Most Active Tolkien Forums of 2013

[Eldorion]

I think I've mentioned my pet project on here before, but in case I haven't, here's a bit of background.  Back in January I wanted to figure out how large our forum was compared to leading Tolkien forums on the web.  I expected us to maybe sneak in the bottom of the Top 10 at best, but I was surprised to find out that we were -- by my best estimate -- in the Top 5.  I decided that I wanted to find out for sure, so I scoured the web for Tolkien-related forums and made a big list of them, then checked in on their post totals periodically.  That was about five months ago, and as we are now at the halfway point of the year, I thought it was a good time to share my findings so far.

A few notes on methodology.  I limited the scope of this project to forums that were in English since those forums have considerable overlap in membership, and because I don't know much about Tolkien fandom in other languages and its harder to find such sites via Google.  I also excluded sites whose primary focus was games (video or otherwise) based on Tolkien's work since those forums tend to cater to a largely different crowd than other book- or movie-centric Tolkien forums.  Also, there are a number of corporate-run Tolkien game forums that double as customer service and thus have inflated levels of activity compared to fan-run forums.

Without further ado, here is the Top 10.

The Most Active Tolkien Forums of 2013 (first half of the year)
PPD = posts per day

1. TheOneRing.net: 343.8 ppd
   
2. Forumshire: 174.4 ppd
   
3. Arwen-Undomiel.com: 144.8 ppd
   
4. Council of Elrond: 96.9 ppd*
   
5. LOTR Fanatics Plaza: 92.3 ppd
   
6. TheOneRing.com: 91.7 ppd
   
7. The Hall of Fire: 49.8 ppd
   
8. The Barrow-Downs: 25.1 ppd
   
9. The Hobbit Movie (Bree): 16.2 ppd
   
10. Council-of-Elrond: 10.1 ppd*
    

* Approximate value

These results paint a picture of a fandom that is in decline: most of the forums in the Top 10 had heydays many years ago and get by largely on inertia now.  However, there are several forums that have found ways to keep themselves fresh, with TORn being the most successful at refocusing themselves on The Hobbit.  I was going to include some notes on the history of various forums and the fandom as a whole, but that idea got way out of hand so I'm going to have to wait to post that separately.  Hopefully the statistical side of the project is of interest to other people, though.  If you have any questions about the methodology or results, feel free to ask and I'll do my best to answer them.

[Norc]

only second.. hmm..200 more posts ler day.. hmmm... that can be fixed

btw, i think this looks great and that must've taken a lot of time  it's really cool ^^ thanks for doing the effort and so forth etc.etc, this is awesome.

[CC12 35]

the barrow downs was one of my first forums

[Pettytyrant101]

Good stuff Eldo- I commend you on your stat gathering.
We do pretty well for a small, slightly off its head, forum.  

[RA]

the barrow downs was one of my first forums

I've been there too. Mainly for Merp though

[RA]

Really cool list Eldo.  
I'm surprised Bree is ranked so high. How many people are reading the debates we've had over there, I wonder.

[Eldorion]

only second.. hmm..200 more posts ler day.. hmmm... that can be fixed

btw, i think this looks great and that must've taken a lot of time  it's really cool ^^ thanks for doing the effort and so forth etc.etc, this is awesome.

Good stuff Eldo- I commend you on your stat gathering.
We do pretty well for a small, slightly off its head, forum.  

Thanks guys. It was fun for me crunching numbers and everything. It didn't actually take a ton of time. Like 30-45 minutes a pop in intervals of roughly six weeks (aka when I got around to it). It's fun for me to see where we rank though, and it's gratifying since when we first moved here I feared we were going to go fade away in short order. :/

the barrow downs was one of my first forums

I met a bunch of people on LOTR Plaza (where I started off) who post on the Downs, and I've visited myself, but unfortunately it was already starting tos low down by the time I made my way over there.

[Eldorion]

Simulpost with RA.  I'm glad you liked the list.  Yeah, I was actually a little surprised at Bree's ranking too, but the-hobbit-movie.com has really favorable Google rankings for a lot of Hobbit-related searches so I'm sure you guys get a ton of lurkers as well as active posters.

[CC12 35]

i was pretty boring over there...i hadn't adopted the kdn13 vibe which is now my preferred style of writing...

[Orwell]

  Dark Planet?  No Dark Planet? Hurrah! No hard feelings though... 



{{{Like Hell no hard feelings! }}}

[Norc]

wait? no planet tolkien ! what?!

[Mrs Figg]

thats surprising news, I didnt think we were so active. so is that going off the amount of posts per day? or amount of members. But then again most of our stuff is not really Tolkien related, its not totally dedicated to the books and films as say Bree is or TORN.

[Norc]

maybe we're not really a tolkien forum  we just try to be

[azriel]

Well, we loosely cover Tolkien ?   If anyone actually read some of the stuff here, they MIGHT think they were on the wrong forum ?

[Eldorion]

  Dark Planet?  No Dark Planet? Hurrah! :cheers:No hard feelings though... 

{{{Like Hell no hard feelings! }}}

wait? no planet tolkien ! what?!

Planet Tolkien is #12 on the full list.

[Eldorion]

thats surprising news, I didnt think we were so active. so is that going off the amount of posts per day? or amount of members. But then again most of our stuff is not really Tolkien related, its not totally dedicated to the books and films as say Bree is or TORN.

It's based on the total number of posts since February 1 (when I started recording posts) divided by the number of days that have elapsed since then.  Therefore it includes both Tolkien and non-Tolkien posts on each forum.  The balance of discussion is different for each community, but most of the forums include a fairly wide variety of topics.  And not even TORn is totally dedicated to Middle-earth, as they have a sizable Off-Topic forum.  Bree is unique in that they don't have any separate sub-forums so it's harder to get non-Tolkien discussions going there.

[Mrs Figg]

I think we have Bunnycrunch Cumbersome to thank for the sheer volume of posts *coughNorcspammingsessioncough*

[Pettytyrant101]

Hey!!!  

[Mrs Figg]

what do you mean? ''Hey!!''  

[Norc]

wait? no planet tolkien ! what?!

Planet Tolkien is #12 on the full list.

trolololololololololololololololoo.....ø

[Norc]

He menns her bevares be has so mann posts himmelfallet ... Oh god autocorrect ... He has quite a lot of the posts himself. It's me and Petty who's the top "spammers" if u wanna call it that.

[Mrs Figg]

O

[Pettytyrant101]

Exactly! (I was going to say well put Norc, but thanks to your autocorrect, it wasnt well put at all!  )

[Norc]

eldo too though.

[David H]

 You gotta give Mrs Figg a lot of credit too. Eldo is ahead on total posts because he's been around longer, but with a career average of 13.2 posts per day, Figg is ahead of Eldo  by 1 1/2 posts per day.