Under the Magnolia Tree

Wedding photo...

2008-08-31T21:12:00.004+02:00

Never thought I would do this - post an image of myself - but since this is such a special occation... here is a photo from the wedding, showing what my dress looked like - as you can see, it completely covers my sparkling shoes... and no, I am not going to make it bigger, and this is the last time you will see any image of me in here... :blushes:

Celebrating Torill's Wedding!

2008-08-17T19:52:00.009+02:00

This is my first time making an actual post on this Blog of ours - but I felt the occassion needed to be documented!

For those of you who do not know, last week - on Friday the 15th of August - Torill and the Love of Her Life were married.

I'm sure you will all join with me to wish them a long life of love and joy together. Anyone who knows Torill at all, knows how wonderful, passionate, loving and giving she is ~ and that she deserves nothing but the best.

This has been a beautiful story of Love "hiding in plain sight" - I was overjoyed when she told me they were together, although I do believe that one of the first things I did was to yell "It's about time!" ...because the way they felt about each other was so obvious to anyone looking on, it seemed as if they were the only two who didn't realise that they belonged together! Luckily they did "find" each other, and the years they spent together as friends and housemates has laid the foundation for a true and magical Love.

Because I am on the other side of the planet, I was unable to attend the ceremony ~ but in true Torill style, she did everything she could to include me. She sent me an invitation, a program, my own personalised place card, and a very detailed schedule of what would happen when, so that I could sit here in our little Magnolia Tree and celebrate along with the happy couple, family and friends. So, I was very surprised when I got a phone call from her nephew, to ask if I would like for him to phone me back in a few hours and put me on speakerphone so that I could hear him reading the small "wedding toast" I had written for them. (Torill's nephew is now on my list of Heroes! That was such a thoughtful gift!)

Torill, my Darling Friend, it truly did mean the world to me to be able to "be there" in that way, and to be able to speak to you for that minute. Thank you for thinking of me on your day.

You are such an amazing woman, and you deserve every happiness.

I hope you and your Husband (hehe your Husband - how long will it take for you to get used to hearing that?) are enjoying your Honeymoon - I will talk to you when you get home, and in the meantime, anyone who wanders in to read this:

....raise your glass and toast the happy couple.

May your life together be all that you desire, and all that you deserve!I Love you both!!

Lilly

Canon, Fanon and Author's Intent - some interesting links

2008-05-18T20:07:00.002+02:00

This blog has an interesting couple of links to discussions of what I tried to talk about below in my smysl rant: - interpretations of the books and who is right when we disagree: writer or reader or both. Check them out here and here!

2008-05-15T12:07:00.004+02:00

Happy birthday, darling Lilly

Concerning some thoughts (few) about the state of the fandom, personal musings, and smysl

2008-05-15T10:41:00.002+02:00

I have read several places about the waning interest and the degeneration into bitterness, warfare and vitriol of the fandom. Where am I in all of this? Why do I not keep this blog up as regularily as I originally intended - is it only because of the demands of my so called "real life" - (it is very real, but so is this place...) - or am I, too, hurting and affected too much by what is happening in the fandom these days?

Honestly - I'm not sure. I am affected by all that is happening, it makes me sad and sometimes overcome by the nostalgic longing for the "good old days" (there will always be a "good old days" for oldtimers, right, no matter what kinds of days those were...)

But I don't want to write much about that here. The conflict and bitterness in the fandom is written about everywhere, no reason to put it up here as well. Personally, I still love the books, although the last two made it harder to be a fan in different ways. (My jury is still out on the last one...) I still debate issues from the books in my mind, and still care about their themes and characters. I have started to write more AU fiction, following "what if" ponderings, which is a way of investigating the books too. This proves that I still care about the characters, even though I do question the plot here and there...

No, I guess the reason why this has not been updated as much as I wanted to, is because I have this feeling that I am too late - "everyone" has moved on to other things. To write here about HP issues and characters will not be taking part in any form of discussion, or mean anything to anybody, it will only be like talking to myself in an empty room about issues others have either debated to death or forgotten ages ago.

Oh well. So be it, then. This is still a place for all my HP thoughts, whether anyone else is interested or not.... and here are some of the latest. (I think I will abandon all these part one, part two headlines for the time being; who knows what I will do in the future, though...)

Hck said in a comment further down that good stories are often better than their writers - and following from this is that we don't have to agree with or listen to anything the writer says about her story - she may not always be the best one to comment or explain it.

I've been thinking along these lines for a while. I'm not even sure I want to read Jo's "8th book", if that is going to consist of all the thoughts that she didn't get to write into the other seven - because I admit that a lot of what she says now in interviews and comments about her characters or her story annoys me. A lot of it is so at odds with my own reading experience.

I think this is the time to revise our ideas about "canon" and "fanon". That distinction was meaningful to me back in the days when we all tried to guess what was going to happen in the last book, and what the underlying plot was really about. If Jo said Snape was not a vampire, then ok, we knew he was not going to turn up as one in the last book. By that answer from Jo in an online chat, the theory "Snape-as-vampire" was officially transformed from canon to fanon.

But now that the books are finished, this has changed. "Canon" now is everything that is actually written on the pages in the seven finished books. But nothing Jo has said outside the books counts. (She even said that something would show up in the last book that didn't - for instance, we never got to see Krum again, even though she said we would) That is now just her opinion, her ideas, and if they conflict with mine, I don't have to change my mind.

I know some fans protest, and say that whatever Jo had in mind when she wrote the books, whatever she wanted to get across, is the correct and only valid interpretation. But I don't agree with this view of literature.

Of course, a writer has different ideas and images and sentiments in her head when she writes a story. Maybe she sees the characters in her "mind's eye" and "knows" the colour of their eyes and the length of their hair. Maybe she wants the characters' actions and fates to be examples of certain virtues or vices, tell a moral lesson or be inspirational for one reason or other. But she has to try and get this across to me, her reader by writing her story, not by giving interviews (not that I think there is anything the matter with her giving interviews, don't get me wrong!) - and then her written words may give me very different ideas and images than what she originally had in her head when she wrote them. That's in the very nature of language. So who is right then - her ideas or her story?

To me, the answer must be her story. If that was not so - why bother to write a story at all? Why not just give us a list of characters, with an explanation of how they look, who is the most virtuous, who's the hero and who's the villain - and then a list of events, what they are supposed to mean and what we are supposed to feel about them. As if the Potterverse was actually real and Jo had seen it all and was able to report back to us in different ways about the various true facts of that world, either in the form of a story or in the form of an interview.

But storytelling obviously doesn't work like that.

An example is when Jo said that she had Mrs. Weasly kill Bellatrix because she wanted to show how she was a very powerful witch even though she was a stay-at-home mum; and that her love of her daughter was more powerful than Bellatrix' love of Voldemort.

Ok. That's how it is for Jo, and I can't argue with that. If this was her intention and her opinon when she wrote the scene, then that's how it was. Period. And it is interesting to learn about her take on it, and why she wrote things the way she did. Only Jo can tell me that.

But as a reader of her story, I didn't get these same impressions and ideas in my head when I read about Molly killing Bellatrix. I wasn't thinking "Yay, one for stay-at-home mums!" For one thing, I never thought of Molly as weak in the first place. I didn't need any "proof" of her strength. And my chief reaction at that point in the story was not celebration or admiration, but grave disappointment.

I had thought it was significant that up until the last book, no one on the "good side" had killed anybody. Grindelvald himself was only put in prison, and perhaps had a chance to regret towards the end of his days - the story hints at this. The good guys never used anything worse than stunners, even when the stakes were high, as in the battle in the death room in book five, or at the tower in book six. So I really thought they did see the killing curse as an Unforgivable, an example of the Dark Arts that they tried to be above. Besides, who needs to kill when you may stun?

But then Lupin urges Harry to kill in book seven, even tells him off for not doing so, and Molly kills - and suffers no regret afterwards. No reactions. I am supposed to applaud her, Jo? Sorry, but no. Yes, Ginny was in danger but Molly too could have stunned only - and even if she thought she had to kill, she did not have to be ok with it. A lot of people, even real soldiers in real battles, who are confronted with situations when they "have to" kill, suffer reactions afterwards - it is rarely just: ok, no problem, one more monster down, hooray!

And Harry, who uses the Crucio curse merely because somebody spits at McGonagall - and she, who calls this chivalrous! Somebody involved in human rights movements - I'm sorry I'm not able to find the reference right now - called Harry a war criminal for that, and was worried not so much by the fact that he might be tempted to do a thing like that in the heat of a battle - but much more by McGonagall's reaction and overall by the way the use of torture in a war was dismissed, or even seen as righteous, by everyone in the book, Harry included.

Wizard's are obvioulsy not familiar with the Geneva conventions of the Muggles - but I really thought they were supposed to have their own codes of ethics, and that the Unforgivables were called Unforgivable for a reason. But no - when the "good guys" use them in the books, they are suddenly supposed to be seen as chivalrous and grand, even proofs of Love, instead of Dark or Unforgivable as we are supposed to think when Voldemort uses them. But if Harry may torture Voldemort's followers for spitting at his friends, why can't Voldemort torture Harry for humiliating him in front of his friends, or Bellatrix torture Neville in order to get hold of the Prophecy for her master? Where's the difference in principle Jo?

And if I am to accept this: Molly won over Bellatrix because her love of Ginny was more virtuous than Bellatrix' love of Voldemort - then I also have to accept that Bellatrix' love of Voldemort was more virtuous than Sirius' love of Harry! After all, Sirius lost in his duel with Bellatrix when he fought to save Harry - and a comparison with that earlier duel is even directly made in the text! But I am obviously not going to accept that, no matter what Jo says - I don't think Sirius' love of Harry was in any way inferior, just because the evil Bellatrix was able to kill him! That's not how the description of Sirius' love - in the text of the books - came across to me. So to me, that is not canon, no matter what Jo may say. (And I am not sure she would say that either, it' just that to me, this is what logically follows from her Molly/Bellatrix comparison.)

Besides, I never thought that anyone's ability to fight and conquer in a life-and-death duel had anything to do with their ability to love. Or with any other moral virtue they might have for that matter. To me, victory in a duel has only to do with ability to fight. Period. Sometimes the bad guys win simply because they fight better. That does not constitute any moral victory on their part. True Love is supposed to make you a better killer? Come on, Jo, you don't really mean that - or do you? Very well - we seriously disagree in our views of the nature of love and war then....

In short - my reactions when I read about Molly's successful duel was very different from the writer's confessed intention with that scene. Was Molly a better dueller than Bellatrix in the story? To me, she seemed to win because Bellatrix was a bit too confident when fighting someone like Molly, and thought she didn't have to give it her all - just like Sirius was when he tried to fight Bellatrix before. That's what the text suggests to me. Did I respect Molly as a homemaker more when I read that? No, why? Do I respect her more now, after I have been told that's why Jo made her win that duel? Again, why? Jo can't control my reactions to her words in the story, and her explanations outside her text does not change these reactions one bit. Her words on the pages remain the same, and they still have the same effect on me.

I'm a big fan of the Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky (who died of tuberculosis in the thirties, lucky for him, then Stalin never got hold of him...) and his theories of language. He has a term in Russian: "smysl", translated into "word meaning" in English. (No, sadly enough, I don't read any Russian, I have to read him in translation, too...) To Vygotsky (as to several other theorists of language, of course) words are not simply labels on objects. Words represent social interaction directed at or concerning those objects, and they are used to influence and coordinate social interaction in order to make it possible for us to change our environment and our situation. Words may control and direct our attention away from the immediate, and makes it possible for us to bring into the present situation an idea of something that is not yet real, but may become real in the future, or was real yesterday, or will perhaps never be real, like a unicorn or a Potterverse....

Word meaning, or smysl, is not just about the lexical, general, decontextualised meaning of the word that we all share more or less - what Vygotsky called znachenie. Everyone who understands English knows what you can do with a cup, from drinking off it to breaking it to present it as a prize in a triwizard tournament... Smysl is something more than that, it represents "the sum of all the psychological events aroused in our consciousness by the word. It is a dynamic, complex, fluid whole...” To use a quick and dirty example: You will get a very different association from the word "cup" if you yourself has won one in a fierce competition, than you will if you were the one who lost...

I have my own personal history with words, with all the social situations I have been part of where I have used the word or observed the word in use, with all the books and newspapers and films and tvshows I have consumed. And since words as a rule are used to influence others one way or the other: convince them, impress them, make friends with them, control them, scare them, lie to them - words are also connected with the whole range of emotions and feelings. Words are both objective and subjective, both public and private. And it is exactly because of this that a writer may write a story and make me believe it is true for as long as I read it - because when I read, all the psychologial events aroused in my consciousness give colour and life, emotion and value to what I read.

But this also means that what is aroused in my consciousness will not be - cannot be- exactly the same as what is aroused in your consciousness when you read the very same text. We do not have the same history, the exact same experience of social interactions where the words were used. And none of us will have the exact same content in our consciousness when we read the story as Jo had when she wrote it. That is just not possible.

So, in a way, there will be as many Potterverses as there are readers of the books - although the differences between the versions may in many cases be rather subtle....

I have observed one interesting effect of this in myself. I know Jo says in the third book that Sirius had long, dirty, matted hair down to his elbows when Harry first met him. Very logical, very believable, fits with his Azkaban experience where he never got to groom himself, makes him very scary to Harry and to everyone else, and also shows without telling how horrible a place Azkaban is. Brilliant.

When i first read that news announcement at the beginning of the book, I remember I did get an image of a man with that kind of hair in my head. But, the interesting thing is -when Harry met him in the Shrieking Shack and I got to know his background story, his horrible fate - this image changed. I was not able to picture him with that kind of hair anymore. The image in my head started to look more like the hair Oldman has in the movie. And this was long before the movie was even planned, it happened when I read the book for the first time, when only the first movie was out. I suppose Sirius' background story aroused different, vague associations and memories in my consciousness - some of them possibly unconscious - that did not go together with long hair to the elbows on a man. So the associations Jo's words about the look of his hair aroused in my mind were not strong enough to conquer the images her words about his background and fate aroused...

In short, "my" Sirius of book three has hair reaching down to his shoulders only, not his elbows. I know that is not what the text says, so I am not arguing this as the "correct" image - but on the other hand, this is the Sirius I do see when I read, and nothing anyone says outside the books can change that. (And not even this makes a reader "delusional", Emerson...)

This goes to show that a writer cannot really control the image her readers will get of her characters by just stating what they look like. Just like no writer can make her readers think of a character as nice or likeable, just by saying in the text "she was very nice, everybody liked her, she was the heart and soul of the party". That may just as likely make readers puke and cry "Mary Sue!" as it may make them like the person in question... Neither will it change any reader's opinion of a character if Jo says in an interview that she likes or dislikes that character. It's interesting to know what she thinks, but it will not change my own reading.

Jo is usually not very elaborate about the looks of her characters, or buildings or places or landscapes for that matter - yet most of us do get very vivid images of them anyway, just from all the associations her storytelling arouses in our minds. I like it better that way. Just as I like it better when the judgement of whether someone is weak or strong, good or bad, heroic or pathetic, immature or the opposite, is left for me to decide from the story itself - because I will do that anyway. I don't like to have it pointed out to me, in the books (which, to be fair, really does not happen very much, except for one glaring example in the epilogue...) or in interviews.

Ok - essay over. It says in the header this blog is for TLPs, right?

Investigation of the Rebel position - AU fanfic: Sirius vs. Dumbledore

2008-03-28T20:45:00.012+01:00

As promised, this is my AU fanfiction, describing a confrontation between Dumbledore and Sirius in an alternative Potterverse, where Sirius was never framed by Peter. Other than that, everything else happened as described in canon that fateful night at Godric's Hollow. (See the post below for the explanation of why this fanfiction is posted on this blog)

I figured out how to link to a separate document, instead of posting it in instalments, as I did earlier, so reposting this now, with comments enabled, in case anyone should feel like commenting on this story - in itself, or in connection with a discussion of the rebel position.

Click this link to read the story.

Investigation from within: Sirius, introduction.

2008-03-28T12:51:00.010+01:00

Ok, flu or no flu, on the couch with my laptop and tissues at the ready - I need to get this started....

Here is what I wrote in August last year, about my intentions, how I wanted to deal with the seventh book of the series on this blog:

What I needed to do to start appreciating it, though, was to completely abandon the idea that the Harry Potter books are about Good versus Evil. They are not that at all as I see them now. This is a series that investigates Power in its many variations, for good and for bad, with its many pitfalls, temptations and contradictions - and Harry is the hero because he didn't want Power for himself. It is also a series with a very strong Father/ Son theme, in an (almost) religious sense (thanks Therese!)

Still - I am not quite ready to appreciate this fully. I will need to discuss the themes above from a within the series positions first. A position where the characters and events are taken as real for as long as the discussion lasts. I am so disappointed with some of them, I need to get that out!

Eventually, I will be able to discuss the series from without as well, looking at meaning and underlying themes and how they are developed, etc. Only then may I be able to draw some conclusions about just how good the series is in my opinion.

I still want to do this. Start from "within". I said I wanted to start with Dumbledore, but I have decided to first start where my energy lies: Sirius. He is my favorite character, for various reasons (one day, I might even post an investigation of the reasons for that fact... :blush: ) - (I said "might", remember...). But the interesting thing in this context, with the overarching theme: Use and abuse of Power, is the "Rebel" position in the series.

I do not wish to romanticise that position, which has its own problems, pitfalls and temptations. But DD's manipulative work, with its mask of benign omniscience, seems to both expect/invite and rely on the unquestioning accept and applause from loyal followers. The rebel position is weak and lacking in the series, there is no real opposition. Strangely, when looking at all the mild satire over the Ministry and the media in the books, the series as a whole ended up with a certain "confirmation of status quo" feeling. I am not sure this was necessarily the writer's intention, though. (Some quick examples: Dobby, the only free elf was the elf that died, Kreacher was "reformed" to become the ideal slave that fought for his "noble masters", not against Voldemort... and, outside the series, in interviews, Jo tells us how Harry has Snape's painting put up in the headmaster's office... I intend to come back to these and more later..)

Sirius, described by the writer ex the text as a "lose cannon" (and "immature"...insert eyrolling smiley here, will definitely come back to this one) is the most likely canditate for the Rebel and troublemaker position, challenging the power and wisdom of the "benign" leader. But he is utterly castrated in the series. First he is nicely stored away in Azkaban, then he is kept on the run with little opportunity of any real intervention, then he is shamefully incarcerated and trusted no better than a ten year old, before he is thoroughly exterminated in book five, with not even a body left behind to bury and make a grave for anyone to remember or mourn him by ...

Perhaps this was necessary to make the plot in the books work. Because what would have happened if Dumbledore's dispositions had been challenged by someone powerful and unafraid among his own followers?

Since I am still somewhat reduced by this dratted flu to get all my analytic powers to function properly (;-) I want some cool smileys around here!!), I am going to post an AU (Alternative Universe) confrontation between Dumbledore and Sirius that I wrote when I should have worked on my thesis some time ago. I have amused myself by imagining what would have happened if Sirius had not been framed by Peter and thrown in Azkaban, but instead had been free to be the godfather for Harry he wanted to be, and Harry sorely needed someone to be.

If Harry had had someone like that to defend him and question Dumbledore's dispositions at every turn where Harry's welfare was concerned, I think the whole plot would have kind of unraveled... So yes, the Rebel position has perhaps been made weak in the series to make the plot work - but that comes at a price, to be discussed later.

For now, here's my stab at a fanfic, investigating the first confrontation between DD and Sirius, over DD's placing of Harry with the Dursleys... It was very fun to write, I hope you will think it is fun to read...

I will have to post it in instalments, or it will be too long. Starting with a fresh post, I think...and sorry to tease you (or perhaps not, wink wink) I will have to post it later this evening or early tomorrow - stay tuned!

And then came the flu...

2008-03-27T21:08:00.002+01:00

Just after my grand reopening... that's how it goes..

Which does not mean that this will not be updated soon. I have too much I want to say. But for now, under the covers with some hot tea and lemon....

I've finished my thesis, I've finshed my thesis, I've finished my thesis!!!!!!!!!

2008-03-19T08:32:00.008+01:00

Yes, I have. The way things looked, I thought it would never happen... So now this place may reawaken and come back from the dead - and I can start to do all the things here that I wanted to when I first created it, and it will be worth it to look back in here, if anyone is still interested!

:starts dancing around the room:

Yes, band - I told Bel I would get a band, and here it is - the old chicken band, lol, so let the celebration begin!:

And now I am here

2007-08-14T08:58:00.001+02:00

Yes.

Now I am here. The story of how I ended up here and all that happened on the road is now told for my part - at least, the parts of the story that I want to make public. I have made decisions and had experiences and thoughts apart from my Leaky Experiences that made me want to create a place like this. I am not going to share all of them.

But one reason I have no trouble discussing - it is what the heading says - the need for a place fit to contain all my essaylength rants, instead of weighing down diverse forums with them, epxloiting bandwidths and clogging discussions with my endless Torill Length Posts....

Now that the last Harry Potter book has been out for a month, the need for TLP space should have been greater than ever. But my initial reaction was wanting to throw the book at the wall and never read a Harry Potter book ever again. Leave the fandom and forget the whole thing...

But it's been a month. I have had some time to think, to discuss some parts with some friends - and now I think I am ready, finally, to use this place to investigate my reactions the way I thought I should before I read the book. Now, I think I consider the book to be a good one - if you disregard the epilogue, that is. I hate the epilogue. I am going to pretend that the epilogue was never included the next time I reread....

The book is not at all the kind of book I expected it to be. The whole series is not what I thought it was.

Harry ends up as someone dealing with his traumas through denial instead of maturing from them. At least, this is what the epilogue suggests. That disappointed me the most. I still haven't recoverd from that one.

Dumbledore was not a wise man. He had more in common with Voldemort than it is comfortable to contemplate, and his strategic planning was abysmally stupid. And that's putting it mildly. It is a marvel that it all went well for Harry in the end, when Dumbledore's plans and manipulations are taken into consideration. I expected none of this to be true. I have spent a considerable amount of energy during the last couple of years arguing against fandom theories that made Dumbledore deceitful and stupid - and now these theories are canon....

Snape is not only a deeply troubled character, wrecked and very far from good - I knew that already - but he is also pathetic.

The once intriguing Order of the Phoenix has turned out to be not intriguing at all. Instead, they come across as a strangely castrated and lame organisation, a band of yesmen seemingly without any discussions or reflections going on among them, wholly dependent on Dumbledore to tell them what to do, ready to accept any order from him without explanation. Sirius is the only exception, he based at least some of his judgements and decisions on something else than the motto: I trust Dumbledore. But he was completely castrated by his author in book five before she killed him off and explained away all his independence as immaturity or rashness. And what did the Order get for all their loyalty? Their leader sold them out for no valid strategic reason at all... Moody died because Dumbledore had ordered Snape to betray them. It was only luck that saved the rest of them from the same fate. But this, too, is accepted witout question. No one is to criticise Dumbledore. (At least it was accpeted by Harry - it is not clear whether he ever told anyone about this fact - or even allowed himself to realise what a betrayal it was)

Consequently, the Order is without much importance in the final war. (And perhaps they were without much importance in the first war too. After all, everyone lived in terror until the rebounding Avada.) The victory this time was ensured by the disobedient teenagers in Dumbledore's Army raising the fight, not by the adults in the Order. They needed someone else to act first, someone else to think of, choose and initiate actions not ordered by Dumbledore....

All of this sounds like I still hate the book and think it is bad - but I don't. None of the above makes a bad book in my opinon. What I needed to do to start appreciating it, though, was to completely abandon the idea that the Harry Potter books are about Good versus Evil. They are not that at all as I see them now. This is a series that investigates Power in its many variations, for good and for bad, with its many pitfalls, temptations and contradictions - and Harry is the hero because he didn't want Power for himself. It is also a series with a very strong Father/ Son theme, in an (almost) religious sense (thanks Therese!)

Still - I am not quite ready to appreciate this fully. I will need to discuss the themes above from a within the series positions first. A position where the characters and events are taken as real for as long as the discussion lasts. I am so disappointed with some of them, I need to get that out!

Eventually, I will be able to discuss the series from without as well, looking at meaning and underlying themes and how they are developed, etc. Only then may I be able to draw some conclusions about just how good the series is in my opinion.

I think I will need to start with Dumbledore. The deceitful, manipulative, slightly cruel Dumbledore with the high ideals and the good intentions, unable to trust anyone else but himself to make the right choices, for all his lip service to the motto: it is our choices that make us who we are. He wanted to believe in it I am sure, but he still thought he had to engage in all kinds of clever manipulations or open coercions to push people into making the choices he thought were the right ones. The control of information was perhaps the least evil of his manipulations, staging a murder the worst....

My first Torill Length Post from within the series will be about this worst of Dumbledore's several dubious acts - worst both in a moral and a strategic sense.

So, coming up next: A Death In Shame. Check back to read, but since it will be long, it may take a little while...

Closure of the Leaky Experience: Open Letter to Melissa, Part Two

2007-07-14T21:16:00.000+02:00

First part of this letter to be read here. This part picks up directly where that one ended.

Was our request to have our texts created for the Essay Project withdrawn a "petty and horrible" act, as you called it in your answering letter to us?

It is clear that we had the legal right to do it. According to copyright laws, any work done for an organisation that is substantial and original enough to be viewed as an independent creation (the compiling of information already out there does not count, neither do mere ideas,) is the property of the one creating it, as long as no clearly stated or signed agreement to the contrary exists. No such clearly stated agreement existed between us, so the bulk of the texts we wrote for the Essay Project did belong to us - even more so since all our work was unpaid.

But perhaps it may still be seen as "petty and horrible" to claim our legal rights under copyright laws to have our work withdrawn from Leaky. I am the last one to argue that what is legal is always nice. You certainly thought it was not at the time, as is evident from your answer to us:

We are under no - repeat, NO - obligation to change a word or submit to any requests you make. You left before you made such requests, denying any right to request anything of Leaky ever again. Further, you did the work for Leaky. It stays for Leaky. Whether you signed an agreement or something to that effect or not, all laws of common sense and righteousness says this was work for Leaky. But you want to be immature about it, and cost your colleagues, who you so often claim you valued so much and were so good to, this extra work simply to be spiteful?

Your chief argument seems to be that no matter our reasons for leaving your site, we should still feel honour bound to uphold Leaky and in no way inconvenience your staff or cost them any extra work. The reason why I say this, is because this inconvenience is something you come back to repeatedly as the reason for what you seem to feel is righteous anger:

I won't allow you to cheat this hardworking staff, who don't bolt the second things don't go their way (leaving a nasty PM in their wakes), out of their valuable time. Everything that needs doing has been done, by me.
(...)
I am deeply, deeply disappointed that we ever made a judgement call to have people so capable of pettiness on staff. This simple, unnecessary busy work that it took to rid our site of your "intellectual property", mindless and effortless as it was, was time I didn't need to spend - was time I could have been working on other areas of Leaky that actually need the attention and aren't the result of adults having hissy fits.

Just to clarify here: our letter to you was politely worded. I don't think it qualifies as a hissy fit. But if you still think that it does, or if you feel that my quotes are taken out of context, and therefore misrepresent what you originally said in any way, just let me know. Then I will post this whole conversation in the full, consisting of our request letter, your answer that I have quoted from so far, and the couple of letters to and fro that followed after that again. (A couple of quotes below will be from these later letters.)

The "simple, unnecessary busy work" you describe, refers of course to tweaking sentences and wordings in our texts a bit, enough to make them no longer recognisable as ours. That was all it took to satisfy copyright laws. It did not mean actually starting on scratch to create anything afresh. We sent our request letter to you on the 26th of February 2006, your answer was receieved on the 27th of February. Then you had done everything that was needed already. So the work involved was not an insurmountable hindrance. Irritating perhaps, inconvenient, sure. Not the thing you would want to spend an evening doing. But not in any way devastating for the project. Scribbulus did go online shortly afterwards and is still very much in existence.

When what it all boiled down to was one evening's work of - in your words - "simple", "effortless" and "mindless" editing and rewording, was it then petty and immature of us to make this grand gesture of claiming "intellectual property" and "withdrawal of our permission" under copyright laws, for something one could argue was of precious little consequence?

I am not going to argue that point, but leave it up to anyone who reads this to decide for themselves what they think. Also leave it up to you to decide for yourself what you think now, whether you have changed your mind since then or not.

I do want to argue your idea that what we did was motivated by spite, though. We had two major reasons that played an important part when we decided to do this. One was because - as I have touched upon in my narrative below - we at this point discussed the possibility of creating an online essay journal ourselves. Then we could have risked accusations of plagiarism if we had used some of our own work, because it would have seemed like we had stolen things from you.

I will grant you this: if we had left Leaky under normal circumstances, you could have had a case against us. You coud have called us disloyal and spiteful for taking our work from you to launch somewhere else just when you were about to go online with your essay section, and indeed accused us of using copyright laws to hurt you.

Because one could of course argue that there is a certain kind of implicit agreement in existence between a webmistress of a faniste and her volunteer contributers - the deal is that both parties are supposed to do the work they do for the fans, not for any personal gain, and therefore willingly share their work.

But we did not leave under normal circumstances. The main reason why we no longer wanted to have our work and our names connected to Scribbulus or even to Leaky, was because of the evidence suggesting so very strongly that Therese had been subjected to an ugly game behind her back, aimed at - or so it seemed - pushing her away from the project she had worked so hard for, a project that in very many ways was her baby. And that this evidence was not taken seriously when it was presented to the admins, first Nick, then the rest. Not taken seriously or even looked into when it was presented to you.

This was - the way we saw it - what constituted a deal breaker. Before this happened we were both very happy to work for Leaky, and wanted nothing more than to see the essay journal we dreamt of creating being published under the Leaky umbrella. But no implicit agreement between webmistresses and volunteers of fansites has ever meant that people must suffer lies and scheemes against them, and still be expected to remain loyal and share their work. This was the reason why we felt fully entitled to reclaim our work in order to be able to use it elsewhere.

What shocked me the most with your letter, and what I still to this very day have great difficulties getting my head around, is the fact that you seemed to think in the exact opposite manner. You seemed to think that leaving Leaky and then reclaiming our work, no matter the reasons for doing this, was what constituted the deal breaker. It is very difficult to understand the following quotes in any other way :

All pretence of "inquiry" into the circumstances regarding your departures are hereby ceased. You have, by this action, wasted all that work on you and your friends's behalf. Therese, have had only two instances in which to gather empirical evidence about you: the day you left, and this. And in both instances you have shown pettiness, churlishness, childishness and impatience, and qualities verging on mean spirit. I had reserved judgment after the first instance because of the stressful situation under which it occurred, and was actually considering weighing the evidence recently afforded to me (...) I had actually considered wasting valuable time on making these determinations, on someone who, when the going got slightly rough, up and left and did so leaving a mean note behind - not because I thought you were owed it, but because I never really had a chance to figure out what went on, and thought it totally possible the whole thing was a misunderstanding, and that you really were as nice as other people were saying you were.

No more. (...) Leaky will spend its time on the people who respect it, and no one else. You have insulted the site deeply, and personally.

You, Therese, left on the very day we were supposed to talk about what was going on - at the time I thought that act driven from tiredness, stress, etc., and tried not to believe it was from simple disrespect. Now I know differently.
(...)
No Leaky staff memeber shalll respond to any further inquiry in any official capacity. (...) This matter is now closed.

I am not going to say anything more about the possible pettiness, childishness or meanspiritedness of our request to have our work withdrawn than I have done aleady. But what about the possible childishness etc. by "up and leave as soon as the going got rough"?

Yes, to anyone reading your email conversations with Therese concerning her role in the Essay Project, her resignation may seem somewhat sudden and abrupt. Because during that conversation, it did seem that you were about to reach some sort of agreement, even though the atmosphere was rather tense. Then Therese suddenly sends her resignation letter, with a pm copy to her fellow staff members, saying she will not work for Leaky anymore because she has been subjected to powergames and negative talk behind her back. This is the pm you keep referring to as "nasty" and "mean" in your letter.

But when Therese decided to "up and leave", she had received the pm Doris forwarded to her that I have quoted earlier (at the end of this entry). This pm shows that she was subjected to "negative talk behind her back", and that two of the admins, Nick and Doris, actually did discuss among themselves the need of getting rid of her.

At that point, Therese believed you had received a copy of this pm too. That was what Doris had told her. In that light, your conversations with Therese do not look good. You took her to task for being stubborn and obtrusive and not wanting to accept Doris as a leader (which she did, and said repeatedly that she did...) You talked to her about how giving up some control and hand it over to Doris would actually be very liberating since it was all in the friendly spirit of Leaky where everybody only wants to help (this is paraphrasing, not quoting). If you had talked like this to her while all the time knowing about this pm where Nick says to Doris that he really thinks they ought to get rid of her, then this conversation would have been a rather nasty sort of game to play, definitely.

Therese thought you did know, and did play with her. Therefore she decided to leave instead of waiting for more of this. And telling her colleagues about her reasons for leaving, yes, she did that too.

But which is the meanest and nastiest - engage in powergames against someone - or tell your fellow staff that these kinds of games against you are the reason why you are leaving?

I am willing to believe, though, that at the point when Therese left, you actually did not know. That Doris had lied to Therese about this, and never showed the pm from Nick to you. This is possible, yes. Then Therese's sudden departure and her talk of "powergames" might have come as a total suprise to you, and you may well have found it annoying and strange.

But what is still very difficult to understand, is your attitude that seems to imply that leaving Leaky in anger for whatever reason, is an act that will forever forfeit anyone's rights to have anything investigated, to be ever reached out to in order to clear up possible misunderstandings, to be ever approached again with the hope of repairing an unhappy conflict - or even only in order to continue a conversation that seems to have been broken for reasons not understood by one of the parties....

You said: You, Therese, left on the very day we were supposed to talk about what was going on - at the time I thought that act driven from tiredness, stress, etc., and tried not to believe it was from simple disrespect.

If this is true, if you really did wonder at the time whether this was an act driven by stress and tiredness only - then why didn't you contact her? You had her email address. And you did reply to her resignation, you sent her a short note accepting it immediately, without any questions. Why? Why not simply ask her: what on earth are you talking about, what power game, who's talking about you behind your back? Then you could have found out. But she had "up and left" ....

By the time you wrote this angry letter, you had received all my documentation about what happened around the time when she left, Doris' forwarded pm included. But this doesn't seem to matter to you, you are still not willing to revise your first impression of someone "bolting the second things didn't go her way" no matter the possible alternative explanations you are given for this behaviour. You were perhaps willing to say "bolted because of stress" - but when she has the nerve to claim ownership to her own work, that slightly patronising explanation is out too.

The impression that you really do seem to think leaving Leaky abruptly in a way that annoys you, does constitute a moral deal breaker no matter the reason, is even stronger when reading this:

I had actually considered wasting valuable time on making these determinations, on someone who, when the going got slightly rough, up and left and did so leaving a mean note behind - not because I thought you were owed it, but because I never really had a chance to figure out what went on, and thought it totally possible the whole thing was a misunderstanding, and that you really were as nice as other people were saying you were.

Of course you had a chance to figure out if you had really wanted to, see above. Many chances, she hadn't gone incognito or changed her mailaddress. But why did you think she was not owed it, if you thought it totally possible that her leaving was due to a misunderstanding, and she was a nice person? Because leaving Leaky in anger, in and of itself, no matter the reason for the anger, is unforgiveable? Because telling other staff about your reasons for leaving, thus exposing a conflict, is unforgiveable?

But in my book, anyone should be owed an investigation of lies against their person from one of your trusted and powerful admins, no matter how angry they were when they left. Even if that anger should have beeen proven to be unreasonable, which is not the case here. Justice is not supposed to be granted only to the ones you like, or the ones loyal to you.

What is more, and what I think it is remarkable that you, as the leader of Leaky, did not understand at the time - and perhaps still do not understand? - is that it was more at stake here than Therese's individual good name. A lot more. You talked about us "hurting Leaky deeply and personally" by withdrawing our permissions to use some texts in an isolated project. But by choosing not to investigate some very serious and specific claims presented to you of corruption in your organisation, because it concerned someone you decided were not owed it - then you actually risked a much, much greater damage to Leaky.

Even in the couple of furious letters you sent to Therese with copies to me, you said about the evidence I had sent you: "of wich there is equal for and against your/Torill's claims" and "with the evidence that is absolutely level in credibility from both sides, I'd be doing at least half the people involved here a huge disservice if I decided that one lied and the other didn't. With further investigation maybe we would have come to the truth -"

So even when you were at your angriest, you did think there was a possibility - a 50% possibility - that something very ugly had happened in your organisation, and that with further investigation, truth might have been discovered. But you decided that Therese was someone who had shown pettiness, churlishness, childishness and impatience, and qualities verging on mean spirit - because she had left in anger, told other staff of the reasons for her anger, and then claimed ownership to her own work - and therefore she was not worthy of justice. So you decided to not undertake that further investigation you thought necessary to decide the truth and be sure to do no one a huge disservice.

This would have to mean, that you were willing to chance a continued corruption to exist in your organisation, rather than having to inconvenience yourself on behalf of someone you didn't like in order to be able to stop the corruption you admitted there was a 50% chance existed.

But the case was and is, Melissa, that you were not supposed to inconvenience yourself on behalf of Therese alone - you were supposed to inconvenience yourself on behalf of Leaky. On behalf of the organisation you were and are the leader of, and on behalf of all your staff. Because if some of your chief admins, someone given considerable control and power over the rest of your staff, in fact had been using extensive lies and manipulations against Therese, lies involving the names of the whole of the old Essay Project staff - and this was not stopped by you - then you were in effect allowing these methods to be used again. You were allowing the corruption to continue and to grow.

The emails where you stated that no furhter investigation into the alleged lies should be undertaken because of Therese's "pettiness", were sent not only to her and me, but also to both Doris and Nick. They conveyed a very strong message about your politics and priorities, about what kind of practice you would be likely to turn a blind eye towards in the future, no matter the evidence presented to you, providing it happened to someone who annoyed you.

And in light of the latest development, in light of all the stories that have surfaced now about continued lies and manipulations in your organisation, it seems that this is exactly what happened. The corruption has continued, you are still turning a blind eye, and no one is held accountable.

(A lot of these stories of later corruptions have surfaced in the comments on Ian's blog And on may 23, 200711:42 AM, Gina - your former head mod - had this to say over there about the continued lack of accountability: I can tell you that I know of four - and possiby a fifth - manager that has gone to Melissa directly about how Doris conducts things. Melissa (rightfully) bears the brunt and responsibility of Doris' actions because she enables and endorses Doris' behaviour and treatment of the staff. When approached by these known four/possible fifth (and I count myself among their lot) Melissa has said that Doris does a lot of work, she is aware of "situations" but, in short, nothing would cause her to remove Doris from her position. If there is no accountability - then what is there?)

Closure of the Leaky Experience: Open Letter to Melissa, Part One

2007-07-12T09:54:00.000+02:00

I have spent the larger parts of my spare time the last few weeks reading and re-reading old mails, comments, all the other blogs out there - even searching for old threads at the Leaky archives.... and pondering over my own reactions. What telling the story now and reading the other stories told have touched inside. Some of the wounds go deeper still then I realised, and the strength the hurt still holds is astounding and somewhat unexpected. This is the reason why telling this story took so much longer than I thought it would when I started this blog on the 12th of May - two months ago already. And there I was thinking that I could finish the narrative of how I ended up here and all that happened on the road in just a few weeks...

But now I am here, finally, ready to end the telling of this narrative for my part by a final open letter to Melissa. Melissa Anelli is the current webmistress at the Leaky Cauldron, and the one who has been in charge for as long as I have been involved there. She is not directly responsible for everything that has happened and for all that anyone has done or not done, but she is the leader, a position she also claims and recognizes for herself, no matter how reluctantly she may or may not have originally accepted it. And as the leader, the final responsibility must be placed at her door. If anyone is to assume the responisibility for change, it has to be her. This is how it is in any organisation.

I will have to post this letter in two separate entries, to have enough space to say all I want to say. Here is the first instalment:

Dear Melissa
Contrary to what you may think right now, my object with everything written in this blog is not and has never been to "tear Leaky down". I would never want that. I would like to quote again the beginning of my farewell letter to you:

I want to thank you for all the wonderful times I have had because of Leaky. It started as you know in the old Leaky comment threads. They used to be a very important part of my life, an outlet, a refuge, an asylum and an endless invigorating source of energy. I couldn't believe it when I was invited to be part of the team of the new forum a year ago, and the first weeks of January 2005 were among the happiest times of my life, when we were all planning the new forum together, and being so full of dreams of how great it would be... This will always be true, and no matter what, I will forever be grateful to Leaky for giving me this, it was more important to me than you will ever know! Thank you Melissa, for enabling this, and to Nick and Sue too, who were part of that first period, both the comment threads and the first days of the forum. You will all have a special place in my heart forever because of this, and the term "The Leaky Cauldron" will always mean something truly special for me!

This is still true for me, every single word of it. In fact, the reason why the conflict with you still hurts is precisely because I used to love Leaky so much and it was so special to me. It still is, in many ways.

I also want to quote here something I wrote in the comments on Ians blog:

I do not wish to "tear Leaky down" as you say Ian. On the contrary, in fact. Leaky was once a fantastic fansite, the very best, and it still has that potential. It was my first home on the net. I wouldn't want to see it sink. It is wonderful for me that so many of you here state in your comments how much you love the forum I was once allowed to participate in creating. It means we must have done some things right. I don't want it shut down, I want it to blossom. I want to see the old spirit resurrected and live on. Whatever I am posting here is not meant as an attack on Leaky or its devoted members. It is an attack on some of the actions of the current admins, in the hope that they may finally learn from their mistakes. If they could only realise just how fantastic their staff and their membership are, if they could only learn to truly value them and treat them with respect, instead of seeing them as vehicles for their own recognition....that would be all it took. They do not need to change all their ways. But in the sadly all to likely event that they will learn nothing and change nothing, I also hope that posting our stories here can serve as a warning for others, whether they want to be a member of the Leaky staff or not. So that they may be able to protect themselves from harm. That is all this is about. It is not about "everything that happens at Leaky is crap".

I repeat this here now because I want to make it very clear where I am coming from in writing this. This place is not a general "Bash Leaky blog"

Like I said in the quote above, I have written about my Leaky Experience to present an alternative version of events, so that past and present staffers of Leaky may have an alternative narrative and an alternative version of events to read, in order to be able to compare and judge for themselves. But also to heal my own wounds, because I admit that I have been wounded.

And some of my deepest wounds from the Leaky Experience come from you Melissa. But I think it is very possible that you are not fully aware of this. I think you are perhaps not fully aware of what people may come to see as implicit promises in your behaviour, both as the webmistress of the site and in your talent for making people feel welcomed, appreciated and wanted in a fabulous warm and vibrant HP community of friends on the net. And the hurt that may follow after this when you later seem to ignore people, allow them to be abused or even lash out in ways you yourself maybe see as only being a bit too defensive when dealing with the unreasonable or obtrusive among your staffers. I will try and explain how I have experienced this below.

Let me first state here in way of a disclaimer that I do not believe for one second that you are an evil sadist, callously and cynically setting out to hurt people. I do not believe this of any of the Leaky admins, and I certainly do not believe this of you. I believe that you may be at least interested in hearing my point of view to the full, even if you after that might want to discard all of it as being of no consequence.

Because I do choose to believe that you are a person able to understand points of view different from your own, if you would only take the time to listen, and not automatically jump to the conclusion that people are trying to attack or offend you - or attack or be disloyal to "Leaky" - when they speak their mind, or give an opinion contrary to your own.

I think this last tendency of yours played a large part in the conflict between you and Therese and me. And from what I hear from the experiences of others, it seems to play a large part in several other conflicts at Leaky as well, and also in the bitterness that may result in people leaving. So I am going to go through your reactions in your conflict with us here, and explain how that felt and was interpreted from our point of view, in way of example. Yes, it is personal. All of this is. It is not to be avoided anymore, after all that has transpired. If you don't know what I mean, read again all the entries of this blog, and the comments to the various entries over at Ian's blog.

Since it has taken me so long to be ready for this letter, and there is now a timegap of some consequence between this entry and the earlier ones containing my narrative, a short re-cap of this conflict is perhaps in order (for the longer versions, see earlier instalments, especially The Therese Appreciation Chapter , Suddenly the Glove Hits , The Lies and Corruption Continues.):

Therese worked as head of the original Essay Project - what is now Scribbulus. This as approved of by you. I, among several others, worked with her on that project
This project originated out of the Lounge, and Nick, as admin for the Lounge, was also the admin Therese related to. She received nothing but support and friendly reassurances from him about the work being done.
Then Doris was made site wide project overseer, and Therese was asked to co-operate with her in that capacity. Originally, Therese welcomed this.
Shortly before Christmas 2005, Therese contacted you to get a clarification of her role in the project
Sometime during the exchanges of emails over this, Therese received a pm from Doris, where Nick was cited as saying (to Doris) that he really thought they ought to get rid of Therese. Doris told Therese that you had also received a copy of this pm.
Then Therese "up and left" - wrote a resignation letter she also sent as a pm to her fellow staffers, and left Leaky for good.
Shortly afterwards, Nick contacted me to explain what had happened. He said that they had wanted to get rid of Therese because she was difficult to work with, yelled at her staff in pms and that nobody liked her but me. The evidence for this was several complaining pms her staffers were supposed to have written to Doris. He admitted to me that it was Doris who had told him this, and that he had not seen any of it.
With Nick's consent, I approached all the staffers of the then Essay Project. They all denied to have ever complained about Therese to anyone, and instead claimed to like her.
I collected all the evidence for this, and sent it to you with a copy to all the admins and the old Leaky staffers
Then nothing happened. No reaction or answer from you that we were made aware of.
Because Therese felt that her work for the EP had been wrongfully appropriated when she had been scheemed against in this way, and because we wanted to try and use our work elsewhere, we wrote you a letter and asked you to withdraw our work - our intellectual property - from the Essay Project
Then we received one of the angriest and rudest letters I have ever read, starting like this: Never, in nearly five years on Leaky, have I seen such petty, horrible behavior.

One of the things that really hurt in this - and still does - was the incredible discrepance between your reactions to the two letters with my signature under them, that you recieved concerning this matter. I had expected something close to the sentence above to be your immediate, spontaneous reaction when you received evidence suggesting that one of the volunteers who had devoted so much of her time and love and working capacity for your site, had been made the victim of an ugly backstabbing campaign. But no - your anger and your outrage only came when someone who had worked for you earlier claimed ownership to their own work. To my claim that one of your staff had been the victim of ugly lies against her person, you found either of us worthy of no reaction whatsoever.

I wonder if it is possible for you to really understand how this hurt, and how disappointed I was. I felt let down in the most basic of ways.

When I first joined your staff, you were incredibly welcoming and supportive. I felt that you were a person who really cared about us. When I mailed you and was so unhappy and felt so guilty because I needed to take a break from modding for a while, you immediately came back to me and reassured me that I could of course take a hiatus whenever I wanted to. You said that just the fact that I wrote and told you about my problems proved to you that I was the kind of person you wanted on your staff. That meant a lot to me. When Lilly told you that she had to sometimes be away because of her health problems, you were equally supportive, in a very warm, personal manner, begging Lilly to keep you updated about her situation or else you would be a wreck from worry. We really believed that. And do you remember that little troll who got so mad at me because I modded her that he/she registered under a new account with the username ihatetorill and started to abuse me all over the forums? Again, you showed your great concern, went out of your way to reassure me that nobody would be allowed to treat any of your staff like that, and you even checked with Lilly whom you knew was my close friend to be sure I was ok.

So, I really did believe you cared about the welfare your volunteer staff. All my personal experience pointed to that. Yes, I was sometimes mightily frustrated over some of your priorities and decisions and styles of leadership - what I have discussed in earlier entries here under the headings Absence and Micromanagement. But this is on another level altogether. This is what it would have been possible to also discuss under the headings growing pains and a site run by amateurs.

But when I realised what had happened to Therese, when I compared what Nick told me to what the former EP staff told me and saw how a pattern of something very ugly seemed to appear - then I trusted you to be the person to go to for help and protection. I felt absolutely convinced that you would never want to accept that kind of conduct from any of your admins, never want any of your devoted volunteers to be subjected to ugly lies behind her back to get rid of her. I felt confident that you would at least look into the matter - if you had wanted to talk to the people involved directly yourself, and not only take my letter as sufficient evidence to act upon, that would have been more than ok with me. In fact, that was something I expected and was ready for because it would have been very reasonable.

I never expected that you would do nothing. Say nothing, just let everything continue as before. But instead yell and throw insults at us when we later came back and asked you to not use our work.

I am still trying to understand this, still having conversations with you in my head over it. Pathetic? Perhaps .... but that is how much it hurt.

To be continued....

Communication with Sue

2007-06-30T21:11:00.000+02:00

I thought I should give Sue, as one of the Leaky admins who has come here to communicate, the same prominent space here as my own entries and Nick's comments. The following is my open letter to her from the entry "Open Letter to Sue and Doris" below, her answer to this letter, and my comment to her answer again. To make it clear who has written what, I will put Sue's words in italics, but other than that, I have not edited her words, obvioulsy:

Dear Sue
You know, my darling Sue, that whatever differences we may have had, we have sorted them out long ago. I consider you to be my friend. Maybe you have not always been certain that I am your friend - but I assure you, I am. However mad you may have been with me at times, I have never heard that you have ever badmouthed me behind my back. Ever. Whatever you had to say you said it directly to me in private pms - as you would never yell to me in public either. You are a great enough person to apologise when you think you have done wrong, and I have never ever heard that you have deliberately done anything to hurt anybody. Leaky would have been a much better place for its staff to be if the rest of the admins had taken your example in these matters to heart!

And you are aware of the fact that the Leaky News section would have sunk a long time ago if you hadn't kept it going, aren't you? I am not sure you are always given the credit or appreciation you are due over there, by the management of the site that is....... The fandom truly loves and appreciates you, though!

I say this here and now because I think that you may have been hurt and confused when so much anger and venom have been directed towards the "Leaky admins" lately - since you are sometimes included in that "admin" group too. I therefore hereby state as loud and clear as I can: Sue Upton is my friend and I have no issues with her. She is not responsible for the recent problems at Leaky described in this blog.

Here is Sue's answer of 30th of June, in the comments:
Dear Torill,
I had not known about this letter until Kimmy told me, and I have pondered on how exactly to respond, so Im sorry for the delay in responding(had the plethora of news, PotterCast stuff, and other family emergencies on top of things so Im way behind as usual) and I thank you for writing this in the first place-wow! What an amazing letter thank you!
You did of course nail my emotions and what I was feeling about all of this on the head, and I'm still amazed (and as always, impressed) with how you can see what I'm feeling inside-you are amazing on many levels but this has long impressed me. Yes indeed, I have been horribly sad, horribly upset for those who truly know me know this just was NOT what I ever wanted for Leaky, nor any of us did! truly I believe this, and because I take all of this so close to heart, all these events have torn me bit and soul, just like Tom Riddle.
I still believe to this very day the strength of the site has always been the people(ie ALL CAP PLURAL MORE THAN ONE PERSON), whether those who are still on staff or have left and the readers-we are all Potter fans and I never thought members of the website would become so disliked, have such controversy around it or that well, it would be like this. None of us did! Naive and silly perhaps, but part of me also very much wants to keep on working as hard as possible to try to improve things (and yes I actually do believe Leaky Senior Staff and a whole bunch of others honestly want to improve things, maybe not happening in the manner nor speed some may wish but i swear it's not being forgotten small comfort to some but i swear its true.)but heh other days I simply want to walk away altogether I mean just screw this, and I dont know why I get out of bed. Yes it is true, I am very conflicted at a time when it is supposed to be the best for our fandom.
I really do not want to get into commentary about others because yo u addressed such a lovely letter to me personally-hope you can understand this, and so I wish to respond solely to you.
Torill, please know I do HUGELY miss the "old days" just like Moody and Sirius reflecting on the old crowd as DD called it; I do long for what our little group had, and would very much like things to be different. I feel as if most of my playmates, Pottermates and online friends have vanished or I've simply been so freakin overwhelmed and busy Ive failed horribly and quite pitifully at maintaining the ties contact and communication to the ones I love the most. Somedays I think Kimmy is the only one who is so gosh dang bloody stubborn persistant and utterly refuses to let me slide into my turtleshell of isolation, and god bless her for that! if it were not for her, no one would know I am still here save for an occassional post or a goofball comment or giggle on pc. The rest of my friends should rightly just kick my sorry butt and I have no other words than to say Im sorry, but I am.
I was thinking the day that we got the news about the release date, and how Jo was feeling, also about how far this journey had taken me, and whether or not it was ending up in a manner and place that I would reflect on with such joy. I had always in the back of my mind rather hoped it would be our small band of Cauldron's army being together online in some mass post-reading chat, but I am not certain if that would happen or if others would welcome my presence there.
I do love my job at Leaky, and I work very hard, and am frankly very proud of all the accomplishments our entire team have achieved-past and present staff included!!!! Im sure as hell not perfect in my job, but I do try, however I am also honest and realise anyone with a bit of effort and sheer enthusiasm could easily do the same with the news, but I did appreciate your kind words, truly truly very much!
I really never ever ever ever in a million years wanted to become a "celebrity fan" and it is something I struggle daily with, for all I really wanted was for our website to continue to grow in respect love and a true appreciation of the readers and for the staff. I think of myself as being just like every one else in our fandom (yes I am sorted into the right house I think), and I bloody well know how lucky I am so I have no room to weep perhaps for the things I miss or have lost, but honestly I really wanted to and believe with my heart and soul that the fandom is for all of us-all of us. I hope that others reading these words will know that to be true, although the other day someone posted about senior staff and left my name off it, so Im not even certain if people really much notice me other than the goofball squeeing.
I think Leaky wants us to all be part of a good experience and hell yes I wish I could change things, make things better over night but I cant but again I think things can improve, hopefully it just isnt too late (i mean my love of HP isnt ending on July 21 -is yours!)
Torill, please know this: I always think with great fondness of our past communications and working together to make the forum, and while yes we did have our (few) disagreements, they were settled and I also appreciate you mentioning that as well. I still remain awed by you, same as I felt when we were always posting on the leaky comments, pre-forum days (even sharing the Cuaron love! :)) My respect for your intelligence, care, concern, and most of all heart, has not wavered one iota, no matter how things have transpired since.
I do not know what else to say in this long rambling (Torill -length ;) ) response, but I personally will always carry the laughter conversations and joy and love of Potter that brought us and all the ones Ive drifted from, together in the first place.
All best,
Sue

And this is my answer to her:
Sue - thank you so much for your lovely answer - thank you thank you for coming here and sharing your thoughts and reactions with me and everyone. It means a lot more to me than you maybe know. And of course I am totally ok with the fact that you choose not to comment on what does not concern you, but only answer my letter to you. That is all I could have hoped for or wanted, so thank you again!

Your great heart and your honesty shines through in this answer - and that does not surprise me, because you were always so real. There was never a shred of calcualation behind any of your reactions, ever.

I am so sorry that you are hurting, sorry that a predictable side-effect of telling this story of my Leaky Experiences would be to cause you pain, make you upset, sad and sorry. Because you truly love Leaky, you love the people there, you love the fandom. You have always wanted to be a part of something great and wonderful, to share, participate, contribute and then be respected, included and loved in return. And now so much conflict and dislike and corruption is happening around you at the very place you invested so much of yourself in...

I truly wish it could have been different. I, too, would have so much wanted to be able to celebrate the last launch, the final revelation of the whole plot, the whole story, together with a huge family of Leaky friends who should have had so much to celebrate and cherish and congratulate each other for. It should have been like that, it really should, and it is such a shame that it is not.

But sadly enough, I do not believe that to remain silent in order to protect you - or anyone else of the good guys like you - from hurting would have been helpful at all at this point. You say that you believe things can change, can improve for the better and that every member of the senior staff wants this - I so hope you are right! I could wish for nothing better.

I am not so sure I can share even your modest amount of optimism, though. But I do know that if there is going to be even the slightest chance of improvement, of righting what is wrong, then we have to speak up. To be silent about our experiences of wrongdoings because it may be hurtful for some to hear about them, will only enable them to continue unchecked. You can only change what you are aware of.

You could say it should have been kept "within the family" and not made public, and yes, I would have preferred that too. I originally tried to achieve something by going to the admins and the ones directly involved only - by being descreet if you will. But that had NO effect. Then I have been silent for more than a year - and that has not done anyone any good either. Now I am talking, and good people like you are hurting...

Will it help? I don't know. But at least, there is a chance that maybe things will be taken seriously now, not just swept under the carpet and retold to be only about "misunderstandings" that no one needs to address....

A small chance. But yes, perhaps. I think an important first step towards real change would be to listen carefully to the complaints and stories of those who have left. To take what they say seriously, to talk to them in all honesty in order to learn and to grow, not in order to accuse or defend or deny. But what I have seen and heard so far are only attempts at discrediting the leavers as liars and troublemakers; and a retelling of old lies. This is not giving me much hope.

But maybe you are right, maybe there is a willingness behind the scenes that we on the outside do not hear about, a willingness to look at what has happened with honesty in order to stop abusing and manipulating practices. That would be truly great. Truly great. I wish.

Finally - my darling Sue - why do you doubt whether anyone would want to include you in a huge online post-launch "reading and squeeing together" chat??? Whatever gave you that idea? I would just love to share the first experience of the book with my online friends - the more the merrier - and YOU are definitely one of my online friends! I know for a fact - and I think you know this too if you stop and consider for a moment - that so many people out there also consider you one of the good guys. You have very very many friends Sue. Whether we are "inside" or "outside" Leaky these days should not be what matters, should it?

Again - thank you for answering me, both Nick and Sue. My next instalment here, which I am now off to write, will be my open letter to Melissa.

Communication with Nick

2007-06-20T21:55:00.000+02:00

I had planed to continue the closure of my Leaky Experience by posting open letters to Nick and Melissa next. But in the mean time, Nick responded to what I have been writing here, first on his livejournal and then in a comment to the entry below.

That changed my plans a little. I am very glad you responded Nick - now I know something about what your reactions are, and can also talk to you directly in a much more real way than I thought would be possible. Of course, I am not so happy about the content of what you have to say - but I don't think you expected me to be that either...

I will give proper space to what you said to and about me - I think that is only fair when I have been so outspoken myself. I will post the quote from your livejournal first, then your comment to my open letter to Sue and Doris below, both without any interruptions from me. Then I will respond to both, incorporating into that response some of what I had already planned to say to you.

What follows below are the copy-and-paste versions of what you posted. I have not edited anything, but of course the formatting shows up differently here than on your blog or in the comments. I have put it all in italics to distinguish clearly what are quotes from you and what is written by me.

So, here goes. This is what Nick posted on his livejournal on Jun. 18th, 2007

My Fresh Perspective

I am not posting this as a staffer of any website, but as an independent person; the thoughts I share below are my own.

----------------------

I've just recently been pointed to a blog by a former Leaky staffer named Torill (she openly shares her name there, so I don't feel it's a violation of her privacy to share it here) that was fairly recently-created (May of this year), which, despite its unassuming title, seems to have the sole intent of dragging the good name of Doris Herrmann through the mud for events that happened a year-and-a-half ago, and which greatly involved myself. Doris has taken the high road by not responding to these posts, but I--lowly though it is--feel the need to share my perspective on the story here on my blog, because I think that without my input, assumptions are being made and conclusions are being jumped to about why I had decided to seek a new leader for the then-Essay Project that are completely false. I was sent several PMs and e-mails that were written by staffers, both from those who worked on the then-Essay Project and those who worked with Therese in other capacities, sharing their thoughts on Therese. Some of these were sent on by the writers and some were forwarded by Doris. Several of the writers were very outspoken at the time among the staff in their negative opinions of Therese. The comments all expressed the feeling that Therese was often hard to get along with, and many also shared that she lacked effective leadership skills to manage the project, in their writers' opinions.

I know that for my own part, I was disappointed to find out that the website that Therese had shown as part of her credentials was only filled with essays written by her, and one by a friend (at the time, t may have changed now). I was under the impression--and I may have jumped to this conclusion completely on my own--that when Therese said that she ran this site, she was in charge of a staff of some sort and had dealt with essay submissions, but that was not the case. At the time, she had no other previous experience with leading essay projects or online staffs, so this site factored greatly into her being asked on board for the project. These details were pointed out to me in December, and were a factor in my decision to seek out a different leader for the project.

I hope that all of this has shed some light on the situation and helped to show the other side to the story.

I have disabled comments in this post because of the potential to abuse them.

--Nicholas A. Rhein

And this was posted in the comments to my last entry below:

I am not posting this as a staffer of any website, but as an independent person; the thoughts I share below are my own.
------------------------
I must say that in your capacity as a forum moderator and as a staffer in the Essay Project, you had very little opportunity to witness first-hand whether or not Doris lied about anything, since you weren't privy to that information. What you were privy to was gossip, as you say: "Too many stories have surfaced for anyone to be able to deny this pattern now. For those who have heard all the stories about your lies, such a denial will amount to nothing less than the enabling of abuse." I, on the other hand, was very much privy to the truth rather than twice-told tales of dubious intent, and I NEVER witnessed her lie to the staffers or to myself, and to this day consider her one of the most principled people I know. I would also like to clear up one point that is, in fact, a lie on Torill's part: "I have no grudges against you for approaching Melissa and trying to become her friend so that you could get a more influential position at Leaky." Given that you were not privy to this information, I do understand why you have it wrong. I was in those e-mails, however, and know for a fact that it was they who approached Doris asking her to be project coordinator (Doris was the first person who immediately sprang to mind), and I approached her to be my co-administrator on the forum, not the other way around. I'm not sure why you think it was the other way around, but my immediate impression is that you listened to gossipers who claimed it to be so. Most Sincerely, --Nicholas A. Rhein

Here is my response:

My initial reaction after having read this thoroughly - was utter confusion. I didn't know what to think, and whether I understand you at all any more. Your two versions of the story - the one you revealed to me in January/February 2006, and the one you are telling now, especially in your Livejournal entry, do not add up. Either you lied to me then, or you are lying now.

Or you have completely changed the events around in your mind during the time that has passed, and honestly do remember it like you describe it above. Then we really are dealing with something that may be termed "The Art of Denial". But then you cannot have read very thoroughly what I have written on this blog, because that ought to have jogged your memory. And I would be very disappointed to learn that you had written the livejournal entry above, describing my blog, even stating what you think its sole intent is supposed to be - without having read my blog properly first...

No matter how I look at it, it doesn't add up.

Those of you reading this who have read my earlier entries, and followed all the citations and quotes I have presented there, may be a bit bored by the following. Because I am going to go through some of the evidence yet again. If the above really is about denial - if you really have forgotten Nick, and convinced yourself that the lies are the truth, then I want to try and wake you up. I used to think of you as my friend. When I left Leaky in January 2006, I wrote this to you in my farewell letter, cited in The moderator experience post far below:

thank you Nick, for being so approachable, supportive, fair and among the least defensive and power-hungry people I have ever met!!

- and I meant every word! You may not believe this, but one of the things I have grieved the deepest through all of this, is the loss of you as my friend. I remember when you first came on board the old comment threads of Leaky, calling yourself Malecrit, determined to see if you could rile us Potterfans up a bit. Then we engaged in some real, invigorating and fun discussions, and then you shed that provocoative disguise and signed up as Scabbbers - sharing in the great experience that was Leaky in those days. For me, as for many others, you were a large part of what made it great. When you created the forum and agreed to invite me on as a mod, I couldn't have been happier. Even though I sometimes wanted to pull out all the hairs on my head from sheer frustration when you hopped along and started new things before you had thought them through properly, I always thought of you as one of the really good guys. I trusted you without reserve. I think you know that.

And here you are now, claiming that my sole intent with this blog is to "drag the good name of Doris Herrmann through the mud", repeating the old lies against Therese yet again, this time with your name under them. I really really want to ask "What happened to you" - even if I will never get any answer...

So let me see if it is possible to wake the old Scabberino up again, then. If sleep or enchantment or denial is what this is about, that is. I honestly don't know anymore...

You say: I must say that in your capacity as a forum moderator and as a staffer in the Essay Project, you had very little opportunity to witness first-hand whether or not Doris lied about anything, since you weren't privy to that information. What you were privy to was gossip.

The information I had about what Doris said against Therese, the information I set out to investigate by approaching all those of the old EP staff who were supposed to have said she was often hard to get along with, as you call it now - doing that investigation with your explicit consent, remember - that information came to me through - you Nick. You were my source. I have been very explicit about that, stating very clearly where I had my information from, by citations. From chats with you. And now you say: I, on the other hand, was very much privy to the truth.

So which is it, the information you shared with me back then - gossip or the truth? It can't be both Nick. And if it was gossip, then you were the gossiper.

You say: I--lowly though it is--feel the need to share my perspective on the story here on my blog, because I think that without my input, assumptions are being made and conclusions are being jumped to about why I had decided to seek a new leader for the then-Essay Project that are completely false. I was sent several PMs and e-mails that were written by staffers, both from those who worked on the then-Essay Project and those who worked with Therese in other capacities, sharing their thoughts on Therese.

Here it is implied that before Therese left, shortly before New Years Eve 2005, you had received mails and PMs from staffers, those who worked on the old EP project included, and that this is why you wanted to seek a new leader for the then-Essay Project.

If this is the truth Nick - then what on earth were you playing at when you contacted me on January 8th, and during our chat said the following things to me (see the citations in context here: http://torill-underthemagnoliatree.blogspot.com/2007/05/lies.html)

scabbersakapeterpettigrew: I worried privately that Therese might not be a very good manager, as many of the EP staff shared complaints or worries about her leadership and her way of working with them
(...)
scabbersakapeterpettigrew: At least two of the EP staff shared complaints with Doris.
(...)
scabbersakapeterpettigrew: They had been yelled at, apparently, in private messages, about things
scabbersakapeterpettigrew: (....)Doris could fill you in more, I do not know the details

If they had indeed written to you, or you had seen the pms and e-mails in question yourself - why didn't you tell me this when I asked, why didn't you cite from them or at least tell me the contents properly to convince me? Why did you claim instead that you did not know the details?

When I contacted you again after several of the staff had told me they had no complaints against Therese, on the 14th of January, you were even more explicit about not having seen these things yourself, and that your information came from Doris:

scabbersakapeterpettigrew: ****, ****, and **** have all sent Doris PMs from Therese that they considered inappropriate, to my knowledge
torillgrnhaug: Nick, have you seen those?
scabbersakapeterpettigrew: No, I haven't, but Melissa has
(....)
scabbersakapeterpettigrew: Let me see if I can find my conversation with Doris about it
torillgrnhaug: ok, I'll wait
scabbersakapeterpettigrew: Doris says that, according to her conversations with the EP staff, none of them liked Therese--this is as of December 27
torillgrnhaug: none of them?
scabbersakapeterpettigrew: Other than you
scabbersakapeterpettigrew: I'm not sure if she was exaggerating or not
torillgrnhaug: and the pms that **** has sent to Melissa - has Melissa said that to you, that she has seen it?
scabbersakapeterpettigrew: No, she hasn't

Then you agreed that it would be a good thing to approach the EP staff and ask them whether they had actually ever said any of these things to Doris. You agreed to that even after I had said this:

torillgrnhaug: because, what I fear, is that Doris may b lying
torillgrnhaug: I don't want that to be true, but it sounds like it.

If the version above is true, why didn't you protest vehemently here? Telling me nononono, Doris is not lying, they have written to me, I have seen those pms, you must believe me. Instead you gave your consent to my investigation:

torillgrnhaug: is it ok if I do investigate, and ask them directly, at least **** who appears to be not at all easy to intimidate to me?
scabbersakapeterpettigrew: Yes, that's fine

But if the version in your livejournal were the truth, Nick - then to send me out on that kind of investigating quest, instead of just forwarding me the pms you now claim you were in possesssion of - that would have been really really cruel as I see it. Really playing a very nasty game with me. Especially since you were the one who initiated all these discussions of what happened when Therese left, by approaching me on your own accord on tne 8th of January, telling me about your concern for me. A concern I believed was genuine:

scabbersakapeterpettigrew: I wanted to ask you first if you have any questions about the essay project
scabbersakapeterpettigrew: Anything at all that I can answer
torillgrnhaug: what kind of questions do you mean?
scabbersakapeterpettigrew: Stuff that we might not have filled you in on
scabbersakapeterpettigrew: And I will try afterwards to explain why Therese left, to the best of my knowledge, because I am not sure, but I think that is weighing heavily on your mind

If you at this point had documentation that you neither told me about nor showed me - then saying to me I will try afterwards to explain why Therese left, to the best of my knowledge is a cruel lie - because then you were very far from explaining to the best of your knowledge.....

Maybe your intent has been to defend Doris as your friend by making yourself out to look like the one having all the pms and mails, make it look as if she had nothing to do with it. This could be seen as heroic, because if your livejournal version is to be accepted as the truth, you do look bad now. At least to me.

It is still not enough to clear Doris' name completely, though. The conversation she had with me where she reassured me how no one saw Therese as trouble, I had to believe that ... after she had forwarded to Therese the PM you wrote about getting rid of her - this is still lying, and not in a very pretty way either..

But I do not believe your livejournal version Nick, no matter what motive you may have had to write it. As late as 18.02.06, you sent me large parts of the YIM conversation you had with Doris on December 27, 2005. Here it is clear that your judgment on Therese was based on what Doris said, not on any mails or pms you had received (PFG is paperflowergirl - Therese - and I suppose the words in [brackets] were added by you?:)

(20:10:40) Doris: I also have asked her [Melissa] for TLC [e-mail] accounts [for the EP] - but - I will also tell her that I think PFG is a mistake for this project -
(20:10:48) Doris: as she is running away staff
(20:10:54) nickrhein: That's fine
(20:10:59) Doris: and pushing your forum mods to the point they hate that project
(20:11:13) nickrhein: Gah, I wish I knew what were going on with my own staff

(...)

(20:12:44) nickrhein: That's fine, then--if we discuss replacing Therese, then I will not stand in the way
(20:13:24) nickrhein: If she's as troublesome as you say, then it seems like we may need to replace her after all

(...)

(21:43:20) nickrhein: I'm writing you a PM--about Therese, and about the fact that I'm thinking she ought to be replaced, because I ultimately trust your judgment on her.

- None of this is the main thing though. The main reason why the content of either one of your two versions are not believeable, is of course because all the old EP staff members have - repeatedly - denied to have ever complained about Therese. Even after they were sent all the documentation cited in the entry "The lies" below, they have stood by this. This is what really needs to be explained Nick - if they had the courage to speak to you or Doris or both of you about how bad Therese was - why then should all of them have wanted to withdraw their complaints about her after she had left Leaky? What is this supposed to be about - coercion, threats, blackmail? It doesn't stand to reason.

This is also one of two main reasons why I do believe the stories that have surfaced recently about Doris' lies and manipulations - the stories you claim are gossip. It is as Gina said in the comments - she believes what I say because she has had similar experiences herself. I believe her when she talks about lies and manipulations, because I know that Doris is capable of those, sadly enough.

The other main reason is because the stories are actually not gossip. Gossip is when you spread around stories based on hearsay, what you have heard and think maybe happened to someone. What we have now are specific stories told by different people, who all tell of their own, first hand experiences. They do not only pass on what they have heard somebody else say. Some of them are people I know and respect. And yes, based on my own experiences, the stories are all too believeable.

Getting very long now, even for me, but I think this was necessary. Before I shut up for now I finally want to talk about the "Golden Perch" - the "site" you claim factored greatly into Therese being asked on board for the EP project.

You say on your livejournal:

I know that for my own part, I was disappointed to find out that the website that Therese had shown as part of her credentials was only filled with essays written by her, and one by a friend (at the time, t may have changed now). I was under the impression--and I may have jumped to this conclusion completely on my own--that when Therese said that she ran this site, she was in charge of a staff of some sort and had dealt with essay submissions, but that was not the case. At the time, she had no other previous experience with leading essay projects or online staffs, so this site factored greatly into her being asked on board for the project. These details were pointed out to me in December, and were a factor in my decision to seek out a different leader for the project.

Therese was "asked on board" in May or June 2005. From what it sounds like in the quote above, you were at that point convinced that she had experience from being in charge of staff running an essay site, dealing with submissions etc. This is a bit surprising.

Yes, Therese did tell us about her dreams and her visions in the old Essay thread in the Room of Requirement forum. She posted a link to what she had made as a visualisation of her dream. It was a page titled "The Golden Perch" - with a very beautiful layout that she had created - at least I thought it was beautiful - showing what she had in mind. But she did not in any way present this as something already run as a public Essay site. She said very clearly that she knew this was a project that would be too big for one person alone, and that she couldn't create or run something like that on her own. She hoped she could to do it in co-operation with Leaky. There weren't several essays posted on the site - as I remember it, none - but she may have posted parts of something essay-like on there, as examples.

But maybe you did misunderstand what she was talking about in that essay thread. Maybe you did think it was more finished than Therese claimed it to be. I think what you say about this in your chat with Doris that you forwarded to me, is a bit confusing. But maybe this is precicely because you were a bit confused about it yourself at that point, about what the page "The Golden Perch" had actually implied.

(Doris talks about a communication with Therese, where Therese honestly says that she has had no prior experience with essay journals. Italics mine)

(23:20:57) Doris: ok - sorry - I thought you said she had done this before?
(23:21:08) nickrhein: Nah, she hasn't
(23:21:20) Doris: you told me she had a forum
(23:21:39) nickrhein: There are people in the EP who know how to write good essays and to some degree how to critically analyze them
(23:21:42) nickrhein: Oh, she had a site
(23:21:49) nickrhein: It's offline now
(23:21:54) nickrhein: The Golden Perch
(23:21:59) Doris: but she told us - look at the post
(23:22:04) Doris: that she had never done it
(23:22:08) nickrhein: Yeah, I don't know why she didn't mention it
(23:22:18) nickrhein: In her thread in the RoR she talked a lot about her site
(23:22:19) Doris: I asked her specifically
(23:22:33) Doris: I just caught that comment - but you never saw the site did you
(23:22:47) nickrhein: That's a large part of why I took her on, because she seemed to already be doing an HP essay project of sorts
(23:22:50) nickrhein: No, I did
(23:23:13) Doris: Was it functioning then? And why would she tell me she had never done a site
(23:23:21) nickrhein: It looked like an impressive start

It did look like an impressive start - an sketch of something that could have been great. But she never claimed that she had actually finished or opened it, let alone hired staff or accepted essay submissions..... And no, it does not exist as an essay journal now. It never did. Which is to our loss, I think.

Closure of the Leaky Experience - Open letters to Sue and Doris

2007-06-17T15:46:00.000+02:00

It has been a while since my last entry now....

I wrote down my story of all that happened on the road in my HP fandom journey and thought that would be enough to get started on what I really want to say here under the Tree. But I think I still need to say a few more words to close the door on the Leaky Experience for myself. The time since my last entry is too telling, I cannot fool myself.

I think I will do it in the form of "open letters" to Sue and Doris and Nick and Melissa. I want to finally write down and make public the thoughts that have been haunting me since the beginning of 2006 - it is time for me to get them out of my head now - I need the space in there for other things!

So, for want of a true pensieve, let me use this place to deposit my recurring dialogues with the Leaky admins. This entry will contain my open letter to Sue and Doris - I will post the letters to Nick and Melissa later.

Dear Sue
You know, my darling Sue, that whatever differences we may have had, we have sorted them out long ago. I consider you to be my friend. Maybe you have not always been certain that I am your friend - but I assure you, I am. However mad you may have been with me at times, I have never heard that you have ever badmouthed me behind my back. Ever. Whatever you had to say you said it directly to me in private pms - as you would never yell to me in public either. You are a great enough person to apologise when you think you have done wrong, and I have never ever heard that you have deliberately done anything to hurt anybody. Leaky would have been a much better place for its staff to be if the rest of the admins had taken your example in these matters to heart!

And you are aware of the fact that the Leaky News section would have sunk a long time ago if you hadn't kept it going, aren't you? I am not sure you are always given the credit or appreciation you are due over there, by the management of the site that is....... The fandom truly loves and appreciates you, though!

I say this here and now because I think that you may have been hurt and confused when so much anger and venom have been directed towards the "Leaky admins" lately - since you are sometimes included in that "admin" group too. I therefore hereby state as loud and clear as I can: Sue Upton is my friend and I have no issues with her. She is not responsible for the recent problems at Leaky described in this blog.

Dear Doris
It is difficult to write this in "you" form - difficult to know what to say to you that would make any real sense to either of us. I would have loved to be able to say "Why?" but I do not expect that question to ever get an honest answer. Maybe not even you know what the honest answer would be?

I want to say that I started out thinking that you were one of my friends as well. I had no reason to think otherwise. You came in and shared the Potter experience with the rest of us, offered your time and your work and what I thought was your personality. You seemed to be of just the right kind: friendly, engaged, reaching out, sharing. We chatted on YIM, you told me stories from your childhood and your marriage, how you took relatives in after the hurricane in New Orleans, how you used Harry Potter and Leaky to engage the children in your classroom. When you were made an admin I was very happy, I really thought you would make a great difference for the better at LL.

Even now I find it hard to believe my own story below when I read the entry about your lies. It is very far beyond anything I expect from the people I deal with, and I never expected it from you. Were all you were and did before this a lie as well - only pretence?

It is unbelieveable to me how you coldly showed Therese that quote from your chat with Nick where he talks about getting rid of Therese - just so she is to understand "where you are coming from as an admin" - and then later pretended to know nothing when you talked to me. How you assured me that no one thought Therese was trouble. How you told me that you believed she was kind since I thought so much of her..... And this line: you know Nick and you know me....

And all the time when you said these things to me you knew you had already sent Therese that PM. Where she gets it spelled out for her in no uncertain terms that you and Nick discussed how you might have to get rid of her.....

It has occured to me lately that people may say that I cannot know for certain whether it was you or Nick who lied. Just to make it clear once and for all: Nick did show me the whole conversation that you quoted from in your pm to Therese - and the accusations that Therese was bullying her team did originate from you, not him. You just edited that part out.

I am so tempted to ask Why??? and How could you??? even if I know this is pointless because I will get no answers. I am so tempted to delve into all kinds of speculations about your motives, even though I know this is not very worthwhile either - because I do not know you. I may guess, I may have hunches, but I know that I do not really know.

I do know that there is a pattern though. In your admin capacity, you do resort to lies far far too often when a conflict occurs between you and your staff members. Too many stories have surfaced for anyone to be able to deny this pattern now. For those who have heard all the stories about your lies, such a denial will amount to nothing less than the enabling of abuse.

Yes, abuse, there is no other way to describe your lies in my opinon. The effect they have had and still do have on people is what makes this harsh word appropriate. To you, they are perhaps only a matter of self defence, of being able to deflect what you see as unresonable blame or criticism or opposition or even competition. Perhaps you lie because people scare you and you feel that they are out to get you. Maybe you think you are never good enough and need to boost the impression you think you must make on others. Maybe to you it is the others who are the abusers, attacking you or undermining you in so many unreasonable ways that you feel like you have no choice but to do what it takes to neutralise them. In order to save not only yourself but Leaky and the "Leaky Spirit" as well. No less. Of course, this practice is the exact thing that will undermine the "Leaky Spirit" if any such thing really exists these days - but you may not understand that.

I don't know. Like I said, I don't know how you think or feel. I am just trying to imagine the least cynical reasons for your lies that I can think of. They may be utterly wrong though.

You know - your ambition is not evil. Your wish to be in the limelight and have your share of the Potter glory is not evil either. I have no grudges against you for approaching Melissa and trying to become her friend so that you could get a more influential position at Leaky. This is very often the way it happens when people are given influential positions in organisations. Things happen to a large extent as a result of informal connections, and there is nothing inherently wrong with that.

But when people start to feel that you see every sign of disagreement or criticism on their part - and there will always be disagreements and criticisms, trust me, some of them even petty - if you see this as dangerous or mean attacks on you that must be squashed by any means possible - then people may start fighting you for real, call you powerhungry and paint everything you have ever done in the worst possible light. If you are never willing to take ownership of whatever mistakes or blunders you or the other admins make - and there will always be mistakes because no one can be perfect all the time - but instead try any excuse, lie or blame to direct the attention away from yourself and onto someone or something else - people may start to use everything they know about you against you and find nothing to excuse or like or even believe. You will have created the very enemies you feared, that were not your enemies to begin with.

And all this is truly sad, utterly tragic - because it is so unecessary. Leaky was a fun place to be, it was not a place haunted by wolves or dangerous rebels....

Sigh. I will stop this rant here. I just needed to say this, myself. I have no idea if this feels even remotely relevant to you, and it will probably have no effect whatsoever on anything at all....

No matter what your motives or reasons may have been or still are, though: the effect of your lies in themselves is abusive and destructive. Someone with the power to do so should stop you, because it is very unlikely that you will be able to stop yourself. I certainly do not expect anything I say here to have any such effect on you. You probably think I am just being plain mean for making all this public in an online blog.

Corruption Continues

2007-06-01T14:46:00.001+02:00

How I Ended Up Here and All That Happened On the Road, Chapter Twelve

I really have no words to express my state of mind as I wrote that letter to the admins, described and quoted from in the instalment below. But I was trusting enough to think that with this kind of documentation, something would be done. I didn't believe Melissa was the kind of leader who would allow any of her staff to be abused. I was sure she would take actions against it, now that she knew.

I can't even begin to tell you how sad I was when I realised that I was wrong in this trust. Remember, I used to love Leaky. It was my first home on the net. I was proud of its successes and anxious about its failures. I had been so proud to be part of its staff, and had fully believed in the idea of the "Leaky Spirit" of friendship, inclusiveness, fun, maturity. The backstabbing of Therese was so utterly, totally against this Leaky Spirit that I had a very hard time adjusting to the fact that it did happen, and that the people responsible for it continued to be in charge, unchecked, and even continued to talk about the Leaky Spirit in the same way as before. As if nothing at all had happened.

I sent the letter not only to the admins, but also to all the members of the old Essay Project. I wanted to give them a chance to speak up should they feel that I had skewed the information or indeed misunderstood something. They did not protest anything. Instead some of them wrote to me and expressed support and sympathy. This told me that I had not overreacted or misunderstood. None of the admins came back to me with any questions or protests either. Doris contacted me shortly before I sent the letter - when Nick had receieved all the documentation - and asked me to schedule a chat with her, which I did. The date for this chat was set till after I had sent the letter, and she never showed up.

Therese and I kept in touch for a while, discussing ways to continue the essay project outside of Leaky. We wanted to build on the substantial material we had created already. But Leaky's Scribbulus, which would contain most of our written material, was about to be launched. We were concerned with the risk of being accused of plagiarism if we published our own work after their launch. So we checked the legal implications - did we have any rights over that material, even after we had left Leaky? We found that yes, as long as no explicitly stated agreement existed between us and Leaky, saying that anything we created would belong to them, the copyright of all our independently written work was still ours. We were never employees.

Of course, had we left the site under normal circumstances, we would never have even contemplated pulling our work, or thought about any legal implications. But after the backstabbing of Therese, and the admin's failure to repair that in any way, we no longer felt any loyalty towards Leaky. So we wrote a letter to Melissa where we withdrew our permission to use any of our written work in their new Essay Project Scribbulus.

I am still not sure how wise this was. Our own essay journal never happened, for various reasons, none of which being difficult or corrupted people. Melissa did comply to our request by changing the wording of our texts enough to make any potential later accusations of plagiarism impossible, even though she protested that these texts were our intellectual property. Except that she insisted that all the threads in the new Essay Forum should still be posted in my name, with my old avatar and everything - even though the whole content of my original posts were rewritten. I never understood the reasoning behind that, but did not find it worth arguing over.

But Melissa also seemed to experience our request as something particularly meanspritied. Apart from telling us what she had changed in our texts and how, the gist of Melissa's answer to us was that she had never ever in all her time at Leaky been so disappointed in someone. The reasons she presents for this are that Therese, in addition to her request to have her work withdrawn from Scribbulus, did not "stick around the extra 12 hours" needed to "talk things out" before she left shortly before New Year's Eve, leaving a "nasty pm" behind. Melissa says that "in both instances you have shown pettiness, churlishness, childishness and impatience, and qualities verging on mean spirit."

Melissa used this opportunity to declare that "All pretense of "inquiry" into the circumstances regarding your departures are hereby ceased. You have, by this action, wasted all that work on you and your friends's behalf." She says that she "was actually considering weighing the evidence recently afforded to me - of which there is equal for and against your/Torrill's claims, especially since the case for you was so spotted in empty pockets, subjective holes, and biased interviews" but now this will not happen. Melissa tells us how she will not spend any more time on Therese who, among other things, she describes as someone who has "insulted the site deeply, and personally."

I of course cannot say whether Melissa would have actually "weighed the evidence presented to her" if we had not made this claim of ownership to our own work. But both Doris and Nick received copies of this correspondence, and whatever else it did, it told them in no uncertain terms that no investigation of the lies against Therese would take place.

Perhaps I should not exaggerate the importance of the events I was a part of - it is always tempting to do that. But I cannot help speculating on whether the fact that Doris got away with her corrupted way of dealing with Therese, even though it was all thoroughly documented, was what opened the gates for this kind of practice to be used so often later.

Because Therese was not to be the only victim. Even as I was in the middle of the process of trying to persuade Nick to take some action based on the evidence I gave him concerning Therese, I heard of how Doris also attacked Bel. Bel had admin status at this point - or at least she had access to the admin control panel to do admin work for the site. Her "promotion" to this admin status was never announced with the kind of fanfares that followed Doris' appointment, though.

Nick told me how the "conflict" between Bel and Doris weighed heavily on him, as he thought of them both as friends. He described going between them and trying to make them reconcile. And he told me how Doris had presented him with the same accusations against Bel that she had done against Therese: someone had complained to her how Bel had yelled at them in private conversations....

Bel was my friend though. I talked to her often. With her unassuming attitude and quiet work for the site without craving for either glory or recognition, I found this idea just as unlikely as the idea of Therese being someone who would be abusive of others.

I went straight to Bel and told her all about these accusations. She was truly shocked. She told me how she went through all her saved YIM chats and pms to see if she could have said something to somebody that they might have experienced as unfriendly or yelling, but could not find anything. I went back to Nick and tried to persuade him to investigate this as well. Now that he had seen how Doris had lied against Therese, he could not take Doris' accusations at face value. He had to go to the person Doris named as the complainer, and ask them directly.

I don't know if he ever did. Bel eventually left the site as admin, and only stayed on in her capacity of Floo Team member - responsible for the forum supposedly owned by the Lexicon at the Leaky Lounge. Doris stayed.

Then there was Puffin, one of the original mods like me. She had to take a hiatus for a while, due to personal issues and severe computer problems. She had cleared this with the admins, and received nothing but support and reassurances. When she was ready to come back - this was after I had left - the forum had changed software and was now using a system with a slightly different mod control panel. Puffin was told by Doris that all the other mods had gone through a "retraining" procedure. Until Puffin had done the same, she was told she could not come back as a mod. She did go through several "training sessions", but according to what Puffin says, she missed one of them. Then she was eventually sacked.

One could argue that a forum manager is in her rights to set the standard of what kind of training any mod must have to be allowed to function in that capacity. But I know from other mods - Lilly, Gina - that no one else was required to go through the kind of "retraining" procedure with Doris that Puffin was forced to do. Lilly had also been away for a longer period of time and came back to the new control panel, but was never asked to do any "retraining". Again, a lie.

And now, with the explotion of stories from staffers who have left Leaky recently, to be read on Ian's blog and on other places you can find links to from there - it seems the corruption has not been limited to these cases only. It seems to have continued, grown and spread out to become what seems like a common practice whenever something occurs that may look like a conflict.

This is all so sad - because it all seems so unecessary. The staff at Leaky is not a bunch of rebellious anarchists - they have all wanted to work with dedication for a site they loved. When Doris was made an admin responsible for "picking up the adminstrative slack", she was welcomed by all. Why does she believe she must rule through corrupted methods? Why is this allowed to continue, and why are the ones reacting to it, protesting or leaving or losing their loyalty to Leaky because of it, described as the problem instead?

The Lies

2007-05-30T22:45:00.001+02:00

How I Ended Up Here and All That Happened On the Road, Chapter Eleven

On the 25th of February 2006, I wrote a long letter to all the admins, and all the members of the first Essay Project staff. At that point I had left Leaky.

The letter started like this:

As you all know, I have looked into the accusations made against Therese, accusations claiming that she was difficult to work with, that no one in the EP staff liked her etc. I regarded these accusations to be very serious and damageing, therefore I wanted to investigate them. After I have found them to be false, I want them to be "pronounced dead and powerless" as the Norwegian legal expression goes, in front of everyone who has been involved with Therese.

My purpose with this letter is to give all f you who are concerned with the matter one way or the other, either as admins of TLC or members of the old EP staff, the information you need to know exactly what this is about and what I have done. I have never wanted to engage myself in any kind of underhanded or secret activity, any form of "plot". The reason I haven't told all of you everything before, is that I didn't want to point any fingers without proof, and end up spreading false accusations or rumours myself. Now that I have proof, I will present it to all of you, so you know where I stand and what I have done.

I trust the admins of TLC to handle this situation in a way that will hold Therese unhurt, and restore her honour and reputation. I hope you will also handle it in a way that may help preventing this kind of thing happening again at TLC. How exactly this ought to be done is not my concern, I am no longer a member of the site's staff, and after this email I do not expect to be directly involved in this case any more. But if any of you have any questions or comments about what I have done, don't hesitate to contact me and I will do my best to answer you.

This chapter will be about the accuastions against Therese, and my investigation of said accusatios, where I concluded without any doubt in my heart that they were all false, all lies. Again, I have done a lot of thinking on how much to present here, how much to cite, how much to show.

I have to say that at this point, sad as it is - I no longer feel any loalty towards Doris or Nick or Melissa. Nothing came out of my letter. From all I heard after I left, all the stories I have read in the last few weeks, on Ian's blog and elsewhere, it seems the practice of lies and false accusations continued. Therese was only the first victim - the first I know of that is.

I have no qualms in citing conversations I had with Nick, or citing from conversations he showed me that he had with Doris. This practice of lying against people, and allowing this lying to happen without investigating and without trying to stop it - this practice will never stop if no one ever tells, if no one ever shows the evidence they have. But I do have some qualms in citing the conversations I had with the members of the old EP staff. Their names were brought into this through no fault of their own. I had their permissions to show their conversations with me to the admins, but I never had their permissions to post them openly on the web.

Therefore, I will not cite anything from their conversations with me unless it is necessary to prove my accuastions: that what was said against Therese was not true. I will do my best to keep the citations anonymous, so it won't be understood which conversation was with which person. I feel pretty safe in doing this, since none of them confirmed the accusations. Whenever their names appear in the quotes, I have covered them with asterixes: ****

I will tell the rest of this story using the words and quotes from my letter to the admins. I have abridged it somewhat - it was pretty detailed - and omitted where necessary to protect the names or identity of the EP staff. Whenever I insert something that was not in the original letter, I will write in italics.

Here begins the rest of that letter:

The following is a presentation of the important YIM conversations and emails I have exchanged with people concerning this matter. I have had some more conversations with Nick than the ones I present here, mostly concerning discussions of how to best investigate or react to the matter. (......)

I have also as a rule not included the full chats and mails. I have omitted any parts of the conversations not concerning this case, repetitions, advice, emotional reactions or speculations on things like motives etc., things one might engage in in a private chat with someone one trusts, but never want to be spread outside that chat to anyone at all. I have tried to be more protective of other people's reactions of this kind than my own. If anyone feels that their opinions or words have been in any way misrepresented by these omissions, please tell me, and I will present the whole unedited converesation(s) you have had with me to anyone reading this, with your permission.

As you all know, Therese left the EP staff shortly before New Year's Eve, leaving a message to all staff where she explained the reason to be her feeling of having been subjected to powerplays, unreasonable accusations and talks behind her back. She showed me the mail and pm exchanges she had with the admins that led up to this departure. Included in this exchange was this personal message from Doris, which Therese explained to me had a lot to do with her feeling that there were dishonesty and things going on behind her back involved, and it was an important factor in her decision to leave, as she had been totally unaware that a replacement of her had been discussed:

[QUOTE=DorisTLC,Dec. 28 2005,7:44 pm]I am forwarding to you conversations Nick and I have had regarding your role in this forum. This should better help you to understand where I am coming from as an administrator of this forum, and as a Senior Staff member of TLC.

Melissa also recieved a copy of this.

Doris

[QUOTE=NickTLC,Dec. 27 2005,8:56 pm]Doris, I have thought about Therese and the issues that we have dealt with regarding her, and I am convinced that we need to think about either replacing her or otherwise just doing *something* about what's going on, and honestly, you're just the better person to solve this.

We need to have more admin involvement in the Floo Review, to be sure, either way, so I'd like to hear what you have to say about involving the two of us better in the project and having more administrative oversight of decisions being made.

--Nick[/QUOTE][/QUOTE]

I was shellshocked and deeply confused by all of this, since I had worked happily on the EP for many months, unaware of any conflicts, believing we had all the TLC behind us and were going to make all of them proud. On the 30th of December I contacted Doris on YIM about it, omissions marked with (...):

FROM A CHAT ON YIM WITH DORIS (YIM name txdarcey2000), December 30th
(...)
torillgrnhaug: I just received a pm from Therese where she says she is leaving. What is going on?
txdarcey2000: Well - I would have to refer you to Melissa and Nick on that one, since they were originally the administrators in charge of this project. Nick directly, Melissa as his administrator. (That's the official stand) Personally - I think that the initial understanding of roles was not really understood by Therese - that administrators have to have the ultimate decision making authority. But honestly - I was not in the original talks or discussions, I've only seent the chats.

(...) (mostly my emotional reactions)

torillgrnhaug: and I can't believe that anyone could see her as trouble..
(...)
txdarcey2000: Oh wiat torill
torillgrnhaug: or difficult to talk to...
txdarcey2000: nobody sees her as trouble
txdarcey2000: not at all
txdarcey2000: no - I'm sorry I didn't say that and I didn't mean to give you that feeling
txdarcey2000: I don't know her - never spoken with her actually. Other then one chat with Nick.
torillgrnhaug: I have worked intimately with her on this ever since august
torillgrnhaug: and I met her this summer
txdarcey2000: I think that she is bright and articulate. That is all I can say about her - my views have come from Nick of course - since I have worked with him so closely.
torillgrnhaug: I know
txdarcey2000: But I think she seems bright and capable.

(mostly discussions about the deadline set for the 6th of January, and what is left to do, plus my emotional reactions)

torillgrnhaug: right now, I feel kind of shellshocked, to be honest
txdarcey2000: thanks - and please! We've known each other and you know Nick - we're both crushed - but sometimes the administrator has to take that role. Thanks - and I appreciated your open mind and I know that you are a kind person. So I know she must be if you feel so stongly.
(...)

After this I felt even more confused - Doris' description of Therese as no trouble, and bright and capable, and probably kind since I cared for her so much, just didn't seem to add up with the mails and the pms I had seen, especially the one quoted above. I also got the impression from this chat that Doris didn't know very much about what was going on either, and had her impressions mostly from Nick - and that she was very pleased and full of admiration for the work we had done. Which she always expressed in the threads in the EP room as well.

So I wanted to talk to Nick and ask him more directly about it. But I spent a lot of time contemplating whether I wanted to leave or stay myself. Melissa posted a thread in the EP drafting room about Therese's departure, and in it you know she expressed worries that my reluctance to discuss this without Therese's presence should intimidate anyone from asking questions or expressing concerns. It was a difficult period for me...

Then Nick contacted me himself on the 8th of January:

FROM A YIM CHAT WITH NICK 8.1.06
(...)
scabbersakapeterpettigrew: I wanted to ask you first if you have any questions about the essay project
scabbersakapeterpettigrew: Anything at all that I can answer
torillgrnhaug: what kind of questions do you mean?
scabbersakapeterpettigrew: Stuff that we might not have filled you in on
scabbersakapeterpettigrew: And I will try afterwards to explain why Therese left, to the best of my knowledge, because I am not sure, but I think that is weighing heavily on your mind

(I was very happy about being given the opportunity to talk to him, and we discussed the organisation of the EP and the way and why Doris was brought in to manage it for a while. In the course of this conversation, this came up:)

scabbersakapeterpettigrew: I worried privately that Therese might not be a very good manager, as many of the EP staff shared complaints or worries about her leadership and her way of working with them
(...)
torillgrnhaug: I am sorry - what kind of complaints were those, and from whom - when you say many of the EP staff, what does that mean, we are not that many, and I have heard no complaints either!
scabbersakapeterpettigrew: At least two of the EP staff shared complaints with Doris. They respect Doris a lot, because at least those two felt that the EP was not moving along quickly and that it would never be released
torillgrnhaug: when was this?
scabbersakapeterpettigrew: Mid-December going into late December
torillgrnhaug: and the complaints were about pace only?
scabbersakapeterpettigrew: They felt that Therese's leadership was very difficult to work with
scabbersakapeterpettigrew: No
torillgrnhaug: what was difficult?
scabbersakapeterpettigrew: They had been yelled at, apparently, in private messages, about things
scabbersakapeterpettigrew: Doris could fill you in more, I do not know the details
(....)
scabbersakapeterpettigrew: The complaints suggested that she is very two-faced, in that she is nice in public but mean in private, but I'm really not sure exactly what they said
(...)
torillgrnhaug: that sounds very bad - and is not my experience...
torillgrnhaug: was that one person complaining like that, or more than one?
scabbersakapeterpettigrew: More than one, I believe
torillgrnhaug: about her being mean, I mean, not only complaining about pace
scabbersakapeterpettigrew: Yes, more than one, I believe, possibly more than two
torillgrnhaug: I will ask her, and also ask Doris
(...)

This was very shocking news for me, and very confusing. I was not inclined to believe it at all, as my experience with Therese and with the general atmosphere in the EP drafting room had been so very different from this. But then I also started to wonder whether Melissa was right, and I had intimidated the rest of the staff from saying anything against Therese that they perhaps had wanted to do. I didn't really believe it, but I couldn't rule it out entirely, and I had to be very careful not to fling ugly unfounded accusations around myself. I decided that before I confronted anyone, I had to check out this possibility. That was my first round of contacting all the remaining EP staff by mail or YIM

Here is where I have to edit heavily, to protect their names and their conversations with me. But my questions were worded as follows, two on YIM chats, and one by mail:

FROM A CHAT ON YIM WITH *****, 10th of January:
"torillgrnhaug: what I did wonder, was if you think I was out of line when I posted in that thread of Melissa's, Therese's Departure, saying I thought it was uncomfortable to discuss it when she was not there...
torillgrnhaug: Melissa got so angry with me, and was implying I was somehow hindering or bullying you from speaking freely - I would be very sad if that was the case
torillgrnhaug: or if you have felt in any way intimidated by Therese or by me in this project..
torillgrnhaug: If you have any concerns at all, please let me know, I will not be angry or anything...

FROM A CHAT WITH ***** ON YIM, the 10th of january:
"torillgrnhaug: you know, I wanted to ask you after that thread Melissa posted about Therese's departure.. I have been so worried that what I posted might have felt intimidating to any of you
torillgrnhaug: Melissa seemed to think so, and that made me very sad
torillgrnhaug: because that was not what I intended
torillgrnhaug: so I thought I needed to ask you all - if you have felt at all intimidated by me or any of my posts, or Therese's before - I know that both her and I could be kind of frank on the threads, and possibly seem difficult in any other way too
torillgrnhaug: is there anything at all that has made it difficult for you to work with us?
torillgrnhaug: With Therese and me, I mean?

FROM A LETTER TO *****, 10th of January
"(...)
I still believe what I posted in that thread Melissa set up, Therese's Departure, that I would feel uncomfortable with discussing this matter in depth publicly, when we don't have all the information from both sides, as I would like to try and be as fair as I possibly can. But from the reaction on my post I got from Melissa, it seems she was very concerned that saying this might have intimidated you or any of the other members of staff, and made it difficult for you to speak freely.

I have worried over this since, it certainly was not what I meant to do, intimidate any of you, not at all, I do respect everybody's opinion! But maybe something I have said and done has made it difficult for you to pariticipate in our project, I have wondered about that lately.

This is why I ask you - and this is not something you need to answer to if you do not feel like it - is it anything at all that either I or Therese has done or said that has made it difficult for you in the essay project - anything that has felt harsh or inconsiderate or too frank or anything? I would be very grateful to know if there is anything either of us has done to upset you or make you feel less welcome, or less motivated or anything...please let me know, then Imay learn from it and understand more of what has happened....
(...)"

All of them answered that they had not felt intimidated by me, nor Therese, and stated in various ways that they had had no problems with Therese at all.

After this, I contacted Nick again to discuss the matter with him, and then more of these accusations came up:

FROM A CHAT ON YIM WITH NICK, 14th of January:
scabbersakapeterpettigrew: ****, ****, and **** have all sent Doris PMs from Therese that they considered inappropriate, to my knowledge
torillgrnhaug: Nick, have you seen those?
scabbersakapeterpettigrew: No, I haven't, but Melissa has
torillgrnhaug: Nick - I have asked them
torillgrnhaug: becasue this worried me so, and I wanted to investigate
(...)
scabbersakapeterpettigrew: Let me see if I can find my conversation with Doris about it
torillgrnhaug: ok, I'll wait
scabbersakapeterpettigrew: Doris says that, according to her conversations with the EP staff, none of them liked Therese--this is as of December 27
torillgrnhaug: none of them?
scabbersakapeterpettigrew: Other than you
scabbersakapeterpettigrew: I'm not sure if she was exaggerating or not
torillgrnhaug: and the pms that **** has sent to Melissa - has Melissa said that to you, that she has seen it?
scabbersakapeterpettigrew: No, she hasn't
torillgrnhaug: I mean, the pm **** is supposed to have forwarded to Doris
scabbersakapeterpettigrew: We've talked very little about it
torillgrnhaug: but
torillgrnhaug: NIc
torillgrnhaug: I am very confused
(...)
torillgrnhaug: would you promise me one thing Nick?
scabbersakapeterpettigrew: Sure
torillgrnhaug: would you wait with discussing this with Doris, until we have asked them directly, like ****, if they ever sent any such pms?
scabbersakapeterpettigrew: Sure
torillgrnhaug: because if this is what I am beginning to suspect, it is very ugly, and I do hope it is not...
torillgrnhaug: and I don't want to falsely accuse anyone of anything...
(...)
torillgrnhaug: because, what I fear, is that Doris may b lying
torillgrnhaug: I don't want that to be true, but it sounds like it
torillgrnhaug: when I compare what you are saying with what they have said to me, it just doesn't add up at all
(...)
torillgrnhaug: I don't belive it, but, as I said, I don't want to accuse anyone falsely, so I would like to ask if this actually did take place
scabbersakapeterpettigrew: Yes
torillgrnhaug: If they acknowledge this, I would have to accept it
(...) (...discussion, among other things, how the staff might feel intimidated if I asked them..)
torillgrnhaug: is it ok if I do investigate, and ask them directly, at least **** who appears to be not at all easy to intimidate to me?
scabbersakapeterpettigrew: Yes, that's fine
(...)
torillgrnhaug: the reason why I ask you not to disucss it before I have asked, is that I do not want to hurt Doris, if they have indeed done this, but not wanted to tell me...
torillgrnhaug: then she does not need to know how I doubted her

FROM A CHAT WITH **** unfortunately undated in my records (my system does not save YIM chats automatically). At this point I had decided to leave Leaky:
torillgrnhaug: The reason I contact you now, is not only that I wanted to tell you about my leaving before I made a farewell post about it - that is something I feel I owe you for all the fun we have had - but also because, since I have talked with Nick over all that has happened, I have a rather awkward question to put to you..
****: Let me have the question!
torillgrnhaug: You see, it seems there are some accusations made against Therese, that shocked me
****: Let's hear.
torillgrnhaug: I asked Nick if it was ok for him to approach the EP staff members about it and he said yes, so here goes:
torillgrnhaug: Apparently, no one in the EP staff liked her, except me
torillgrnhaug: she is supposed to have been difficult to work with, and have yelled at people "behind the scenes"
torillgrnhaug: in pms etc., while pretending to be nice in the public threads
****: None of this is true:
1: I liked her verrry much.
2: She was easy to work with.
3: She sometimes disagreed with me (which is more than o.k.!), but even under stress she alwas was frien dly!
torillgrnhaug: and there is rumours that some of those pms have been forwarded to Doris - Nick has not seen them. Your name was mentioned as one of those, but Nick was not sure if he remembered that correctly, if you were among those forwarding pms,,,,
****: She never was to me different person via PM than otbherwise.
torillgrnhaug: I didn't think so either
****: I never forwar6ded a PM by Therese to Nick or Doris as far as I can remember, and certainly not one with a complaint about Therese.
(...)
****: As for contacting Nick about this: I don't like to act behind people's backs. If I act concernin g this /and I'll probably do so): I'll do so in the therad on Therese's departure ... . You are free to send all this to him, but, as said: I m yself would tend to go a different way.
(...)
****: The EP is going down without you and Therese: whosever was not ab le to kee4p Therese on board created the problem.

I felt uncomfortable contacting people "in secret" too, and contacted Nick again:

FROM A CHAT WITH NICK, unfortunately undated as well..
(...) I presented Nick with the whole conversation with ****.
scabbersakapeterpettigrew: The next person to contact, then, would be ****, I think
torillgrnhaug: yes
torillgrnhaug: but Nick
torillgrnhaug: I do feel you should do it
torillgrnhaug: I feel awkward doing this, like I am a troublemaker
scabbersakapeterpettigrew: I'm not sure that I can, because I can't really contact these people without severely undermining Doris' position
torillgrnhaug: you saw how **** felt too, about going behind someones back
torillgrnhaug: and I feel as if I am doing it too
torillgrnhaug: Nick
torillgrnhaug: how could that be seriously undermining Doris' position
torillgrnhaug: If what she says is correct
scabbersakapeterpettigrew: Because it shows that I don't trust her
torillgrnhaug: they will not be afraid to tell you, as they have already told her
torillgrnhaug: that depends on how you word it
torillgrnhaug: if you say that you look into this as admin, because Therese deserves a proper investigation of th is
torillgrnhaug: and you need to know more about the accusations made
scabbersakapeterpettigrew: True
scabbersakapeterpettigrew: I will see if I can contact **** this week
torillgrnhaug: and I seriosly think this is needed!
scabbersakapeterpettigrew: But we'll all be busy trying to get the essays ready and the new forum ready
(...)
torillgrnhaug: I hope you do understand how this feels so uncomfortable for me
torillgrnhaug: I feel awkward asking them, as if I am trying to push them into saying negative things, and creating discord while leaving - it is a very awkward position to have
scabbersakapeterpettigrew: I know it does, I was worried about that, because it is basically going behind the admins' backs, even though I approve of it
torillgrnhaug: but I feel very strongly about investigating accuations against Therese that I feel are wrong
torillgrnhaug: yes, it is just that, and even if I say I do it after talking to you, it still feels wrong
torillgrnhaug: **** felt it too, as you can see, even though **** likes me
torillgrnhaug: and I felt I had to agree with ****...
scabbersakapeterpettigrew: I wish that Therese had stayed on longer so that we could have talked this out with her, because a part of why Melissa feels no need to investigate it is that Therese left before she could really discuss things with Melissa
torillgrnhaug: yes, I know
torillgrnhaug: but you know, Therese left because she saw that pm where you discussed her replacement, then she felt safe no more
(...)
scabbersakapeterpettigrew: What I said to Doris was that *if* what she said to me was true, *then* we might need to replace Therese
scabbersakapeterpettigrew: And I'm sure that makes sense to you
torillgrnhaug: yes, that makes a lot of sense.
torillgrnhaug: of course
scabbersakapeterpettigrew: And Doris just assumed that she was right in her accusations and took it to mean that we were right in replacing her
torillgrnhaug: if she really did yell at her staff "behind the lines"
torillgrnhaug: then you couldn't let that go on
torillgrnhaug: but
torillgrnhaug: I am now very wary of Doris, I have to admit
torillgrnhaug: if she is right, if Therese was nice to only me and ****, but nasty to the others, then I will owe her an apology
(...)
torillgrnhaug: if it all is true, it serves her right not to bully people
torillgrnhaug: but if it isn't?
torillgrnhaug: And I think you know that I do not believe that it is
torillgrnhaug: but am willing to bow to the inevitable if I hear from the other staff that it is indeed like that
scabbersakapeterpettigrew: I will contact ****, then, to see if I can find out from her what the story is, at least from her perspective.
(...)
torillgrnhaug: you know, if you worry about undermining Doris' position, you do not have to tell them you are investigating her claim to begin with - all you need to say is that you are investigating these accuasations
torillgrnhaug: as an admin, you need not tell them who told them to you
torillgrnhaug: then they will not have to assume you do not trust her
scabbersakapeterpettigrew: That is true
torillgrnhaug: I mean if you are worried that you may cause
torillgrnhaug: Doris uneccecary pain and hurt, if it is all true
scabbersakapeterpettigrew: Yes
scabbersakapeterpettigrew: I'll see what I can do to avoid pointing blame at Doris
torillgrnhaug: Yes, that may be important for all involved, if they are going to work together later
(..)

After this I waited for the launch of the Leaky Five, as Nick had told me he would not have the time till after that. As you know, that took a while. Then I contacted Nick again about this, and after a bit of discussion, we agreed I could contact **** if he didn't have the time.

FROM A CHAT WITH ****, undated
(..)
torillgrnhaug: listen, there is one thing I would like to ask you about the experience we shared in the EP room...
(..)
torillgrnhaug: But I just heard these rumours that worried me, so I thought I should ask
torillgrnhaug: I am sorry to bring this up again...
torillgrnhaug: but the rumours says that no one liked Therese except me..
****: are you kidding me?
torillgrnhaug: and that she was sort of two faced, yelling at you all behind the scenes, and writing angry and inappropriate pms to you...
****: that never happened to me
(..)
****: I never got the impression anyone was angry at me while Therese was in charge.. I thought she was great!
(..)

I contacted Nick after this, showed him this chat, and discussed what to do next. That discussion ended with an agreement that I should contact the remaining two members of the old EP staff as well. I did so by mail, and posed the question to them in much the same way as in the two chats above. This is quotes from their answers:

FROM THE ANSWER MAIL FROM **** ( received on the 14th of February:
(...)
"As for my part in it, I never found Therese to be difficult to work with--she was friendly and answered the questions I had and went out of her way to be patient and helpful. So I find it rather annoying that people are putting words in my mouth when I know I never said anything like that. But that's the nature of rumors, unfortunately. It's also the reason I save emails, as I have been down this path in the past."

FROM ****'S RESPONSE, received on the 15th of February:
(...)
"I never had any problems with Therese and never thought that EP was poorly administered. I should point out however that I've never really had much contact with Therese or any of the other admins for that matter. I am pretty much removed from the personal aspect of the group so I have no sense of who might have been rubbing whom the wrong way."

(....)

I have shown all this documetation to Nick before, and now I have shown it to all of you who are concerned with this. I think it is evident from this material that Therese has been subjected to false lies and accuastions that have been very hurtful to her, and have played an important part in making her feel compelled to leave a project she loved. Also, that the names of the members of the old EP staff have been abused to create these lies, this false image of Therese as a mean and abusive person. I will not speculate in what the motives for this may have been, nor will I dictate what should be done about this. But I sincerely hope that the evidence in this email will forever clear these lies away from Therese's name and reputation at TLC or anywhere else where these lies may have been spread, and if you should come across them, you will work very honestly to refute them, so that they will indeed become "dead and powerless".

Thank you for your time in reading this.

Yours sincerely
Torill Grønhaug

Suddenly, the Glove Hits

2007-05-26T19:30:00.000+02:00

How I Ended Up Here and All That Happened On the Road, Chapter Ten

Been a few days since my last instalment - if that one was difficult to write, this one is even worse..

On one of the very last days of December 2005 - 29th or 30th I guess - I came into the EP forums to work, and saw a thread Doris had started in there. She asked us what was left to be done with the project - completely ignoring what Therese had said only days earlier about that - and posted a short list herself. One of the items on that list was about making something that was completely unknown to me. It later proved to be about the fancy (and I do not mean that in any sarcastic kind of way) roll-down Scribbulus menu to be posted on the main site, but Doris called it something I had never heard of and did not understand - I am not all that computer or website construction savvy.

I can still remember my utter confusion and terrible sense of foreboding while reading that thread. Perhaps this is difficult to understand, and I told myself back then too that I was being silly. But my first thought was - what is this, where is Therese? What is happening?

Shortly after this, on the 30th of December, Therese sent an email to all the members of the Essay Project staff, where she announced her resignment from Leaky, meaning both the EP project and her modding job. She sent the message by pms to the rest of the staff as well.

I still have her mail. She said her reason for leaving was negative talk behind her back and breach of agreements ... I was dumbstruck.

At this point, Doris had already been made an admin. I do not remember the exact date when this happened - but I think it was some time in October or November that year. It was not as if the site could not use more people on the admin side, so nothing strange about that. Doris had always worked very hard with every assignment she was given, and was involved all over the place. As far as I can remember from back then, she was generally liked and thought of as a nice and friendly person. Lilly and I talked to each other about how happy we were having her among the admins. Bel had been given access to the admin control panel of the Lounge too, so now there were four people under Melissa who had some expanded responsibility concerning things in the Lounge compared to the rest of the staff: Nick, Sue, Bel and Doris. We had been in contact with all of them about the Essay Project in various ways, and none of them had done anything other than encouraging us or giving helpful suggestions and input. And I had never heard anyone badmouthing Therese in any way whatsoever.

Then Therese contacted me to explain and say goodbye more thoroughly. We had worked very close, met in person - I was a guest in her parent's home in the summer - and appreciated each other very much. That was why she wanted me to know a bit more about the background for her decision to leave. She forwarded me communications she had had with the admins concerning the Essay Project during the last week of December.

I have thought a lot about this, about how much I should post of the chats and mails I have kept still. They were never meant for me in the first place. I do not hold it against Therese that she showed them to me, though. She felt convinced already that the admins were talking about her behind her back and campaigning against her, and was therefore concerned that I as her friend should know what was going on. I can't blame her.

In order to make sense of this story, I will quote some of this material - but I will try and keep the quotes, especially of negative things, on an absolute minimum. As the story unfolds, I hope it will be clear why I thought it was necessary to publish things that was originally never meant for the public in the first place.

I have no qualms in quoting from the first chat I was shown, though, as nothing harmful or bad was said in that one at all. It is between Nick and Therese - scabbersakapeterpettigrew is one of Nick's YIM names, and paperflowergirl is Therese's. "The Review" Nick talks about here refers to the then working title of the Essay Journal: The Floo Review. You may think the now name "Scribbulus" is a much better title, and I am not going to argue with you on that one! This chat happened on the 23d of December 2005:

scabbersakapeterpettigrew: I also wanted to let you know that Doris' new role on for TLC is that she's the sitewide project coordinator, so she may ask you about setting deadlines for various things to get done with the Review
scabbersakapeterpettigrew: She's inviting us both to a chat now, in fact
paperflowergirl: oh, ok
scabbersakapeterpettigrew: So that she can take notes on where we are with the project
scabbersakapeterpettigrew: and give input, of course
paperflowergirl: yes, she is great
paperflowergirl: hehe, I was hoping to get her in the beginning, but now she's with us anyway!

As you can see, Therese had nothing whatsoever against the idea of Doris as a Project Coordinator, taking notes and asking for the setting of dates to be finished with various things. On the contrary, she was happy to have a chance to work with Doris to finish the Essay Project.

The chat between the three of them that followed, seems perfectly friendly and nice to me. They talk about a lot of technical things. Doris voices some very valid and reasonable concerns we on the EP staff had also been discussing, about training the editor staff to judge the essays after the same standards etc., and they discuss the need for more staff. Doris asks if the project can be ready to launch by the first couple of weeks of January. Therese thinks this is too early, with the need for hiring more staff etc. Doris says it's ok if not everything is finished, but they can try....

What starts something that looks like a disagreement, though, is when Doris is showing them some technical programme I have to admit I do not quite understand. In a later email to the admins (see below), Therese calls this iTeamwork. Apparemtly it is about listing assignments and finishing dates for all staff involved in all Leaky's projects, but people will only see the project they are part of. Therese says it looks really neat and helpful, and agrees that she does not need to see anything of what is going on with other projects. But as the appointed head of the Essay Project, she thinks she should be given access to the EP part of it. Doris says she cannot give her that. Melissa has decided that access is only for Senior Staff. But she will ask Melissa if Therese can be given the limited access she asks for anyway.

I will state again, in reading this chat, I did not quite understand what kind of programme they were talking about, and I may have misunderstood some things here. For the same reason, I cannot say whether it was reasonable or not for Therese to ask being given access to the programme.

Therese voices her concerns in a following chat with Nick, though. It seems she is beginning to feel a bit uncertain about what Doris' role actually means. How much say is Doris as a project coordinator for the whole site supposed to have over her, as compared with the agreement Therese originally had with Melissa? Therese goes to Melissa to get some clarifications.

I have read these clarification mails between Melissa and Therese on the 28th, 29th and 30th of December, that were also forwarded to Nick and Doris. They are all rather long. I will not cite them (see above about my qualms with citing originally private mails) but will try and describe the essence of them.

Therese cites her original agreement with Melissa, and asks for clarifications as to how things have changed now. Melissa underlines that things are now changing everywhere at Leaky, and Doris is brought in to pick up the organisational slack that is happening all over the place. She says she is not blaming Therese for any such slack, because that has been more the rule than the exception at Leaky, but it needs to be fixed now. If Doris sees that something is getting off track with the Essay Project, it will be her right - with Melissa's urging - to go in and see to it that it gets back on track. But Melissa still wants Therese to head the project. She will give Therese the limited access to the iTeamwork she wants, and as for hiring staff, Doris will read applications (they talk about running ads on Leaky main) and pick out those that fit Leaky's needs, then hand them over to Therese and the EP staff to do the final picking.

Therese comes back saying very clearly that she understands things are changing, is glad for the clarifications, they were what she wanted - and also states more than once that she has no problems working with Doris, whom she thinks is great. But she also says that she wishes she had been told about the changes more clearly right away, without having to ask. She also hopes that if things go off track, admin will talk to her about it before stepping in to overrule her.

She does protest organisational problems with the EP, though. Deadlines have been pushed, but that is because they were unrealistic the way the project has grown. Whenever she has gone to Nick with her concerns over this, he has been nothing but understanding and soothing, and let her believe there was no rush and no problem. How can there be organisational problems when a project of this size (we had plans about a real online journal at that time) is now almost ready to launch?

Melissa states that the pushing of deadlines is an organisational problem, no matter what - and that there is not a question of what to do when the EP has gone off track, because it has done that already. There is no point of having a fantstic castle in the air if it never goes online, and there seems to be no light in the tunnel with the EP project, and no idea of when it will be finished. But - if this is not right and the project is close to finish - then Therese can just bring a list of what is left to do, and they will work from there and all will be fine......

- The "atmosphere" in the last couple of mails is a bit tense, although no one is rude - but in reading this, it really seems to me as if there was a chance of reaching a reasonable, workable agreement at this point - and that some of Melissa's ideas of the desorganisation of the EP project were perhaps bulit on misunderstandings.

Then, seemingly out of the blue, Therese comes back with her resignment note, saying that upon reading Melissa's last mail, and the pm from Doris, she understands that she has been subjected to power plays and negative talk behind her back, and will therefore no longer work for Leaky.

In the context of the mails described above only, this reaction seems strange and unreasonable. But the pm in question is this one:

[QUOTE=DorisTLC,Dec. 28 2005,7:44 pm]I am forwarding to you conversations Nick and I have had regarding your role in this forum. This should better help you to understand where I am coming from as an administrator of this forum, and as a Senior Staff member of TLC.

Melissa also recieved a copy of this.

Doris

[QUOTE=NickTLC,Dec. 27 2005,8:56 pm]Doris,

I have thought about Therese and the issues that we have dealt with regarding her, and I am convinced that we need to think about either replacing her or otherwise just doing *something* about what's going on, and honestly, you're just the better person to solve this.

We need to have more admin involvement in the Floo Review, to be sure, either way, so I'd like to hear what you have to say about involving the two of us better in the project and having more administrative oversight of decisions being made.

--Nick[/QUOTE][/QUOTE]

The Essay Project Experience - the Therese appreciation chapter

2007-05-23T20:39:00.000+02:00

How I Ended Up Here and All That Happened On the Road, Chapter Nine

I am very glad to hear that some of you are reading this with interest, although for the most part I do it for my own good. When I read what I have written, I get a new perspective. I do not only relive what I experienced back then, I also see how it is connected to a wider context in my life. How everything that happened and my ways of handling what happened informs how I think and feel and act today - in a much more real sense than I thought before I started writing this.

But this is personal, so I won't bother you with it. The second reason why I put this story out here, is because I want it to be known - especially the part of it that I am going to tell now. I now know that others have had similar experiences. And just as I felt validated when I read their stories in the comments on Ian's blog, I hope someone may feel validated by reading what I am about to write here.

The third reason why I write this, is because I do not want to have false stories of my departure from Leaky - and even less, false stories about Therese - paperflowergirl - floating around out there on the net. Lies were told about Therese, and I don't know how many who heard them. I want to tell the truth as I know it, I want to defend her name.

This part is difficult to write. I have opened the draft with the intention of finishing it, stared at it, then closed it - for I don't know how many times now.

I loved to be part of the Essay Project on Leaky, what was later to become Scribbulus. It was when I joined this project that I felt healed from the reading groups experience. I felt enthusiastic about Leaky again, about being part of creating something great for the site and for the Harry Potter fandom.

This time, everything seemed in order. The project had an appointed leader: paperflowergirl, whom I came to know as Therese. She is a bright, lovely yong Norwegian woman in her early twenties, then studying in the US, full of enthusiasm and ideas. She had posted in the Room of Requirement (see how great it is to have a forum like that, where members can come up with ideas for fabulous new projects for your site?) on how interested she was in essays about everything HP, which she thought was something lacking in the fandom. Not just sleuthing or theorising essays (is Snape good or bad, what is the meaning of the prophecy) - essays written from within the canon as we came to call it, where the perspective of the writer is as if the story and the potterverse is real. She also wanted essays to be written by fans taking the perspective from without canon, from any sort of muggle perspective, focusing not on the plot, but on the meaning of the text. She had ideas of a "writer's workshop", where people could get help and criticism and ideas and links and whatnot, to develop their budding writing abilities. In short, she wanted something different from and more than the Mugglenet editorials. Not that there is anything the matter with the Mugglenet editorials, but they need not be the only way to write more extensively about HP than you can do in your ordinary forum post.

Again, this is not the place where I am going to tell all the details of all the plans for the Essay Project. They, too, became quite elaborate. And wonderful, I have to say. And they mostly came from Therese, she was a virtual fountain of ideas. She really really inspired me, and the 6 months or so I worked with her, from August till December 2005, was one of the happiest times I ever spent in the HP fandom. (Only surpassed by January 2005 - when I was part of planning the Leaky Lounge before it opened.)

Therese outlined her ideas on a thread in the RR. Many others posted about it as well. I have tried to find that thread on Leaky, but it seems to have been deleeted - I seem to remember something vague about old threads not posted in for a month or something being dumped behind the veil....

Reading through her old posts that came up in my searches was still good, though. I celebrated again how much I appreciate her thinking - how she always stressed meaning, not plot - how great and friendly she was when she moved in there with her "modding hat" on as she called it (and signing her modding messages with all the different "hatted" smileys we had). The way she moved threads from her forum to another one for instance, with a recommendation: this is a great discussion, happy posting! Way to go for a mod, no traffic police manner, no annoyance with posters not quite aware of our "order".

I am sure you can tell how I miss her.

So, yes - this time it was going to be the good one...that was what I thought. Nick had brought her on the staff to help develop an Essay Project for Leaky. At least, that was how she understood it. This happened in June 2005 I think - perhaps May - it was late spring, anyway, before book 6. She was told that we had to finish all the reading group work first before starting on another new project (wise!) In the mean time, she was made a moderator for the the more "brainy" Obscurus books forum, a position I think she kept till she left the site. Nick created a special forum in the mod quarters for the Essay Project - EP - and she immediately created threads in there with all her ideas.

At first no one answered her. Then in August I started posting there extensively. A couple of other staffers dropped in now and then, too. Therese approached Melissa and asked for clarifications - who was leading the EP? Melssa answered in an email (I have read it) that as far as the planning went, this was Therese's baby. Nick had to oversee it to be sure it did not go against any Leaky principles, and admins of course had a say in hiring staff as well, but basically, the planning was hers.

That made it easy. I got involved as EP staff, so did Heinrich Kuhn/ hck, Theowyn, Eeyore and Kristin/memyselfnI.

Therese was wonderful as a project leader. She posted extensive outlines of what an essay journal for Leaky ought to look like, according to her original ideas. They functioned as great starting points for discussion - because she was never the least bit defensive of her ideas. We often disagreed, but always reached a third version that was even better than the two first ones, hers or mine. Way to lead a creative project.

She was also very good at keeping track of how far we had come and what was still left to do. Nick popped in from time to time and contributed a lot to the technical discussions on how to do it - that was when I always dropped out. Other staffers also posted occationally, Doris Herrmann included, both before and after she was made an admin. Even Melissa looked in a few times. All the planning and all the discussions were done openly in the EP forum, and we never heard anything from anyone but that everything looked great and was coming along fine. We really thought we were doing a great work for the site that everybody wanted, and would make everybody proud. A work to make Leaky the best source for essays on HP online - a place to be seen as having the "gold standard" for Harry Potter essays.

The only real problem was demands from our other lives. Therese was writing her thesis, and I went through some nasty depressive periods. We thought we could finish by October but did not meet that deadline. On the other hand, we had never been given any specific deadline by the admins. Toward the end of December 2005, we were approaching the finishing line though - it was possible to see that we were nearly there. A time of great exitement, soon, it was really going to happen.

But then again - something totally unexpected happened.

Reflections on Absence and Micromanagement

2007-05-20T16:08:00.000+02:00

None of what I have written so far about the reading groups project shoud be taken to mean that I was the most important factor in making it happen. A lot of different people contributed on a lot of different levels to realise that project. But since I am telling this from my point of view, I may appear as the most prominent person in the reading groups story. That is the trick of personal narration, don't let it fool you.

Nor do I wish to imply that I was the only one who could or should have been the leader of this project. Far from it. For some reason, I was the one among the staff who seemed to be most anxious about a failure, about how bad Leaky might appear if nothing came out of the reading groups project - after all the hype we had made of it in the RR and the test group forums. That was basically the motive behind all my nagging and all my more or less desperate measures to get someone to listen and something to happen. Looking back, I don't think I always chose the best strategies....

I have wondered if I came across as annoying and a bit threatening to the admins - a nagger and a basic pain in the neck kind of person. If you want influence in an organisation, any organisation, that is definitely not the way you want to appear. Maybe that was why they were so reluctant to give me even the shadow of a "position", why even the title of "clerk" seemed too much to bestow upon someone like me.... It is in no way unlikely that someone else could have handled this whole thing way better than I did.

The main point remains though: any project of this size needs some organisation, some co-ordination and leadership. There are many workable ways to do that of course... But someone with authority at least needs to approve, set reasonable deadlines and give feedback on the work done in time to correct it before the deadlines are hopelessly passed. When I am saying there should be no micromanagement, that should not be read as if I say there should be no management. I don't mean that at all. There is nothing wrong with management and leadership per se.

Neither is there anything wrong per se with admins being absent, as in engaged in other, new and exiting projects. As long as they ensure that the staff in the projects they leave behind have the guidelines and mandates they need to be able to function on their own, everything is fine.

What is damaging is absence combined with unwillingness to delegate, unwillingness to appoint deputies, reluctance to trust staff to make wise decisions on their own level, regarding the tasks they have been assigned.

When an organisation grows, like Leaky has done, and branches out in many different subsites and subprojects, it will not be humanly possible for one manager to oversee every detail of every project anymore. You have to delegate. You have to trust that the people you delegate some authority to, will follow the main principles you have set, and basically be loyal to the site and to you as the owner of it. If you can't do that, then don't branch out.

The Reading Groups Experience: Finishing Line

2007-05-20T12:57:00.000+02:00

How I Ended Up Here and All That Happened On the Road, Chapter Eight

Less than a week to go before we needed to be ready ...

Finally, Melissa looked into the reading group project - and posted in the modsuite about it, basically slamming our draft.

Ok, the draft was long, contained very detailed descriptions of all the different groups, and equally detailed instructions on how to do the sorting process. It was supposed to be a final draft after all, ready to use as a blueprint for the actual set up of the groups. If you had not been part of or monitored all the discussions leading up to it, first in the Room of Requirement thread, then in the test group forum, then in the drafting group - I am sure it appeared totally overwhelming and impossible.

It was clear to us who had been part of the process that a lot of Melissa's criticism was based on misunderstandings - she thought it was more complicated than it actually was, and some of the things she criticised was not there. I therefore posted a long explanation in way of an answer, pointing out the misunderstanding and trying to clarify how it was all meant to work. Yes, long, really long, I felt that was necessary. Remember, less than a week to go - at this late hour, to have to start drawing up a new plan, even to start tinkering too much on the one we had - this seemed impossible.

Melissa posted an answer, saying that she couldn't possibly be expected to have the time to read a long post like that, with all she had to do now that she was soon leaving for Britain.

This is where I gave up. I am not proud of it, it was not very honourable to abandon ship at that critical hour - but I gave up. I felt totally shattered, put down and disrespected, not to say disregarded - so I did abandon it all, and did no more to make the reading group project happen.

It did happen though. Bel talked to Melissa on YIM and got through to her, so the project got the go! signal, finally, with some minor alterations. Some things also had to be altered for technical reasons. Several members of staff were engaged in setting it up, working hard, and Bel was driving it all to the finishing line. So it did happen, and people enjoyed it very much, from all that I have heard. The Barnes and Noble groups happened too, with some of our best staffers as leaders in some of the groups, and people enjoyed them as well.

All well in the world, right? I did contemplate leaving the site, but changed my mind. I was involved as a moderator for one of the groups, working with Chelikins, before she was made a moderator too. Picking up, moving on, continuing my ordinary moderator job in the ordinary forums, enduring the ordinary low level chaos. And then another exiting project appeared on the horizon: the Essay Project, what was later to become Scribbulus

The Reading Groups Experience: Priorities

2007-05-20T12:19:00.000+02:00

How I Ended Up Here and All That Happened On the Road, Chapter Seven

On the 28th of June, Melissa sent me an email where she told me she had gathered a group of moderators and Potter Parties staff to take part in a special thing with Barnes & Nobles (the American book chain): help running the reading groups for HBP the book store was going to feature on their net site. The book chain needed insights in what kinds of threads to put up in a reading group like that, and people to be around guiding the conversations after the book was out. They wanted people with moderating experience.

Melissa asked me if I would be interested in being one of these leaders for the Barnes & Nobles reading groups.

This was my answer, sent to Melissa on the 30th of June 2005 (I needed a couple of days to think, see below)

Hi Melissa!

We are setting up reading groups together with Barnes and Nobles? It is an honour to us that they want us I am sure - but - what about our own reading group project? You know, I have been among the ones very eager to get that up, and we in the planning committee delivered a draft with suggestions on how to do it over a week ago - I have been very anxious to hear your opinion on thisk, if you are pleased with it, want us to do it or not, or maybe with some adjustments to what we have suggested. I understood from Nick he did not want me to take any special responsibility for this after the committee work was over, so I have not either, but I have been waiting to hear more about it....this is a true forum project, planned together with the members of the lounge, and I know many of them are very exited about it! We need people to lead some of those groups as well, if we set them up, and I thought, if I was to lead any group, it would be one of ours....But we are doing groups for Barnes and Nobles instead? Has our own project been abandoned? Or am I being totally clueless now...

Anyway, as you know, I leave for London on Tuesday 12th, and will not be home with any regular access to any computers until Monday the 18th, so I guess that automatically rules out me leading any group starting on the 11th. But thank you for thinking about me as someone you would trust with this, that is an honour, really.

Melissa came back to me saying that no, our own reading groups were not abandoned, this was just extra. She had to get this one sorted first though, as they were on "corporate deadlines", but she would look into our project ASAP. She just had so much to do (which I am very sure she had, this being shortly before her going to Edinburgh to interview JK Rowling herself the very morning after the big launch of HBP.) She understood that I had no time for the first set of groups, but what about leading a group starting in August?

My reaction to this Barnes&Noble invitation was very mixed, to put it mildly.

* On the one hand, I was furious to tears. I was so frustrated for not getting any reaction to our draft, for being forced to sit and watch and do nothing while knowing the time was running out - I knew Melissa was leaving first for London then Edinburgh around the 10th of July. We now only had little more than a week to go if we wanted to have our reading groups up and running by the launch of Half Blood Prince on the I6th of July - provided that Melissa had to review and approve everything first. Which is what she had to do. No one could move until Melissa said go.

I really felt like being at the brink of despair. To learn at this stage how one of the reasons why Melissa had not looked into our reading groups draft to approve or discard it, was because she was busy organising reading groups for another organisation - well, it really felt like being hit over the head with a blunt instrument. Corporate deadlines or not, the huge deadline we had was the launch date, and there was no negotiating that one. In my frustrated fury, I even harboured angry thoughts about combing our best moderators and staff to hand them over to the competition, leaving our groups to be second best...

Besides - why had I never heard about this, that a group of both moderators and Potter Parties staff - my collegues - had been gathered to do work for B&N post-launch? Who among the staff would be available to do what and how much post HBP launch, was a huge issue in those days of late June/early July 2005 . We knew we would have another tidewave of traffic and new members to handle after the sixth book was out. But by the time I received these emails, the B&N assignments were not posted about or discussed anywhere.

* On the other hand, I felt I was overreacting, being overly emotional. It wasn't as if I couldn't understand how exiting it was for Melissa to be contacted by the big book chain, to have staff from the Leaky Cauldron featured as experts on their site. Their reading groups were well established. Now, through them, Leaky would get a huge promotion. If I were Melissa, wouldn't I have been exited too?

And - was it perhaps silly of me to think of it as competition? We already had a huge traffic on the site and in the forums, the fact that some readers out there would go to B&N to join their reading groups would hardly result in us getting no participation in our own groups. The Potter public is HUGE. As for the combing of staff - enough accomplished people were left to run things, for sure - besides, we had discussed picking coordinators for the reading groups from nice posters on the Lounge that we thought would be good candidates.

In short, it wasn't as if both projects couldn't be possible. I decided I was overreacting with the tears and fury.

I clearly felt, though, that it was not an overreaction to think our own project should have been given first priority, over organising groups for any other organisation. No matter how well it would reflect on the site to be promoted elsewhere. If Melissa had no time to look into that, she should have delegated the authority to say "go" to someone else.

Finally, I had sorted out my reactions enough to write back to Melissa saying this on the 4th of July:

Poor Melissa, I didn't want to add to your worries - I know you have
so much on your plate now! I am glad to hear this is not instead of
our group project - I see I was just being silly there for a moment..

I definitely understand that bit about boosting our credibility, and I
am very proud of us - you know I love Leaky and our forum to bits, and
want it to be the best in the world - but just because of that, I kind
of feel that we will get so much to do post 7/16 and the following
month, that I feel my resources are best used on our own forum! Kind
of an "all hands on deck situation". I don't think I will have enough
online time to cover both a B&N group and our own lounge. And then I
want to give the lounge first priority.

See you in London?

The Reading Groups Experience: Micromanagement

2007-05-19T13:51:00.000+02:00

How I Ended Up Here and All That Happened On the Road, Chapter Six

I said four or five chapters more down there somewhere - but I am not finished yet. That's what happens when you want to tell it all, and is (in)famous for essay length posts.....

Back to the narration of the reading groups experience, right at where we left off in chapter four:

I had some idealistic ideas back then. I wanted us to be one team, working together for a common goal, so I wanted all communication to happen openly in the modforum. I didn't like the idea of a lot of talks and discussions and decisions happening in private conversations, in pms, on YIM, on Skype (I don't remember if we had started using that already at this point - but you get my point) with the risk of having some included in the politics of the site, while others were left in the dark. So I kept posting in the modsuite about all my concerns, both about the low level chaos in general, described below, and the increasingly critical reading groups issue.

Nothing much came out of this nagging practice. After I posted a major list of all my complaints, I was yelled at by an admin in some pms for not having approached them in private conversations first. I was told Melissa said this post was like the cork flying out of the bottle, and they never knew I was that unhappy. But I had been voicing my concerns in several threads for a long time before I wrote that major complaint post - only no one had answered me, and maybe not even read me........

So I was naive. There is a lot of lobbying going on in most organisations, that's why somebody may suddenly appear, seemingly over night, with new positions and newly assigned power, to the possible frustrations of ordinary members. Somebody has been talking in private, disregarding the open forums where it is said to happen, but often doesn't. This practice was beginning to emerge at Leaky at this point, if it hadn't happened before without my knowledge.

I do admit that I, too, had started to vent my frustrations in private. My closest, must trusted friends had to constantly sit at the wrong end of long rants of complaints. I got different advice, one was to not bother about any delegation of authority. Just go in there and start organise the reading groups project - if the result is useful, admins will buy it and never bother how it got started!

But I didn't feel comfortable doing that - I was very aware of being only a common moderator, not part of the admin team. I was not brought on board to start messing with their projects on my own, no matter how desperately I thought they were in the need of some messing.

Besides - if I had started to engage several people in substantial planning, only to have everything discarded by the admins later because it was not what they had wanted - I would have done more harm than good. Increased confusion and frustration could have been the result, even hurt feelings. I was adamant that if I was going to do anything, it was going to be with proper admin backing.

This is when I started pestering Nick in private conversations about my concerns. I pinged him every time I saw him online on YIM. I thought of him as a good and easily approachable friend, who never got the least bit defensive no matter how much I complained. Finally, we agreed that the test group experiment could be declared as over, the test group dissolved and its members thanked, and the secret test forum shut. A group of interested moderators could be assigned the task of combing the test forum and the RR thread for ideas and inputs, then put together a workable draft for the organisation of our HBP reading groups.

Two of the test group members had been brought aboard as moderators already: Doris/Darcey and Erin/Lady Stratford. It was natural to ask them to participate in this planning group. Then it was Aleoninc, Bel, Lilly and me. Bringing this group together with members from three continents and goodness knows how many timezones to cross was a major feat - but we were finally going to get the work done.

It was crystal clear to me that with the limited time we had left to the launch date of the sixth book: 16th of July 2005 - this group needed a leader. We could not afford a repetition of the self-organising test group, as we were already by the end of May, beginning of June (I don't remember the exact time any more, but it was late, believe me). This was a project with a very limited time, and the authority of a project group leader would not mean very much more than ensuring that the work was done in time for the techies to set up the actual group forums and sorting devices before July 16. After that date, this project woud be definitely over, and the leader returned to the status of a mere mod.

But the admins did not want any leader to be appointed among the mods. Not for any reason or any stretch of time, not even for the mere 4-6 weeks in question here. I am not entirely sure where this came from. But I had the distinct impression this was from the admin team as such, it was not only Nick. Which is not to say that he disagreed in any way, though.

I could not be the leader. I suggested calling the position a co-ordinator, arguing that this would be needed if we were to get anywhere in time for launch. But I could not be that. Neither could I be secretary. Finally, it was decided I could be the group clerk.

Fine. Armed with the title of a group clerk, I went in there and organised the drafting group. Organised the work that is, not deciding anything over the others as to what the draft should look like. We were able to reach concensus on that, and incorporate everybody's wishes, and we were very clear that this should be presented to the rest of the staff for the final approval.

We got the work done. It was a great group. People contributed to various degrees, that is how it always is in any group project. Bel worked her ass off. I spent some weekend nights without sleep to put the final draft together. People gave valuable inputs on the draft suggestions that were presented. By the middle of June, we had an exiting workable draft ready and presented it to the rest of the staff. I asked Nick how he wanted me to contribute to get it all ready by 16/7.

The answer was: not at all. The drafting group should dissolve, this project should now belong to all. I was told that this concerned me in particular, I should have no special role in driving the project to the finish line, it was important that I stepped down from my limited position immediately. As for the draft, the rest of the staff could give input, but Melissa had to approve.

Then

nothing happened. Nothing. The staff was asked to participate in the newly opened Chamber of Chat, and apart from a huge appreciation post from Sue in the modsuite, congratulating us on the great work we had done, no one discussed the launching of the reading groups. Melissa did not say anything - this was when she was busy preparing her great interview with Jo - and I spent the final weeks of June resisting the temptation to eat my wallpaper out of sheer frustration.

Then something totally unexpected happened on the 28th of June.

The Importance of What Happens On the Net

2007-05-19T11:47:00.000+02:00

How I Ended Up Here and All That Happened On the Road, Chapter Five

I said my next instalment would feature my reading groups experience with Micromanagement thrown into the equation. But I want to first take one step back, and share some of my reflections on why I let some conflicts and frustrations regarding a mere fan site on the net affect me so much....

I suppose I could have just walked away from the whole reading groups embarrassment. I had not been assigned any particular responsibility for that project; and if it had all come to nothing, with some frustrated test group members and disappointed RR posters as the only result, it would neither have been my fault nor the end of the world. This is a fansite we are talking about after all, nothing more, nothing less.

But the whole concept of "Leaky" was very important to me back then. Like I said earlier, it was my first home on the net and a place where I had formed some of my most important friendships. I identified with Leaky's successes and failures, I felt they reflected on me too, somehow. To a certain extent, I identified with Leaky, its forum The Leaky Lounge in particular, the one I had been a small part of creating.

I am not sure whether this makes me a sad case or not. I do not regard the net and what happens there as "virtual" as in different from "Real Life". What happens on the net matters in the same way anything that happens anywhere else matters: because it happens to real people.

The friendships made are real, so are the organisations, groups, conflicts and events created. Strip away all the technical gizmos and jargons, what you are looking at is human communication in its most basic form: carried solely by the miracle of language. Real comnunities are formed, complete with all the processes of rivalry, hierarchy, clique formations, fractions, battles for attention and recognition, power games - but also attachments, identifications, celebrations, support, care, friendships....

I saw this clearly in my work as a moderator too. People got hurt for real when they were flamed or ridiculed in the threads. I have been told how people have walked around for days with a lump in their throat and an experienced difficulty in breathing - because they have felt attacked and disrespected in forum discussions. It is real.

Be warned - just because it may seem easier to lie and get away with faking a personality on the net than it maybe is when you meet someone in the flesh, just because you may feel it is easier to shunt someone aside or say rude things to them when you cannot see the reactions on their faces, does not mean that the wounds you may inflict are virtual. They are very real, and they may carry over to the life people lead where their physical body is situated. If experiences on the net tells you that you are worthless, replaceable, uninteresting - or even downright stupid and bad - you may start to suspect this to be the case in other arenas as well.

Take it from someone who has lived it.

The Reading Groups Experience: Absence

2007-05-18T21:37:00.001+02:00

How I Ended Up Here and All That Happened On the Road, Chapter Four.

Right from the start the Lounge had a forum called the Room of Requirement, where members could post their ideas of improvements and additions to the site. That forum still exists I believe. It was a fun place to visit, with active members coming up with all kinds of exiting and/or mad or silly ideas. Nick was very fond of interacting with the fans in there.

A huge project for the Leaky Lounge emerged from one of the ideas swirling about in that forum in the early days of 2005: sign-up reading groups for the upcoming Half-Blood Prince. The thread discussing this idea in the Room of Requirement (RR) quickly grew very large, with some very enthusiastic members posting all sorts of exiting and creative suggestions on how to organise such reading groups.

The admins bought this idea from the members. A great idea. Nick posted about it in our modforums, asking for inputs and ideas from the staff, who would be involved in monitoring and perhaps running the groups. People in the RR wanted groups where you could be sorted according to different interests or wishes. Groups where all the members would be asked to have finished the book before they joined the group to discuss it, groups with a strict schedule of chapter by chapter readings with no spoilers from future chapters allowed, groups for slow or fast readers, groups where the ardent shippers were separated from the more serious theorisers etc. etc. We would need some well thought out sorting procedures to manage all of these ideas.

I won't go into all the details of the actual organising of the reading groups here. But the sorting ideas and the ideas on how to organise the groups were allowed to become quite elaborated. And the publishing date was looming ever larger on the horizon.....

The reading groups did happen. Not with the wildest of the ideas realised, but with enough cool features left to make them quite interesting in my opinion. I think they were much enjoyed by the participants.

Yet, the problems involved in the organising of these groups amounted to a huge energy drain for me, to a point shortly before the launch of book six when I almost left the site altogether from pure exasperation and frustration. And yes, some hurt feelings as well...

A lot was happening with the ever-expanding Leaky Cauldron site that spring. As far as planning the reading groups was concerned, the admins didn't seem to be too involved. At least it didn't look like that from a mod's point of view. Nick was communicating with the members in the RR about it, but not much with the staff in our back rooms. Although we would in all probablility be the ones required to run and monitor the groups once they were set up.

That alone might not have frustrated me so much. I could have just called it not my problem, gone about my modding business and waited to see what would happen. But then some of the more active members in the reading groups thread in the RR were invited into a secret forum invisble from our regular members (but not from the staff.) They were supposed to be our secret test group for the project. Doris Herrmann, then calling herself Darcy, was among the ones invited in there.

I suppose that invitation made them kind of proud, made them feel important. I know I would have if I had been invited to a secret forum like that, and told not to talk about it to anyone on the regular forum. They were told that they were supposed to help us out with the testing of all the ideas we had concerning the reading groups. This could have been great, if we really had used them to test all the ideas we had concerning the reading groups!

But we didn't. Nothing happened. The members of the secret test group were not told anything at all about what they were supposed to do in their secret forum, except that they were supposed to read the Chamber of Secrets for the test run. The admins were all engaged elsewhere, and none of the other members of staff had been delegated any responsibility for the test group.

And so passed several weeks. I did post a few posts in the secret testgroup forum, because Nick had said that was ok for the interested mods. Then some of the testgroup members sent me pms, asking me what they should do. But I didn't know what to answer them - I wasn't given any authority to decide anything. This made me feel increasingly embarassed on behalf of the site.

In many ways, watching the activity in that test group forum was like watching an experiment in social psychology. What happens when a group of people are thrown into a virtual room together and told that they are part of an experiment, but not given any specific instructions? Not told how long the experiment will last, or what the rules are, or what will happen to them when it is over - as in: will we still be part of a secret group, will we be the reading group leaders (as some of them thought but had never been told and didn't end up being either) - or will we be reduced to ordinary members again after this is over?

It all developed in a text book fashion. Informal leaders emerged who tried to organise, then others got angry with them because "who died and made you queen?" I think it got pretty nasty in there for a while. Which is not to be read as if I blame anyone for anything - like I said, text book case. If anyone is to blame, it is us for not giving them the structure and support they needed.

But then they did arrive at some consensus, after several weeks. I think I posted something in way of: we are interested in seeing just how much leadership is needed in a group like this, so try and see if you can organise yourselves while still being nice to each other - or something.... I do not have access to any of this anymore, I am not sure if it was not all deleted eventually, and I didn't save anything of it. Anyway, the test reading group members came through admirably. They were able to vote properly for leaders of some sort, who were then respected in return. Then they formed two different reading groups, one discussing the book strictly chapter by chapter, the other one consisting of thematic threads each covering the whole book. They dug up all kinds of interesting references to the remotest aspects of the book, had some really great discussions going, and judging from what some of them said about it later, they experienced a truly great journy going from chaos to admirable, selfconstructed order.

None of this helped us one bit though, as the experiences from the test group was not utilized to decide on how the actual reading groups should be organised. The launch date for book six loomed ever nearer, and this was one increasingly frustrated mod who jumped up and down in the mod forums, flapping her hands and shouting in endless repetitious Torill Length Posts to try and draw attention to herself and the reading groups issue. Not very effective. Not necessarily the smartest approach I am afraid, not at all according to text books in organisational psychology I am sure. Meanwhile, Absence still ruled, and nothing was done.

My next instalment will continue the narration of the Reading Group Experience from the perspective of one frustrated mod, adding Micromanagement to the equation.

A brief intermission

2007-05-16T23:40:00.000+02:00

A busy couple of days, so the next chapters of all that happened on the road and how I ended up here will have to wait a little bit. Not for very long.

Tomorrow is our (Norway's) National Day, then I will visit my old mother with flags and birch twigs with the newly sprung leaves true to tradition - and flowers in red, white and blue .... and then we will watch the children's parade and go to my sister's to have the traditional dinner - so

watch for the next instalment here tomorrow night or Friday night. My time. GMT+1, that is. I really want to tell this story, and there is more to come. Four or five chapters yet I think. Check back in if you want to read the rest.

Happy birthday darling Lilly!

2007-05-14T20:28:00.001+02:00

Time to break the flow of the narrative of all that happened on the road and how I ended up here - because down in Australia it is now the 15th of May, and that is Lilly's birthday!!!!

Bring out the cake! Bring out the flowers and the birthday fairies and the wine and the music! Let the feast begin!!!!!

The Roots of Low Level Chaos

2007-05-13T13:37:00.000+02:00

How I Ended Up Here and What Happened On the Road, Chapter Three

Let's make one thing clear: the lack of proper organisation described in my letter below is not the sign of Evil. At all. We are talking about a fansite run by amateurs here. As you maybe know, amateur shares root with amour - the amateur works out of sheer love for what they do, not for fame or fortune, and not as a result of professional training....

I don't think anyone foresaw the size of the tiedewave of posts that nearly drowned us the moment we opened the Leaky Lounge forum. Five moderators alone could not possibley stem that tide. Several others were brought on board in quick succession, Doris Herrmann among them. Using Darcy as her screen name back then.

The number of memberships and the posts grew and grew. We quickly passed the stage where a cozy, democratic, flat-structured grop would have been able to get the work done.

A certain amount of initial chaos is probably more the rule than the exception when amateurs start huge projects. It has even been known to be the case when professionals start huge projects too. You cannot always foresee every problem and the structure necessary to deal with it.

The question is not why such a semi-chaos (it is not as if no plan or structure or guideline existed at all, it did) became apparent soon after launch. That was perhaps inevitable, at least very understandable. The quesion is why it lasted so long.

I believe there were two main reasons for this: Absence and Micromanagement. I mentioned both of them in my farewell letter, but I didn't name them.

Absence: The admins responsible for the forum were all involved in other huge projects. The Leaky News page, the Cauldron shop, the Potter Parties, the Floo Network, the Chamber of Chat, the Pottercasts...... Melissa was soon absorbed in all of this and more, and stopped visiting the Mod Suite on a regular basis. Sue and Nick were left in charge, but it was impossible for them to be more than one place at once, so they were often away too. The sheer mass of modreports and questions quickly became overwhelming, even for us who were the people posting them.

Micromanagement: In spite of this there was a clear unwillingness to share power, delegate, give even limited and supervised authority to anyone outside the admin group of three. There were cases when even Nick or Sue could not decide, but had to wait for Melissa's approval, and she was maybe not there.

The result was that the low level chaos continued.

My next instalment will feature the description of a project I was involved in where Absence and Micromanagement combined made themselves acutely felt: The creation of the reading groups for HBP in the spring of 2005.

The moderator experience, spring 2005

2007-05-13T09:28:00.000+02:00

How I Ended Up Here and What Happened On the Road, Chapter Two.

I will do like the writers of old 18th and 19th century novels, and tell the story partly in letters.

In December 2004, I was asked to join the staff and take part in the very secret planning and drafting of what was to become a new internet home for Potterfans: The Leaky Lounge. So was Clare, Lord Fishcake, Lilly and Puffin. We were the first group of Leaky Lounge moderators. Now all of us have left.

Suggestions of a Leaky forum had been made before. I know Martje once did for instance, and Lilly among others had campaigned for it in the comment threads. But they had always been turned down. Then our favorite rat, old Scabbers aka Nick Rhein, went to Melissa and showed her his plans for a forum, and she bought them.

I was very happy. Very exited. Honoured beyond description. And I am not being sarcastic, I am not joking. I was walking on air.

I was part of discussing the draft for Terms of Use Melissa presented, with its wonderful Be Nice! rule to rule them all. I wrote a lot of the FAC togehter with the others. I posted my thoughts on the banner and the colours of the skin. I was so proud of the avatar I made for myself, after much amateurish tinkering and problems in getting it posted on the site. Everyone was very helpful. Melissa thought my joke member title Insufferable Know-it-all endearing. So I kept it, and went out there, ready to roll.

A year later, I wrote my farewell letter. This is the first part of it:

First however, I want to thank you for all the wonderful times I have had because of Leaky. It started as you know in the old Leaky comment threads. They used to be a very important part of my life, an outlet, a refuge, an asylum and an endless invigorating source of energy. I couldn't believe it when I was invited to be part of the team of the new forum a year ago, and the first weeks of January 2005 were among the happiest times of my life, when we were all planning the new forum together, and being so full of dreams of how great it would be... This will always be true, and no matter what, I will forever be grateful to Leaky for giving me this, it was more important to me than you will ever know! Thank you Melissa, for enabling this, and to Nick and Sue too, who were part of that first period, both the comment threads and the first days of the forum. You will all have a special place in my heart forever because of this, and the term "The Leaky
Cauldron" will always mean something truly special for me!

By the beginning of the summer last year, however, I was kind of tired, desillusioned and disappointed, and at the brink of leaving. That is not to say I didn't still have wonderful moments at the lounge, but there were also issues that constituted real energy drains for me. I don't think there is any point in going through all of that all over again now, however - Nick has patiently listened to my complaints and rants more than once earlier (thank you Nick, for being so approachable, supportive, fair and among the least defensive and power-hungry people I have ever met!!), and Sue and I had some intense debate over it too (don't worry Sue, you know we have settled our differences, and made up entirely by now!) - but since some of it is still unresolved and part of my reason for leaving, let me try and sum it up like this:

I think the main problem is to do with organisation and structure, not jealous or difficult people. There is a lot of dedicated and good people working for the Lounge. But Leaky as a site has been growing fast, with constant new projects involving all of the admins, and no one seems to have been dedicated to the forum alone, with the sole task of leading the mods, and helping them out with the daily dilemmas you meet as a moderator. It is only so much that can be solved by writing down guidelines - nothing wrong with that in and of itself, but you can't cover every dilemma beforehand in print, and, what is more, written guidelines and rules will always be open to different interpretations. What you need is an ongoing discussion of the actual modding practice, linked to concrete examples, where someone is bestowed with the power of drawing conclusions after everyone has had their say, saying: this is the way we will do it, according to our core philsophy. But the problem has been, a lot of dilemmas and questions from mods have been just hanging there, some of them never answered or addressed, some answered only after too long a time, and perhaps without a proper, guided and focussed discussion, or without the admin addressing all the issues raised by mods, simply becausethey couldn't possibly take the time to read through every single post in the fastmoving modlog. The result is, quoting Lilly, that different mods seem to be modding different sites, while they all believe they are modding the same site!

One of the chief reasons for my present fatigue and lack of enthusiasm has to do with the fact that I, and also a couple of others, have repeatedly adressed this issue in various fora, and at times there has been a discussion of it started - but then it has all died down again. I believe, as I said above, that the main reason why this happens, is that all the admins dealing with the forum also have a zillion other tasks and asignments to attend to, and can only give their full attention to these problems in limited periods of time. What is needed, in my opinion, is a kind of "head mod" - someone with this task as their sole responsibility, possibly not even with any forum
modding duty in addition. They didn't have to be general admins, they probably shouldn't be that, but they would need to have some real responsibilty delegated to them from the admins to function effectively.

This ties into the second main problem of organisation, as I see it. There seems to be a strong reluctance, even fear, on the part of admins to delegate, to give real responsiblity when necessary to people for work done in even limited areas of the lounge, and even for limited periods of time. The style of praising everybody, tell us repeatedly that you are so grateful for all the hard work we are ALL doing, and you appreciate ALL of us, has a genuine good intention behind it - definitely - but there also seems to be the idea that no one among the mods must be given a grain more responsiblity or acknowledgement than the others, even if they actually do more work or show more initiative than others at times - because this would perhaps generate jealousy or rivalry or "politics" among the mods. I can see how this is a genuine concern - but the other side of the coin is that people may feel demotivated, not acknowledged, not empowered, those showing independent initiative may feel as if it they are not rewarded, and, most unfortunate: necessary tasks and issues may be left unattended to. Admins cannot possibly look into everything, since we are now too big of an organisation for a principle of micromanagement from the top leader to be effective. If everything must be given to Melissa or one of her deputies for approval, too much time will be spent sitting around and waiting for decisions to be made.

After I left, some time during fall 2006? - a head of the mods was appointed - Gina. I am not trying to hint that this happened solely because of my suggestion. I was not the only one aware of these issues. How much decision authority Gina was given, I don't know. I was not around anymore.

I will comment some more on this next, as the story of my Leaky Experience continues.....

How I Ended Up Here, and All That Happened On the Road - Chapter One

2007-05-12T19:02:00.000+02:00

So - here we go. Introduction. Who am I what am I doing here and all that.

I created this blog to post my thoughts about everything Potterish and beyond, and to invite any other potterhead or fairyfriend or cupcakeeater out there to come share with me. I promise I will welcome everyone as long as they are friendly. You may come here even if you do not wish to bite Snape on the ankle - you may even come here if you wish to yell at Sirius or put down Flaco (Alfonso Curaón) - although those two last exercises will be at your own risk... :giggle:

I came from somewhere in the fandom before. So I want to start out with my background story, because I hope that by telling, some of the old wounds will finally heal, both for me and possibly for some who read. I want you to know when you read this story of my Leaky Experience, that everything written here is from my point of view. I do not claim to be objective, but I will try to be fair.

It will come in several instalments, here is chapter one:

I came into the fandom after the fourth book was out, but long before the fifth. I was very unfamiliar with online communities, but was a fascinated lurker. When I first signed up with a dorky screen name (no, won't tell you which or where) I was so scared you would think computers have a boxing glow hidden, ready to spring every time a newbie hits the "send" button.

Then I discovered The Leaky Cauldron. Everyone was linking to them, because they were the ones who got the news first. They were always updated with everything Potterish. They were very good at separating the shit from the cinnamon as we say in my language. They were witty and friendly and showing just the right slight hint of selfirony. They seemed to be grown ups. My first online home.

And then came their comments feature.... I will never do that experience justice in words. All the great people. Lilly. Clare. Lord Fishcake. Martje. Nick Rhein, our darling Scabberino running around in the pub raising havoc. The best of friends.... Too many to mention. Everyone who participated in those days may consider themselves honoured, you all made it what it was.

Go to their archives and check it out, if they haven't deleted it all by now - especially March 2004, right before the launch of the third movie. Read the comment threads attached to the news entries, and you will perhaps understand what I mean - except being part of it, not being able to log out and go to sleep because someone might post something new after you left, is very different from reading it all long time afterwards. The days of the War of the Pink Hoodie. The Kill Cuarón Squads and me as the self appointed head and sole member of the Cuarón Defense Squad. N0 coincidence that this was my first ever (selfmade) avatar

(Yes, the signature is real, no, I never met him in person, but I still love and adore the guy... )

Welcome

2007-05-12T16:43:00.000+02:00

This place has been floating around in the heartspace for too long, about time it was given a place in the physical space again. (Are you saying the net is not a real place? Think again....) I will fill it with my thoughts shortly. Pick up a cushion and have a cupcake while I gather my thoughts together, and try out all the different decorations available for this room. Choosing wallpapers is so hard! See you soon!!