ADMIN: Possible Threat to the HPFGU Family of Lists

[uk_elf1]

Dear Members of the Harry Potter for Grownups Family of Lists, 

We regret the need to interrupt with a post of this nature. 

For the past several months, we (the List Administration Team) have 
been handling the disruption of several of the HP lists by an 
individual or individuals, and it has gotten to a point which we 
feel to be harassment. In addition, a threat has been made offlist 
to at least one member of the current admin team, and we are 
concerned that harassment of list members may have extended to 
others beyond admin team members. 

Until now, we have been handling this within the admin team, and 
have done our best to avoid burdening the lists with this situation -
 we felt it was an administrative problem, and so should be dealt 
with internally. Recently, however, we received a message which made 
it much more than just a list admin problem. 

We were contacted via the owners address with a frank threat against 
the lists, indicating that, unless certain demands are met, an 
irreversible action will be taken that will damage the HPFGU list 
community. 

The action was not specified; however, one of our auxiliary HPFGU 
lists was recently deleted by Yahoo, and the sender of this e-mail 
apparently took credit for that action, implying that "Terms of Use 
violations" were reported. Other owner messages have made reference 
to "holes" in our security. 

This threat may be as innocuous as the formation of an alternate 
list. However, we cannot ignore the possibility that serious harm 
may be intended to the HPFGU family of lists, and we felt it only 
fair that you should be alerted. This is your list community too. 

Some of us are concerned that we are being manipulated into 
complaining on the public HPFGU lists, or forwarding the emails, so 
a complaint for a violation of Yahoo's Terms of Use could be made. 
For that reason, we are not providing any names in this email. 

As our experience with the auxiliary group showed, Yahoo does not 
give notice before they delete a group. While it might seem 
incredible that they would delete a group with nearly 90,000 posts 
and three-plus years of history without investigating the details of 
an accusation, we have to be cautious, and beg Yahoo to listen to 
both sides of the story if a complaint is made. 

We are doing whatever we can to improve security on the lists. We 
will do our best to avoid any disruption of services, and we ask 
your understanding if odd things should happen to the lists. We 
intend to do whatever we can to prevent any damage to the HPFGU 
family of lists, including deletion of any other lists, should that 
be the form this threat takes.

However, should any HPFGU list(s) become inaccessible, you can visit 
The Lexicon at 
http://www.hp-lexicon.org for status updates and, if necessary, 
relocation information. 

Finally, in closing, we wish to apologize. We know the 
unresponsiveness of the admin team has been a source of frustration 
to many of you. It has been a source of frustration to us as well. 
We each have only so many hours to devote to HP, and over the past 
few months, most of them have been devoted to dealing with this 
situation. It has taken our time, energy, and enthusiasm away from 
our proper tasks: the fostering and running of these lists. And 
until this situation is resolved, some of our time must continue to 
be devoted to dealing with it. So we ask your continuing patience 
and understanding, while we do everything we can to protect this 
family of lists. 

Sincerely, 

The HPforGrownups List Administration Team