FWD from HPfGU owner: Ambitious editorial idea for for HPfGU Admin Team..

[bluesqueak]

This was sent to the admin Team at the owner address. After reading 
it, it seems more in FAQ's remit, so I'm forwarding it here.

Carolyn's email is CarolynWhite2 at aol.com

Hi
I have only been a member since about July this year, so apologies 
first of all for the temerity in sending in a radical restructuring 
suggestion for the site! 

However, foolishly emboldened by Amanda Geist's recent encouragement 
to Kneasy (82268), I thought I would send you some ideas I have been 
thinking about for a while now, which may fit in with what he is 
suggesting, or indeed, what you may be working on already.

It seems to me that the basic problem with the site at the moment is 
that there are too many messages for people to search easily. This 
leads to many of the repetitions and silly questions that people 
object to. This problem is exacerbated by bad headings and Yahoo's 
peculiar threading function.

Although there are resources, such as Fantastic Posts, and the 
Lexicon to help, nevertheless people do have difficulty in finding 
out what has been discussed before.

My suggestions for sorting this out are first and foremost, aimed at 
the website, to improve its usability right now. However, they could 
also be the basis of an interesting publication eventually (more 
below on this).

1. First, form a working group of about 100 keen HPfGU members.

2. Then, allocate a set of posts to each of these people. At the 
time of writing, there are approaching 83000 posts, so this would 
mean 830 posts per person - a fairly manageable number, 
as many are quite short. Each group probably no more text than GoF 
or OoP if laid end to end !

3. Next, decide on an initial list of possible headings. Everyone is 
familiar with the posts - it should not be difficult to anticipate 
what subjects are likely to be discussed. Fantastic Posts already 
has some useful headings, but it needs a lot of expansion to cope 
with all the extraordinary stuff that comes up. Filks need parking 
somewhere as well.

4. The next stage is for each member to go through their 830 posts 
and correct the headings, using the agreed subject list, so that 
they properly reflect the content that they find. There will need to 
be a stop-and-pause process to discuss new heads that inevitably 
come up during this stage.

5. If posts address multiple subjects serially, and can be easily 
split apart under different headings, then this should be done at 
this stage. Where posts address several topics, but in a more 
integrated way, probably the best thing is to copy the post as many 
times as required for the different headings.

6. Once fixed, all the posts then need to be sorted into groups as 
per the headings, and (very importantly) put in date order.

7. The piles of posts then need allocating to different people to 
work on - probably a smaller group than the original 100-strong 
working party, or maybe not if there are more than 100 topics (could 
easily be, I suppose).

8. Then, for each topic, once it is in date order, the editor needs 
to go through and slice out any repetitive text, where it is not 
essential to understanding a reply. This will enable someone to read 
post 1, then all the replies, expansions, queries etc that this post 
generates in their correct order. 

Text only needs repeating where someone chooses to reply paragraph-
by-paragraph to something. 

This exercise in itself will considerably shorten the total amount 
of text on each subject.

9. It is important that posts are not cut out altogether, however 
silly they are, as the whole purpose is to preserve the flow of the 
debate. Also, it will take too long and be too difficult to make 
decisions in many areas. (You can just hear the heated 
discussion: 'sorry, I just don't agree that Snape is anything other 
than a model teacher, so I cut out all this nonsense about bats and 
vampires'
.or.. 
'I'm a practising Christian, I don't think this sort of thing should 
be debated at all
)!

10. The process of doing this cutting and ordering will undoubtedly 
reveal repeated waves of the same question being asked on some 
popular topics. I think this should be left as it is, and possibly 
even labelled 'wave 1' 'wave 2' etc, to highlight when the argument 
starts all over again! The reason I suggest this is that, although 
the initial question might sound similar the 3rd, 10th, even 20th 
time, in fact what tends to happen is that new shades of answers 
come back from new minds on the problem, or as a result of new 
information (especially post-OoP publication). In the case of named 
theories, it would definitely do no harm at all to show how the 
ideas have evolved over time 
 (this is where Kneasy's idea fits in 
I think)

11. Probably the editor working on one topic should finally swap 
with another editor when finished, so there is a second eye on the 
decisions that have been made, and bias does not creep into 
contentious areas 


12. These tidied, cleaned, shortened and ordered sets of posts 
should then be put up on the site as per their subject headings, so 
that people can quickly and easily find them and read themselves up 
to date on any given subject, from the original posts.

Although it sounds like a lot of work, I don't believe the whole 
process would really take more than a couple of months if it was 
well-organised, and it would contribute so much to finding out what 
had gone before.

By the way, I am not suggesting deleting the main list, that should 
stay as it is, as a primary resource, as with all the other 
documentation - although the new files might be a radical 
replacement of the current Fantastic Posts section.

Obviously, there then needs to be put in place an ongoing update 
process, so new posts can regularly be added, to keep a subject up 
to date. 

That's Part 1 of my suggestion (don't groan, Part 2 is much shorter).

If this process is carried out, and kept up to date, you then have 
the basis of a fantastic book, to be pulled together at some 
suitable point after the end of Book 7. My initial concept of this 
was as a tribute volume to be presented to JKR, as a thank you for 
giving us so much pleasure over the years. However, I think a lot of 
HPfGU members would also like a copy (I know I would !), so 
perhaps it could be published on a purely charitable basis, all 
surplus to go to good causes after printing costs had been met.

For this book version, there would need to be more editorial 
intervention - probably to choose the best posts, or best series of 
posts on the various topics, rather than include everything. 
However, it should definitely still preserve the original text of 
the posts, and not become a smoothed over and 
edited summary - half the amusement is following the various listies 
as they lock antlers (I noticed Iggy McSnurd encountered Golly last 
week
). I can also think of a least a couple of posts which 
would make great headings in themselves. There was the listie who 
asked plaintively 'what is this canon, I would like to read it', and 
another who asked indignantly 'what is this Tbay stuff ?'  A 
perfectly reasonable question, of course
..

Another issue is copyright and attribution - as a publisher myself, 
I know these are big issues (I don't publish in this area at all, I 
hasten to add - my area is business and management!). The 
simple solution as far as the actual posts go is to attempt to ask 
each and every person their permission to use their post in this 
way. If they have disappeared, it may be ok to publish the posts 
anonymously. 

As far as the material quoted within the posts from the HP books, 
and many other sources, I guess you'd need to talk firstly to JKR 
about this, to see if she'd allow this (rather extensive use). If 
there were problems, you could get round it by just giving the book 
and page refs to long passages. For other quoted material, the same 
goes - give correct attribution, contact copyright owner in cases of 
doubt.

But it would make a highly unusual publication - a documentation of 
a publishing phenomenon.
 
People just wouldn't believe the topics which have come up as a 
result of these books !

Well, I hope you'll give the ideas some consideration.

Cheers
Carolyn