Questions

[annemehr]

> CATEGORY 0 - REJECTS
> 
Carolyn:
> (0.5) Listings of personal favourite topics/characters etc
> I have been using this for much unsupported `I wish' type posts, eg `I 
> hope Harry/Hermione/Ron etc get it together in the end', as well as `I 
> love xxx in the books'. The only exception here where someone is 
> appreciating the humour in the series, where I have been coding under 
> 1.3.6 (if I agree!).
>  >
Barry:
> I've  rarely used this category so far. The example that you use of "I 
> wish.." I tend to mark as Off-Topic. Not that it matters - a reject is 
> a reject.

Anne:
I've been using it much as Carolyn has; at first the word "Listings"
made me wonder if I was right (thinking along the lines of "favorite
quotes" threads), but there's really no where else to put them.


Carolyn:
> (0.8) Mere agreement/adding nothing new
> This category is likely to be increasingly important as we move 
> forwards. Should it be split in two? What should our criteria be for 
> `adding nothing new'? I have been using it for both factual queries 
> like `Where did the twins get the Marauders' Map?/ (answer) From 
> Filch's cabinet', and repetitions of common theories like `I think 
> Voldemort and Harry are related' (unaccompanied by any detailed 
> analysis). However, using it like this will depend on constant review 
> of what has already come up.
>  >
Barry:
> I concur.

Anne:
I might rename it "Mere (dis)agreement/adding nothing new.  I've been
using it also for for some very short, unsubstantiated posts when I
know the idea contained therein is covered in much more detail
elsewhere.  I once came upon quite a long reply that basically
rephrased the post it was agreeing to: that went here as well.
> 

Carolyn:
> (1.1) Meta-themes
> Are these working for people? Personally, I have not used them very 
> much so far. They evolved from the boiling down I did of the FAQ topic 
> list way back. They may be too vague to be useful.
>  >
Barry:
> They probably will be used once the excitement of GoF has subsided and 
> posters settle down to the long 3 years of drought that follows. 

Anne:
I agree: in the titles themselves I recognise many of the themes I
know were covered more recently.
> 

Carolyn:
> (1.2) Military strategy
> See question under character's – maybe 1.2.1 & 1.2.2 should be moved to 
> DD and Voldie categories. 1.2.3 (Hogwart's defences) could go
> under Hogwarts in section 4; 1.2.4 (spying, espionage & betrayal) could 
> become a subset of 1.1.3 (friendship, love & loyalty).
>  >
Barry:
> Yes, they can be moved without losing anything, except 1.2.4.
> Betrayal and spying are massive themes in the books and the potential 
> for various characters to indulge in them seems to occur in every fifth 
> post. Is there a named individual in the texts that has not been 
> accused at some time? Can't think of one.
> Harking back to my post of yesterday, why not  re-vamp  the whole 
> section to take into account the popularity of the subjects? Maybe 
> thus:
> 1.2 ........Treason, betrayal
> 1.2.1 ......Spying, deception, disguise
> 1.2.2 ......ESE
> 1.2.3 ......Trust
> 1.2.4 ......FEATHERBOAS
> 1.2.5 ......FLYING HEDGEHOGS

Anne:
I thought FEATHERBOAS was just the wish on the part of the adherent to
see as much blood and mayhem as possible.  I don't think it belongs
here.  Treason, begrayal and Spying, deception, disguise seem as
though they are going to blend into each other; I imagine I'd have a
lot of posts coded into both.

As far as 1.2.1 and 1.2.2, I like them just where they are.

>  >
> (1.3.2) Narrative style
> Do we need more categories for arguments about whether the books are 
> well-written or not? Ie, separate from whether or not they are 
> children's books (which belongs in section 4).
>  >
> 
> Probably not. Literary criticism can be nailed into this without too 
> much angst.
> 
Carolyn:
> (1.3.4) Foreshadowing, clues & misdirection
> How are people using this? I have not used it yet, as have not come 
> across posts overtly discussing how she uses this technique in the 
> books.
>  >
Barry:
> Mostly I've used it when the posters suspect a foreshadowing or clue 
> rather than it's other use in retrospective analysis. Works for both 
> IMO. Under some circumstances 1.3.3 Plot development is  almost 
> indistinguishable.

Anne:
I've used it once, and I thought it would come up much more later.  It
might be more useful for discussions of how JKR uses them per se, as
opposed to checking it every time someone makes a canon-based
prediction (which you could do for each of these, technically).  For
example, I'd check it for a post discussing whether Mark Evans is a
clue or a red herring, but not for a post noting that his surname was
Lily's and guessing he'll be receiving a Hogwarts letter, which I'd
put as a book 6 prediction only.  Otherwise, this category would
become so full as to be useless, don't you think?
> 
Carolyn:
> (1.8 – 1.12) Book/chapter contents
> I have been trying to code as much as possible to individual chapter 
> discussions, where arguments have raged as to why, how, where things 
> happened. But I also code the discussion to the main characters as 
> well.
>  >
Barry:
> Yes, so have I (but see Multiple posts)

Anne:
I hope I haven't been remiss in this area.  I *have* been coding posts
into one or two individual chapters where I recognised them (i.e.
discussing one or two discrete events), but where a post ranged over
wider areas of a book, I haven't.  Come to think of it, I could have
coded those under simply "GoF" or "PoA."

Carolyn:
> (1.13) Predictions
> Do we need sub-categories within any of the book categories listed 
> here? Whilst 1.13.1 Book 4/GOF is likely to be fairly finite, as the 
> predicting had to end as soon as the book was published, mid-way in the 
> Yahoo Club postings, the number of predictions put into the other 
> categories are likely to be huge.
> 
> Second question is what is the difference between a prediction and just 
> pure speculation on what might happen in future books? A particular 
> difficulty I have had is speculation on what might happen at the end of 
> the series. I have been coding this to 1.13.4 (Book 7), plus other 
> codes depending on the nature of the theory. A further complication is 
> when this includes discussion of plot development in a literary sense, 
> ie what is likely from the POV of are the books for children or not, 
> meta-themes of good/evil.
>  >
Barry:
> Most posters have staunchly held ideas of what happens next but tying 
> them to particular volumes is pretty much guesswork.

Anne:
Yes, that's been my problem. Perhaps we need a category called
"General predictions" after the book 7 category.  I also think "after
book seven" predictions just belong under book 7, as the epilogue will
be part of the book.

Barry:
> Speculation without evidence borders on wishful thinking and we've seen 
> an awful lot of that posted in the past year - mostly of the fluffy 
> bunny persuasion. Theory and speculation should be based on something 
> capable of interpretation and discussion. If there's no canon backing, 
> extrapolation from canon or argument based on character traits / 
> unexplained behaviour or the like, it shouldn't be classed as 
> Prediction IMO.

Anne:
There's also prediction based on "what JKR would do" (in the poster's
opinion of course).  "Harry won't die because these are children's
books" could be coded under predictions and also childrens/adult
books.  Although they are very often seemingly valuless as actual
predictions, I think 1)some people are more perceptive than others,
and 2)whether wide of the mark or not, the various varieties of these
will be interesting to people after we've read book 7.

This might also be a good place to point out that some of the
obviously wrong and illogical stuff *will* end up being of interest to
future users, and shouldn't all be rejected.  It's part of HPfGU
culture, especially the stuff that occurs over and over. Which brings
me to:

Barry:
Posts that arbitrarily 
> assume that "this must have  happened" to substantiate some belief or 
> other with *no* evidence irritate particularly. I'll not name names. 
> Category - sloppy thinking.

Anne:
Oh, how I wish we had this category!  Fortunately, I can code most of
these into "nothing new," since the idea involved will get dealt with
more logically elsewhere.  Still, widely held assumptions are going to
need to be recorded somewhere for posterity, aren't they?  What about
all the post GoF posts dealing with the "witch" Arabella Figg?  We
can't code them only as "misdirection" until after we've read book 7
when we know what *all* the misdirections are, otherwise we'll be
inconsistent.

Barry:
> As to the finale, why not have a category The End? Theory or pure 
> guesswork  are the same when there is so much that has yet to be 
> revealed.

Anne:
To me, these are just "book 7," which will not be a very full category
at all until we've read book 6.  What we'll have most of is general
predictions which can't be tied to a particular future book until
then, IMO.

Carolyn:
> A major question is should we remove the theory acronyms?
>  >
Barry:
> Best to keep them. How they will be dealt with in the Search programme 
> is worth thinking about though.

Anne:
I'd agree we should keep them, for safety's sake.  If Paul could
temporarily suppress them, that'd be great, though.

Carolyn:
> Related to the theory acronym question is what do we do about posts 
> which have a consistent theme, but are not specifically linked to named 
> theories? Would it be useful to have sub-headings under each character, 
> in order to be able to follow streams of ideas? Eg should we move 1.2.2 
> (Dumbledore's agenda) to a sub-category under Dumbledore? Should we 
> have a box under Snape called `Is he a spy?', and another one to track 
> his many hypothetical romantic entanglements? Would it be too difficult 
> at this stage to anticipate the many convoluted propositions that have 
> been put forward about each character? If we did this, would it cause 
> mega-confusion with the text themes listed in Category 1?
>  >
Barry:
> For a very few characters it might be useful. For example Dumbledore's 
> agenda is obviously linked to DD. Spying is a more general topic (see 
> 1.2 above).
> The acronyms nail the theories quite well, those that say the same 
> without the capital letters can be categorised as any other post. No  
> sweat.

Anne:
I'm not sure what Barry meant in that next to last sentence,
but...Yes, I think some of the main characters should have
sub-headings besides just the acronyms to split up their categories.
This will take some thinking.  BTW, if, say, book 6 makes it clear we
need a new subheading for someone, that wouldn't be a problem to add a
couple of years down the road, will it?

>  >
> Also, I have a pretty complete list of all the characters in the books 
> – I could expand the names on this list exponentially if anyone
> thought it was useful. In the short term I tried to make a selection of 
> the most commonly discussed characters.
>  >
> 
> Best only to add them as and when it becomes necessary.

Anne:
Agreed.

Carolyn:
>  >
> (2.14) RelationSHIPPING
> Are there enough options here? I have been a bit cavalier and have been 
> putting some non-Trio speculation (eg Harry/Cho) under 2.14.7 (Trio 
> ships), although also under Cho (or whoever), if it blossomed into a 
> wider analysis of character and motivations.
>  >
Anne:
I agree with Kelly's answer, that any SHIP that involves at least one
of the Trio goes here.
> 
Carolyn:
> (3.8.6.8/3.10.1) Time-turner/Time travel
> Should they be together under travel or magic?
>  >
Barry:
> Magic.

Anne:
Yes, magic.

Carolyn:

> (3.16.4/2.9) Sorting process/school houses/founders I sometimes find it 
> hard to decide whether to put stuff about the nature/character of the 
> houses under the house codes or the historical character codes. Should 
> they be amalgamated?
>  >
Barry:
> I wouldn't - but that's because IMO there's going to be a lot more 
> about Slytherin and Gryffindor the persons in future books. But what do 
> I know?

Anne:
I put that stuff under the school houses, and save the founders'
categories for discussions of those people themselves.
>  >
> (4.1) Children or adult's books
> I have been putting the religious banning controversies under 4.1.3, 
> but this is not really a children/adults question – should we have a
> new sub-head here, or should this sort of discussion be moved back up 
> to category 1 under 1.1.1 (Good vs evil/religious influences etc).
>  >
> 
> Keep it in section 4. There haven't been that many controversies that 
> they need sub-divisions. Anyway, I'd assumed that 1.1.1 was more for 
> philosophical discussions on the nature of evil etc. than for RW 
> nutters.

Anne:
I might just rename section 4 as "Public reaction," and subheads for
Children/adult, Banning/religious controversy, etc.  Then we can add
more subheads as we see fit.

Carolyn:

> (5.1) Multiple Posts
> I probably have not been clicking this as often as I should, and 
> judging by the relatively few number of hits, nor has anyone else.
> Really, we should click this every time a post addresses more than one 
> topic in a formal way (as opposed to talking about many things in 
> relation to one point). However, not sure yet what we are going to do 
> about all these – ie how they are to be pulled apart.
>  >
> 
> 
> Open to interpretation this one.
> When a post starts to resemble CatLady's weekly missives, that I think 
> is a multiple post. When it covers different actions, persons, 
> whatever, no mmatter  how diverse that are contained in one chapter, 
> then I check it as a chapter discussion; if it is a post on say, how  
> Hagrid got to the Rock, discussing various modes of travel, magic or 
> otherwise, it gets Hagrid and travel. To get a Multiple post  from me 
> it has had to contain a series of unconnected ideas or actions not 
> found in one chunk of text.

Anne:
I'm with Barry.  Usually, the Multiples I've run across contain a bit
of Reject material and then one on-topic section, which I code for. 
That will change after they create the OT list, of course.

>  >
> (5.4) TBAY
> Is everyone clear to tick this if you think a post is TBAY style, but 
> this tag has not been used in the post header.
>  >
> 
> Understood.

Anne:
ditto.


> 3.5.4 Blood protection. The GoF readers are aware of Harry's 
> protection, but not what it consists of.
> They  are under the impression that 'Privet Drive protection' is 
> different from his blood protection that V overcomes at the end of the 
> book.
> How do you want to handle that?
> Place Protection (unspecified) directly under Harry 2.4.3?
> 
> Privet Drive deserves a check box too.
> 
> I may be back with more.

Anne:
I'd code that under Dumbledore's agenda, Lily, and Harry.  Privet
Drive might be a good check box.

Sorry I got a little sloppy with attributions at the end, I'm right
out of time -- I knew I'd be having a busy weekend.