UPDATE Sunday 18th April: We're in business

[a_reader2003]

--- In HPFGU-Catalogue at yahoogroups.com, "Dicentra spectabilis" 
<dicentra at x> wrote:

> 1) Should we add a text field wherein the cataloguer can add a 
comment if desired, such as "includes minute-by-minute breakdown of 
Shrieking Shack scene."  This would aid the FAQers tremendously.

Carolyn: I would have no problem with this, but its one for Paul to 
sort out how it could be achieved. I guess it would be an optional 
text box on the category list - Paul: what would be the implications 
of this?

I added one category 'Fantastic Post' which we could click if we were 
really wowed by something, but this would be a further enhancement.
> 
> 2) I noticed that most of the Inish Alley acronyms have been made
> categories.  Should we remove all those acronyms that didn't live
> beyond the post in which they were coined (comprising most of 
them)? For example, listies frequently used MAGIC DISHWASHER and 
LOLLIPOPS as shorthand for their respective theories, but IMPISH 
LLAMA DRAPE and I GOT YOUR PARALLELISM RIGHT HERE MISTER never caught 
on, clever though they are.  Furthermore, "George" is by far the most-
used (and most personified) Snapetheory, but it's not an acronym.  
> 
> As the curator of Inish Alley and erstwhile participant in TBAY, I 
can help mark which acronyms became useful to the list (and therefore 
to the catalogue) and which did not.

Carolyn:
Hm. Interesting point. One of my big gripes with the FP section as it 
currently stands is that it doesn't give a quick, clear summary of 
where a theory stopped, started and diverged. A lot of post numbers 
are quoted, but usually too many, and they often repeat themselves in 
a confusing way. My idea on this category list was to provide a 
definitive list of which posts related to which acronym (even if it 
was only ever one post), so people could follow a theory thread right 
through and know where it started and stopped.

However, I hear what you are saying and we could have a rule that if 
an acronym generated no more than one or two posts that it gets 
downgraded and just coded up to its constituent parts. For IMPISH 
LLAMA DRAPE (Impoverished Molly's Parenting Isn't So Harsh! Lousy 
Lunches and Maroon Apparel Don't Render a Parent Evil), this would 
mean the post (36045) would simply get coded to Molly Weasley in 
section 2, and perhaps also the 'parenting' code in section 1. I 
could live with this.

George isn't an acronym, of course. However, its a term so widely 
used, I thought it might be useful to have it on our list, in order 
that people can follow through the whole wild series of mentions, and 
understand what it was all about (or not, as the case may be <g>).
> 
> 3) Am I to understand that we are not to monkey with the categories 
as of yet, i.e., we can neither create, edit, nor destroy?

Carolyn:
Um, yes, if you don't mind. If people do this on their own 
initiative, it means other people could be actively coding up to a 
category which has just been deleted or re-named to mean something 
else. I can imagine this making everyone very cross, so I am 
proposing that we post ideas for changes on this site, discuss them 
as necessary, and then I implement the agreed ones in one go, perhaps 
once a week, and record those changes in my update, so everyone knows 
what is happening.

Its a bit clumsy, but I can't think of any other way of doing it at 
the moment. Also, whilst making additions to the category list is 
straightforward enough, deleting categories causes quite a lot of 
problems. In fact, if I understand Paul correctly, we can't actually 
do it if anything has been coded up to the category so far - he will 
have to physically move those posts to another location first.

Some of the same problems occur if we re-name a category - we have to 
consider the effect of that on what is coded to the category so far. 
At this stage, the lists of posts are relatively short, but by the 
time we get into many thousands of posts, the consequences have to be 
considered fairly carefully. In fact, when we have a bigger team 
working on the project, we will probably have to 'lock' the category 
list in some way to prevent accidents.

> 
> That should be enough for now.
> 
> --Dicentra

Please don't apologise - I am relieved and keen to discuss the 
project in this kind of detail at long last. Its been in my head for 
so long !