Ask Elm (Vol 9)

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Welcome to the ninth edition of Ask Elm.  To ask a question: CLICK HERE.

Answers to questions below the cut…

I’ve noticed huge point fluctuations, like ten, twenty thousand point swings between Gryffindor and Slytherin house within hours. I went to bed one night and Slytherin was 20,000 points ahead … the next day we had lost that lead. How does that happen? I think there is more going on … like people cheating … using multiple accounts to sabotage … is there anything that could be done? I’m thinking not but it seems like cheating is getting way out of control. And I’m frustrated! :/
-April

Answer:

To be honest, I don’t think cheating is responsible for those fluctuations. I’m pretty sure that it is due to the fact that the populations for each house have gotten quite large, and so has the point total. A fluctuation up and down of 20,000 points when the point totals are in the 60 million range is only about a 0.3% fluctuation. Less than 1%. I know that a lot of account are inactive, but with around 700,000 students in each house if they each won a single duel a day that’s a LOT of points.

It doesn’t help that the Great Hall points jump up and down a bit as they are calculating, another biproduct of point and population volume. For a more stable point tally based on averaging the points as they jump up and down check HouseCup.Info.

Now to the hot button question: CHEATING. The truth is, there isn’t much cheating to be done on Pottermore anymore. The time-turner and one click fail cheats for potions have been thoroughly banished. A lot of people argue “but what about people making accounts in other houses?” It is true that you can make an alternative account and get sorted into a rival house. But what exactly would you do then? Blowing up a cauldron will lose you five points, but only if you earn five points to begin with.You can not go into negative points. At one point during the Beta you could go into negative points, but they stopped that due to cheating also.

Pretty much the only way to “cheat” would be to create an account in a house other than yours, and then duel people in your actual house and intentionally lose. But honestly, I feel like time would be better served just earning points for your house yourself. I’m sure people are doing it, but not enough to account for large point swings or anything.

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In chapter 3 in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s stone when the letters are flying about, i can’t collect the salt and pepper or the postcard! why won’t it let me?
xx Niamh

Answer:

This is one of the more notoriously glitchy moments on Pottermore. I have a friend who STILL can’t get that moment to load on their computer, but when they log in on my computer it loads just fine. She, of course, refused to install a new browser to try, but I have had other people who had the same problem who tried a different browser (IE, Chrome, Firefox, etc.) and were able to load the moment just fine from a different browser.

Try Chrome, it’s the one I’ve been  using and I have had less problems with it than the other browsers. Also, when you go back into that moment and can finally collect thing, there is “hammer and nails” to collect by the front door in addition to the “salt and pepper pots” and “postcard from London”.

Hope you can get it to load!

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1)Is there a point to the wand test? Are there any differences beetween the wands (more powerful, etc.)? Or is it just to understand our personality based on the new content found in Olivanders shop? 2) I have a fealing that the leftmost locked icon will be quiditch, that quiditch will be an actual feature in future books. Whtat do you think? 3) What new features (ways to earn house points, have fun, communicate, etc.) do you want pottermore to add in the future?
-Andrew

Answer:

1) At this juncture, the wand doesn’t affect how you cast spells in dueling. I have been asked often if it ever would, since in Ollivander’s wand descriptions some wands are better for spell casting than others. I don’t know if they plan on implementing that later on down the line, or not. At the moment the wand asignment is purely personality based so that you can get a wand and more info on that wand.

2) I would LOVE to believe that Quidditch will be featured on Pottermore, but I wouldn’t count on it. The first icon was originally intended to be a link to the Pottermore store. We know this becaus of the following two images pulled from the html coding of the site:

“/locked/dockshop.png”	“/en/dockshop.png”

Now, that being said, obviously the shop has BEEN open and that locked icon never has changed over. So it is common belief among users that Pottermore recognized they were running out of dock space at the top and decided to use the icon for something else. Many people proclaim that surely it will be Hogsmeade, but the truth is we really don’t know what they might have in mind for that icon.

In regards to the possibility of Quidditch, I’m not overly optimistic. I feel as if they would have done it before dueling if they were going to do it at all. Quidditch, for Harry, started in the first year. Whereas Dueling Club didn’t happen until Chamber of Secrets. I think they looked at the programming hurtles they would face trying to make Quidditch and decided to go with the much easier concept of dueling.

But I would really LOVE for Pottermore to prove me wrong on this one.

3) There is such a world of possibilities for expansion of Pottermore. My first, and most important, request is the ability to ACTUALLY SEND A MESSAGE to another student via owl post. Imagine the possibilities? You could send someone a Howler and it would go off in the Great Hall when you open it. You could actually say “Thanks for all the duels” to someone you’ve been dueling back and forth with for days without ever speaking to  them.

To earn more points they could expand into a number of games, even aside from Quidditch itself. What about gobstones? Exploding snap? I’ve always wanted to know the rules of these two games as they have been referenced throughout the books with limited information. Wizard’s chess is a common request as well, and I would like that too. Even though I am utterly terrible at chess.

I would also like to see the other subjects. Transfiguration, in particular. But I’m sure there are many ways different Hogwarts subjects could be given their own games for users to play.

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The houses have extremely unequal numbers. Do you think one reason for this is so the Griffindors will be sure to win the house cup, as in the book?
-Kristina

Answer:

I don’t know about being SURE to win anything. At the moment Slytherin has about a 25,000 point lead, but as I discussed in a previous question, that is a drop in the bucket compared to the total number of points being earned. The Gryffindor’s have a definite point advantage under the new point calculation system. Before, the numbers were being averaged to form a point total for each house that was weighted according to the population of that house. This was to make it so that if you had more students it did not necessarily put you at an advantage. Unfortunately, too many people did not UNDERSTAND the point system, and instead of explaining it Pottermore changed the calculation to a straight total of all the points for all the students in a given house.

So, with significantly more students, each student in Gryffindor must earn LESS points apiece to stay in the lead then, say, Ravenclaw. Just for fun I did a quick point average to show you the average number of points per student for each house at the moment that I am writing this up.

Gryffindor: 80 pps
Ravenclaw: 88 pps
Hufflepuff: 71 pps
Slytherin: 85 pps

What this tells me is that right now, under the original point calculation system, RAVENCLAW would be in the lead. Slytherin would be in second and Gryffindor would be in third.

As it is, yes, Slytherin will have to CONSTANTLY work harder than Gryffindor to maintain a lead. And unfortunately Ravenclaw, with the least number of students will have to work even HARDER to win. It isn’t exactly fair… wonder if we can convince them to switch the point calculation system back…

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I have one more question for now. What’s the point in having 3 cauldrons? I bought all 3 of them on my first visit to Diagon alley, because it sayd that different potions take different times in different cauldrons. But since only one can be used at a time, and the copper one is the fastest, what’s the point in having the others? Also, is there a purpose of buying the moon chart, moon globe?
-Andrew

Answer:

Honestly, I only ever use one cauldron, and that is the Copper one because it is the fastest. Now I do know other avid potioneers who utilize all of them. Let’s say you know you are leaving the house for longer than it takes a potion to brew in the copper cauldron, so you brew it in pewter so it takes longer and won’t have failed when you get back from being left brewing too long. Aside from this, I can’t really see a need to own all three at once. I don’t even own a pewter one anymore, I blew it up early on and never replaced it.

In regards to the Moon Chart, Star Chart, and Globe of the Moon, they do not currently serve any purpose. People tend to buy them just so that they have EVERY possible item. I bet they come into play at some point though.

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Hi Elm,i need your help with my nickname problem.Any comments i’ve made using the nickname i chose haven’t been posted.It keeps showing me a message saying your comment is under moderation.I’ve searched through forums with lists of nicknames in case someone has already picked it but i haven’t found anyone.Any ideas why is this happening? I chose the nickname Auroress by the way…
-Violet

Answer:

The word Auroress is not in Pottermore’s database of approved words, so therefore the moderation is going to trigger every time you attempt to type it in a comment. It has nothing to do with whether or not anyone else is using the nickname as Pottermore itself doesn’t have anything to do with us using nicknames, it’s just something we decided to do on our own. My suggestion is to spell it “Auror ess” that space makes the filter treat it as two seperate words and allows it to post. Otherwise, you will have to pick a different nickname.

When picking a nickname, you want to consider is if it will pass through the moderation filter. Pottermore blocks a great deal of names, which is why I am Elm everywhere now as opposed to my real name (Lauren).

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Hi Elm, I found all the secret books, thanks for the help. but the last one in Hagrids secret, I know where it is and it lights up and tickles and will even say read about but I can’t get the bugger off the shelf! I’ve tried changing browsers and nothing. very frustrating please help?
-Robin

Answer:

I had a similar issue with one of the books, and did MULTIPLE refreshes until I was finally able to collect it. I have also heard that clearing your browser cache and cookies and then refreshing the page has worked for a number of people. If you are using chrome at all, try the tip posted in this image I found on silverheart91.tumblr.com:

Notice that they had trouble picking up the same book you are having trouble picking up, so hopefully this will work for you.

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Hey Elm!I found this blog really helpful. But It’s been a few weeks since I last opened my Pottermore account, I can’t help but notice some changes, especially the library thing. How do I go there? Thanks very much!:)
-Frances

Answer:

Thanks, I’m glad you’ve been finding the blog helpful! The “Pottermore Library” is located across three chapters in any moment that took place in the library, for links to each of these libraries CLICK HERE.

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Hey Elm, its IceNight. Since they hired that new manager at pottermore (Can’t remember her exact title) how do you think PM will change with respect to comments and things like that? Does it mean she has autonomy to do what she thinks fans want? Thanks.
-Octavius

Answer:

The official job title is Online Community Manager, and it’s a title that is vague and versatile. The responsibilities change depending on the community they are managing. I read quite a few different articles on it, trying to find the most common definition. Some stuff I found was slightly scary. Some pages made me want to BE a community manager. But in the end I think I can now sum up what exactly a Community Manager is.

A Community Manager is the liaison between a company’s online community members and the bigwigs at the company itself. They report news to the community, and manage the way the community works. They advice companies on how to effectively build an online community that people want to be a part of and continue returning to day after day.

The new Community Manager of Pottermore is coming from EA Games’ online community, which is a community like most online communities. There are forums dedicated to different games. Registered users have profile pages that can be personalized. Registered users can send private messages to each other. And moderation is served up in the form of moderators roaming forums and policing the posts.

Can we expect ALL of these things to show up on Pottermore now that we have a new Community Manager? Doubtful.

I am unsure how much power Sony intends to give our new CM, but I do hope that having someone who’s focus is the community and communication will bring about improvements. Finding a balance between child safety, and the needs of adult users is a necessity if Pottermore wants to keep people coming back to the site. Accommodation also needs to be made for the fact that there are two different groups posting on Pottermore: role-players and those talking about the site itself. Creating separate areas for different kinds of posts would make new users more likely to return to post things.

At the moment the Common Room and Great Hall act as a slow moving chat room, not as message boards. Meaning posts over time just vanish into the abyss below the span of vision of the comment board, never to be read by anyone ever again. I hope something changes about this, as new users coming into these chat like comment boards at the wrong time might just get the wrong impression about the general populace of the site.

I hope the new CM sees these things, and works towards improvements. I also hope that she emphasizes the Pottermore bigwigsthat a better, easier to access way of talking to support about bugs and issues should be put in place.

I feel for the woman, she has her work cut out for her. And guess what, her first day is TOMORROW. I wish her luck.

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This entry got a little away from me there. Some wonderful questions that just got me babbling. To ask a question to be answered in a future Ask Elm entry CLICK HERE!