Fanlore:Featured Article Archives/2020: Week 39
HPforGrownups (a.k.a. Harry Potter for Grownups, HPfGU or HP4GU) is a Harry Potter mailing list founded in 1999. It started on Yahoo! Clubs and moved to eGroups on August 24, 2000, before ending up back on Yahoo! in early 2001 after eGroups was purchased to form Yahoo! Groups.
It was described as "a friendly, thought-provoking place for adults to enjoy discussions of the Harry Potter books. It is a moderated list with very high volume. Along with the extensive discussion board, HPFGU feautures polls, essays, jokes, as well as scheduled chat sessions."
This discussion list was very influential in shaping the Harry Potter fandom, and produced many BNFs that would found their own fanfiction archives. It was also infamous for its many ship wars and wanks.
HPforGrownups also sponsored Nimbus 2003, the first Harry Potter convention.