radical remedy

[Ebony AKA AngieJ]

I'm not as veteran as Milz, and Heidi's got about three weeks on me, 
but as someone who's entering month #14 as an HP4GU member, let me 
say that the idea of closing membership at this point smacks of 
elitism and just mean-spiritedness in general IMO.

The lists are like all of life.  You have your ups and your downs.  
Right now I haven't been reading the main list at all not because of 
the inanity of teens, but because of the antics of a certain 
(veteran) contingent and a lack of time to be everywhere in online 
fandom at once.  But that is my personal decision.  I am sure I will 
get back around to it when the movie comes out.

The teens do not bother me.  This may be because I like kids and have 
a lot of patience with them.  Unless we are going to have a credit 
card check required for membership, I don't think it's fair for us to 
restrict who gets in.  If we are going to have criteria for 
membership from now on, fine, but the members who are already around 
ought to be grandfathered in.

This is what I do when the IQ level of the various lists takes a 
nosedive:

1)  I switch to the "no e-mail" option.  Right now, almost all of my 
Harry Potter lists are in this mode, even Paradise and PoU.  It 
doesn't hurt me or cost any money to do this.  I just check the ones 
I mod or own at least once daily to make sure everything's OK.

There's currently a very OT, teenybopper discussion going on over at 
Paradise.  Rather than squelch it, I'm letting it go simply because 
nothing else is going on over there, it's only 3-4 messages long, and 
the other Mods haven't said anything.  Because I'm on webview, it 
hasn't cluttered up *my* mailbox.  Now, once it dies down, I will 
post a kindly ADMIN message stating where the discussion *should* 
have gone on.

And yes, we get the badly spelled reviews and posts in annoying 
Netspeak.  I think a gentle chiding is in order in these cases... not 
shattering these teens' fragile egos.  I think it helps to remember 
that we didn't always know everything ourselves.  :-D 

Lots of these teens are TRAINABLE.  I currently am a fandom big 
sister or parent of sorts to about a dozen or more of these kids... 
it's been very rewarding to say the least.  After a while, the "n e 
wayz" and silliness ceases and they become more sophisticated in 
their postings and thought.  Some of the young fanfic writers I've 
been privileged to work with have improved vastly just from having 
the chance to interact with "grown-ups" in the fandom.  A lot of 
these kids come from decent homes, but some of them come from not-so-
good ones... why do you think they're online all the time?  Patience 
is always a virtue... I am not saying they ought to be allowed to run 
rampant on the lists, but there is a way to teach them "our ways".

Anyway, if you do switch to the "no e-mail" option, there is a new 
special feature now which allows you to get "special announcements" 
from the Mods.  This way, if you are on a list like PoU, Cassie and 
Rhysenn, or Paradise just for the chapters, the moderator-authors can 
check the "special" box and the chapter announcement will show up in 
your e-mailbox even if you are on webview.

2)  The best thing you can do when a list gets out of hand is to post 
something relevant.  Start a new discussion.  If people ignore your 
attempt, try again.

In closing, I am very against closing membership.  If all else fails, 
you could section off the main list into a scholarly discussion group 
(which I'd daresay not many of us would qualify for in the academic 
sense of the word) and a general discussion group.  I don't even much 
like that idea... and I'd never dream about doing anything like that 
at Paradise.

Just my .02 knuts.

--Ebony AKA AngieJ