HPFF Weblog: Extra, Extra, Read ALL About It! Del Harvey Survives the HPFF Staff Room!

We had a marvelous surprise in the Virtual Staffroom not that long ago – the fabulous Del Harvey of Perverted Justice dropped by to have a chat with us. Del will be joining us in a special chat room later this month, to discuss online safety – Please keep your eyes peeled for more details.

Our very own QuickQuotesQuill helped record the event for posterity . . .

Kay picked up a megaphone and shouted, "Okay, time for a break from the queue! We can only take so many tube-tops at once, right? Look who dropped by . . . It’s the one and only Del Harvey!"

Several staffers eagerly pulled themselves away from a long row of cubicles, muttering strange things like brick-fic-brick-fic-brick-fic, and slowly the glazed look faded from their eyeballs.

"Be there in a minute," called Cor Leonis, "I’m only a third of the way through validating a 6000 word chapter. If I leave now, I’ll lose my place."

"Del," shade said cheerfully, "Welcome to HPFF! You know all about us, but our members don’t know much about you. Can you tell us, what kind of work does Perverted Justice do?"

"We go into online chat rooms with underage profiles," Del Harvey explained, "And if adults contact those profiles and solicit them for sexual purposes, we work with the police to prosecute and convict them. We've also done a number of projects involving Dateline NBC and law enforcement."

"I’ve seen you on television," PrudencePrior smiled graciously. "Can I get you something? Coffee? Tea? Some adorable little crumpets? We have a house elf around here, somewhere, he might be able to scrounge up some doughnuts for you."

"We’re out of doughnuts, and there’ll be time for coffee later. Del, I’ve been dying to chat with you. What does being the ‘Law Enforcement Coordinator’ entail?" queried BitterEpiphany. "What exactly do you do?"

"It means I coordinate our efforts with law enforcement; it also means that if a district attorney has a question, they come to me. All Subpoenas are routed through me, and all police inquiries come to me." Del looked a bit taken aback as a shoddily dressed house elf tore through the room, muttering about mocha lattes and laundry.

Kay narrowed her eyes at StarBucky but gamely continued. "We know you spend 80+ hrs a week working with Perverted Justice, but do you have a position elsewhere in addition to that?"

"Nope. Other than Perverted Justice, I surf, bike, read, and make chainmail - the armor, not the letters. Those aren't paid positions, sadly." Del grinned.

"AY YI YI YI YI!" yelped the strange little House Elf. "I is being good house elf!" Del cringed and looked a bit nervous.

LogicalRaven laughed. "Don’t mind him, he’s a little strange, but he makes a great cup of coffee. If he gets in your way, just threaten him with clothes. Hey, are you any good with riddles?" Her eyes glinted mischeviously. "I need a word that rhymes with kedavra."

"NO!" insisted several staff members simultaneously. "Tell her no! She’s obsessed with riddles; she’ll make you tear your hair out!"

Logical pouted a bit. "Everyone needs a hobby. I happen to like riddles and scavenger hunts. Hey, Del, if you don’t like riddles, what do you do – do you have any interesting hobbies?"

"Ummm," Del pondered. "I don't think there's too many people out there who make chain-mail, so I suppose that should count as a relatively interesting hobby."

"No doubt," agreed RavenGryffendor.

Del grinned wickedly. "I also play a mean RPG on console machines."

"This is going to sound like an insane question," Noblevyne began, "But what is on your desk right now?"

"At this very second?" Del thought for several moments. "I'm sitting on a chair with my feet up on my bed. Yay for laptops! However, if I were to go out to my desk, there'd be two routers piled on top of each other, about 200 total feet of ethernet cable, my keys, a cat or two, and my mail that I need to actually open."

Scarhead cleared her throat. "Are you a Harry Potter fan? What are some of your favorite books, movies, or TV series?"

"Pfft," said Del, waving her hand dismissively. "Who's NOT a Harry Potter fan? However, I'm also a fan of V for Vendetta, The Watchmen, and the Sandman graphic novels, anything by Neil Gaiman, the movie Donnie Darko, and the TV series Smallville."

MadameSnape adjusted her tiara and smiled like the cat who caught the canary. "Tell me what you think - Is Professor Snape truly evil, or was he simply following Dumbledore’s orders?"

"Totally following Dumbledore's orders." Del looked relieved when Madame smiled – clearly, she had answered correctly. "Dumbledore is too smart not to have predicted something like that. Snape is not nearly as farsighted as Dumbledore. I really do think there was SOME reason that Dumbledore had things happen as they did . . . but I can't wait to find out what it was."

"Do you think good will triumph over evil in the end of Book Seven,” posed Timeturner, ”Or do you think that Harry will be unable to win?"

Del shook her head. "Man. I really want to think that good will triumph over evil, and I really think that Harry can pull it off if anyone can. I just can't imagine someone who hasn't even grown into the height of his powers couldn't beat someone like Voldemort who's so twisted by revenge that he can't make good judgments."

"You mentioned cats before – how many cats do you have?" asked Joela.

"Well, as for pets, I have three cats and I'm aunt to an iguana." Del said.

"What about music," wondered PhoenixStorm, "What sorts of music to you listen to?"

"As for music, you'll find the best list of that on my MySpace -- www.myspace.com/delharvey."

"Hey, guys?" called Cor Leonis, who was frowning. "Sorry to interrupt, but can I get a second opinion on this chapter, please?"

VioletGryffindor grinned ruefully. "Sure . . . hey, Del, you might want to take a peek at this too. Want to see what the HPFF queue looks like?"

The staffers and Del all crowded around the computer screen, peeking over Cor's shoulder. Their voices mumbled and murmured, and finally reached consensus: The story still violated the Terms of Service, and because it had been resubmitted three times without change, the author faced a temporary account suspension. Del looked a bit taken aback by the realities of the Queue, even though it surely paled compared to what she sees on a daily basis.

One of the Archive Admins took over to handle the details of the suspension, but she soon began frowning mightily. "Oh my gosh, guys, Del, look at this. Look at this author’s bio page, its awful!"

"That author posted her full name," Jax Granger said sadly.

"And that’s not all," pointed out Lucid, "She’s posted her age. She’s 14. 14!"

Siren was glum. "And her hometown. And the name of her school."

Bibbs shook her head. "I don’t get it – don’t they realize how unsafe it is, sharing personal information like that?"

"She may as well have posted a map to her house!" MadameSnape started massaging her temples, trying to fight off would had the potential to become an extremely painful stress-headache.

Kay looked worried. "I don’t know if they realize just how unsafe things can be online. How sharing personal information makes it easy for complete strangers to track them down. Del, I can’t tell you how grateful we are, that you’re going to do this chat with HPFF. We really need your help and advice."

# posted by Anonymous @ 8:00 PM