Request for contributions and other stuff

[abigailnus]

In accordance with Amanda's comments, the revised version of the 
request for contributions:

Dear HPfGU Members,

Hello from the FAQ team! We're in charge of writing the Fantastic
Posts essays, which can be found at

http://www.hpfgu.org.uk/faq/

These essays collect posts on a variety of different subjects,
ranging from The Weasley Family to Justice in the Wizarding World.
They also provide summaries of important and popular theories
such as LOLLIPOPS or George. The Fantastic Posts are a great
asset to group members old and new, providing a coherent
perspective on the ideas that came before us. They also allow us
to save from Yahoo! oblivion those posts which are truly
remarkable and worth remembering.

We on the FAQ team are eager to get to work on updating the old
FPs and writing new ones in the wake of OOP, but we'd like you
all to help us. Have you read a post recently that really made you
think? A well-written post, that offered a new perspective or
submitted a new thoery? In short, have you read a Fantastic Post
recently? If you have, we'd like to hear about it.

Before you get going, a few words on what makes a post Fantastic.
You might want to check out some of the posts referenced in the old
FPs to get an idea of the kind of quality we're looking for. Also, bear
in mind that a a Fantastic Post should:

1. Be well written and coherent
2. Present new ideas or offer a good overview of old ones
3. Have good formatting - good grammar and spelling, capitalization
and punctuation where appropriate, more then one paragraph, etc.

There are three simple ways to let us know about a Fantastic Post:
 
1. We've opened the FAQ archive group to posting by the general 
public.  You can e-mail us at

(e-mail of archive group should go here)

Please use the following template when sending us a
recommendation e-mail

Fantastic Post number:
Author of Fantastic Post:
Topic of Fantastic Post:
Date of Fantastic Post:

Not all fields have to be filled, but we *must* have the message 
number - finding a message in any other way is all but impossible.

2. You can also reach the archive group homepage the same way
you might go to the HPfGU homepage and post a message from
there - simply use the 'Post' link on the sidebar.  Again, use the
template above, and be sure to include the message number.

3. A database has been created on the HPfGU homepage.  To get
there, simply go to the homepage and click on the 'Database' link
in the sidebar on the left-hand side of the screen.  Scroll down the
list until you find a database entitled 'Fantastic Posts'.  Click on the
title and you will be transferred to the database page.  From there
you can simply click on the 'add record' link at the top of the table
to make your suggestion.  You don't need to fill out all the fields,
but you must include a message number.

Finally, any post you send is only a suggestion. If you look at the
old Fantastic Posts you might notice how few messages they actually
reference. This isn't because these are the only good messages in
over 70,000 posts, but because if we were to include all the fantastic
posts ever made to the group we would drown, and the very purpose
of the FPs is to provide brief and concise overviews of ideas on the list.
We can't promise to use every post you send us, but we do promise
to read and consider every one with all due gravity, no matter who the
author is.

Wishing you happy hunting,

The FAQ team

I understand that MEG are going to let us know about setting up a 
database, and would someone, anyone, *please* post the e-mail and URL 
of the archive list so I can add it to the letter?

Amanda asked:
> Is this nomination method going to *replace* the combing over blocks of
> messages? Or was it intended to *augment* that? I wasn't clear on that.

That's a good question.  Personally I think that at least in the coming 
months rigorous cataloguing is probably not necessary - as long as we all 
keep our eyes peeled and add good posts to our database.  We may want 
to revisit this decision a few months from now when group quality picks 
up.  

I'm beginning to warm up to the idea of completing the Full Enchilada.  
The FE has catalogued posts until 45,000, and when OOP came out we were 
around 61,000.  That's 16,000 posts in the interim.  Penny has suggested 
that there are 30 of us willing to do archiving - I think that's a bit optimistic, 
but even 15 of us could finish the job in a few weeks.  I not sure if we need 
to be as rigorous as the FE cataloguers - representing every single thread, 
and all - but I'm sure there's plenty of good stuff there.  Who else is interested 
in doing this?

It seems that we've come back to the matter of which FPs to update first.  
Before OOP came out we had a poll, and then we sort of ignored the poll and 
decided on the four houses - Gryffindor had Weasley Family, Slytherin had 
DE/Justice/Aurors, Hufflepuff had Harry and Ravenclaw had Lupin.  The idea 
behind the seperation into houses was to have teams working on each FP but 
also to prevent the group from fragmenting too much to be productive.  Now 
it seems that some of us would prefer to work on other FPs - I've seen 
references to Snape, Hermione, Sirius and Neville, and I agree that they all 
deserve updates, but I worry that we may spread ourselves too thin.  Shall we 
have another poll, or shall we simply say that any topic that has enough (shall 
we say 3 as a minimum) FAQ writers interested in dedicating themselves to it 
will be taken up?

Penny wrote:

>>HARRY FP --
 
 Yes, let's get going. It probably makes sense to talk to the entire team
 off-list, recirculate Abigail's outline, etc. On something like the Harry
 FP, does it make sense to set up another yahoogroup? Is that what the Snape
 FP people did? Or, did you all work just be individual emails amongst the
 working group members? >>

It seems kind of silly to take a discussion of an FAQ off-list from the FAQ list, 
doesn't it?  This was another one of the reasons for dividing into houses - so 
that members of a specific FAQ team could talk amongst themselves and 
signal each other about a topic that has to do with that FAQ.  So, who is still 
in Hufflepuff house?  

Abigail