Re: Most Active Tolkien Forums of 2013

[Orwell]

I kinda like living in a village and not a metropolis, so second place is as high as I want to go. Numbers have never been that important to me. I reckon the place could be run with just me and the Bankses if it came to a pinch. Though I like it that all you others are here. Mavericks all!   



{{{Fancy being left alone here with the Bankses for eternity! }}}

[Norc]

this is the best forum. why? because we're tiny  we're a small group of more or less crazy people and everyone just has a lot of fun. and we don't just talk LOTR and tolkien  i think that's the key to success. always be unpredictable.

[azriel]

Quite right Norc   We are all just a bunch of everyday, ordinary people!



Who like to chat & have fun & while away the happy hours !



Dont see how anyone could say anything different ?

[halfwise]

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.

I think Figgs nailed it. Our non-Tolkien posts outnumber or Tolkien posts by 3 to 1. If you only include Tolkien posts we fall down to #6 at about 40 ppd, but still ahead of Bree.

[Eldorion]

I think Figgs nailed it.  Our non-Tolkien posts outnumber or Tolkien posts by 3 to 1.  If you only include Tolkien posts we fall down to #6 at about 40 ppd, but still ahead of Bree.

You'd have to adjust every other forum's totals if you wanted to create a ranking of only Tolkien posts, and there are several that get by largely on role-playing or non-Tolkien discussion.  Even TORn derives a not insignificant chunk of their activity from off-topic posts, and they're one of the most Tolkien post-centric since they attract so many newbies and passerby to their Hobbit forum.

Generally speaking though, I think a broad range of topics with active discussion is a selling point for a community. If you're completely dependent on a single topic, then your community isn't going to last much longer than said topic remains in the public eye.

[halfwise]

Yeah, once the next Hobbit movie has been out, where will that leave us? Egads, we'll be doing nothing but discussing Moffat and Cumberbatch.   

[malickfan]

Excellent work Eldo! We rock apparently! Roughly half the number of TORn, wow! Then again as Halfwise says I'd guess half or more of those posts were Dr Who/Cumberpants related, I don't think TORn will be getting less busier, the forum members there never seem to tire of discussing Thorin's hair...

I mean we don't exactly discuss the Hobbit really do we? Insult and rage about it yes but not proper discussion, Crabbit goes a long way. Then again I don't think I can really discuss DOC having only seen it once, much of it I'n trying to forget anyway...

And Petty I was pleasantly surprised to see you post on TORn (didn't know you were still a member) gave me a few chuckles to see your brutal honesty!.

[Tinuviel]

Yeah, once the next Hobbit movie has been out, where will that leave us?  Egads, we'll be doing nothing but discussing Moffat and Cumberbatch.   

   What will we do when there's nothing left to crabbit over?

[Orwell]

With experienced folk like Petty here, Your Majesty, there will never be an end of crabbit.

[Pettytyrant101]

Very true Orwell, my crabbit well runneth over   

"Petty I was pleasantly surprised to see you post on TORn (didn't know you were still a member) gave me a few chuckles to see your brutal honesty!."- malick

Its a rare event but yes, occasionally I still make a post over there, and then inevitably and almost immediately the wagons start circling. They dont like the crabbit over there.

But that they know me so well in all my crabbit glory does rather hint that some of those ToRN folk have been lurking around the Forumshire hedgerows and peeping into good folks holes!   

[Amarië]

Yeah, once the next Hobbit movie has been out, where will that leave us?  Egads, we'll be doing nothing but discussing Moffat and Cumberbatch.   

At least there's enough fuel there to bring the Shire to the top of the list.

[Bluebottle]

Yeah, somehow I feel that won't be much of a problem.   

Did you guys know the word spam, as in on the internet, comes from the Monty Python sketch where a bunch of Vikings drown out the sketch conversation by singing spam over and over.

[Norc]

yes. we know. i think u've posted the video  but i like the reference thouhg.. i mean there are lots of vikings here to drown u guys in spam


(that came out a bit wrong..)

[Bluebottle]

You know, when you mention it I think I did.

But I had no idea that that was the actual basis for the word at the time.

As you say, perhaps, a bit, poingnant, yes.   

[halfwise]

I didn't know.    Now I have to find the video.

[Norc]

poignant? 

i remembered u used that word, and since i don't know adn don't care what that mean, i skim read it and i read that i said u were pregnant...

[halfwise]

Found the video. Even more incoherent than most Monty Python. I'm surprised it launched a meme, actually.

[Bluebottle]

Well, it launched the word spam. Which is probably now in the OED. But the sketch is rather absurd, yes.   

[halfwise]

No, the word spam was a joke before the skit, but the transferrance to another medium would require it to be a highly popular and memorable skit, which I just don't see.

[Bluebottle]

I think it's quite widely known in all it's absurdity.  

And it's only in the internet sense that it was the inspiration for the use of the word spam, I think. It was of course a word for other things before the sketch... Spam for one.  

[Pettytyrant101]

"the term spam is derived from the 1970 Spam sketch of the BBC television comedy series Monty Python's Flying Circus. The sketch is set in a cafe where nearly every item on the menu includes Spam canned luncheon meat. As the waiter recites the Spam-filled menu, a chorus of Viking patrons drowns out all conversations with a song repeating "Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam... lovely Spam! wonderful Spam!", hence "Spamming" the dialogue. The excessive amount of Spam mentioned in the sketch is a reference to the preponderance of imported canned meat products in the United Kingdom, particularly a brand of tinned pork and ham (SPAM) from the USA, in the years after World War II, as the country struggled to rebuild its agricultural base. Spam captured a large slice of the British market within lower economic classes and became a byword among British children of the 1960s for low-grade fodder due to its commonality, monotonous taste and cheap price — hence the humour of the Python sketch.
In the 1980s the term was adopted to describe certain abusive users who frequented BBSs and MUDs, who would repeat "Spam" a huge number of times to scroll other users' text off the screen. In early chat rooms services like PeopleLink and the early days of Online America (later known as America Online or AOL), they actually flooded the screen with quotes from the Monty Python Spam sketch.
With internet connections over phone lines, typically running at 1200 or even 300 bit/s, it could take an enormous amount of time for a spammy logo, drawn in ASCII art to scroll to completion on a viewer's terminal. Sending an irritating, large, meaningless block of text in this way was called spamming. This was used as a tactic by insiders of a group that wanted to drive newcomers out of the room so the usual conversation could continue. It was also used to prevent members of rival groups from chatting—for instance, Star Wars fans often invaded Star Trek chat rooms, filling the space with blocks of text until the Star Trek fans left. This act, previously called flooding or trashing, came to be known as spamming. The term was soon applied to a large amount of text broadcast by many users.

It later came to be used on Usenet to mean excessive multiple posting—the repeated posting of the same message. The unwanted message would appear in many if not all newsgroups, just as Spam appeared in nearly all the menu items in the Monty Python sketch. The first usage of this sense was by Joel Furr in the aftermath of the ARMM incident of March 31, 1993, in which a piece of experimental software released dozens of recursive messages onto the news.admin.policy newsgroup. This use had also become established—to spam Usenet was flooding newsgroups with junk messages. The word was also attributed to the flood of "Make Money Fast" messages that clogged many newsgroups during the 1990s.[citation needed] In 1998, the New Oxford Dictionary of English, which had previously only defined "spam" in relation to the trademarked food product, added a second definition to its entry for "spam": "Irrelevant or inappropriate messages sent on the Internet to a large number of newsgroups or users."- wiki