What's the best way of getting people to use this catalogue ?

[corinthum]

Carolyn asked:

> This catalogue should be a great resource to help improve the 
quality 
> of posting, but only if people enjoy using it, and can use it to 
> locate stuff quickly and easily.
...

> Take a difficult category like Snape, for instance - well over 1000 
> posts already. Finding what you want is very tricky, although not 
as 
> bad as having to read 27000 posts, of course.
> 
> Also, would like to get your views on the second level edit - how 
> tough we should be, what the criteria could be for pruning further..

Regarding use of the catalogue, I really don't think it will be as 
difficult as you think to locate posts.  After all, most common 
questions can be narrowed down to a certain combination of 
categories.  For example, someone who wants to know if anyone 
considered the possibility that Snape was in love with Lily wouldn't 
have to search all Snape posts; he or she could search a combination 
of Snape, Lily, and RelationSHIPPING, and would find that, why yes, 
people have considered this idea.  I think that simply providing an 
obvious link to our catalogue will be enough.

Perhaps we could provide guidance for the most common questions along 
these lines.  For example, if someone posted a message discussing 
whether Hermione likes Ron or Harry, we could simply reply "Search 
the catalogue (http://www.randomcatalogueadress.com) for Trio ships".

As far as the second edit, I still think we should leave as much as 
possible.  Keep in mind that we cataloguers don't represent the 
average HPFGU reader; what seems obvious to us may be very 
interesting for others to read.  I doubt people will be upset to find 
too much on a topic of their interest, as long as it's all in one 
place.  

-Kelly