Various Replies

[Penny & Bryce Linsenmayer]

No: HPFGUIDX 6980

Good morning --

Replying to a variety of posts this morning to clean out my inbox ....

HP COLLECTIONS -- Nick, I love your pic of your full collection!  I
thought I had alot of stuff.  Well .... wait till after Christmas!  I
also thought my study was becoming a bit of a shrine to HP, but my stuff
really isn't concentrated in one place as I look around (I have the UK
Deluxe editions on display (framed with the WB Train bookends) in the
den for example).

WB & LEGAL ACTIONS --

> Steve wrote: This was also reported by eonline.com. Warner Bros. states that no
> one has EVER been asked to shut down a site, that all they were doing
> is inquiring into whether the site is set up to make money, in which
> case they WOULD shut it down because it uses a copyrighted name. They
> said that they routinely send such inquiries and that this girl
> decided to make a fuss about nothing.
>
My thought about the above is that lawyers do have a way of writing that
can be quite intimidating to a layman (even while the same writing is
still capable of being minimized with explanations such as the above).
I'm not saying that this is what happened; it could well be that this
girl is an opportunist as Steve suggests is possible.  But, without
benefit of the wording of their communications with fan site owners, I'd
be inclined to believe that their language was likely designed to
intimidate the recipients.

AMERICANIZATION & SS/PS --

I agree with those who have ranted that these changes presume a certain
ignorance level amongst the overall American population.  I also do see
the point that JKR made that she *did* want every child to be able to
take away the humor & understanding of these books.  I think it would
have been better (& less offensive to the rest of us) if they had simply
included a glossary in the US editions.  There could have been an intro
page, explaining that there are many differences between American &
British English and that indicated readers should consult the
handy-dandy glossary at the back of the book.  That would have ensured
that even the laziest American reader could get the full meaning of the
books, without changing words needlessly.  Personally, I think most
readers could/should have been able to glean the meaning from context in
most cases, but I can see the value of including a glossary nonetheless.

And, I'm with Simon -- why in the world would you change "Mum" to
"Mom"?  If *that* isn't obvious from the context, I don't know what is!

> This one of only two Americanisations that annoys me (the other being math
> for mathematics or maths).
>
<light bulb goes on>:  Do you Brits call this subject "maths" as short
for mathematics???  I'd always wondered why you called it maths, as
though its plural.  Learn something everyday!

Hedwig -- I don't think Scott's message was all that rude; he was merely
expressing an opinion.  Believe me, as listmom, I will definitely step
in if someone is being unnecessarily insulting, and we definitely don't
tolerate personal attacks on anyone.  In any case, he did apologize for
offending anyone so hopefully that can be an end to it.

FAQS -- The FAQ group is still hard at work!  We have given some
consideration to approaching a publisher about publishing them in a
non-web site format, but haven't made any real progress.

For the newbies, I'll recap a bit.  There is a FAQ group of about 10
people who are writing substantive FAQs summarizing the discussions on
about 60 different topics (Harry, Ron, Hermione, Dumbledore, Magical
Creatures, Religion & HP, Wizarding World Govt., Potential Romance
Pairings, Magical Devices, Wands -- just to name a handful).  We had
hoped to post these in October .... then November.... now we are
shooting for having at least some of them uploaded by January 1st.  In
any case, these FAQs will summarize the 15000 messages generated by this
group in the past year.

Yes .... close to 15,000.  You people are quite prolifiic (as if *I*
haven't contributed at all ... cough)!

DEAN THOMAS -- Dean Thomas is in Harry's year and should have been
sorted with the others, so if he wasn't sorted in the UK editions (not
going to the den to look), it's an error in that edition.

Will reply to Ebony's posts separately ....

Penny




[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]