Old and New Questions (was Snape)

[vjmerri]

Original Yahoo! HPFG Header:
No: HPFGUIDX C6187
From: vjmerri
Subject: Old and New Questions (was  Snape)
Reply To: [Yahoo! #6134] Re: Snape (was: A question for parents.
Date: 8/8/00 1:00 am  (ET)

Nicholas, listing reasons that his posts were ignored said "people seem
to have ideas before me," and "the flowers are staring at me again"

First:

I'd be careful if those flowers were staring at you. You never know. They
might be related to teething tenticulas (from book 3) :-)

Second:

I have a theory re "people seem to have ideas before me." That is the
nature of a listserv. They ebb and flow like tides. There will always be
new people joining the club and always people who are sick of the same
old question. Assume that each new person asks a specific question and
gets ignored by "the oldtimers." Eventually sufficient new people will
collect who will want to discuss the question. Then when newcomer X asks
it, some critical mass of newcomers is met and the question is suddenly
discussed amongst them. Then they are "oldtimers" and ignore the question
until a new critical mass of newcomers is reached. And so it goes.

There is nothing wrong with throwing out conversational gambits. Certainly
this listserv has such an enormous traffic that its hardly going to
increase daily posts a great deal. And the Oldtimers who don't want to
discuss it can simply press the "next" key based on the subject line. If
no one wants to discuss your question, then clearly the critical mass
hasn't been reached yet. Perhaps it'll be reached next month.