radical remedy

[Jennifer Piersol]

I think I'm straddling (sp?) the fence on this idea...

While I must admit that I rarely read anything on the main list 
anymore because of the sheer volume and repetitive nature of the 
topics, I'm sure that the newer members are finding new and 
interesting thoughts and arguments.  And while I'm annoyed that so 
many members are posting initial messages starting off with the 
phrase: "Sorry if this has been discussed before, but I don't have 
time to go through all of the past messages, and I wanted to 
know...", there *are* some posts that are bringing up new points that 
we haven't covered (crazy as that may seem).  And yes, it seems that 
we've gotten a lot of younger members, but then there's always an 
Alicia/Sue to make us think twice about a lower age limit.

You know what I'm really scared of?  I'm scared that when book 5 
comes out, we're going to have total chaos.  We'll be up to 3000 
posts a day, many of which will fail to include spoilers, and some of 
us will get so frustrated that we'll just give up the whole community 
in disgust.  Or we'll become so frustrated that someone will come up 
with a "HP4GU list only open to members who've been members for a 
year or more" or something like that.  The whole thing scares me a 
bit.

Anyway, I suppose that I'm theoretically against limiting membership 
- it smacks too much of elitism to me.  However, I can't help but 
think it'd be a lot more convenient. ;)

Jen (who *does* read the OT list every chance she gets, and reads 
*every* message... this list is the BEST!)