[the_old_crowd] W.O.M.B.A.T.S

[rebecca]

> Talisman said:

>I'm reflecting on the questions and trying to decide if there is any
>real opportunity to milk something *meaningful* from this.

>Hopefully, the scoring will 1) be obvious or 2) come with some
>explanation.

<snipped>

>If the score at least tells which you got right, and which wrong,
>maybe we can confirm *what Rowling thinks.*

rebecca:

I was particularly interested in the "what would you do, when, and who would 
you call" questions.  Leads me to wonder just how much Harry is going "bend 
the rules" of the Ministry in the final book, all in the interest of doing 
what is right for the greater good of all.

Maybe she's trying to find out what "we", her readers, know about the 
universe she's created - having a interactive dialog (of sorts)  like this 
saves on some writing time - what she covers on the WOMBATS with readers 
before the final book means she only needs to loosely refer to relative 
knowledge from this test in Book 7,  if she has a need to.

The other view I'm partial to is that information is being collected in a 
database and other to provide answers, what do you do with collected data 
like that?  You analyze and data mine it. What a better way to gauge the 
WW/HP knowledge the fan base has? Hell, I wish I had access to that and the 
answers, I'm sure it would be fascinating to see what people do and don't 
know, and how popular one answer is over another.

I'd also love to know how many people *took that test.*  Architecting a web 
service like that for perhaps 10's of thousands (or easily more) of fans 
that *didn't* fail while so many people were probably hitting it 
simultaneously this weekend deserves a bow, believe me. Frankly, that kind 
of infrastructure, development and support costs some major money, so I'd 
submit it wasn't entered into lightly.

rebecca, who is naturally pondering the possibilities just like 4 gazillion 
other people