The Catalogue..one year on.

[carolynwhite2]

Carolyn wanders into the cataloguing office early on Monday morning. 
No one's about, but you can hardly walk across the room for heaps of 
paper. A huge category chart on one wall looks like an explanation of 
Quidditch for not very bright muggles. A mountain of queries and 
objections spill out from her in-tray.

Sighing, she wonders if they realise what day it is: a whole year 
since they got the keys to the building and moved in. Some day the 
story of this epic folly will be used as a case study in universities 
around the world..if they ever finish. Pouring herself some strong 
coffee, she recalls how it all began.

'Erm, ok...it sounds um...very interesting' - Anne
'You are bloody joking..' - Barry
'If my spanglish eez ok, I like to kill posters, yes please' - 
Silmariel

Undaunted, and drawing on my wide experience of spinning ludicrous 
projects to doubting investors, it was easy to translate this into a 
watertight proposition to Admin:  'I have a terrific project for 
HPfGU which you can't do without, here are the first 1000 posts 
already done by yours truly.' Cunningly, these were on Excel files, 
which few people could read (including Anne, Barry and Silmariel). 
But, success ! On the grounds that this could be a fun spectator 
sport, on 21st February 2004 we were granted a Yahoo discussion group 
with a nice picture at the top. A number of elves settled themselves 
comfortably in the front row seats, clutching huge tubs of popcorn.

My first move was to ignore the stuff we didn't know how to do by 
delegating it to a technical sub-committee, which didn't meet that 
often. However, just as we had finally established that we couldn't 
do anything at all till we solved the technical problems, in strode 
Paul, a tough Texan with no time for techno-wimps. Politely ignoring 
our garbled explanations, he calmly built exactly the site we wanted, 
and chucked us the keys...On April 18th 2004 we finally began to code 
the Yahoo club..

'How did I get roped into this?' - Barry
'I do have a life..but this project is, um...very interesting' - Anne
'I am ze leader of an RPG in Madrid..we roam ze streets...I will 
return..eventually' -Silmariel

Clearly more victims, er team players were required. Greedily I began 
to scan the horizons. Aha.. A small, grinning creature was spotted in 
central London...could it be the legendary Pip!Squeak? Indeed it 
was..but alas, she was just looking for a place to sleep, and 
promptly curled up in the dorm for the duration. 

A sailor in port, Corinthum (Kelly), was pressganged next, closely 
followed by The Sergeant Majorette (Jayne), Severely Sigune (Eva), 
and Bad!Boyd Smythe, and for 17000 posts we slogged on, being careful 
to avoid Jayne's Barbi dolls dressed in combat fatigues. Those 
snipers could give you a really nasty flesh wound if you got in the 
line of fire. Alas, Jayne finally screamed 'enough' and left to spend 
more time with her remaining sanity.

At some point, two blokes, Dan and David dropped in, pirouetted on 
the spot for some months muttering 'surely this can be automated?', 
and then vanished in a puff of smoke.

Meanwhile, the elves started throwing popcorn. It appeared that there 
might be a legal problem and all our work might be wasted. Shadowy 
figures who shall remain nameless would sue all of HPfGU for JKR's 
royalties if we explained to anyone what the Big Bang Destroyer was. 
Legal documents flew back and forth. Many sleepless nights later, a 
way forward was thrashed out: all posts written between midnight and 
dawn on Halloween in 1704 would be fine; all the rest were to be 
discarded, so that was ok.

But I had more people in my sights. Next I bagged an Elf (Debbie), 
then Entropy (Corinne)... 5000 posts later, Kathy (Potioncat), 
Sevenhundredandthirteen (Laurasia) and KathyK were enticed with sweet 
words about how far we had got and how straightforward it all was. 
Well, it was sort of true...

'I'll do as much as I please, so bugger off' - Barry
'..um..I'm still *really* interested' - Anne
'I have a question..' - Potioncat

Morale was sagging..time for the old smoke and mirrors trick. 
Recruitment campaigns and exciting new product development proposals 
were launched. An advert in the HPfGU press for a developer pulled 
in...no responses, except from Tim Regan (Dumbledad), who quite 
insanely had a project not dissimilar to ours. He wants to count all 
the mentions of Snape in all the sentences on HPfGU or something, 
dunno why. Anyway, I said he could do that no problem with our 
database (you can't) and come right on in...at first he boggled at 
the total madness of it all, but then started talking gibberish to 
Paul. I left them to it; they seemed happy.

More troops were still needed. I consulted an old parchment, handed 
to me by Dicentra..the fabled FAQ/FP group. I thought it was defunct, 
but after trudging through uncharted wastelands, finally found a 
survivor - Jo Serenadust. She protested prettily at having to read 
all her old posts again but sternly I said her country needed her.. A 
little later, a relative newcomer Doug (aka Eustace_Scrubb) was 
ensnared. He likes classifying things in museums, and I said I had 
just the job.

Then at 33000 and counting, there was a flash of gold, a swoop of a 
blade on OTC. A warrior chiefteness of old strode into that pink and 
frilly lounge. I expect they were discussing what children aged 3-6 
months should wear when going to an HP premiere. Proud words were 
spoken, lesser mortals kneeled. Talisman deigned to cut the heads off 
all posts which offended her.

'Bout time..where the hell have you been' - Barry
'..how lovely, um....' - Anne
'...gulp' - everyone else

And then in short order, the party suddenly got very lively with 
KathySnow, Ginger, Jen and Dot joyfully joining in the chat, and in 
Dot's case supplying a delightfully different type of canape. 
Finally, Sean from Oz gatecrashed from TOC...he wasn't even fazed by 
the truly appalling review I had just set in train - 'lets re-
classify everything we have done over the past year - it'll be fun 
and worthwhile'.

Yep, it's been a long and eventful year, but I think we've created 
something great which will work.

Big thanks to you all, and very special thanks to Anne (who actually 
does quite a lot of coding!), and Barry (who provides much moral 
support - yes, I said moral) for sticking with me from the beginning.

Carolyn