Content of final catalogue

[a_reader2003]

--- In HPFGU-Catalogue at yahoogroups.com, "davewitley" 
<dfrankiswork at n...> wrote:

I'm confused by this, now.

(....)

This is the crux - will those posts be accessible or not? As I
understand it, we have three options:

- delete them from the database;
- keep them for specialists to use, but deny the general HPFGU
member access;
- keep them, and let people access them on the same basis as the
other posts.

None of these options involves significant effort to implement, so
far as I can see - what may be more work is providing the sort of
facilities to do Boolean searches on things like author etc, in a
form that is not too forbidding to the average list member, but as I 
understand you above we are intending to try this anyway.

(....)

I repeat, I'm *not* suggesting additional coding in any form. but
we are, in fact, coding all posts.

As I understand it, whether the reject posts are 'included'
or 'excluded' from the catalogue is a cosmetic matter of semantics.
De facto, they are in the database. Yes, they get only very basic
categorisation, but that's still a whole lot better than the
situation out there on the list itself.

David


Carolyn:
Nothing is yet decided about the final presentation of the catalogue. 
However, looking at the reject categories, some are obviously more 
suitable for offering to the members than others.

Using the new headings which we have recently decided on, I would 
suggest that:

0.2 Movie-related 
0.3 OT/personal favs/quizzes etc 
0.4 Fan-fic-related  

might eventually form part of the catalogue if people were prepared 
to accept that they were not sub-coded in any way beyond their 
general heading.

The following reject categories are never likely to be included, 
unless you can think of a tactful heading that doesn't draw attention 
to the reasons why they were rejected in the first place.

0.6 Mere agreement  
0.7 Mistakes/perpetrating mistakes           
0.8 Duplicated posts/trivial posting errors
0.9 Too illiterate, badly written  


For the remaining two categories:

0.1 ADMIN/list manag/spoiler issues
0.5 FAQs/Adds nothing new

I feel it would extremely confusing to include old Admin messages, as 
they may not be consistent with the current Humungous Bigfile and 
other recent Admin pronouncements. I would keep them for specialist 
reference by the Admin team, or perhaps present them as a resource to 
the Feedback list.

The content of the final group of posts in 0.5 is banal in the 
extreme (by definition) and, IMO, not useful to anyone, which is why 
they have been rejected in the first place. However, I am hoping that 
a trawl of this section will provide a renewed impetus to the FAQ 
team as to the *subjects* they should be covering, and eventually 
generate a series of revamped essays for that section on HPfGU. To 
write those essays they won't be using the content of the posts in 
0.5, but will obviously trawl our other categories extensively for 
ideas.

Beyond these thoughts, and those outlined in the MEG paper, I don't 
have a final view on what form the actual search functions might 
take. When it comes to it, quick and dirty solutions always appeal to 
me more than over-refined ideas that take too long to implement. The 
membership are so desperate for this catalogue that I am sure they 
would put up with something a bit clunky if it worked on the core 
problem - which is finding posts relevant to book canon. 

Anything else is icing on the cake, IMO, so right now, I am rather 
focused on getting the initial classification completed. If possible, 
I will try and do that in a way that doesn't preclude further 
classification work on the "excluded" posts later.


Clearer ? 

Carolyn