[HPFGU-Feedback] Re: What Price Success? Improving Posting Quality on HPfGU

[Shaun Hately]

On 22 Feb 2005 at 15:26, nrenka wrote:

> 
> 
> As Yahoo ate my post and I'm working, I'll be brief.  All opinions in 
> here are solely my own.
> 
> Super Post Combine Power--Activate!
> 
> > Shaun:
> > I will read Half Blood Prince the day it is released (unless 
> > something dramatic happens to stop me - which isn't impossible). By 
> > the time a two week posting hiatus finishes, therefore, a period of 
> > around 13 days will have passed in which the knowledge of the novel 
> > will become far less fresh for me, and I almost certainly will have 
> > forgotten many of the points I would be interested in raising.
> 
> May I kindly suggest that is what pen and paper or Notepad are for?  
> You could take the time to write out a substantial, well-organized, 
> canon-cited post that covers a number of issues, rather than a lot of 
> short responses.  I have, on this list, volunteered to write up the 
> FAQ for the book so we can try to short-circuit the inevitable flood 
> of easily-answerable questions.  The material's not going to go away, 
> after all.

Pen, paper, or Notepad don't addresss the issue. I want to be able 
to discuss the books in the immediate aftermath of reading them - 
not have to wait two weeks to some completely arbitrary date (and 
any such date is arbitrary - there's no natural magic about two 
weeks). I may well write out a substantial, well-organised, canon-
citing post that covers a number of issues, but even if I do that, 
such a post will likely be ready for posting by the Monday after 
the book is released.

Being forced to wait another twelve days to post that, means that 
by the time it is posted and possibly discussed, the books will be 
less fresh in my mind, and my ability to discuss them will be less 
than it was at the time I wrote the initial post.

If we're worried about list quality, I have to say I consider that 
you're likely to get rather mixed results by a policy that for some 
posters at least will mean they are trying to discuss books two 
weeks after they have read them, rather than two days after they 
have read them.

I think the FAQ is a great idea for answering fairly 
straightforward questions that arise and tend to go around and 
around in circles, and that is something I think that is very 
worthwhile doing.

But I suppose that I would say I think a 'quality list' comes from 
two broad places.

The lowest possible number of 'low quality' posts, and the highest 
possible number of 'high quality' posts.

A two week hiatus *might* have a positive effect by reducing the 
former. The problem is, I think it is likely to have a negative 
effect by reducing the latter over the medium term.

I'm not going to say I'm a good poster, because it's not my place 
to say that, but I am certainly someone who has, in the past 
written some 'substantial' posts that I think were at least 
moderately well organised, and which required a lot of research in 
both canon and non-canon sources. Astronomy, whether or not there 
really was a Vauxhall Road in London, and the place of Hogwarts 
within the context of British public schools, are the ones that 
come first to my mind. So I certainly have no bias against the idea 
of such posts, and I would love to see more of them.

*However*, even if a two week hiatus means that you get more 
substantial, well-organised posts in, say, the three days after the 
list reopened, I suspect that after that, you'll be dealing with 
the problem that many of the people who wrote those posts during 
that two week hiatus to post at the end of it, will find themselves 
in a situation where they are less able to expand upon, or defend 
their ideas, because the books are not as fresh in their mind as 
they were when they originally completed their post. The list is a 
discussion list - it's not just a place for people to throw a post 
out into the ether, and forget about it. At least I don't think it 
is.

Anything that means those posters who produce 'substantial, well-
organised' posts are in less of an ideal position to enlarge upon 
their ideas if asked, to defend their ideas if challenged, or to 
accept alternative evidence and change their ideas if such evidence 
is presented, does not seem like to enhance the quality of the 
list. And forcing people to wait two weeks so things are less fresh 
in their heads will serve for a least some people, to place them in 
that less ideal position.

There's also the issue that, say, 20 people decide to write 
detailed, substantial, well-organised posts over the two week break 
and to post them on the day the list reopens.

So on the 30th of July, 20 3,000 word essays hit the list. How many 
of those are likely to get read and get decent responses? 
Especially as there are very likely to be dozens or hundreds of 
smaller posts. A two week hiatus, in my view, is likely to ensure 
that any 'high quality' posts (however you define the term - there 
may be several parallel definitions, and this may apply to all of 
them at once) will hit the list within a 6 to 12 hour period, as 
opposed to over the course of a couple of weeks (or longer - the 
enforced hiatus period may mean people find time to write long 
posts that wouldn't have been written for a month or two if the 
list had been open, because they would have been more busy 
reading). That is likely to lead to any number of 'quality posts' 
being ignored, or lost, and it becomes less likely that many of 
their authors will bother to write such posts in the future. If 
people don't respond to your substantial well-organised post - and 
you can see short snippet posts getting lots of responses - your 
much less likely to bother next time.

There's also the factor that at least some of the people who write 
substantial posts will have other places to post them (and those 
who currently don't, may well decide to look for somewhere else if 
there is an imposed hiatus on HPFGU). If I decide to write a 
substantial post on 'Half Blood Prince' I have other places I can 
easily post it. Even if I posted it to HPFGU after the end of a 
hiatus (and I probably would do so), by that stage, I've likely 
already chewed the meat off a lot of the points that could have 
been discussed about it, so even if it attracts comment on HPFGU, I 
am less likely to want to repeat myself in detail about issues I'd 
addressed elsewhere a week earlier. Now, because I have committed 
to trying to help HPFGU, I would do my best to still take the time 
to post there in a reasonable fashion, and do my best to keep the 
list running well, doing what I think I can for 'quality'. But the 
fact remains that the quality of the list in general is not likely, 
in my view, to be improved, if, when it comes to substantial, 
first-impression type posts about HBP, HPFGU has become a place to 
simply reiterate points the posters may have made a week earlier in 
another place.

> 
> <snip>
>  
> > And they do affect me personally, I must confess. My mid year break 
> > (at University level) runs from the 25th May to the 24th July.
> > 
> > In other words, Half Blood Prince is being released a little over a 
> > week before the end of my University holidays.
> > 
> > So a two week posting hiatus would mean that I am unable to comment 
> > on the book during a period I am likely to have time to do so - and 
> > the list will reopen just as my classes have started up again.
> 
> Well, I have a personal stake as well: I will be studying for 
> comprehensives *all summer*.  As I plan on being rather active in 
> trying to keep the list from degenerating into sheer anarchy, a break 
> would be very nice to have time to process everything and spread out 
> the flood of commentary.  We can't make everyone happy, alas.

No, we can't.

But we have no control over the publication date of the book, so 
any problems that are created for people because they will be 
studing all summer, are totally outside HPFGU's control.

HPFGU however *does* have complete control over whether or not 
there is some sort of posting hiatus - and therefore should affect 
responsibility for decisions of that nature that will discriminate 
against certain people.

When I started writing my post yesterday, I hadn't even considered 
my own university term dates. I had considered the fact that it 
potentially would cause problems for the residents of five of 
Australia's eight states and territories. I was actually assuming 
at the time it wouldn't make any difference to me, because I'm in 
Victoria and both dates are in school term here - it only occurred 
to me as I was nearing completion of my post that university dates 
only roughly match school dates. So that's when I checked, and 
found it does make a difference for me. So I put that in in one 
example.


Yours Without Wax, Dreadnought
Shaun Hately | www.alphalink.com.au/~drednort/thelab.html
(ISTJ)       | drednort at ... | ICQ: 6898200 
"You know the very powerful and the very stupid have one
thing in common. They don't alter their views to fit the 
facts. They alter the facts to fit the views. Which can be 
uncomfortable if you happen to be one of the facts that 
need altering." The Doctor - Doctor Who: The Face of Evil
Where am I: Frankston, Victoria, Australia