What's our responsibility, anyways?

[abigailnus]

Look, I'm not exactly clear what's going on on the MEG 
list and why, and I'm pretty certain I don't want to know.  
It all sounds like the sort of mess that's best left behind 
as quickly as possible.  I realize that may not be possible 
for the people who have become emotionally entangled 
in it, but as a bystander I see no reason to complicate 
matters further by trying to wade in.  All I know is that 
I've been asked to participate in the FAQ list - to use the 
term in its loosest possible meaning, that's my job.  

Cindy feels that she can no longer "lead" the FAQ group.  
I'm not entirely certain that I agree with her - or, for that 
matter, that I understand her reasons - why should we 
care that we don't have input into the running of HPfGU?  
Is there a chance that the FPs will be discontinued?  Pip, 
since you seem to be the voice of MEG at the moment, how 
about giving us some semblence of a policy regarding our 
work?  Nevertheless, it is Cindy's perogrative to feel this way 
and act accordingly.  At this point, however, I'm not sure 
how much leadership we really need.  Our mandate is clear, 
we have outlined the four tasks to which we were planning to 
devote ourselves first and divided ourselves into groups.  
We have at our disposal the awsome resource of the 
Enchilada, not to mention the new Fantastic Posts table.  
We know what to do.  

Important questions have been raised, by myself and others, 
over how, or more importantly, when to proceed with our 
work.  Those questions were asked of this entire group 
- the fact that Cindy feels she can no longer shoulder the 
burden of answering them unilaterally is not an excuse for 
the rest of us to remain silent.  There are 40 members on this 
list, most of them active, at least a quarter of them brand new 
members eager to get to work.  We are perfectly capable of 
making decisions.

So, the most important question before us is when and if we 
should  begin writing or updating the four FAQs which have 
been assigned to houses (which are Weasley Family, Harry, 
Lupin & DE/Aurors/Justice).  For that matter, in light of OOP, 
does anyone feels that these topics should be changed (for my 
money, Lupin can probably be replaced with Sirius)?

Personally, I think we should wait.  The material on the list 
is simply not coherent enough to be worth the time and 
effort.  By the time we finish writing an FP it will already 
need updating.  That having been said, I think there is 
probably work that we can do in the interim.  The different 
houses can get to work on outlines for their FPs, and we can 
start scouring the list for Fantastic Posts on a more formal 
basis as opposed to counting on eagle-eyed members as we 
are now.  For that matter, if the latest 15,000 posts seem 
unlikely to yield enough good messages to be worth the 
trouble, there are still 10,000 uncatalogued messages not 
included in the Enchilada - we could get to work on those.

Speak up, people.

Abigail  

P.S. I don't want this message to be interpreted in any way 
as meaning that I don't think we need Cindy or that her input 
is not important.  Nothing could be further from the truth, 
and I'm very glad that she's chosen to remain as a member 
of Slytherin house.  I'm just trying to say that I think the rest 
of us can and should take a more active role in this group.