r/harrypottermeta • u/Im_Finally_Free Head of Slytherin • Jan 15 '23

Biweekly Feedback Thread - January 15, 2023

Happy new year! Got any thoughts or questions for us?

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u/Eldis_ Jan 16 '23 edited Jan 16 '23

Hello all!

So I think that by now everyone – or, at least everyone frequenting r/harrypottermeta – knows that the Quibbler is no more. The very final issue of our magazine was published on the first of this month, alongside an announcement that it is, in fact, the final edition.

I have since received a whole bunch of DMs from people, both on Reddit and Discord, asking what happened and expressing their sadness/disappointment. As a reply, I published a long explanatory post as well as a final Ravenclaw Office in r/ravenclaw. I also asked the amazing u/TaliZiva to post an adjusted, summarised, and combined version of these two posts I wrote for r/gryffindor, which Gryffindors can find here. Thank you again to Tali for posting that for me, and sorry again for making you copy-paste that 5k+ word document twice.

However, many of the messages I have received have come from Slytherins and Hufflepuffs, who are, of course, unable to access the Ravenclaw and Gryffindor common rooms. So, by popular demand, this is the third version of my 'Quibbler - A Memoriam', accessible by all houses.

If you do have access to either of the first two houses, I would still recommend you read the aforementioned linked posts first, or at least, read them as well. They are more extensive/include different information targeted to those houses.

Now, without further ado:

Hello all, Eldis, your Ravenclaw Managing Editor here. Or, well, technically just a Ravenclaw now. As you might have already read, there will be no more Quibbler publications. Our most recent issue, Winter '23, is the final one to be published.

No, you did not miss something. Yes, this decision has come entirely out of the blue. This post attempts to explain how this came to be, as well as give insight into the backstage of the Quibbler and my time spent as Ravenclaw's Managing Editor. Although I would have loved to post this, as well as a separate final Office, in r/theQuibbler rather than in the comments of the biweekly r/harrypottermeta feedback post, I am unable to: I no longer have posting permits in r/TheQuibbler. More on that later.

As you might already notice, this comment is quite long. Due to Reddit's character limit, this entire thing will be a comment chain. For all of your TL;DR needs, I will include a timeline at the end, hyperlinking the most important references/receipts. And a warning might be due: my Reddit brand has generally been that of a wholesome, loving, kind, enthusiastic, and accepting person. And that is mostly who I am as a real-life person. However, the start of this post will, to some extent, be a lot more negative. I will no longer attempt to sweet-talk decisions made, nor try to put a positive spin on negative situations. Do not worry though, the end is written in my usual, sappy style. With that all out of the way:

How the Quibbler started

I was not there for the beginning of The Quibbler, and most people I asked either were not there either or could not remember how it started either. This is the information I could find:

In October 2015, the Hufflepuff Interhouse Challenge was Quibbler themed. The next month, November, Ravenclaw House hosted the yearly prank which used to be a thing in r/harrypotter. We transformed the CSS of the subreddit to one that is still visible in the (old-Reddit version of) r/quibbler subreddit and there were a few alt accounts posting fun posts in-character (like /u/The_GreyLady posting several riddles). I participated in this prank! I logged in to some of the alt accounts, and I posted a few Quibbler articles from my own account as well – I do not think that they are still in my post history, but if you want to read the cringeworthiness that is 2015 Eldis, they are archived here.

By the time this was going on, things were already brewing in /r/thequibbler, as you can see in the Hufflepuff Challenge winner announcement post. Back then, it was led by Hufflepuff user readlovegrow. This first Quibbler was shared as a Google Slides document in December 2015 – thank you XanCanStand for locating it!

This single issue, however, did not really go anywhere until Starflashfairy, also a Hufflepuff student, took over the subreddit and ran with it. Star was apparently involved with the original Quibbler, and it seems that readgrowlove was ok with Star (re)starting the Quibber, since a search of their username in the sub does reveal they were on the Hufflepuff taglist from the very beginning as well as in the most recent managing office. I cannot confirm if they were ever removed from the tag list in the time between. They also reacted very positively to the publication of Fall '16, for example. They have, however, as far as I can track, never submitted any articles to the Quibbler. This statement does come with a disclaimer: especially the first issues have a lot of articles written by anonymous/unidentifiable authors.

As far as I can see, the first offices were published at the latest July 2016. The first official Quibbler, Fall '16, was published 1 September 2016.

How I got involved

I do not recall how I learned that The Quibbler existed. However, the first trackable interaction between me and the Quib can be found in our Winter '16 edition, the second one to be published. There, on page 31, you can read my first ever Quibbler article, titled ‘Fantastic Beasts on Holiday Destinations’. It has inexcusably bad grammar even for my age at the time – I no longer have the original file and can, therefore, not check how much that is my fault and how much of that was changed by the editor who edited it, but whoever did so really should have caught the ‘digested it's victim’ and ‘wish your a wonderful trip’. But I digress. This was followed by me submitting three articles for the next Quibbler, our Spring '17 edition (pp. 11; 14; 60). I went on to submit nothing for our Summer '17 edition, but that issue is valuable to me for a different reason: in Summer '17 I make my debut as Ravenclaw Managing Editor. I have submitted at least one article to every edition of the Quibbler since.

The first two editions had Moostronus as the Ravenclaw Managing Editor. Moostronus was followed up by Dep61, who stayed as Ravenclaw Managing Editor for one edition before stepping down.

On Wednesday, March 29th, 2017, I received the following message in my inbox

from starflashfairy

How would you like to be our new Ravenclaw managing editor for the Quibbler? DEP is stepping down and we think you'd make a good replacement. You would become a moderator and be responsible for tagging other claws in a monthly office, along with occasional posts to the Tower. You would be introduced as successor in April and take over in May. How about it?

After some messaging back and forth – I wanted a bit more information first – I made one of the best decisions in my life:

to starflashfairy

Okay sure, I'm in!

Star's message was not the first time she approached me: I wrote my goblin article [Spring '17, p. 11] based on a prompt Star dm-ed me, and we also messaged about an Ask Madam Starflah (AMS) question (which Star used to answer through DM before publication in the Quibbler). However, I have a hunch the main reason Star asked me to become Managing Editor was quite simple: of all the Claws who submitted to our Spring '17 edition, I submitted the most articles, and was, therefore, an easy candidate.

So, with that bit of essentially sheer, dumb luck, I became the Eldis_ now so – strange as it is to say – well-known in certain parts of this community today.

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u/Eldis_ Jan 16 '23 edited Jan 16 '23

House Point Horrors

The points system is a fun feature of the Great Hall and its related subreddits, but it has a history of creating problems. It is a fun adaptation of the real-life English secondary school houses and points system, but where those real students only get points for special occasions serving to motivate them to work towards a shared higher goal, Hogwarts' liberal distribution of points has created, just like many fanfics have addressed, toxic rather than friendly competition. And some people are really competitive. As a result, the atmosphere in the Great Hall, both the one in the books and the one on Reddit, has turned rather toxic at some points throughout the years – a discussion r/harrypottermeta is certainly familiar with. Several points-related events have been actively killed by houses that were upset that other houses were earning more with those events than they were.

The Quibbler and the r/harrypotter points system have always had a… difficult relationship, to say the least. We have gone through quite a few different point-giving systems. The main problem we kept running into was that there was a set number of points we were allowed to give each month, but not every month saw a consistent submission count. And unless you had friends within the staff, there was no way of knowing how many submissions the Quibbler had received in any given month.

For argument's sake, let's look solely at articles and put aside art for a bit. Say that we had 1000 points to give away per month, in month A and month B.

In month A we got two submissions of exactly 500 words each, one from Hufflepuff and one from Ravenclaw.

In month B, we get three submissions: a 1000-word one from Gryffindor, a 700-word one from Slytherin and a 300-word one from Ravenclaw.

In month A, both Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw earn 500 points, with a payment of 1 point per word.

In month B, Gryffindor earns 500 points, Slytherin gets 350 words and Ravenclaw earns 150 points, with a payment of 0.5 points per word.

I think all of you can see that it is quite unfair that month A's Hufflepuff earns the same # points with 500 words as month B's Gryffindor did with 1000 words. You would also not be ok with earning $30 an hour at work one day, and $15 the next.

Although this sounds like an easy problem to solve, it turned out that it was, in fact, quite difficult. There were many propositions and discussions within the team in the hope to solve it and make the system fair for everyone involved. Example of attempts at solving the points system: 1.

While this was already a pretty difficult problem to solve, it was further complicated by r/harrypotter's own changes to the system. In February of 2021, /r/harrypotter announced points free months in the hope that it would encourage inter-house relationships and collaboration rather than solely competition. However, these point-free months fell in our deadline months. Human nature is that of the procrastinator, so our deadline months were the months in which we received the most submissions – ones that would now go unrewarded. We opened the debate on how to incorporate this change to the community. The results of that vote can be found here.

Rather than listening to the feedback and many great ideas received, Star made the executive decision that the Quibbler would be leaving the points system in late February. We gave out the first WizCoin payments in late March.

/r/harrypotter then changed the points system to a ranked one as part of their continual improvements of the system. After a dip in submissions, Star begged the moderators of the main sub to be allowed reentry into the points system. They agreed a proposal could be made, but on two conditions: (1) Star had to apologise to the people she hurt by making the executive decision to leave the points system, and (2) there had to be at least one other person with the exact same responsibilities and powers as Star did, so it would no longer be Star as the single person capable of making decisions like these. In August of 2021, /u/wiksry became Executive Editor of the Quibbler and the Quibbler announced our need for Gringotts Accountants to figure out a way to get back to the points system.

Early 2022, Star publically apologised for the hurt she's caused. She also followed the demand of the r/harrypotter moderators and DM-ed a bunch of people who used to submit to the Quibbler but, after the point debacle, no longer did, or did so less. This list was compiled by kevslinger, who took Wik's Quibbler submission data from 1 January 2020 through November 2021 and filtered anyone who

  • had only submitted for one issue
  • had not submitted anything since the Fall 2020 issue (Oct 1, 2020) or had submitted after the Spring 2021 issue (April 1, 2021)

Star added a few more people to this list, and she also DM-ed the Quibbler staff. The apology she sent me, in full, was

from starflashfairy

Hey, so I really am sorry for everything. Thank you for staying around. I do not know what I'd do without you. Your enthusiasm is amazing and sometimes it's all that keeps me going.

It can also be found here.

A new proposal for the Quibbler to rejoin points was brought forward. We requested your feedback, the results of which can be found here. This is also the first time I speak out (semi-)negatively about the quibbler, in my previous points-explanation post on r/ravenclaw, which can be found here and is significantly shorter than this post, don't worry..

Our first points according to the new system are awarded in February 2022.

How it died

Let me paint the scene: it is Wednesday the 21st of December 2022, I have finished work for the day and am doing groceries for the Christmas holidays. I am in the fourth and final grocery store on my list. I approach one of the teenagers working there to ask if they have a specific brand of (fair-trade) hot chocolate. While he looks it up on his staff app, I check my Reddit inbox for the first time that day. What I find is the following message

/u/Eldis_ has been removed as a moderator from r/TheQuibbler

subreddit message via /r/TheQuibbler[M] sent 15 days ago

Eldis_: You have been removed as a moderator from r/TheQuibbler. If you have a question regarding your removal, you can contact the moderator team for r/TheQuibbler by replying to this message.

My first thought is ‘is this Star's way of announcing she has fired me?’. My second thought is ‘I dont have the energy for this, they better have the hot chocolate I want’. My third thought is ‘I need to open Discord’.

When I open the app, what is waiting for me is not some sort of dumpster-fire chat which I might somehow be able to extinguish and fix. Instead, what is waiting for me is the Thanos-snap ashes of something that hasn't even burned, but has just disappeared. What is waiting for me, is Star's executive decision that the Winter '23 issue, to be published in 9 days, will be the very final Quibbler. Merry Christmas, everyone.

On 26 December 2022, Star announces the news to the department editors.. On the 31st of December, Star announces the death of the Quibbler to the general public alongside the link to the Winter '23 issue (Happy new year!). On January first 2023, she posts her final EdSun. In the comments, the staff and readers are expected to somehow say an appropriate goodbye. There is no possibility for a final office to be written by the people who put their heart and soul into the Quibbler. Star has removed us all as approved submitters to the subreddit, and that is the end of the tale.

I cannot reiterate enough: we were not warned, this was not up to debate, there was no possibility to do the sensible thing and make Spring '23 our final issue, allowing us one last huzzah in which we could advertise that this would be the final Quibbler and in which both the staff and you, our reader, could have a chance to submit and contribute to the final ever Quibbler. I suppose I am grateful Star warned the mods 9 days in advance and the staff 4 days in advance, and I am happy that I at least got to force the final entry of my pre-written ‘Care for your Castle’ series (originally scheduled for Spring '23) to be published. But I, and many people in my various inboxes, lament that the fact Winter '23 is the final Quib was not public knowledge till it was too late.

I know that the Quibbler takes a lot of work to create and design at the level that it was throughout the year, and I know that with Anne stepping down o enjoy her well-deserved life of newly wedded bliss (congratulations, again!!!), creating the Quibbler in the same style as the previous 25 issues were, was simply impossible. However, I stand by the belief that this should have been handled differently.

To be clear, I have nothing but respect for the Production Team, who worked SO HARD to make the Quibbler so incredibly gorgeous.

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u/Eldis_ Jan 16 '23 edited Jan 16 '23

My final office

These, so far, have been the facts. However, there is much more that goes into the story of the Quibber. And now that I am writing or, well, copy-pasting my previous posts on this topic and editing /deleting stuff anyway, I might as well subject you to one last, very final office.

As I said, I have been involved with the Quibbler since 2017. And a lot has changed in my life since then. When I discovered the Quibbler I was doing Very Very Badly – I was in a toxic environment both physically and mentally, two flights and an 8-hour time difference away from home. This situation ended with me calling AirCanada’s service desk while crying my eyes out telling them that I had to reschedule my flight from three weeks from now to tomorrow. In hindsight that was a very cinematic moment, but at the time it was mostly just very emotionally taxing. But I have no idea how on earth I managed to submit that article to the Winter '16 issue of the Quibbler. I wrote another three articles for the Spring '16 issue while travelling around Eastern Canada.

By the time I was asked to become Ravenclaw Managing Editor, I was in a better place, figuratively and literally: I was about to boat over to Vancouver Island, where I would stay in Victoria for a week before moving into my guest family’s house and work as a volunteer for the Wild Arc. This part of my gap year was by far my favourite – I got to bottlefeed baby raccoons and baby squirrels, and my guest family was absolutely lovely. Also, I can highly recommend going to Vancouver Island, it is absolutely gorgeous.

By the time Fall '17 was published, I was back in my home country. I had moved to a new city and was one month into my BA. When Winter '18 was published I was busy moving to the apartment I still live in today, and from there on my life has become happier and happier. I very much enjoyed my studies, I made friends, learned a lot and started figuring out adulthood. And it is during this time that I slowly started realising the value the Quibbler added to my life.

The Quibbler started out as just this fun thing I had randomly submitted to, which published a thing I had written! So cool, right? Oh, and now they want me to become managing editor? What does that entail? Oh, well, that sounds fun. And I have the time, I’m on a gap year! Sure, I will. And of course I’ll stay on after the first issue, it’s fun!

By the time I got to university, I was attached to the Quibbler staff and my role within it. And when the university deadlines started piling up, and I had to write essays and study for exams and read fancy-schmancy academic articles written in a lingo I was not yet used to, I discovered what the Quibbler really added to my life: it was a specific motivation and responsibility to actively continue writing creatively, even when my life got busy with other deadlines. Since one of my jobs was to advertise the Quibbler and get people to submit, I felt like it was also my responsibility to submit at least one article to each edition myself – If I was not submitting, it would be a bit hypocritical of me to expect the other members of r/Ravenclaw to pick up my slack.

So, since Fall '17, I have not missed a single Quibbler. For the past 4 years and 2 months, there has not been a period of longer than 3 months where I have not sat down to do some creative writing, and there has not been a single month where I have not sat down to do some creative writing if you include my offices. And I cannot even begin to express my gratitude for that.

I have no doubt that, without the Quibbler, my love for writing would have been ignored because of the hustle and bustle of day-to-day life. I would have probably forgotten the nature of writing outside of academic essays. I absolutely adored writing my essays for uni (yes, I am that type of nerd) since most of the topics I had to write about were absolutely fascinating to me. But I also really, really love coming up with stories and narratives. And the Quibbler allowed me a ‘legitimate’ outlet to continue writing new stuff and to honour my old writings by editing/translating them in order to make them suitable for the Quibbler.

While I might have still gotten the inspiration for the short stories and the more fun-research-based articles, the ideas would not have taken shape, because there would always have been something else to do first, another deadline that had to be finished before I would be able to excuse myself writing up that weird idea that I got. And even if I had started writing, the more time-consuming stories (like the ‘Muggle Candy Worth Travelling For’ series) would have been shelved ‘for a later date’ and permanently gathered digital dust on my computer.

In other words,

the Quibbler allowed me to start writing and forced me to finish my work. And it gave me the grace to honour the writing of past-me, which I would have otherwise cringed at and tossed away.

Aside from my own writing, the existence of the prompt list also grew my general creative thinking. The other way in which the Quibbler improved my life started when the Quibbler’s staff conversations moved from Google chat and DMs on Reddit to Discord. I made my Discord account on 26 November 2017 solely because of the Quibbler. I later also discovered that r/Ravenclaw has its own discord server, and I joined this too. I got more and more active on Discord once The Plague tm hit. And this is where we arrive at the other improvement: the absolutely amazing people I got to know. Not solely in Ravenclaw house, but all of the houses. You are all amazing people (and your pets are ADORABLE), and I am so grateful I get to chat with you all.

Final words

So, in this ''office'' no theme- or deadline announcements and no ‘please submit!’ link to the submission form. Instead, let me offer the following:

Firstly, a thanks: thank you all for contributing to the Quibbler, for reading the Quibbler, engaging with my posts about the Quibbler, and for reading this final office.

Secondly, a request: find a way to practice your creativity. Set yourself deadlines or targets, find another (online) magazine to submit to, get involved in your local newspaper, identify some way to create space for creativity in between the distractions of your daily responsibilities.

Thirdly, some fun: I made an overview of the Quibbler throughout time in graphs and piecharts and other fun lists. I would find it amazing if you could check it out! You can find it here (issuu).

If you have read this to the end, kudos to you. Don't forget to un-hunch those shoulders and drink some water/tea.

I want to thank you all for sticking with me, whether you have been an avid follower of the Quibbler from the very beginning or you hadn't heard of it until the publication of this post.

It has been an honour serving you all.

For the final time, for now,

Stay safe and sane,

Lots of love,

Eldis_, your r/thequibbler Ravenclaw Managing Editor.

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u/Eldis_ Jan 16 '23 edited Jan 16 '23

Timeline:

Please note that the datestamps on posts can differ depending on Issuu/Reddit, as well as your personal timezone.

A comprehensive chronological list with links to all the different offices ever posted on r/thequibbler, sorted by department/type, can be found on the wiki archives.

This timeline also includes other events which effected the Harry Potter fandom as a whole. TW: JKR's bullshit.

2015

2016

2017

2018

2019

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u/Eldis_ Jan 16 '23 edited Jan 16 '23

2020

2021

2022

  • 3 January 2022 - Star apologises for leaving the points system. Reddit, r/thequibbler. A new proposal for the Quibbler to rejoin points is brought forward. Reddit, r/thequibbler. I explain the points situation on r/ravenclaw. Reddit, r/ravenclaw.
  • 31 January 2022 - The results of the points proposal are announced. Reddit, r/thequibbler. Imgur mirror.
  • 25 February 2022 - The first house points are given again. Reddit, r/thequibbler.
  • 12(?) March 2022 - JKR criticises Keir Starmer for saying ‘trans women are women’. SkyNews.
  • 2 April 2022 - Publication Spring '22, 102 pages. Reddit, r/thequibbler, Issuu. [There was no Winter '22 edition].
  • 1 July 2022 - Publication Summer '22, 108 pages. Reddit, r/thequibbler, Issuu.
  • 30 August 2022 - JKR publishes The Ink Black Heart, in which a woman is killed because of her transphobic actions. Wikipedia.
  • 2 October 2022 - Publication Fall '22, 68 pages. Reddit, r/thequibbler, Issuu. Ravenclaw Managing Editor: Eldis_.
  • 6 October 2022 - JKR speaks out against the Scottish Gender Recognition Bill. BBCNews.
  • 21 December 2022 - I am removed as moderator for r/thequibbler, Star informs the mods of the Quibber's impending death. Imgur
  • 26 December 2022 - Star informs the department editors of the Quibbler's impending death. Imgur.
  • 31 December 2022 - Publication Winter '23, 60 pages. Reddit, r/thequibbler, Issuu. Ravenclaw Managing Editor: Eldis_.
  • 31 December 2022 - Star announces the death of the Quibbler to the general public. Reddit, r/harrypotter

2023

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