No responses on the main list (Was: Wizarding Education )

[justcarol67]

Shaun wrote: <snipped>
> I confess to being just slightly annoyed with HPFGU at the moment - 
> I sent a very large post, which I put a lot of research into, to 
> the main list last week, and received virtually no comments about 
> it at all. No reason I should I suppose... it's just very 
> disappointing - especially when I see that far less detailed posts 
> on the same types of issues spark a lot of discussion.
> 
> Maybe I should have posted it here (-8.

Carol responds:
I think almost everyone, even those who dutifully spend every evening
posting to the list, are overwhelmed by the number of posts on the
main list right now. I, for one, have had to skip whole days' worth of
posts and still am nowhere near caught up, even skipping SHIPs and
FILKs. I have to be very selective about the posts I respond to as
well. When I do post, I generally put a lot of effort into it (as you
do, too) and even when I don't need to check canon, it's a very
time-consuming process.

As for why I didn't respond to your long post, it's because (as I
noted in my response to Catlady), I have a much simpler view of the
selection process, and I've encountered too many instances of JKR's
difficulty with math to expect her to keep the numbers consistent.

My solution: Do what the people in Orwell's "1984" were expected to
do--keep two contradictory ideas in my head at the same time. So
Hogwarts has 280 students (an equal number for each house) when JKR
wants it to and approximately 1,000 students when that's more convenient.

Same thing with the ages of Bill and Charlie Weasley. They're four and 
two years older than Percy respectively even though those numbers
can't be reconciled with Gryffindor not having won the Quidditch Cup
for seven years in SS/PS.

I'm pretty sure that JKR has spent considerably more time thinking
about the characters and the basic plot than about details like the
selection process at Hogwarts.

So it's not that I don't appreciate the time and thought that went
into your long post. I just put my own time and thought into other
topics--like the POV in the books or analysis of events and
characters. I think that many posters are in a similar position at the
moment.

Carol

P.S. When no one answers one of my posts, which happens fairly often,
I console myself with the thought that I've presented an unanswerable
argument, the last word on the subject, and no one has anything to
add. (It isn't true, of course, but the ban on "I agree" posts at
least makes it plausible.) ;-)