consider Daystar's remix of HPMoR ch1-4 for smoother entry

[jmichael2497]

since the starting is not as polished as the later writing (and the serial web release format did not allow the author to go back and revise the start like before a typical book release [edit: actually it was revised several times throughout the project])...

one thing that i often recommend is starting with the daystareld.com revisions to ch1-4 https://www.fanfiction.net/s/9676374/1/Daystar-s-Remix-of-HPMOR and then continuing from there.

(i wish someday the hpmorpodcast.com would use these to rerecord the first 4 kinda awkward original chapters as well)

[rrthomas]

It's a pity that Yudkowsky appears to have dropped the book. I am a bit nervous of going from just typesetting it, proof-reading and Brit-fixing to actually becoming an editor/curator. Is someone else or some community doing this elsewhere? I agree that it would be great to have a better text, though.

[jmichael2497]

i remember mention somewhere the daystareld intro being included in a pdf already, but thought i must have imagined it, since this seems to be where hpmor site points to...

(but i remember at the time being mildly offended at the alteration to the original author's starting line description of the book shelves, once it gets to that part, since that gets echoed on the return home later, i felt that line should have been preserved at least)

quick web search and found it was a multi-layered fork.

https://github.com/xenohedron/hpmor (forked from here 2013?)
https://github.com/xenohedron/hpmor-xetex (their 2018 sources and 2015 pdfs)
https://github.com/xenohedron/hpmor-pdf (their 2015 pdfs only)

seems they are making American English version as they note removing "Britpicking" for consistency.

[rrthomas]

Thanks for the links. It seems it would be fairly complicated to integrate these alternate chapters, if it also required re-Britfixing, but it's a good pointer, so I'll leave the issue open.

[entorb]

I like the idea. What about choosing one version and placing the other into the appendix?

[rrthomas]

@entorb, this sounds more like a "critical edition"; I don't think it's that useful for a normal version (especially printable; it's less of a problem adding appendices to the PDF).

The various issues raised above would have to be resolved (or ignored!) if the non-Yudkowsky version were chosen for the main text.

[Aerael]

I personally find the daystareld revisions to be lacking.

I much enjoyed some changes, like the change of scenery. The cupboard under the stairs? Brilliant idea. The doubled use of "What."? Super cool. Many other things are good alternatives, with "good" not necessarily meaning "better".

The key aspect of criticism I have with it is that it describes in exaggerated detail what in vanilla HPMOR was revealed via show-don't-tell story telling, and for good reason. Yudkowsky made a point of letting the reader fill in the gaps, e.g. in the prediction/logic riddles, but also by not spelling out every single thought. One of the beautiful things about HPMOR is how authentic and true to the original Harry Potter series it feels, and that is in partial due to its reliance on simple dialogue (and pretty basic descriptions) to drive the story and to drive the readers understanding of the thought processes beneath WITHOUT always hitting it on the nose. This revision IS hitting it on the nose -- and taking a really long time in doing so. Again, I believe there are some good ideas in there Yudkowsky could have thought of which would genuinely improve the story -- but the transfer into a HPMOR-esque piece of writing is done poorly.

Anyway, another issue is that IF someone takes the freedom to take HPMOR and change its canon, then it should either be its author and/or the collective of its readership (probably best reacher over a year-long poll on reddit or something like that). It should NOT be in the hands of less than a dozen enthusiasts discussing this in an obscure subthread on a github page. THis would be hybris to say the least, considering HPMOR's impact.

[jmichael2497]

I appreciate your perspective @Aerael though still feel the revision makes the text more welcoming with minimal downsides, to get more people into HPMOR and related community.

With so many media options, people learn to drop things that don't appeal to them right away... some won't bother with an award winning tv series if the first half of the first episode isn't as perfectly amazing as the series finale made years later.

Most folks are not accustomed to enduring lower quality amateur writing (despite having overall merits) and may just drop it within the first couple of awkward chapters.

If a poll was posted on reddit, I'd bet majority would agree those first few chapters have some very rough spots that need something done. May as well use what is already available, because can't easily rewrite by committee or LLM.

Considering that HPMOR got several rewrites anyway... this 3rd party revision, by notably prolific author Daystar Eld, seems to fix the rough and off-puttingly amateurish cringey edges of the currently posted version.

The point is to get more people into this HPMOR community, so it should be as accessibly polished as possible, but don't let perfect be the enemy of good enough.

[twilight-flower]

I'd be against making the Daystar-remixed versions default, although offering them as an alternate version seems fine if that's a thing people want. But they're not... cohesive with the rest of the story? Daystar's contributions are conspicuously different from Eliezer's both in their prose style and in their nuances of characterization, in a fashion that I personally like less and in a fashion that I imagine would stick out as odd / disjoint even for those who don't share my taste in that regard.

(Not to mention confusing for any readers who come here from the hpmor.com ebook-download link and discover that the first four chapters are dramatically different in the ebooks than in the web version.)