It isn't. But I thought it would be funny.
2. Why did this guy write it?
My daily commute includes a mile-long walk that leaves me with plenty of time to think of strange things. As George Carlin said. "These are the things I think of when I'm home alone and the TV is broken."
3. How often is this FAQ updated?
This FAQ will be updated when I feel like it. This might be twenty-five minutes from now, or it might be when Madonna takes a chastity vow, Adam West learns to act, Washington DC gets a competent and honest mayor, city councils deal intelligently with owners of sports teams, Michael Moore seeks counseling for his pathological fear of sound public policy, Italian politics acquire some coherency, the French admit that their entire culture is derived from stuff borrowed from other cultures, or some other equivalent of hell freezing over.
4. What are the forms of discipline on a.f.h-p?
4.1. The Squib-O-Gram (SOG)
The SOG consists of Arabella Figg, carrying a bag of canned cat food. She will berate the offender, with hits from the bag throughout the admonishment.
4.2. The Troll Club Squad (TCS)
The TCS is reserved for greater offenses. The Trolls visit the offender and beat him/her/it to a pulp.
4.3. The Cloak of Unfortunate Appearance (CUA)
A magical development, the CUA has the interesting property of causing the wearer to appear as the enemy of whoever is viewing the wearer. For instance, if Voldemort were to look upon a wearer of the cloak, he would see Albus Dumbledore or Harry Potter.
4.4. The Unbreakable Hairmouth Curse (UHC)
I presume the Weasley twins are responsible for this one. For the rest of the victim's life, every time he opens his mouth to take a bit of food or a drink, a hair gets into it.
5. What offenses are punishable by these methods?
5.1. Ignorant ranting
Ignorant ranting consists of assuming that if one has never heard of something, it doesn't exist, and then acting accordingly. An example (actually posted, recreated here from memory) follows:
> I saw the trailer for the new Star Trek film when I saw ID4.
THERE'S NO TRALER FOR STAR TREK WITH ID4 SHUT UP YOUR LYING I NOE IT I SAW ID4 HERE ON SATURDAY THERE NO TRALER FOR STAR TREK JUST SOME FILM ABOUT A CUBE SHAPED SPACE SHIP!!!!!!!!
Ignorant ranting is usually accompanied by all-caps typing, severe punctuation omissions, rotten grammar, bad spelling, and an address in the aol.com or webtv.com domains. BTW, the rant you see above passed through my spellchecker with flying colors, so don't trust them with anything important.
The first offense is punishable by the SOG, all later offenses by the TCS.
5.2. High bandwidth/me-too quoting.
To quote a 15K message with seven layers of quoting within it, to make a comment about the very last post to the thread, is an annoyance that will draw the attention of the SOG, and later the TCS.
5.3. Orthographic anal-retentiveness.
To rant about a commonly-used alternate spelling (i.e., grey instead of gray), or to post merely to point out one inconsequential typo in a post, is punishable by the CUA. This is not to be construed to excuse people from employing the comma, period, and other punctuation keys when posting, or to excuse people who repeatedly misspell simple words in their native tongue, or to smile upon any other symptom of American public school attendance.
Please note that sometimes a typo results in a change to the meaning of a phrase, sometimes a catastrophic change. When humorous, there is no harm done in pointing out these instances. That's what Usenet is for.
Offenders will be subject to appropriate lengths of time in the CUA. Those who post to point out a spelling error, and in the process commit one of their own, will be sneered at, not only by the Slytherins, who sneer at everything, but even the Hufflepuffs.
5.4. Netcopping:
Netcopping consists of any of the following:
a. Threatening to report people who appear to be posting from their office computer to their bosses, in order to get their access cut off.
b. Treating a post that is merely offensive as if some law was actually broken by its posting, and threatening to contact the offensive person's ISP/Sysop. Except for kiddie porn, libel, copyright violation, and threats of physical harm, everything's legal around here.
The punishment? Read on:
"Oh, you'll probably get away with crucifixion."
"Get away with crucifixion?"
"Yeah. First offense."
5.5. Orphan replies
Orphan replying is when you post a response to something without quoting that something in your message. F'rinstance: "I thought it was Snape who did that" appearing as the only text in the body of the message. This confuses the fnacker out of us.
This offense is punishable by the SOG.
5.6. Bickering
The statement "TROLL!!! IN THE NEWSGROUP!!!" only constitutes an argument between the ears of a person with the maturity of an eight-year-old. Take the flame wars to alt.mature.not. Some time in the CUA is appropriate here.
BTW, a troll is someone who takes an outrageous view in order to annoy other people. Trolling does NOT consist of expressing a minority viewpoint, or even a fringe viewpoint. Words mean things, people.
5.7. Unprotected spoilers
Now this may come as a shock to some of you, but there are indeed people who have not read every single word published by Jo Rowling, and don't want advance warning of what comes in the stuff they haven't read.
A lot of people like to speculate on what happens next. Other people don't want to hear the speculation, but want the surprise to hit their brains in an unprepared state.
The general consensus is that after release of a Harry Potter film, the story line up to the end of that film no longer requires spoiler warnings, as anyone willing to spend time on this newsgroup will have seen the movie.
Unprotected spoilers consist of either a spoiler in the subject line, such as "The Real Reason Snape Goosed McGonagall," or a subject line that doesn't warn about the spoiler, with the spoiler in the first line of the message body, like "I just read the part where Dobby says that he's Harry's real father..."
Misdemeanor spoiling consists of spoiling an episode from a book not yet released in film. You'll get a Squib-O-Gram for this.
Felonious spoiling consists of spoiling an episode from a book which most people on the group haven't had a chance to purchase yet. A couple years in the CUA sounds appropriate.
Capital spoiling consists of spoiling part of the book that hasn't been published yet. Probably at the urging of JKR Herself, the offender will receive a visit from the Squib-O-Gram, which will proceed as follows:
SOG: Please remain still.
OFFENDER: Ouch! How long is this going to take?
SOG: Just long enough for me to kiss you.
OFFENDER: Kiss me? But what—MY SOUL! NOT MY SOUL! Mmmmfff...
SOG: Slurp!
OFFENDER collapses to floor, effectively dead. SOG removes costume, revealing that she is really a dementor.
5.8. Flatly contradicting what is established
Any theorization which flatly contradicts things established in the books will draw the ire of the newsgroup. For example:
All of the above are felonies, punishable by a lengthy visit from the SOG.
5.9. Offending the Severus Snape Estrogen Brigade
The only way to do this would be to disparage Alan Rickman's masculinity. Certain readers of the newsgroup are Members-in-Good-Standing of the SSEB, so the offender will be in for a cauldron of hurt.
Frankly, the Snape depicted in the books would only arouse romantic interest in people with serious issues. The girls who dig Snap dig the movie Snape, who is visually a different creature from the book Snape.
5.10. Saying that Harry Potter promotes Satanism/Wicca/voting Republican/etc. To which the rest of us reply, "please shut up and get a life." First-time offenders get the SOG. Repeat offenders, and everyone who looks like them, hear from the TCS.
Harry Potter and the characters pertaining thereto are the intellectual property of Jo Rowling. The opinions expressed herein are my own, but if you have a lick of sense you'll adopt them.