The Roots of Low Level Chaos

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.