, who doesn't understand 
these things, so perhaps I've got this sorting business all wrong. (I can't 
experiment to find out.)

In any case, I still need an answer to the question I asked about whether or 
not I am retrospectively to designate Proto-TBAY Period posts as TBAY or not. 
I shall take silence to mean consent. I was intending to get down to a chunk 
of cataloguing today and do not want to have to go back and insert or delete 
yet more rows and shift yet more keywords from column to column.


> > But I'm stuck. How do I find a keyword for SYCOPHANTS (a discussion 
> > of the diversity and characteristics thereof) without using the 
> > word, um, sychophants? Which in the context, is always capitalised?
> 
> For one of those "I identify and sympathize with SYCOPHANTS and 
> here's why" posts, I might do something like this:
> 
> TBAY, Characterization, Reader Reaction
> 
> And put some mention of SYCOPHANTS in the comments field.
> 

This is the case in point, just out of interest and for the general 
entertainment of all:

> Uh, would it be a fair assumption that S.Y.C.O.P.H.A.N.T.S. members 
> are not Tough? 

Er...not as a general *rule,* no. But some are. In fact, a few of 
our members have even been known to do things like sever their own 
body parts, although they are generally only able to manage such 
feats of Toughness when the plot demands it.

As I've said before, though, there really is a great deal of 
diversity within our ranks. We are, after all, an umbrella 
organization of sorts for those members of the fictive world who are 
what we like to call, er..."reader sympathy challenged." So while it 
is indeed true that our Abject Neurotics are, almost without 
exception, Not Tough, quite a number of our Yes-Men are very Tough 
Indeed. Young Crabbe and Goyle, for example, currently show every 
sign of growing up to be Reasonably Tough Yes-Men.

It is a sad truth, however, that our Toughest members are also often 
our very least articulate. As a result, they do often find 
themselves shockingly marginalized, even within the ranks of our own 
organization. We hope to address this problem in the future.

> Do they watch a great deal of daytime television and read a lot of 
> self-help books while they eat pint after pint of high-fat ice
> cream? :-) 

Well, many of our members currently hold 24/7 positions as Minions to 
various Evil Overlords, which doesn't leave them very much time at all
for daytime television and the like. Really, you know, it's very hard
work being a SYCOPHANT. It takes a lot of time, and a lot of mental
and physical energy...it can be *draining,* you know, it really can 
be... and all too often it leaves you with nothing left over for such 
frivolities as self-help books and the like.

No, at the end of the day, most of our members really just want 
nothing more than to go home and take their anti-anxiety medications, 
and their sedatives, and their anti-depressants, and their antacids, 
and their many *many* pain-relievers, and then go to bed, secure in 
the comforting knowledge that Tomorrow Is Another Day -- And Quite 
Likely To Be Your Last.

And as for the ice cream...well, minions rarely get very much of 
that. Evil Overlords are *notorious* for bogarting the high-fat ice 
cream.

Damn them.


-- Elkins

Eloise






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