New year, new brooms

[Neil Ward]

Hi TOC-ers!

As you know, this list started out as a place to discuss Order of The 
Phoenix, around the time of its publication date.  It's never been 
limited to that alone, but I think we can now officially generalise 
to "the works and world of JK Rowling".  Time to pull out that thesis 
speculating on the content and style of "Rabbit" - we're all ears.

The list belongs to all its members, so everyone should feel free to 
kick off discussions at any time, suggest things, ask 
questions...whatever.  There are a few ancient moderators, who set 
the few ground rules, but the idea is to hang out and have a 
relatively rule-free time.   

OT posts are absolutely fine, but it helps if they have OT in the 
title.  Anything goes, frankly, from a birth announcement to a 
dissection of Harry's left kidney, but I imagine we're mostly here to 
explore the books.

The last thing to mention is membership.  A straw poll of the 
moderators suggests that (a) we want some more members, like NOW, and 
(b) we probably don't ever want more than 500 members.  The latter 
may be open to discussion at a later date, but to help with the 
former, please feel free to nominate fascinating people for 
invitation.

To nominate, please enter the name/ID and email address of the person 
in the database called "Propose New Members":
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/the_old_crowd/database

Kelley has kindly updated the list of people we have invited to date 
(in the database called "Invited to date"), which you can use for 
reference.  There is no rule against re-inviting someone who didn't 
join previously.

There's another reference you may find useful located in the Files 
area – an Excel table of current members:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/the_old_crowd/files/

Also in the Files area, you'll find a slightly revised "Rules of the 
Hut" and - in the ADMIN folder - a template showing how the 
invitation will read.

I aim to send out some invitations next Saturday, so, um, get 
cracking.

Thanks, all

Neil

flyingfordanglia