From cindysphynx at comcast.net Tue Sep 24 03:13:04 2002 From: cindysphynx at comcast.net (Cindy C.) Date: Tue, 24 Sep 2002 03:13:04 -0000 Subject: Lots and Lots of FAQ List Issues Message-ID: Hi, FAQ team, With the CoS movie less than two months away and with OoP just around the corner, it might be time to make a final push to complete as many FAQs as we possibly can. Mike, Elkins and I are going to try to move things along as much as we can, so I thought I'd kick off some discussion of where we go from here. Here are some ideas. They are just ideas. Be sure to speak up if anything is flatly wrong or inadvisable, or if you have any views or suggestions about how best to proceed. Please, don't be shy. LOCATION OF FAQs In the past, the FAQs have been hosted on Steve's Lexicon server. In recent discussions, it was decided that the FAQs should be moved to Fiction Alley's server. Steve advised that he would upload all of the FAQs on his server to the FAQ list files section so that we'll be moving the correct files to our new location. Paul has already set up a new URL: http://www.hpfgu.org.uk/faq/ I think that Heidi is in the process of giving the necessary privileges to the people who will perform the tech work of moving the FAQs. People who have expressed interest in helping with tech issues are Jen, Joy, Dicey and Porphyria. The tech team will perform the necessary work to transition us to our new digs, which I understand might involve some formatting or coding or such. Did I get all of that right, tech folks? Tech team, do you have everything you need to get started with the move? Is there anyone else interested in helping with the move? I assume we will perform the name change from FAQ to Fantastic Posts and Where To Find Them in conjunction with the move. When everything is up and running, I think the plan is to announce the move to the lists and delete the FAQs from Steve's server. Is there anyone who feels up to designing a cover page that works for the new Fiction Alley address and name? Or can we just use the current FAQ page style? Thoughts? Also, I notice that some of the existing FAQs cite message numbers but do not include links. Should we add some links to those FAQs now, should we add them later, or should we not bother with this? Next, perhaps we should think about deleting from our new FAQ page any FAQs that aren't uploaded. As it stands, we have about equal numbers of finished FAQs compared to unfinished FAQs with dead links. I suppose there's no sense advertising that we're only half- way along on the project. Let's let that be our little secret. ;-) STATUS Right now, the following FAQs are completed and uploaded: JKR Geography Hogwarts School Mysteries Potential Romance Predictions Government Magical Devices Wands Animal Characters Dursleys Hermione Neville McGonagall James and Lily Ron Voldemort Universal Appeal Book Banning & Controversy Lawsuits Religion Fanfic Merchandise Recommended Reading The following FAQs are drafted and ready to upload: Weasley Family Pettigrew Black The following FAQs are in various stages of completion: Snape FAQ ? Gwen and Porphyria. I understand from Gwen that all of the message review has been completed and the Snape FAQ is in the drafting stages. Gwen and Porphyria have done a tremendous amount of work on the Snape FAQ so far, and Porphyria is continuing to move forward with the drafting. Mysteries ? Cindy and Pippin. The update is complete and all the links are in the document. Dicey formatted it in HTML today, in fact. The introduction is just in the draft stage and could probably be improved quite a lot, and I'm hoping to recruit someone to punch up the introduction a bit. Any volunteers for that? Lupin ? Amy and Elkins. I understand from Amy and Elkins that they are reviewing messages at this stage and drafting bits of the FAQ as they go. Quiddich FAQ ? Neil made a great deal of progress on the Quiddich FAQ, but it may well be a casualty of his computer crash. Neil is checking his old computer to see if he has anything worth salvaging. STRATEGY In the past, FAQ preparation was handled by assigning FAQ topics to one person (or a very small group of people). This worked quite well when the list was small, and most of our existing FAQs were written or edited by one person. Last time I checked, however, there were over 44,000 messages in the main list archives. The list is so large now that it takes a superhuman effort and quite a lot of time for a single person to be able to draft a FAQ, search the archives for pertinent messages, and link the best messages into the FAQ. For that reason, I suggest that we revisit the question of how we handle FAQ preparation. I think it might be best for all of us as a team to focus on knocking out FAQs one or two at a time, depending on how many volunteers we have with time to help out. That way, if one person is sidelined by RL, the project can continue moving forward. Not to mention the benefits of each of us having others to nudge our efforts along. Synergy, they call it. ;-) Therefore, I suggest that we focus for now only on completing the FAQs that are well underway (Snape, Lupin, Mysteries). When those FAQs and the already-completed FAQs are up, we might then consider which FAQ to focus on next. We should probably plan for the very real possibility that we won't finish all of the FAQs by the release of OoP. That means we might need to prioritize our efforts to get as many FAQs completed and uploaded as possible. My personal view is that we should pick FAQs to work on based on the importance of the FAQ subject itself and the extent to which there has been scintillating discussion of the subject on the list. For instance, we might want to turn to the Harry Potter FAQ next because, well, this is Harry Potter for GrownUps, so we probably ought to have a Harry Potter FAQ. For that reason, my preliminary view would be that we could take up new FAQs in the following order: Harry Potter ? Ron and Hermione have a FAQ, so Harry is overdue. Hagrid ? Many people think Hagrid could die in OoP, and there will be a great deal of interest in his FAQ if this happens. Also, there has been quite a lot of discussion of Hagrid in the past ? his irresponsibility, his alcohol use, his teaching methods, his father- figure relationship with Harry, his past and so forth. Malfoy Family -- There is a lot of interest in Draco on the list (especially Redeemable!Draco), and Lucius will probably see some action in OoP. Dumbledore ? Dumbledore is also a candidate for death in OoP, although there seems to be less scintillating debate about him on the list. War, Law and Justice ? This is not currently a FAQ subject, but it might work well as one. It could touch on Moody (who will undoubtedly be in OoP), Aurors, the Wizarding Justice System, Crouch Sr., and the first rein of Voldemort. Any thoughts about this sort of approach? Finally, I set up two databases here on the FAQ board to track where we are on FAQ preparation. The first of the two databases is for FAQs that are complete or almost complete. The second is for FAQs that have not been started, so far as I could tell from reviewing the messages on the FAQ list. The second database is mostly just a reference; we'll still need to decide which FAQ we should turn to next and how we will staff it. FAQ STYLE I noticed that we have a great deal of individuality in the styles of the various FAQs. Some cite many message numbers; some cite hardly any. Some have an extensive narrative; others are more like outlines. Some have links; some don't. Do we have any views on whether future FAQs should aim for one style over another? Personally, I'd be happy to allow the team working on a FAQ to decide how best to present it, but this is probably something we should discuss. Also, I think we probably should think about not including TBAY theories, as this would cause the FAQs to overlap with Hypothetic Alley. Cross-referencing to Hypothetic Alley might work just fine, though. UPDATING Many of the FAQs were written quite some time ago and could use some updating. Nevertheless, I was thinking that we make some headway on preparing the most important new FAQs before we begin the process of updating. But if anyone has some spare time and would like to update a particular FAQ, please feel free to volunteer and have a go. Thoughts, reactions, objections, ideas? Cindy From gwendolyngrace at yahoo.com Tue Sep 24 15:49:28 2002 From: gwendolyngrace at yahoo.com (Gwen) Date: Tue, 24 Sep 2002 08:49:28 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [HP4GU-FAQ] Lots and Lots of FAQ List Issues In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20020924154928.76909.qmail@web13504.mail.yahoo.com> Hi, y'all. --- "Cindy C." wrote: > > With the CoS movie less than two months away and > with OoP just > around the corner, it might be time to make a final > push to complete > as many FAQs as we possibly can. Yep. I recently bumped Snape up on the priority list, to Get It Done, Already! > Also, I notice that some of the existing FAQs cite > message numbers > but do not include links. Should we add some links > to those FAQs > now, should we add them later, or should we not > bother with this? > I don't know about others, but what I've been doing is providing the message number for everyday, ordinary messages, and only providing a link to a message that is particularly helpful or entertaining (or both). I've also elected to reprint 3 select messages in their entirety in order to give folks an even easier reference. I call them "essential posts" in the FAQ. But the Snape FAQ is going to be a very large document, I suspect not quite rivalling the HB, because of the amount of discussion he has received over time. So I'm also going to add internal links and a table of contents for easy navigation within the file. > Next, perhaps we should think about deleting from > our new FAQ page > any FAQs that aren't uploaded. As it stands, we > have about equal > numbers of finished FAQs compared to unfinished FAQs > with dead > links. I suppose there's no sense advertising that > we're only half- > way along on the project. Let's let that be our > little secret. ;-) > Initially, I agreed with Cindy. But what if, as she suggests below, we came up with target dates or at least vague ideas of when we were going to work up the undone FAQ's and changed the list to reflect that. Such as: Completed as of _date_ X X X X Coming Soon (anticipated upload of _date_) X X To be compiled in 2003: X X X To be compiled in 2004: X X X That way, people who check the FAQ page will know that yes, we know we need a FAQ on Ollivander, we just haven't gotten there yet. It also gives them an idea whether it'll be one month or eighteen before it's reasonable to ask about it. > STATUS > > Right now, the following FAQs are completed and > uploaded: > That's a lot of FAQ's! Great work, everyone. (hangs head... Gwenny is a bad elf) > The following FAQs are in various stages of > completion: > > Snape FAQ Gwen and Porphyria. I understand from > Gwen that all of > the message review has been completed and the Snape > FAQ is in the > drafting stages. Gwen and Porphyria have done a > tremendous amount > of work on the Snape FAQ so far, and Porphyria is > continuing to move > forward with the drafting. > Yes, my personal goal is to have this at least roughly ready to hand over for coding/formatting in a month--October 25. I'll accept getting it done sooner, of course. :^) > STRATEGY > Last time I checked, however, there were over 44,000 > messages in the > main list archives. The list is so large now that > it takes a > superhuman effort and quite a lot of time for a > single person to be > able to draft a FAQ, search the archives for > pertinent messages, and > link the best messages into the FAQ. > Amen, sister. At 35,000 messages, it took just over 3 months of (solid) message archive review to find the raw responses I have for the Snape FAQ, and I *know* I missed many because of the process I used. But had I actually used the search function, it would have taken even longer, ironically (because he gets mentioned so often even when the post isn't really about him). > For that reason, I suggest that we revisit the > question of how we > handle FAQ preparation. I think it might be best > for all of us as a > team to focus on knocking out FAQs one or two at a > time, depending > on how many volunteers we have with time to help > out. That way, if > one person is sidelined by RL, the project can > continue moving > forward. Not to mention the benefits of each of us > having others to > nudge our efforts along. Synergy, they call it. > ;-) > I think this is a fabulous idea, Cindy! And it feeds into my suggestion above, about a rough schedule for them to be completed. > For that reason, my preliminary view would be that > we could take up > new FAQs in the following order: > > Harry Potter > > Hagrid > > Malfoy Family > > Dumbledore > > War, Law and Justice > > Any thoughts about this sort of approach? I know you said one or two at at time, but I just want to go over the options. We can sic the entire FAQ team on one of these at a time, or divide up into 5 small teams and work them simultaneously, or take the top 3 and be 3 teams, complete a project, then move on to the next 3, maybe shuffling who's working together if desired, etc. I think perhaps the projects could be adequately served any way we slice it, but in the interest of time, we might want to choose smaller teams (or bring in some more help for larger teams) and try to get several done at once. > FAQ STYLE > > I noticed that we have a great deal of individuality > in the styles > of the various FAQs. Some cite many message > numbers; some cite > hardly any. Some have an extensive narrative; > others are more like > outlines. Some have links; some don't. > > Do we have any views on whether future FAQs should > aim for one style > over another? Personally, I'd be happy to allow the > team working on > a FAQ to decide how best to present it, but this is > probably > something we should discuss. > I've been wondering about this, too. I know I has been a very bad elf, and has not gone and studied existing FAQ's to make sure Snape's is consistent with what has gone before. What I *am* trying to do, though, is make sure that each question we've chosen for the FAQ is answered in a logical and thorough manner without being too overloading or boring. Also, what are other people doing about issues that overlap? For example, much of the "leaving the DE" discussion refers back to whether people think he loved Lily. How do y'all deal with that kind of duplication on your FAQ's? And, finally, what about questions that are not answered directly (such as Snape as Father Figure) but that are answered indirectly (in this case, through discussions of his relationships with Harry, Neville, and Draco)? > Also, I think we probably should think about not > including TBAY > theories, as this would cause the FAQs to overlap > with Hypothetic > Alley. Cross-referencing to Hypothetic Alley might > work just fine, > though. > I'd be all for this. There are some Snape questions that just got inundated with theories, and I'm finding it very difficult to give straight answers to the questions while still attempting to keep the theories intact. > UPDATING > > Many of the FAQs were written quite some time ago > and could use some > updating. Nevertheless, I was thinking that we make > some headway on > preparing the most important new FAQs before we > begin the process of > updating. But if anyone has some spare time and > would like to > update a particular FAQ, please feel free to > volunteer and have a > go. Yeah, this is a tough issue. If we wait until we've got all the "new" FAQ's up before we go back and update, we'll probably never get to it, because there will continually be new characters and new wizarding world issues to examine. But if we let them go too far, they'll be useless. What if we created a schedule of sorts for these, too? That is, no FAQ should go for more than X amount of time before some team diverts to update it? Gwen __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? New DSL Internet Access from SBC & Yahoo! http://sbc.yahoo.com From dicentra at xmission.com Tue Sep 24 17:11:18 2002 From: dicentra at xmission.com (dicentra63) Date: Tue, 24 Sep 2002 17:11:18 -0000 Subject: Lots and Lots of FAQ List Issues In-Reply-To: <20020924154928.76909.qmail@web13504.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: --- In HP4GU-FAQ at y..., Gwen wrote: > I've been wondering about this, too. I know I has been > a very bad elf, and has not gone and studied existing > FAQ's to make sure Snape's is consistent with what has > gone before. What I *am* trying to do, though, is make > sure that each question we've chosen for the FAQ is > answered in a logical and thorough manner without > being too overloading or boring. I just uploaded the Sirius Black FAQ to the Files section of this group. It comes in two parts (there's so much). Sirius probably doesn't get as much screen time as Snape, but he does get quite a bit, including lots of overlap and indirect discussion. This FAQ might help with organization. --Dicentra From cindysphynx at comcast.net Tue Sep 24 18:28:33 2002 From: cindysphynx at comcast.net (Cindy C.) Date: Tue, 24 Sep 2002 18:28:33 -0000 Subject: Mysteries FAQ Completed! Message-ID: The Mysteries FAQ is completed! The final version is: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HP4GU-FAQ/files/HPfGU%20-%20FAQ% 20Mysteries%20HTML%20Sept%2024.htm You can also get there by clicking on "Files" and looking for the Sept. 24, 2002 version. I'll delete the old drafts the next chance I get. Thanks to Pippin for slogging through thousands of messages and Dicey for doing all of the tech work on it! Cindy From skelkins at attbi.com Thu Sep 26 01:07:10 2002 From: skelkins at attbi.com (SK Elkins) Date: Wed, 25 Sep 2002 18:07:10 -0700 Subject: [HP4GU-FAQ] Lots and Lots of FAQ List Issues References: Message-ID: <01b301c264f9$0f421ae0$029de00c@sarahcharles> Hey, FAQsters. Kudos to Dicey and Cindy and Pippin! We now have a Mysteries FAQ and a SiriFAQ! Great work. Cindy wrote: > Also, I notice that some of the existing FAQs cite message numbers > but do not include links. Should we add some links to those FAQs > now, should we add them later, or should we not bother with this? The way that Gwen and the Snapesters have organized the SnapeFAQ -- by only linking to important messages, while leaving the others in merely as references -- makes good sense to me. A number of the existing FAQs, however, don't draw that same distinction. For those FAQs, I think that it *would* be nice to make those message numbers into links eventually, but I don't think that we should make it a big priority. To my mind, that falls firmly into the category of "revising the FAQs," which we've agreed is less important right now than getting our outstanding FAQs completed. Still, given that it's not a very major revision, it might serve as a nice short project for any of the HTML savvy who don't have the time right now to help out with a big project. So how's this sound? If any of the HTML literate find themselves with a few spare moments -- not enough for a huge project, but enough for linking a message number here or there -- then they should go at 'em -- and then come back here to brag about what they've done so that we can shower them with praise and gratitude and admiration. For the most part, though, we'll worry about those links when it comes time to revise the FAQs. Sound good to everyone? Cindy then suggested: > Next, perhaps we should think about deleting from our new FAQ page > any FAQs that aren't uploaded. Gwen replied: > Initially, I agreed with Cindy. But what if, as she suggests below, we came up > with target dates or at least vague ideas of when we were going to work up the > undone FAQ's and changed the list to reflect that. I think this is a great idea, and I liked the way that Gwen suggested we format it. Just one caveat, though -- if we do this, then we *have* to stay on top of the deadlines and revise the text if we do not meet them. I've so often come across websites where I've seen things like "scheduled for completion June, 2001," and I always find that profoundly (if vicariously) embarrassing. I'd really rather keep that embarrassment vicarious, thanks. ;-) Cindy: > STRATEGY > Last time I checked, however, there were over 44,000 messages in the > main list archives. The list is so large now that it takes a superhuman effort > and quite a lot of time for a single person to be able to draft a FAQ, search > the archives for pertinent messages, and link the best messages into the FAQ. Gwen cried: > Amen, sister. Amen, indeed! It is a lot of work, even when it's divided among a small group of people. I think that forming larger groups to handle at least the culling part of the process would be a great idea. I do see some purpose to having a senior editor to impose a certain style on the document as a whole, but there's no reason that I can see for us not to tackle the culling and compiling in larger groups. Cindy: > I think it might be best for all of us as a team to focus on knocking out FAQs one or > two at a time, depending on how many volunteers we have with time to help out. Gwen: > I know you said one or two at at time, but I just want to go over the options. We > can sic the entire FAQ team on one of these at a time, or divide up into 5 small > teams and work them simultaneously, or take the top 3 and be 3 teams, complete a > project, then move on to the next 3, maybe shuffling who's working together if > desired, etc. In my experience, it is the wading through archives/culling part of the process that is truly time-consuming. And it is *truly* time-consuming. I think that if we really want to streamline this process to get those outstanding FAQs out quickly, then we might want to consider having the people cull for multiple FAQs at once. In other words, the person going through messages 18000-24000, for example, would divvy up posts as they go into separate documents for a number of different FAQs. This would be slow going for the cullers, but I have a feeling that it might be a more economical approach, particularly as I don't really think that we have hordes of volunteers. I agree that however we decide to do this, we really should make Harry a priority. It is rather embarrassing that we don't have a Harry FAQ. I'd also agree that getting a Draco or Malfoy Family FAQ finished should rank high up on the list. Hagrid as well -- and I would think that Hagrid might not be quite as time-consuming as either Harry or the Malfoys. > FAQ STYLE > I noticed that we have a great deal of individuality in the styles > of the various FAQs. Personally, I really *like* the individuality of the FAQs. To my mind, that's a bonus. I do think that we want to streamline their production in the sense of speeding up the process, but I'd really hate to lose that sense of individuality and character by turning this into a kind of factory line. Let's strive for something between those two extremes, shall we? Gwen asked: > Also, what are other people doing about issues that overlap? Well, for Lupin, Amy and I had been hoping to deal with a number of issues in part by linking to the Mysteries FAQ. I'm sure that no one can imagine which issues *those* might be. This is horribly unfair, of course, as it means that those people who finished their FAQs promptly wind up doing a lot of dirty work that the rest of us now get to exploit. But hey. What can you do? Sometimes, though, different FAQs might have such different styles that this wouldn't necessarily be desirable. I suspect, for example, that SnapeFAQ will likely deal with the Dread Prank, but in a somewhat different way than the SiriFAQ does. I think that's perfectly fine myself. The two documents can always link to each other as well, just for good measure. That way listies who are really deeply interested in the Prank can get two slightly different perspectives on it. Just like on the list itself. ;-) Gwen: > And, finally, what about questions that are not answered directly (such as > Snape as Father Figure) but that are answered indirectly (in this case, through > discussions of his relationships with Harry, Neville, and Draco)? I think that editorial decisions like this one are probably best left up to the individual FAQ editors to wrestle with on their own. Each character and topic has its own idiosyncratic issues, which is IMO a large part of why the FAQs all take such different approaches. UPDATING Gwen suggested: > What if we created a schedule of sorts for these, too? That is, no FAQ should go > for more than X amount of time before some team diverts to update it? I think that's a great idea. I'm just a little worried about our time constraints right now. I don't really know if we have the pure and simple *manpower* to get some of those FAQs revised *and* get the really important outstanding FAQs completed before we get inundated with post-OoP newbies, and I think that (for the major characters anyway) getting the FAQs written should probably be our first priority. I also take Gwen's point, though, that with this approach we run the risk that the old FAQs will just never get updated. So how do we want to prioritize things here? Should updating some of the old FAQs take precedence over writing some of the less important FAQs? I'm open to suggestions. Elkins From skelkins at attbi.com Thu Sep 26 01:13:06 2002 From: skelkins at attbi.com (ssk7882) Date: Thu, 26 Sep 2002 01:13:06 -0000 Subject: Gah! Formatting! In-Reply-To: <01b301c264f9$0f421ae0$029de00c@sarahcharles> Message-ID: Hey. Sorry about the ugly formatting, guys. I'm new to posting to groups through e-mail, and I hadn't realized that the line breaks would be that messed up. - Elkins (scowling at her monitor) From john at walton.vu Thu Sep 26 01:18:15 2002 From: john at walton.vu (John Walton) Date: Thu, 26 Sep 2002 02:18:15 +0100 Subject: [HP4GU-FAQ] Gah! Formatting! In-Reply-To: <1033002776.25964@mailserver120.sectorlink.com> Message-ID: <1033003085.30065@mailserver120.sectorlink.com> ssk7882 said: > > Hey. > > Sorry about the ugly formatting, guys. I'm new > to posting to groups through e-mail, and I hadn't > realized that the line breaks would be that messed > up. > > > - Elkins (scowling at her monitor) Whuchu talkin'bout, Willis? Looks fine to me... --J, terribly pleased that there is FAQmentum going at last :D ~*~*~*~*~*~*~ ^.^ Magical Moonshadow 103% HP Obsessed Harry and Hermione 4 eva!! Keeper of Harry's left sock Guardian of the Flame Visit My Pony's Website! www.geocities.com/magicalmoonshadow ~*~*~*~*~*~*~ From cindysphynx at comcast.net Thu Sep 26 17:57:15 2002 From: cindysphynx at comcast.net (Cindy C.) Date: Thu, 26 Sep 2002 17:57:15 -0000 Subject: Lots and Lots of FAQ List Issues In-Reply-To: <20020924154928.76909.qmail@web13504.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Hi, everyone! Thanks to everyone for their hard work! I think we're making real progress. And a spirited welcome to Eloise and Porphyria, the newest members of our FAQ team! Here are a few quick reactions to the thoughts of Gwen and Elkins: Elkins: >Should updating some of the old FAQs take precedence over writing >some of the less important FAQs? AND >If any of the HTML literate find themselves with a few spare >moments -- not enough for a huge project, but enough for linking a >message number here or there -- then they should go at 'em -- and >then come back here to brag about what they've done so that we can >shower them with praise and gratitude and admiration. For the >most part, though, we'll worry about those links when it comes time >to revise the FAQs. Hmmm. I think the dilemma here is that we have way more work than we have available people to help. Combing the archives is tremendously difficult work, and we only have about 6 people *actively* performing FAQ preparation right now. So how about this for an idea? I created a new database called "Update Database." When anyone has a spare moment, they could go to that database and add in suggested message numbers for any completed FAQ. So, for instance, if someone would like to help with FAQing but can't take on a block of 10,000 messages, they could spend some time thinking about especially pertinent threads they remember. They could then search for the message numbers and add them into the database. An example. The Weasley FAQ might be updated to include the Seventh Son discussion from a few months back as well as the recent bully thread. Someone could just drop those message numbers into the database, which will allow the person who eventually takes on the job of updating the Weasley FAQ to do so without a thorough message review. This will also allow our active FAQ preparers to have a place to note any message numbers they stumble across without having yellow sticky notes all over their desks. Would that work? Gwen: >But what if, as she > suggests below, we came up with target dates or at > least vague ideas of when we were going to work up the > undone FAQ's and changed the list to reflect that. We could do this, and it might make some sense. I'm a little nervous, though, because I fear we'd either constantly be pushing things back or we would wind up picking dates that are so far in the future as to be meaningless. I think once again I'm suffering from some handwringing because our team is so small that it is going to take some serious time to crank out even one FAQ. If we don't have a schedule, though, I suppose some people will ask why we're not thinking of doing a Moody FAQ. Maybe we could just answer those inquiries directly by explaining that we're working on X, Y and Z first? Elkins: >Just one caveat, though -- if we do this, then we *have* to stay >on top of the deadlines and revise the text if we do not meet them. That's true. I have a question for the tech types -- just how much effort is required to physically edit a page of HTML once it is up and running? In other words, if we changed the FAQs home page every two months to reflect adjustments to our internal schedule and priorities, would this cause you to pull your hair out? Or is that no big deal? Gwen: > We can sic the entire FAQ team > on one of these at a time, or divide up into 5 small > teams and work them simultaneously, or take the top 3 > and be 3 teams, complete a project, then move on to > the next 3, maybe shuffling who's working together if > desired, etc. Maybe we need a roll call to find out how many people have time for some serious FAQ work right now, as opposed to those who will have time later or would be most comfortable taking on spot assignments (link check, etc). I had been operating on the assumption that we would risk spreading ourselves too thin if we took on more than one or two FAQs, but I could be way off on that assessment. Is there anyone else out there who thinks they could commit more time to FAQ preparation such as culling messages? Right now, my roster of active FAQ preparers is Amy, Cindy, Dicey, Elkins, Gwen and Porphyria. We also have a tech team of formatters consisting of Dicey, Jen, Joy and Porphyria. I think that Eloise and Tabouli have said they can help with smaller projects. Have I missed anyone? Unless we have several more people available to help with active FAQ prep, I think we probably can't manage more than 1-2 FAQs at a time, although I'd be thrilled to be wrong. Gwen: >I think that if we really want to streamline this process to get >those outstanding FAQs out quickly, then >we might want to consider having the people cull for multiple FAQs >at once. This might work, if we plan it just right. Right now, we're finishing up Snape, Lupin and (hopefully) HPfGU: A History. [I haven't really reported on what I'm doing with HPfGU: A History, so I'll do so quickly. I am taking Penny history lesson on MEG, I am adding great nuggets from Joywitch and from John's Live Journal, and I am creating a fairly brief Walk Down Memory Lane. I'll toss some interesting stats and factoids onto the end, and that will be it. So I don't think the project will take me very long at all. I'd say I am about 1/3-1/2 finished at this point.] When Snape, Lupin and the History FAQs are finished, we'll likely want to tackle Harry and Hagrid first. These seem a good match, as Harry is huge and Hagrid is likely small. Perhaps all of us active FAQers could cull for both of those FAQs at the same time? One question about the culling, though. I assumed that the Senior Editor on the project would create a draft, basically going by memory of list discussions about what gets discussed. Then the cullers would have that draft document and would look for pertinent message numbers, flagging some as worthy of a link and others as just worthy of a mention. The cullers would also pull out really great quotes for the Senior Editor to add to the finished document. Is that approach crazy? It's kind of how Pippin and I handled the Mysteries FAQ. We generated the substantive document first (using Penny's original, but rearranging it and adding to it), and then we started culling, updating the draft as we stumbled across new Mysteries. Is there a better, faster or more efficient way? Come on, speak up. Don't be shy. Gwen: > Also, what are other people doing about issues that > overlap? For example, much of the "leaving the DE" > discussion refers back to whether people think he > loved Lily. How do y'all deal with that kind of > duplication on your FAQ's? Well, the Mysteries FAQ seemed to touch on everything else on some level, so I didn't cross-reference much. I do think teams should feel free to cross-reference to other FAQs, though. Gwen: > What if we created a schedule of sorts for these, too? > That is, no FAQ should go for more than X amount of > time before some team diverts to update it? There might be another way to go at it. We do have to consider the possibility of burn-out. Frankly, once I had finished the Mysteries FAQ, I had had quite enough of FAQs, thank-you-very-much. Maybe the way to deal with this is for people who are approaching burn-out to take some time to "recover" by focusing on updating a FAQ? Thoughts? Cindy From cindysphynx at comcast.net Thu Sep 26 18:06:20 2002 From: cindysphynx at comcast.net (Cindy C.) Date: Thu, 26 Sep 2002 18:06:20 -0000 Subject: And Another Thing . . . Message-ID: I forgot to ask about this earlier. There is another way we could greatly streamline the culling process. We could decide that we won't review the oldest messages. So, for instance, we could only cull from, say, messages 25,000- present. I remember that when I worked on the Mysteries FAQ, there was a great leap in message quality right around the moment the pending messages system was adopted. Suddenly, a greater percentage of messages had appropriate subject headers, weren't spam, weren't one- liners and weren't OT. I got the impression that the culling of the later messages was much more productive from that point going forward. And frankly, there was also the fact that I was familiar with the reputations of the more recent posters in a way I wasn't for posts from years ago. So when I saw a message from a particular person, I immediately had a good idea about whether the message was likely to yield a good link for the FAQ. So. Should we opt to narrow the universe of messages from which we cull to help speed up FAQ preparation? Cindy From dicentra at xmission.com Thu Sep 26 19:07:50 2002 From: dicentra at xmission.com (dicentra63) Date: Thu, 26 Sep 2002 19:07:50 -0000 Subject: killing a few birds (including ourselves) Message-ID: And then there's the issue of going back through the archives again and again, each time for a different subject. Would it be useful to assign one person a 10,000-message file, then have that person catalog the subjects found in the messages? That's time-consuming, but it could save time in the long run. Besides, Penny would like to see something to that effect. --Dicentra, biting off far more than she can chew, as usual From cindysphynx at comcast.net Thu Sep 26 19:23:54 2002 From: cindysphynx at comcast.net (Cindy C.) Date: Thu, 26 Sep 2002 19:23:54 -0000 Subject: killing a few birds (including ourselves) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Dicey: > And then there's the issue of going back through the archives again > and again, each time for a different subject. > > Would it be useful to assign one person a 10,000-message file, then > have that person catalog the subjects found in the messages? How about we start with 25,000-50,000 and we give five people responsibility for 5,000 messages each? We could also say that the catalog needn't be complete. Instead, it could only be the best messages -- messages that are sufficiently substantive and interesting and so might be cited or linked in a FAQ someday. That might help streamline things quite a lot. Cindy -- who always gets enthusiastic about finding ways to eliminate work From heidit at netbox.com Thu Sep 26 19:34:32 2002 From: heidit at netbox.com (heiditandy) Date: Thu, 26 Sep 2002 15:34:32 -0400 Subject: [HP4GU-FAQ] Re: killing a few birds (including ourselves) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <006201c26593$d5b7ddf0$3701010a@Frodo> > -----Original Message----- > From: Cindy C. [mailto:cindysphynx at comcast.net] > We could also say that the catalog needn't be complete. Instead, it > could only be the best messages -- messages that are sufficiently > substantive and interesting and so might be cited or linked in a FAQ > someday. > > That might help streamline things quite a lot. > I do support the "only including worthwile messages" - otherwise, it's a lot more noise than signal. However, I think we should cite to the older messages, and if that means going through them at least cursorily, I think that might be necessary because otherwise, the germination of a lot of the theories will be lost. If we don't go back that far, the whole Wand Order debate will be for naught. Same with a lot of the Draco discussion, which is pretty cyclical. Or the first suppositions of a family relationship between Snape and the Evanses. Am I adding ot the problem without helping? Wibble. From skelkins at attbi.com Thu Sep 26 20:01:57 2002 From: skelkins at attbi.com (Elkins) Date: Thu, 26 Sep 2002 13:01:57 -0700 Subject: [HP4GU-FAQ] Re: Call For Bird-Killing Volunteers! References: Message-ID: <003b01c26597$a0ded3a0$029de00c@sarahcharles> Let's do it! Starting with message 25,000, and in 5,000 post chunks, just like Cindy suggested. A brief description of the subjects of the posts ("Prank," "Lupin's boggart," "Sexuality in HP," "Snape's Task," etc.) would be great. As for fairly non-substantive posts...well, perhaps we only need to bother with those if taken in its entirety the thread goes someplace interesting. There are a few threads that I've run across in which no one person *ever* said anything all that impressive, and yet taken as a whole, the thread as a whole nonetheless does give a useful summary of the issue at hand. Perhaps for those we could just describe the subject of the thread, give the first message #, and then put a + marker after it, much like Dicey did in the SiriFAQ. I agree, though, that we probably really don't need to note the subject matter of "me too" posts, uninteresting queries that yield no responses, things that should have been sent to OTC, and so forth. So how many people do we have willing to lend a hand with this project? Dicey? Cindy? I believe that Penny once said that she would be willing to catalogue a chunk of posts. We only need four people to cover everything from 25,000 almost to the current day: 25,001 - 30,000 30,001 - 35,000 35,001 - 40,000 40,001 - 45,000 (includes current posts) Takers? I'm in the middle of culling Lupin right now, so until that's done I don't think that I can take a chunk, but I am willing to take on the responsibility for cataloging 45,001-50,000, once the list reaches message 45,000 -- which should be in around a week or so. I can catalogue as I read, and then at 50,000, I'll pass off that responsibility to somebody else. Sound good? So who else? If we have enough volunteers, then we can start working backwards from 25,000 as well, which would be a great help to future FAQers. (There was some good stuff written back in The Day too, you know. Really there was.) We already have a catalogue of the old Club posts that Penny compiled; it's in the files section somewhere. I think, though, that the cataloguers should probably at least sneak a peak at the content of each post, rather than going from the subject lines. Going just by subject lines, you can miss quite a lot. -- Elkins From cindysphynx at comcast.net Thu Sep 26 20:17:09 2002 From: cindysphynx at comcast.net (Cindy C.) Date: Thu, 26 Sep 2002 20:17:09 -0000 Subject: Call For Bird-Killing Volunteers! In-Reply-To: <003b01c26597$a0ded3a0$029de00c@sarahcharles> Message-ID: Elkins: > So how many people do we have willing to lend a hand with this >project? > 25,001 - 30,000 > 30,001 - 35,000 > 35,001 - 40,000 > 40,001 - 45,000 (includes current posts) > > Takers? I'm in the middle of HPfGU: A History. Can I get back to you once I've finished? I'll definitely take a chunk -- the question is when and how big a chunk. Also, when we prep the catalogue, can we give a clear idea for each message the *relevance* of the message rather than just duplicating the subject header. In other words, "Draco" is ok, "Redeemable! Draco" is better, "Redeemable!Draco -- great quote, new thread" is even more useful, I'd guess. I assume we'll include SHIPPing but not FILKs in the catalogue. Should we include TBAY messages in the catalogue? Cindy -- noting that post 25,000 was on Aug. 28, 2001, so there probably won't be many topics in prior messages that haven't been covered in depth since except things like the wand order that are already treated in depth in the Mysteries FAQ From skelkins at attbi.com Thu Sep 26 20:14:45 2002 From: skelkins at attbi.com (Elkins) Date: Thu, 26 Sep 2002 13:14:45 -0700 Subject: [HP4GU-FAQ] Re: killing a few birds (including ourselves) References: <006201c26593$d5b7ddf0$3701010a@Frodo> Message-ID: <004f01c26599$5eae2d30$029de00c@sarahcharles> Heidi wrote: > Am I adding ot the problem without helping? Not so long as you take a CHUNK! Ahem. Sorry about that. No, I agree with Heidi. Of course we need to get those older posts done, and if hordes of people suddenly crawl out of the woodwork to volunteer, then we should add them. My reason for feeling that it would best to start with the more recent posts, though, was that so many of the currently existing FAQs desperately need to be updated. If we had the more recent posts catalogued for easy reference, then giving all of those now outdated FAQs a new paint job would become a much faster process. Tackling the more recent posts first is therefore, yet again, "two birds with one stone." It can help us both to create new FAQs *and* to update the older FAQs. A catalogue of the older messages only serves one of those two functions. But nonetheless, I agree. We should be aiming to get everything catalogued eventually. -- Elkins From cindysphynx at comcast.net Thu Sep 26 20:32:15 2002 From: cindysphynx at comcast.net (Cindy C.) Date: Thu, 26 Sep 2002 20:32:15 -0000 Subject: Paul's Most Marvelous Magic! Message-ID: Hi, ya'll, Since we're on the subject of cataloguing posts, I wanted to let you all know what great thing Paul did for us. He prepared an Excel spreadsheet that is, among other things, a complete list of message number, date, poster and subject header. Would this be at all helpful for cataloguing, do you think? It is currently in the files section if anyone wants to take a look or download it. I assume it would be a great way to track down particular theories, like "Lupin was a volunteer auror" or some such, but I haven't tried searching it or anything. The spreadsheet also contains an accurate ranking of Top Posters by e-mail address! Below is a sample of the message list, although it won't wrap correctly in this Yahoo window on webview. But you get the idea. Thanks, Paul! Cindy ************ 1 24-Aug-2000 10:16 PM Alicia/Sue Spinnet AliciaSpinnet at h... Character Discussions 2 24-Aug-2000 10:40 PM Dee (Denise) Rogers gypsycaine at y... The Rocky Horror Picture Show 3 24-Aug-2000 10:47 PM Simon Branford simon.branford at h... Re: Character Discussions 4 24-Aug-2000 11:29 PM Alicia/Sue Spinnet AliciaSpinnet at h... Oops! 5 25-Aug-2000 12:28 AM Carole Estes lrcjestes at m... Biting one's tongue 6 25-Aug-2000 1:10 AM Penny Linsenmayer linsenma at h... Inaugural Post (a bit late) 7 25-Aug-2000 1:31 AM Karin karob_7 at y... Transition to eGroups From dicentra at xmission.com Thu Sep 26 21:28:05 2002 From: dicentra at xmission.com (dicentra at xmission.com) Date: Thu, 26 Sep 2002 15:28:05 -0600 Subject: [HP4GU-FAQ] Paul's Most Marvelous Magic! In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <1033075685.3d937be56c2c1@webmail.xmission.com> Quoting "Cindy C." : > > Since we're on the subject of cataloguing posts, I wanted to let you > all know what great thing Paul did for us. He prepared an Excel > spreadsheet that is, among other things, a complete list of message > number, date, poster and subject header. > > > Would this be at all helpful for cataloguing, do you think? What, are you kidding? It would be a godsend. Half the trouble with cataloguing and culling is having to scroll through those rotten combined messages that are longer than my arm. Where do I get one? --Dicey, drooling over a document fer cryinoutloud From skelkins at attbi.com Thu Sep 26 22:36:34 2002 From: skelkins at attbi.com (Elkins) Date: Thu, 26 Sep 2002 15:36:34 -0700 Subject: [HP4GU-FAQ] Paul's Most Marvelous Magic! References: <1033075685.3d937be56c2c1@webmail.xmission.com> Message-ID: <00f001c265ad$375f5f60$029de00c@sarahcharles> Yes! Yes! I want one too! Where can we get our hands on it? -- Elkins, drooling right along with Dicey From kippesp at yahoo.com Thu Sep 26 23:38:53 2002 From: kippesp at yahoo.com (kippesp) Date: Thu, 26 Sep 2002 23:38:53 -0000 Subject: Post "summary" Excel file Message-ID: I gave a *really* lousy name. So I've renamed the zip file. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HP4GU-FAQ/files/hpfgu-postsum.zip If you try to search for a post by date, keep in mind I converted all the time data to GMT. From dicentra at xmission.com Thu Sep 26 23:58:30 2002 From: dicentra at xmission.com (dicentra63) Date: Thu, 26 Sep 2002 23:58:30 -0000 Subject: Post "summary" Excel file In-Reply-To: Message-ID: --- In HP4GU-FAQ at y..., "kippesp" wrote: > I gave a *really* lousy name. So I've renamed the zip file. > > http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HP4GU-FAQ/files/hpfgu-postsum.zip > > If you try to search for a post by date, keep in mind I converted all > the time data to GMT. Omigosh! This is the coolest file I have ever seen in my life. EVER! And there's not a drop of irony in that statement. Where have you been all my life! --Dicey, who should get out more From cindysphynx at comcast.net Fri Sep 27 00:03:40 2002 From: cindysphynx at comcast.net (Cindy C.) Date: Fri, 27 Sep 2002 00:03:40 -0000 Subject: Post "summary" Excel file In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Dicey (about Paul): >Where have you been all my life! Hey, keep your hands off him -- he's *mine!* Seriously, Paul. We need some tech advice. If we're going to prepare a catalogue of, say, 20,000 posts, with different people generating different sections of the catalogue, what is the best format? Excel? Yahoo database? Word Table? Something else? I guess lots of folks are going to want to download it once it is finished; should we take that into account now? What can be done for those of us who are not at all tech savvy and get weak in the knees at the idea of working with Excel, but who are willing to learn? Can you hold my hand, just for a minute? ;-) Cindy From kippesp at yahoo.com Fri Sep 27 02:05:34 2002 From: kippesp at yahoo.com (Paul Kippes) Date: Thu, 26 Sep 2002 19:05:34 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [HP4GU-FAQ] Re: Post "summary" Excel file In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20020927020534.12402.qmail@web13804.mail.yahoo.com> To me, a Word table would be the most flexible and easiest to work with. And the nice thing about that would be Word tables can be converted to Excel very easily should it become necessary. Plus I'd expect more of us to know Word well compaired to Excel. Considering how difficult it is to search using Yahoo for words, would there be any interest in indexing all the posts? An example of how this could be used would be to pull all the post numbers that contain the words "harry & scar." It'd be limited to words rather than phrases, but it would be very fast and not limited to the past 1,000 posts like Yahoo. If the server has spare resources, it could be used to do the searching. If the function were password protected, the bandwidth would be very minimal--whatever to list out a 'few' numbers. I'd need to clear it with Heidi first of course. The actual posts wouldn't be available--just searchable words. --- "Cindy C." wrote: > Dicey (about Paul): > > >Where have you been all my life! > > Hey, keep your hands off him -- he's *mine!* > > Seriously, Paul. We need some tech advice. If we're going to > prepare a catalogue of, say, 20,000 posts, with different people > generating different sections of the catalogue, what is the best > format? Excel? Yahoo database? Word Table? Something else? I > guess lots of folks are going to want to download it once it is > finished; should we take that into account now? > > What can be done for those of us who are not at all tech savvy and > get weak in the knees at the idea of working with Excel, but who > are > willing to learn? > > Can you hold my hand, just for a minute? ;-) > > Cindy > > > ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor > > To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: > HP4GU-FAQ-unsubscribe at egroups.com > > > > Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to > http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ > > __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? New DSL Internet Access from SBC & Yahoo! http://sbc.yahoo.com From cindysphynx at comcast.net Fri Sep 27 15:59:10 2002 From: cindysphynx at comcast.net (Cindy C.) Date: Fri, 27 Sep 2002 15:59:10 -0000 Subject: Sageguarding FAQ Drafts Against Crashes Message-ID: Hi, all. Just a quick suggestion. If you're writing a FAQ, be sure to upload drafts to the group's files section periodically as you go along. If your computer gets fried, you won't lose the result of weeks or months of painstaking work. If you need instructions on how to upload your draft to the files section, just shout out or contact me off-list. Cindy From eloiseherisson at aol.com Fri Sep 27 21:51:39 2002 From: eloiseherisson at aol.com (eloiseherisson at aol.com) Date: Fri, 27 Sep 2002 17:51:39 EDT Subject: Hi from a Newbie! (I can say that without a Mod breathing down my neck!) Message-ID: <9f.2ddab633.2ac62ceb@aol.com> Hi folks! Well, there's no point in saying that I'm here, as Cindy's already done that. :-) To be frank, I feel like a bit of a spare part at the moment and really need to find my feet, but if anyone has anything with which they'd like help and with which they think that I can cope without being too much of a hindrance (I'm *not* technical, but I try to follow instructions!), I'm here. Oh... you know that. I'm mean I'm willing. Or something... Anyway, I'm not just lurking in the corner of the room, hoping to be ignored! Eloise the new girl, standing out in her too-shiny shoes and her robes bought a few sizes too big, so there's plenty of room for growth. From pipdowns at etchells0.demon.co.uk Sat Sep 28 18:17:24 2002 From: pipdowns at etchells0.demon.co.uk (bluesqueak) Date: Sat, 28 Sep 2002 18:17:24 -0000 Subject: Hi from a Newbie! (I can say that without a Mod breathing down my neck!) In-Reply-To: <9f.2ddab633.2ac62ceb@aol.com> Message-ID: --- In HP4GU-FAQ at y..., eloiseherisson at a... wrote: > who all seem to know what they're doing (in-between vying for the > attention of someone she hasn't met called Paul - Hi, Paul!) and > tries to exit quickly, before being yanked inside by Cindy and drawn to the attention of the group> > . Uh, well, I'm here [nervous grin]. And now study-free until late January. So if there's anything you need a newbie to help you with... > > Eloise > the new girl, [but not the only one] > standing out in her too-shiny shoes and her robes > bought a few sizes too big, so there's plenty of room for growth. Pip who is wondering how on earth she's going to get this huge trunk up to her dormitory. From cindysphynx at comcast.net Sat Sep 28 19:41:49 2002 From: cindysphynx at comcast.net (Cindy C.) Date: Sat, 28 Sep 2002 19:41:49 -0000 Subject: Preparing A Catalogue of Main List Posts Message-ID: Hi, FAQers, First up, a warm welcome to Pip! ::waves to Pip:: Elkins and I have given some thought to how we might go about preparing a catalogue of main list posts, and here are some ideas, complete with files and databases. Our goal, of course, is to produce a catalogue of coherent and canon- based posts on every conceivable canon issue that has been discussed ? that is, the posts and threads that someone will eventually use to write or update a FAQ. So we're looking for posts that are interesting, amusing and/or well-reasoned, and that have good analysis and good form. No theory is too outlandish to be included in the database; let the FAQ editor decide whether "Lupin was an unpaid auror" makes it into the FAQ. What posts should we *not* include in the catalogue? We should not include posts that make no canon point (OT, LOL!, Me, Too!), posts that have atrocious form (spelling, grammar, etc), extremely short posts, posts that merely repeat what others have said much better in the same thread, and gibberish. That said, if you run across a truly awful thread and you wind up citing no posts at all from that thread, please do go back and pick the best post from that discussion so that we won't miss entire threads. Those reviewing messages should review all types of messages except FILKS, including SHIP, FF and TBAY. I indicated earlier that perhaps TBAY posts could be skipped, but upon reflection, I think they should be included. Some TBAY posts have substantial or novel canon analysis (Memory Charm Symposium, anyone?), so it might be best to catalogue them. Otherwise, use your best editorial judgment on what you think should be included in the catalogue and what is best left out. CONSISTENCY ISSUES Once we finish the catalogue, we hope to have a massive Word table that we can sort by key words. In other words, the person preparing the Hagrid FAQ will be able to read or print out a list of all of the posts that someone entered into the catalogue because they discussed a Hagrid-related issue in some meaningful way. For that reason, we should strive for a measure of consistency in how we prepare our tables. If everyone prepares a different style of table, we'll have a royal mess on our hands. For that reason, I have prepared a table template and uploaded it to the files section. Let me know if you think there's a better way, but this is what I've come up with. It has five columns. First, there is a column for "Message Number." Pretty self- explanatory. Second, there are three columns for "Key Words." This is where you enter a key word that the editors will use to sort the table later when they are writing a FAQ. If the post addresses more than one subject, such as "Harry" and "Hagrid", please give it two key word entries in separate columns. Try to include a key word for every subject discussed in a meaningful way in the post. For instance, if I were cataloging the Memory Charm Symposium, I would have separate key words for "Neville," "Longbottoms," "Memory Charm," "Crouch Jr.", "Mrs. Lestrange," "Avery," and so forth. If the post requires more than three key words, just start another row for that same message number. The advantage of using separate columns for each key word is that anyone coming along later can sort the table by column so that all references to Moody, for instance would appear clustered together. Say someone is looking through the catalogue for posts discussing Sirius' reaction to how Snape clutched something on his arm when confronted by Moody. If we do not use separate columns for each key word (for instance if we write "Moody Snape Dark Mark Black" all in one key word column), then the sorting function will only sort the column alphabetically for the first word it sees -- "Moody" -- and the editor might miss the relevant post. If we enter key words in separate columns, however, we can later sort *each* of the columns alphabetically, thereby catching each occurrence of a key word. Along those lines, if you run across a combined post with 10 different subjects addressed, 5 of which are one-liners and 5 are substantive in their treatment of the issue, you should probably include key words for the 5 substantive issues and skip the 5 one- liners. Feel free to select any key words you think are appropriate. For instance, Luke's foreshadowing post might take the key word "Foreshadowing." Elkins' post on subversive readings might take a key word of "Literary Analysis." Third, there is a column for "Comments." To assist those editing FAQs, we probably want to be fairly specific in describing and evaluating the post. "Discusses Snape" is not too helpful. "Snape/DE" is better, but not great. "Why Snape left the DE" is better still. Here's the link for the Table Template: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HP4GU-FAQ/files/ My experience with tables is that they can crash if they get too large. What is "too large?" I'm not sure, but I probably would break a table into two documents if it began to exceed 15-20 pages. Don't forget to back up your tables and/or upload them periodically to the files section in case of computer crash. MESSAGE REVIEW I've also set up a database for those able to help prepare the catalogue by taking on a block of messages and preparing a table for their block. I divided the database into 1,000-message blocks so that FAQers without much time can still help out without committing to a huge 5,00-message block. Feel free to sign up for one message block or multiple message blocks. Please indicate the date you commit to your chunk. If for any reason you cannot finish your block reasonably promptly, please upload any table you started, note in the database that you can't finish your block and indicate where you stopped work. Here's the link: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HP4GU-FAQ/database? method=reportRows&tbl=10&sortBy=1&sortDir=down&start_at=0&query= Once the catalogue is complete, we'll be ready to start writing FAQs. Does this sound workable? Any suggestions, questions, comments? Cindy From lucky_kari at yahoo.ca Sat Sep 28 20:48:44 2002 From: lucky_kari at yahoo.ca (lucky_kari) Date: Sat, 28 Sep 2002 20:48:44 -0000 Subject: Hi from a Newbie! (I can say that without a Mod breathing down my neck!) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: --- In HP4GU-FAQ at y..., "bluesqueak" wrote: > --- In HP4GU-FAQ at y..., eloiseherisson at a... wrote: > > > who all seem to know what they're doing (in-between vying for the > > attention of someone she hasn't met called Paul - Hi, Paul!) and > > tries to exit quickly, before being yanked inside by Cindy and > drawn to the attention of the group> > > > > . > > Uh, well, I'm here [nervous grin]. And now study-free until late > January. So if there's anything you need a newbie to help you with... Eileen creeps in behind Pip. Well Porphyria and Elkins have drafted me. Do we have to wrestle a troll first? > > > > Eloise > > the new girl, > [but not the only one] > > standing out in her too-shiny shoes and her robes > > bought a few sizes too big, so there's plenty of room for growth. > > Pip > who is wondering how on earth she's going to get this huge trunk up > to her dormitory. Eileen who is beginning to suspect (after reading Cindy's post) that Elkins and Porphyria selected her on account of her declarations of affinity with a certain Percy Weasley. From eloiseherisson at aol.com Sat Sep 28 20:51:36 2002 From: eloiseherisson at aol.com (eloiseherisson at aol.com) Date: Sat, 28 Sep 2002 16:51:36 EDT Subject: [HP4GU-FAQ] Preparing A Catalogue of Main List Posts Message-ID: Looks fine to me. At least I can open this template, unlike the one which was posted yesterday. (My computer is having difficulty with it. At first it said it couldn't recognise the type of file, now it says it's too big to open with AOL. I'm afraid none of my (quite new) software seems to be up to it!) Since no-one seems to have anything else that they want me to do, I'd be happy to start cataloguing a block, but I might need a bit of help with intitially downloading (or creating) the file to work in and then uploading it. As I've said, I'm not in the least technical, but I think I can follow (clear!) instructions! Once I've done it, I should be all right. I don't have Word, BTW, only Works. (Is this a problem? Do I need to install anything else?) If this is the way everyone wants to go, tell me how to get started and I will. Eloise In the meantime volunteering to help Pip with her trunk. What *have* you got in there? A dishwasher? From elfundeb at comcast.net Sat Sep 28 21:06:18 2002 From: elfundeb at comcast.net (elfundeb) Date: Sat, 28 Sep 2002 17:06:18 -0400 Subject: [HP4GU-FAQ] Re: Hi from a Newbie! (I can say that without a Mod breathing down my neck!) References: Message-ID: <000801c26732$e3d666e0$3a3b3244@arlngt01.va.comcast.net> Debbie steps nervously off the train and, hearing a discussion of html, suddenly fears she doesn't know the right magic and that the good professors will tell her there's been a mistake and she'd better get back on the train . . . . but then she hears the calming voice of Captain Cindy welcoming a couple of other equally nervous-looking first-years. Feeling a bit better, Debbie follows Eloise, Pip and Eileen into a boat which takes off, gliding through a curtain of ivy across the lake to the FAQ castle, where the Sorting Hat calls: > > Eloise > > the new girl, > [but not the only one] > > standing out in her too-shiny shoes and her robes > > bought a few sizes too big, so there's plenty of room for growth. > > Pip > who is wondering how on earth she's going to get this huge trunk up > to her dormitory. Eileen who is beginning to suspect (after reading Cindy's post) that Elkins and Porphyria selected her on account of her declarations of affinity with a certain Percy Weasley. And Debbie Who still can't get that smudge off her nose [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] From lupinesque at yahoo.com Sat Sep 28 21:29:00 2002 From: lupinesque at yahoo.com (Amy Z) Date: Sat, 28 Sep 2002 14:29:00 -0700 (PDT) Subject: breathes down newcomers' necks In-Reply-To: <000801c26732$e3d666e0$3a3b3244@arlngt01.va.comcast.net> Message-ID: <20020928212900.56180.qmail@web20301.mail.yahoo.com> I'm not a Mod, but someone had to say it. Various things (oh no! a combined post! the bane of FAQers everywhere!): Welcome to the dark, Satanic mill of HP4GU-FAQ, newbies! Here you will languish for months, counting the drips from the stone dungeon ceiling, culling posts at the rate of 10 per day while the list generates them at the rate of 50, meaning that you'll be finished in the year A.D. Fifth Order of Magnitude of Infinity. Oh wait, no, that is no longer true! Thanks to the combined genius of Paul "It's not MY doing that we're pushing 50,000, I've only posted nine times" Kippes and Cindy "I know nothing technical, I swear" C., we may actually get on top of these things before OoP comes out. Or maybe that IS in the year A.D. Fifth Order of Magnitude of Infinity. Anyway, I heartily endorse the whole plan. Basically, we are creating an index of the entire thing--WOW. Great idea! I just have a wee little suggestion. Can we do the old messages as well? I know it adds tremendously to the task, but there really were lots of gems back before 25,000. Naturally my plea has nothing whatever to do with the fact that when Elkins and I divvied up the list to write our FAQ (Lupin), I took the Archive list and early posts of the main list. Nope. Now, I do have a few thoughts on how to make this easier. First, we do leave those for later, doing the more recent chunks first. This raises a question--what about those who are currently slogging through older posts, like me? It seems silly for me to do this and only cull Lupin, when I could be culling everything. The problem is that I will never finish if I do that. Perhaps the FAQ we are now writing should deal only with 25,000 onwards and any revision will wait until we work back to indexing those earlier posts? I'm getting fuzzy-headed here and could use some clarity. Second, remember that OT posts were allowed until, what was it, around March, 2001. So a lot of the earlier stuff is just plain OT. I suggest that any post that would be ruled OT today gets ignored in the indexing process. Those who really crave to know about the very first spotted dick question can look it up using the search engine, darn it. Back to the Word table. I think we need a feedback process so that we start to agree on common language. Otherwise we'll come up with lots of different names for the same thing. Can we have a Subject Headings file where we throw in all the things we come up with (just the headings, mind you, not the posts they describe) and then someone can look at them once a week or so and say "OK, let's take 'Point of View,' 'Narrative Perspective,' and 'Third Person Limited' and call them all 'Point of View'"? I'm not sure how that would work... Maybe we should just use the Library of Congress headings? Amy half-serious (but all Remus) __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? New DSL Internet Access from SBC & Yahoo! http://sbc.yahoo.com From lupinesque at yahoo.com Sat Sep 28 21:32:22 2002 From: lupinesque at yahoo.com (Amy Z) Date: Sat, 28 Sep 2002 14:32:22 -0700 (PDT) Subject: P.S. Re: breathes down newcomers' necks In-Reply-To: <20020928212900.56180.qmail@web20301.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20020928213222.56999.qmail@web20301.mail.yahoo.com> > Second, remember that OT posts were allowed until, > what was it, around March, 2001. So a lot of the > earlier stuff is just plain OT. I suggest that any > post that would be ruled OT today gets ignored in > the > indexing process. Same with Movie posts. I'll be damned if I'm going to catalog every casting debate. Amy __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? New DSL Internet Access from SBC & Yahoo! http://sbc.yahoo.com From heidit at netbox.com Sat Sep 28 22:02:18 2002 From: heidit at netbox.com (Heidi Tandy) Date: Sat, 28 Sep 2002 18:02:18 -0400 Subject: [HP4GU-FAQ] P.S. Re: breathes down newcomers' necks Message-ID: I also want to note that imho, the merchandise faq should either be eliminated or be considered an "archival" work, because these days, who really has a problem tracking anything down? If that decision is made, more posts can be skipped. -----Original Message----- From: Amy Z Date: Sat, 28 Sep 2002 14:32:22 To: HP4GU-FAQ at yahoogroups.com Subject: [HP4GU-FAQ] P.S. Re: breathes down newcomers' necks Real-To: Amy Z > Second, remember that OT posts were allowed until, > what was it, around March, 2001. So a lot of the > earlier stuff is just plain OT. I suggest that any > post that would be ruled OT today gets ignored in > the > indexing process. Same with Movie posts. I'll be damned if I'm going to catalog every casting debate. Amy __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? New DSL Internet Access from SBC & Yahoo! http://sbc.yahoo.com To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: HP4GU-FAQ-unsubscribe at egroups.com Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ From neilward at dircon.co.uk Sat Sep 28 22:40:16 2002 From: neilward at dircon.co.uk (Neil Ward) Date: Sat, 28 Sep 2002 22:40:16 -0000 Subject: Old FAQ stuff - in files Message-ID: Dear all, Cindy chased me down a dusty corridor with her broom recently, so I've posted a few files that may be of help. See Neil's FAQs folder in the Files area. The first thing to mention is that I lost the hard drive on my computer recently, and hadn't backed up some files, including some work I'd done on the FAQs since autumn 2000. For example, around the time I posted the MacGonagall FAQ, I'd almost finished a draft of the Quidditch one (it needed stuff adding from the Schoolbooks, but it was reasonable, otherwise). Now, the best I can give you is a version from October 2000, which is not long after we'd collated the first wave of messages. This means it only covers the Yahoo messages and, I think, a few early eGroups messages (i.e. virtually nothing from the current YahooGroups!) Apart from Quidditch, the only other thing I had in some sort of format at that point (stored on my old PC) was the Character Accents FAQ (that dates from September 2000). I've also included files of messages on Quidditch and Spells & Charms, both dating from the same time (Sep 2000). Spells & Charms was quite a mammoth undertaking, even then, and I'd decided to split it into about ten files, based on individual spells or groups (such as the Unforgivable Curses) about a year ago. So, all in all, not much of use, I'm afraid. I do have some messages sorted into groups in the email archives on my old computer (which is where all this stuff was stored), so might be able to pull something useful from that. It's all two years old though. Here's a run-down of the FAQs I was originally doing: 1) Ron - completed, but now out of date 2) Magical Devices/Objects - completed, but now out of date 3) MacGonagall - completed, rather less out of date, but still ancient 4) Quidditch - lost near-complete draft. Note: Ebony wanted to be involved in this FAQ. 5) Character Accents - had a draft, but there wasn't much to say 6) Spells & Charms - (see above). I also had some handwritten notes on a printout of messages that I can't find. Note: Sheryll was taking on this FAQ. 7) Snape - had made progress on reviewing messages in the early days, but stalled when the discussion on him went ballistic. I think Gwen or someone else (?) decided to take that one on not so long ago, so I'm backing away from it, rapidly... 8) Casting/Movie - I gave up on this one once the first film was released, but had done some work on fantasy casting discussions, technical stuff about the film and had planned a sub-FAQ about locations used. It was a non-starter though. 9) Wizarding World (general) - Meant for things that wouldn't go anywhere else. There were a few topics that seemed to fit, such as genetics and the nature of magic, but I didn't even get to drafting stage. 10) Mysteries & Inconsistencies CoS - Penny did a more general M & I on the books, so the individual ones were dropped, IIRC At this point, I'm not planning to do any more work on these FAQs, so feel free to take on any of them and make them your own. Neil From neilward at dircon.co.uk Sat Sep 28 23:19:02 2002 From: neilward at dircon.co.uk (Neil Ward) Date: Sat, 28 Sep 2002 23:19:02 -0000 Subject: Old FAQ stuff - in files In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Er, Of course, I hadn't read the recent discussions here before I posted my last message (which probably sounded like I'd just wheeled in here in my squeaky bath chair and dropped off a small pile of yellowing parchments for you young'uns). One of the things I never did, but meant to do, was include live links. I wasn't happy with the way I did the citations in my FAQs, but was so relieved to have 'finished' at least a couple of them that I spent the following two years just whistling nonchalantly and looking the other way. Did you notice? I thought Simon had some sort of draft of the Harry FAQ? Perhaps not. I think there were differences in the perception of the project over time, which may explain the stylistic differences in the older FAQs. I understood the aim to be preparation of readable summaries of the main points made in list discussions, but if the FAQs were to be regarded more as informative essays, it seemed odd, for example, to have included only those Magical Devices/Objects that had been discussed and not mention those that hadn't. The idea of ploughing through 50,000 messages now fills me with cold dread, so I'll just hop back into the rickety bath chair and roll my chassis back to the Geists' dungeon. Fare thee well... Neil From cindysphynx at comcast.net Sun Sep 29 01:34:17 2002 From: cindysphynx at comcast.net (Cindy C.) Date: Sun, 29 Sep 2002 01:34:17 -0000 Subject: breathes down newcomers' necks In-Reply-To: <20020928212900.56180.qmail@web20301.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Amy wrote: >Here you will languish for months, counting > the drips from the stone dungeon ceiling, Hey, now! The ceiling does *not* drip! The prisoners are not allowed any water, for heaven't sake. Didn't you get the memo? >I just have a wee little suggestion. Can > we do the old messages as well? Hey, sure! Let's do this. Let's do the most recent 20,000 posts. Then, if we are not a twitching, heaving, sobbing wreck of a group and if we are still speaking to each other, we can revisit the issue of the first 25,000 posts. So, you see, if we all work really quickly, why, there will be plenty of time to do a complete and comprehensive catalogue! ;-) >what about those who are currently slogging > through older posts, like me? Hmmm. How far have you made it, Amy? Would it make sense for you and Elkins to team up on the last 20,000 or something, just to finish the FAQ ASAP, at which point you can both begin to catalogue if you can bear the idea? Elkins? >I suggest that any > post that would be ruled OT today gets ignored in the > indexing process. Absolutely! > Back to the Word table. I think we need a feedback > process so that we start to agree on common language. Not a bad idea. We can certainly have a convention to call characters by last names except in instances where doing so would create confusion (Weasleys). But should we use summoning charm or Accio? Er. Any ideas? Cindy From cindysphynx at comcast.net Sun Sep 29 01:36:20 2002 From: cindysphynx at comcast.net (Cindy C.) Date: Sun, 29 Sep 2002 01:36:20 -0000 Subject: Preparing A Catalogue of Main List Posts In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Eloise: > I don't have Word, BTW, only Works. (Is this a problem? Do I need to install > anything else?) Can someone help Eloise with this tech question? I have no clue, I'm afraid. Cindy From kippesp at yahoo.com Sun Sep 29 04:55:44 2002 From: kippesp at yahoo.com (Paul Kippes) Date: Sat, 28 Sep 2002 21:55:44 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [HP4GU-FAQ] Re: Preparing A Catalogue of Main List Posts In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20020929045544.60165.qmail@web13805.mail.yahoo.com> MS Works can save files using the Word format. It shouldn't have a problem with reading them. If the .doc files already stored in the files section can be read without problems, should be good to go. --- "Cindy C." wrote: > Eloise: > > > I don't have Word, BTW, only Works. (Is this a problem? Do I need > > to install > > anything else?) > > Can someone help Eloise with this tech question? I have no clue, > I'm afraid. > > Cindy > > > ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor > > To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: > HP4GU-FAQ-unsubscribe at egroups.com > > > > Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to > http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ > > __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? New DSL Internet Access from SBC & Yahoo! http://sbc.yahoo.com From cindysphynx at comcast.net Sun Sep 29 14:28:01 2002 From: cindysphynx at comcast.net (Cindy C.) Date: Sun, 29 Sep 2002 14:28:01 -0000 Subject: What FAQs Should We Have? (WAS P.S. Re: breathes down newcomers' necks) Message-ID: Heidi wrote: > I also want to note that imho, the merchandise faq should either >be eliminated or be considered an "archival" work, because these >days, who really has a problem tracking anything down? If that >decision is made, more posts can be skipped. Agreed! If there's a post talking about how to buy a Hermione doll, then it doesn't make a canon point and should be skipped, I think. I also agree that we could eliminate the merchandise FAQ entirely, for the reason Heidi gave. It probably isn't worth the effort to keep it up the date, assuming this could even be done. Along those lines, we will at some point want to think about what the final list of FAQs will be. Which will we keep, which will we eliminate, and which new ones do we need? For instance, I'm not sure what to do with the "Other Recommended Reading" FAQ. It almost seems outside our jurisdiction, and I think I remember that there is a file in OT-Chatter that contains recommended reading. Maybe we should jettison that one and replace it with a "Literary Comparisons" FAQ? The "Social Issues" FAQ seems a bit broad, probably intended to cover slavery, historical parallels, cultural observations, and gender bias. Should we give it a more descriptive name, break it up, or leave it as is, do you think? Also, there seem to be some FAQ subjects that people really don't discuss all that much on the main list. This includes "Covers from Around the World," "Fan Clubs," "Humor" and "Movie." Thoughts? For new FAQs, I was thinking it might be fun to have a "Law and Order" FAQ that would pick up things like Aurors, Moody, DEs and Azkaban, for instance. Any other ideas for new FAQs or FAQs we should re-name or jettison? For reference, here's the list of FAQs, with completed FAQs indicated by *. Cindy ************** THE WORLD OF HARRY POTTER British Educational System Character Accents Character Names (Meaning, Origin, Pronunciation) Chronology and Timelines *Geography *Hogwarts School of Witchcraft & Wizardry *Mysteries & Inconsistencies *Potential Romance Pairings in HP *Predictions Quidditch Clothing Economy *Government *Magical Devices Mythology & Magical Creatures Social Issues Spells & Charms *Wands CHARACTERS OF HARRY POTTER *Animal Characters *Sirius Black Albus Dumbledore *Dursley Family *Hermione Granger Rubeus Hagrid *Neville Longbottom Remus Lupin *Minerva McGonagall *Peter Pettigrew Harry Potter *James & Lily Potter Severus Snape *Weasley Family *Ron Weasley *Lord Voldemort ABOUT THE BOOKS *Universal Appeal of HP *Book Banning & Controversies *Lawsuits Racial Diversity & HP *Religion & HP Audio Versions CoverArt & Covers from Around the World THE FANS Fan Clubs *Fanfiction Harry Potter Humor Movie Merchandise *Other Recommended Reading From pennylin at swbell.net Sun Sep 29 19:07:24 2002 From: pennylin at swbell.net (Penny Linsenmayer) Date: Sun, 29 Sep 2002 19:07:24 -0000 Subject: Catching up & What FAQs Should We Have? In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Hi all -- Sorry for being a full week behind the times here. I read through the last week's worth in one sitting & took some notes, but I'm not sure if it will all make sense. Bear with me... MOVING THE FAQS TO FA'S SERVER -- Sounds great. NAME CHANGE: ROLL OUT WITH NEW SERVER -- sounds great. TACKLING THE TOP PRIORITY FAQS -- I think the team approach sounds really great. As Cindy noted, the prior approach of assigning 10 FAQs to one person made somewhat more sense back in the Day than it would now. At the time the FAQ project was conceived, we had about 12 people willing to help cull through messages & write FAQs. We had a plethora of FAQ topics, so everyone took at least 5 FAQs on. Simon and I were pretty much the only ones to complete our entire assignment, with Neil doing some heavy work as well. I agree that a Harry FAQ is top priority. Yes, Neil is right that Simon had done a draft & it should be in the files area. It might make a useful skeleton but would be drastically out of date at this point. I think Hagrid, Malfoys and the Law & Justice topics are top priorities after Harry. I do have a suggestion on Dumbledore. Caius did a superb character summary of Dumbledore, and I'd recommend that we use that as a basis for starting on the Dumbledore FAQ. I have more to say on FAQs that can be eliminated, combined or added below. FAQ STYLE -- I think I still like the idea of the FAQs being somewhat individualistic, though it might be good to identify some matters of form that we'd want to make uniform throughout all the FAQs (such as linking to message numbers). Some FAQs lent themselves more to a Q&A format, while others were best served by something more narrative -- or at least that was our collective thinking in the prior years. Incidentally, the reason none of the FAQs that I did link to message numbers is that I lacked the techie skills to make this happen. I simply composed in Word and hit "save as HTML" (which I understand makes many people break out in hives). FAQ TABLE OF CONTENTS -- I still like the idea of keeping the undone FAQs listed somewhere in the "Table of Contents" or Index page. It *does* alert people that we're aware we need a FAQ on various topics. I like Gwen's suggestion of Completed, Nearing Completion and various times of estimated completion for the remainder. I hear Cindy's concerns, but I don't think it will be hard to revise so that the deadlines make sense if we get offtrack. MESSAGES TO CULL -- I'm in agreement with Elkins. Let's focus on the newest ones but definitely have it as a goal to get the pre-25,000 messages done too. UPDATE DATABASE -- I signed up for one grouping. Count me in as an active FAQ'er. :--) EXCEL OR WORD -- I'd have voted for Excel, which I think is a tremendously powerful program. But, I can certainly work in Word easily enough. SUBJECT HEADINGS FILE -- Please! Amen. In the previous culling of the 7500 message archives, we had lots of people entering in subject headings & so lots of things that were similar were entered in separate lines. We can probably get rid of: > Character Accents >Chronology and Timelines > Audio Versions > CoverArt & Covers from Around the World > Fan Clubs > Harry Potter Humor Merchandise Penny From simon.hp at virgin.net Sun Sep 29 19:22:16 2002 From: simon.hp at virgin.net (Simon Branford) Date: Sun, 29 Sep 2002 19:22:16 -0000 Subject: Old FAQ stuff - in files In-Reply-To: Message-ID: --- In HP4GU-FAQ at y..., "Neil Ward" wrote: >I thought Simon had some sort of draft of the Harry FAQ? Perhaps >not. There is a starter to the Harry FAQ in the file section of this group (there are starters for all the FAQs I took, updated to different points). It will be out of date - I stopped FAQing at around 10,000 messages on the main list, so none of the FAQs I started will have been updated past this point (unless someone else has been working on them). As to FAQs to drop... My vote goes to Predictions. If anyone else attempts to continue this they will know exactly why I say this. Almost all predictions fall under another FAQ (as most look at history and predict where this will lead in the future). It is also nearly impossible to track down messages for (without reading the whole lot). I am currently working on post numbers and rates for Cindy. Hopefully I will have some pretty pics to go with the figure I have produced. Simon From mike at aberforthsgoat.net Sun Sep 29 19:34:55 2002 From: mike at aberforthsgoat.net (Aberforth's Goat) Date: Sun, 29 Sep 2002 21:34:55 +0200 Subject: Message Archives on CD References: Message-ID: <006401c267ef$4b824b30$0200a8c0@shasta> Ah yes - FAQs. That's right. Just in case some of you are working with slow connections, I have downloaded Paul's message archives to my hard disk and would be happy to burn them onto a CD and send them to any interested parties. Baaaaaa! Aberforth's Goat (a.k.a. Mike Gray) _______________________ "Of course, I'm not entirely sure he can read, so that may not have been bravery...." And there's proof that he can't write either - check out the Viagramus Curse at http://www.riddikulus.org/authors/agoat/VC01.html From simon.hp at virgin.net Sun Sep 29 20:25:34 2002 From: simon.hp at virgin.net (Simon Branford) Date: Sun, 29 Sep 2002 20:25:34 -0000 Subject: Post rates Message-ID: Not happy - Yahoomort has eaten my first attempt at this message. Any way I have uploaded some post rate graphs to the files section (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HP4GU-FAQ/files/Post%20rates/). day.gif shows how many posts there have been per day of the week. week.gif shows how many posts there have been each week since the group started. month.gif shows how many posts there have been each month since the group started. Also posted is a zipped version of part of the Excel spreadsheet I used to generate these graphs. It is only part because the full thing came to nearly 3Mb (when zipped) and it is only really there to give an idea of the formulae used, so that similar techniques can be used in the future if we need to update this info. Simon From cindysphynx at comcast.net Mon Sep 30 00:44:08 2002 From: cindysphynx at comcast.net (Cindy C.) Date: Mon, 30 Sep 2002 00:44:08 -0000 Subject: Catching up & What FAQs Should We Have? In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Penny: > EXCEL OR WORD -- I'd have voted for Excel, which I think is a > tremendously powerful program. But, I can certainly work in Word > easily enough. Dicey explained to me that Word tables can easily be converted into Excel spreadsheets. She suggested that cullers work in either Word or Excel, whichever they are more comfortable with. When we are finished with the culling, we can then generate one massive Excel spreadsheet for cullers who prefer that format and a series of Word tables for cullers who prefer that format. We can also create an Access database for those who prefer that format. Remember, though, that if you choose to prepare Word tables, Dicey warns that they become unstable and become corrupted if they get too large. So keep an eye on how large your table is getting. Amy: >I think we need a feedback >process so that we start to agree on common language. >Otherwise we'll come up with lots of different names >for the same thing. Your wish is our command! ;-) Following on to Amy's suggestions, how about if we use the following guidelines for key words in our culling? 1. Character names -- all students go by first name. All adults go by last, except for where this would be confusing (Weasleys, Potters). So it's Draco, Neville, Harry and Ron. But their fathers are Malfoy, Longbottom, James and Arthur. Their mothers are Narcissa, Mrs. Longbottom, Lily and Molly. Common sense should hold sway here, of course. Obviously there is a Crouch Sr and a Crouch Jr. A post about teenaged Riddle should be keyed to "Voldemort." And so forth. 2. Animals and magical creatures should be referred to by name (Erroll, Winky) unless discussed generically (owls, house elves). 3. Spells should be referred to by the incantation, if any. So "Accio" instead of summoning charm; "Priori Incantantem" for "Wand Order." Spells can be shortened to the first word, so just "Wingardium." Use the common name where there is no incantation. 4. Please catalogue contests/puzzles and results under "Contest." Skip ADMINs. 5. For SHIPping, TBAY and FF, please use the prefix and other key words depending on canon point, such as "H/H." 6. For literary theory, I don't think there's a good way to nail things down very well, so do your best (Foreshadowing, Deux ex Machina, Criticism.) For literary comparisons, perhaps "Narnia" and "LoTR" and "Prydain." Let's mark these posts using "Theory" as one of the key words. 7. For word origins, meaning and pronunciation, how about "Etymology?" Does that work? Have I left anything out? Cindy From lucky_kari at yahoo.ca Mon Sep 30 18:37:45 2002 From: lucky_kari at yahoo.ca (lucky_kari) Date: Mon, 30 Sep 2002 18:37:45 -0000 Subject: Cataloguing Message-ID: I've volunteered for Messages 28,001-29,000, but someone had better give me exact instructions on what to do, else I'll end up flubbing it. (Did I mention I identify with Neville as well as Percy?) I think I understand the guidelines on keywords, as set out by Cindy a few posts ago. Now as for the Table Template, the one that reads "Message, Keyword 1, Keyword 2, Keyword 3, Comments" is the right one, right? Here comes the tricky part of the business. I'm not sure I quite understand the best way to go about this. All the old hands are swooning over Paul's document (Hello Paul!), but I really don't... well..... understand it. It's enough to make me fall on the floor and start grovelling and crying. It lists titles of posts, right? (The second tab that is) So what is it for? I know this probably sounds really stupid, but I can't for the life of me figure this out. Eileen, embarassed in advance over the obvious answer she will no doubt received From lucky_kari at yahoo.ca Mon Sep 30 18:49:55 2002 From: lucky_kari at yahoo.ca (lucky_kari) Date: Mon, 30 Sep 2002 18:49:55 -0000 Subject: Cataloguing In-Reply-To: Message-ID: P.S. What about those chapter discussion posts? Keyword: Chapter Discussion: Chapter 6? Or should I keyword them by concepts touched upon? Or both? Eileen --- In HP4GU-FAQ at y..., "lucky_kari" wrote: > I've volunteered for Messages 28,001-29,000, but someone had better > give me exact instructions on what to do, else I'll end up flubbing > it. (Did I mention I identify with Neville as well as Percy?) > > I think I understand the guidelines on keywords, as set out by Cindy a > few posts ago. Now as for the Table Template, the one that reads > "Message, Keyword 1, Keyword 2, Keyword 3, Comments" is the right one, > right? > > Here comes the tricky part of the business. I'm not sure I quite > understand the best way to go about this. All the old hands are > swooning over Paul's document (Hello Paul!), but I really don't... > well..... understand it. It's enough to make me fall on the floor and > start grovelling and crying. It lists titles of posts, right? (The > second tab that is) So what is it for? I know this probably sounds > really stupid, but I can't for the life of me figure this out. > > Eileen, embarassed in advance over the obvious answer she will no > doubt received