3.16.3 review (Hogwarts admission, population, funding)

[corinthum]

Well, I finally finished reviewing 3.16.3.  Only took, what, two 
months?  Sorry, lots of real-life interference lately.

Anyway, to the results of this review.  I'll start with the 
subcategory 3.16.3.1, which was pretty straightforward and only 
needed a little cleaning out.

3.16.3.1 Funding & Tuition
--------------------------
Originally: 63
Now: 59

Includes:

How is Hogwarts funded?  Tuition, endowments, government support?  
What needs to be funded, and who controls the money? (includes 
discussion of the financial source of Harry's first broom).


3.16.3 Admission Process & overall school population
----------------------------------------------------

Now, the main category.  This one definitely needs to be split into 
two categories: 1) School population, and 2) Admission process.  In 
the 410 posts originally populating this category, only two really 
referred to both subjects; the rest were one or the other.

I haven't actually moved or rejected any posts yet (since all will 
need to be moved), but I've marked every post for either inclusion in 
one of these two categories or for rejection (from this category, at 
least).  It breaks down to

Originally: 410
School population: 109
Admission process: 86

Way above my normal reject rate... aren't you proud of me?

Starting with school population, I was very tempted to remove all 
posts but club post 7032, which reached the following definitive 
number of students: 

"Okay, once and for all time, here is the exact number of students
at Hogwarts. After extensive research of the subject, I have used
several supercomputers to predict the influences of several different
factors. Taking into account polar wobble and the change in the 
earth's
magnetic field, it can be hypothesized that each student represents 
one
gazillionth of the amount of energy in the universe. Using a sliderule
the exact number comes out to be 379 students plus or minus 500. 
There,
now that makes the whole story complete in my mind, how about you? I 
don't
think I could read another one of these books without having that 
settled."

Seriously, though, any posts you come across that say "Hogwarts has X 
number of students because of ..." and proceed to quote one or two 
passages from the books need to be rejected.  I can guarantee you 
that there is not a single piece of canonical evidence that has not 
already been quoted, second-guessed, and debated to death in the 
posts I kept.  

I won't even mention posts located at #40000+ that say, "Hey, anyone 
know how many students are at Hogwarts?  Or realize that the numbers 
in the books aren't entirely consistant?"

So, unless you come across a really compelling, detailed, well-
researched thesis on the topic of Hogwarts population, think twice 
about coding it.

Posts that belong in other categories:

- WW population estimates: Often threads that began estimating school 
population drifted into entire-WW-world estimates, and vice versa.  
Try to keep these in their respective categories.

- Other wizarding schools: Multiple-campus and other-British-
wizarding-schools theories often began as an attempt to reconcile 
school population discrepancies.  Once the conversation moves on to 
discuss the plausibility and details of other schools, keep it out of 
this category.

On to subcategory 2, Admission process.  Main topics:

- How selective is Hogwarts?
- Is there a specific age at which students receive their letters?  
What is the cutoff date?  (a lot of overlap with Calculating 
students' ages here)
- Do Muggle-born students receive the same letter or is there a 
different procedure?  How do their families react (some crossover 
with Relationship with the Muggle World).
- Quill discussion

Overall, not many problems here.  Quite a few Hermione-age posts that 
mentioned theoretical cutoff dates but that I didn't feel belonged 
here, but that was really the only problem.

Finally , there was a small group of posts in the original category 
discussing the page in JKR's notebook where she had listed all the 
students names with some symbols.  The thread basically discussed 
which symbols went with who and what they might mean.  I wasn't sure 
they really belonged here (in either of the new categories), but I 
wasn't quite sure where they should go.  Any suggestions?

-Kelly