Hat threw me into Gryffindor. I was honestly expecting Ravenclaw, but whatever.

 

Got picked for Slytherin. Saw that coming.

Also, LAUREL, PHOENIX FEATHER, 10 3/4", UNYIELDING. A good wand - although supposedly laurel wands don't tolerate laziness, which could be a problem.

 

So, October is finally here. Any word on when the registrations are open for all?

 

You don't use Google?

If I was a betting man, I'd put my money on Halloween, 31 October. It's a very significant date in the series.

 

End of October? :facepalm

Did they pick that date randomly, or something?
I realize it's on Halloween, but wouldn't it make more sense to open registrations in September?

 

The reason for the delay is in the Pottermore interview I linked to. The people with accounts are using the site much more than expected. Therefore the anticipated load on the site will be much heavier than initially predicted.

We're still in Beta. Still experiencing bugs. Wizard dueling is not yet enabled, ostensibly due to the capacity of the system to cope with the user numbers. There's still a lot of work being done to Pottermore to get it ready for Opening Day.

Even when registration opens at the end of the month, it won't be a free for all. New users will be granted admittance in stages so that the site isn't crushed.

 

GhostAccio173 surprisingly found her home in Slytherin, and is the proud owner Ebony, Dragon, 11 1/2 Slightly Yielding. A nice wand. But the Slytherin thing surprised me. I was sure I'd be Ravenclaw.

 

Am I the only one who is completely bored with Pottermore?

 

My username is PotionSeeker152. I was sorted into Slytherin.
My wand is Hornbeam and Pheonix Feather core, 11 3/4", slightly springy.

 

Oh, the irony...

 

That's interesting, wordhammer.

What's the story on moderation? I'm not a member of Pottermore, but I was always interested from the start in what censorship the site admins would exercise on negative comments or criticism of Rowling's work.

Are all comments automatically moderated? Or had you gotten into hot water with some negative chat?

 

They have an engine in place that checks for unrecognized or undesirable words or phrases that checks every post. If what you write is questionable somehow, you get a warning box saying 'this one isn't cool'. The post is shunted into a moderation queue, where eventually a human evaluates whether the wording is alright, and they'll add new words to the recognition system over time, like 'chocolate' and the various mis-spellings of bezoar.

What makes it frustrating beyond belief is that the moderators will repost later the messages that pass review, often hours or days after the conversation is past. Given that the comment boards only show the last 20 comments in order and then jump to commentary from days ago, it can get almost bizarre.

Also, the human mods don't always agree. I've had the same statement pass moderation, re-fail it, pass it again, refail it AGAIN and then make it through. Why did this particular comment cause such a stir?

I referred to another poster's country of origin, Austria.

They don't allow actual numbers, so everyone is getting a fast education in Roman numerals, and all sorts of euphemisms are beginning to show up.

Clucking bell. That bludger.

Meanwhile, the points leader in Slytherin is abusing the available time-dilation hacking app so badly that the leader board number and his personal count are often 200 pts. different.

 

So basically Pottermore's a fucked up entity. If each vomment is so heavily reviewed would it really be worth posting at all?

Imagne how frustrating it will be for Taure when one of his essay posts inevitably makes it to moderation.

 

Any comment is limited to 266 chars, so I'm sure Taure's head exploded in the first hour of use.

EDIT: if 'vomment' was intentional, I tip my wine glass to you. If it's just a typo... well played, anyway.

 

I gave up on actually using comments after my first two - comments trying to give the site feedback about what I think wasn't working well - went into the moderation queue.

Eh, I'm sure someone on the staff read them eventually (a moderator if nobody else), but it annoyed me. Particularly after I had to spend extra brain cell cycles trying to shorten the messages enough to fit.

On another note, I'm amused that Ravenclaw and Slytherin have so many more points than the others - particularly Hufflepuff. With over 600,000 sorted members, and all houses having roughly the same population, I didn't think there'd be any one house with 15% more points than any other house.

 

I'm amazed that there is no big split in the houses population.

 

As a member of Hufflepuff, I think we actually get more than anyone else, but about 10% 'commit suicide' (delete their account) upon being Sorted.

As to the points disparity, there are the aforementioned third party apps to cheat the potion wait times down to nothing. I'd love to see what happens if the admins figure out who's using them and cuts off their points completely.

Also, there has been mention that the House points are being averaged some way with the House population total, so that smaller houses aren't penalized overall.

If you want to submit feedback to the site developers, don't use the comments- that's for talking with other 'students'.

In Help (bottom of the screen) go to 'Other', scroll down to 'What's next?' and select 'Need more help?'- that opens a message form for bug complaints and suggestions.

(or I could just post a link, I guess.)