The HP obsession (Was: To Carol)

[Carol]

cindersla" wrote:
>
> I did get your message on the other board, and I had saved it so I 
could answer back, and there's been so many messages in the last few
days that I couldn't find it to answer back.
> 
> I so appreciate your letter. I am jealous of your degree. :) But I'm
working on mine.
> 
> I love your answer and it helps a lot, in my understanding of why 
people are this way, AND also with my own writing and what I need to
work on. The biggest thing is character development apparently. hehe
> 
> This mail wasn't really about the amount of messages I received. I
wasn't bothered by that. It was the amazement that each topic seems 
to find its way back to the gay issue. There's been like hundreds of
e-mails in the last few days, and a lot of them on the letter I had 
started but not many on that topic, most on the gay thing. That's
actually what I meant by it. I don't care how many answers I got and I
appreciate the ones I got (THANK YOU), it was my amazement that all
the topics seem to go back to the other issue. I was just pointing 
out the obsession with that issue. I find it sort of fascinating. lol
> 
> Thank you so much for your answers. I really do appreciate them. I'm
also amazed at how people can keep up with all the mail lately here. :)
> 
> The Other Carol
>
Carol responds:

You're welcome. I'm just wondering why I couldn't find my own message.
And don't worry; certain topics dominate for awhile but even the
variety of emotions aroused by Gay!DD will die down when we've all had
our say. A lot of us are also incurably obsessed with Snape; you'll
find tons of posts about him on the main list.

If our posts clog your inbox, you can always opt to read online from
the site itself. That's what I do. (If you think it's hard to keep up
now, imagine how it was when we had thousands of messages per month
coming in. IIRC, those times were usually right before or right after
a book came out. (I just checked the stats for the main list: 7,267
messages in June 2003, astoundingly topped by 8,234 the following
month (July 2003). Thanks to the temporary three-post limit during
peak response times (and the semi-permanent five-post limit, which
perhaps the List Elves will consider lifting if things get slow in a
year or two????), the numbers have been more manageable in recent
years. In fact, January and September of this year are tied for the
lowest complete month at 1,083 each. October may well come up even
shorter, with a mere 943 posts so far and only four-odd days to go.

Aside to Sarah G., who just posted on her HP obsession in the
"Distracted" thread: You're not alone! There are currently 27,459
members of the main list (not all of whom actually post, obviously!)
At a guess, some of those members are now inactive and just never
bothered to resign from the list; how many are compulsive lurkers, I
can't even guess. Still, considering that many members were primarily
interested in speculating on what would happen in future books, that's
a large number. Maybe one of the List Elves can give us an idea how
that compares to the membership pre-DH or at other peak periods.

Carol, who finds the statistics fascinating and hopes she hasn't bored
everybody else