Desperate Measures

[john at walton.to]

(Second time of sending...email still dying a death...)

prefectmarcus at yahoo.com said:

> What I am concerned about is NOT the FAQ or the Lexicon.  What needs
> to be avoided is making newbies feel unwelcome and intimidated.  Part
> of that is not pouncing on the poor soul who asks if Hermione and
> Krum have a chance, and telling them that we already discussed that
> to death last January, nobody wants to discuss it anymore, and if
> they had bothered to read all the 20,000+ previous posts in the
> archives, they wouldn't be wasting everybody's time and bandwidth
> with stupid questions.

In all honestly, Marcus, we (the Moderators and Elves) are trying our best
to make HPFGU a friendly, welcoming place. Each new member gets an email
from a real person (Elf :D) when they join, which does point out the obvious
things. As for the point you raise above, I have to say that I haven't seen
a case of that in a while. Sure, it could be because I've not been
completely scrutinising every message on the list, but I'm pretty sure that
I'd've noticed that. It's my impression (gleaned from the list and from the
folks over on the Mod list [Mods, Elves and FAQers]) that if oldbies are
bored with the subject, then they just ignore it. That is the only way (IMO)
in which a newbie could feel unwelcome -- if nobody responds to their post.
Of course, it's not the newbie's fault -- they weren't to know that we
bashed the topic to death a month ago. However, don't jump on the person
replying to the newbie with a "older members' thoughts on certain issues are
to be found in the archives from last month" post -- it's fine for the
newbie to go back through the archives, read our opinions and make some of
their own which they then share with the group.

I'm going to set up a database in which we can all leave suggestions for the
future of the list, over on the main list's Database Section. Feel free to
comment there (or here, but do comment there as well :D)

--John

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John Walton -- john at walton.to

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