Harry FP and Leadership

[Cindy C.]

Ali wrote:

> In terms of the Inter-house championship, labelling the FPs as 
> Slytherin, Gryffindor etc would never motivate me, as I do not feel 
> the need to compete with others to get our FP done. 

I think there may have been some miscommunication about what the House
system is and is not.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it is not and was never supposed to be a
competition.  No one will win or lose.  It was not designed to cause
anyone to feel guilty or bad.  It is nothing like my understanding of
a true House Championship (based on what I have seen in canon).

The point of the FP House System was (1) it was kinda cute and fun and
seemed to be a morale booster; (2) it was a prefixing system to allow
groups working together on an FP to discuss their work here rather
than off-list; (3) it allowed others to skip posts that didn't pertain
to their own work if they chose; and (4) it refected a consensus
decision of this group that we would do better to work as teams on a
limited number of FPs that were considered a priority.  

I gotta tell ya, however, that I am bewildered by the persistent
suggestions that this group has functioned without leadership.  Unless
I am hallucinating, I was one of the leaders of this group for quite a
while.  For instance, one thing I did as leader last year was to prod
Neil to locate and upload his Quidditch draft, review it, decide that
it was worth completing, and ask Ali off-list to finish it, which she
graciously agreed to do.  I really didn't think the FAQ list was a
contentious or unpleasant place then, despite the fact that I was
functioning as official (and later de facto) leader.  

Sorry to be so very *prickly* on this issue, but it would be as though
people suddenly started saying that HPfGU never had anyone experienced
in intellectual property.  We clearly did, and it was Heidi -- who did
good work and a lot of it.  It would be rather revisionist to suggest
otherwise.

As I mentioned earlier, we have already strayed pretty far from the
House system we were using.  If we wish to abandon that system (and
just have everyone work on whatever they want whenever they want), we
can do so, of course.  I would say such a step is unwise, but that's
just MHO. 

Cindy