Visitors from Bree-land

well time to start them back up Malick ... I think there was something to do with some corrupt script or something. I'm trying to talk them into a complete redesign and a way to keep out the bots to cut down on the spam, but their programmer is a bit apprehensive about it at this point. We'll just have to see how things play out

koriagin wrote:Hi Folks!


I haven't been around for a while.  What happened to Bree?  I cann't even find it on a Google search.  It used to be that it would always show up at the top of the list when searching for "The Hobbit Movie".  Now it's only the corporate sites, especially TORN stuff at the top.  I guess they must have learned a thing or two about how to get your site to the top of the search list.  (Perhaps someone also learned how to get a site off of the top and keep it well out of sight, if you take my meaning....)

site is back up koriagin, I think that TORn does things to get themselves to the top of the list. But the staff over there has an ongoing relationship with Peter Jackson and they get all sorts of little perks for praising his films and publicizing Jackson's films for him. No matter how badly Jackson strays from the source material which is what TORn claims to be about, they keep on praising instead of opening their eyes and realizing that Jackson's changes have absolutely nothing to do with Tolkien.

If by "does things" you mean operate the largest, most popular, and most widely-referenced Tolkien/movie/Hobbit site on the web then ... yes, I suppose TORn has done things to get to the top of Google's search results. Their special relationship with PJ has undoubtedly played a role in their prominence in the fandom (to be fair, most fandoms have one or two sites that develop a special relationship with the creators), but I doubt PJ has any say in Google's ranking algorithms.

Does Jon on Bree know that most of the regulars were posting here during the downtime?  He seems rather lonely. I don't know if he has an account here or not, though.

http://the-hobbit-movie.com/forum/topic/hello-there/page/2#post-161662

Yes.  That's me.  You can call me jon - it's what I would have used as a handle here but the name was taken when I registered.  As you can see I'm naturally somewhat suspicious of the old site.  Or perhaps slightly paranoid.  But just because I think everybody is out to get me doesn't mean they're not!  

Good to see everyone again!

I'll have a lot of reading to do to catch up...

Anyone know why the site was down for so long or why all the posts are 4 months old?

Now I feel somewhat silly for not realizing. The treatment of Bree lately has definitely been pretty weird so I can't really blame you for being suspicious. I think Sin's been working on and off on a spin-off forum of his own (which I have tentatively termed Buckland ). It's really a shame about Bree losing its Google status, too. That was always a big driver of membership in both the Old Forum and Bree eras.

NB I can probably change your username here to Jon, if you want. I checked and it should be open; I'm not sure why the site wouldn't have let you use it.

Simulpost.

koriagin wrote:Anyone know why the site was down for so long or why all the posts are 4 months old?

Last time the problem was, as best we could figure out, that someone had forgotten to re-register the domain name for Bree. This time there was a database error message, so I assume there was some sort of internal technical error on the site. The loss of three months of posts may be related to that. Or maybe they had to restore the site from backup and hadn't backed up the forum any time recently. Sin has been in touch with the owners recently and they seem to be having problems with the technical guy who works for them.

Eldorion wrote:I can probably change your username here to Jon, if you want.  I checked and it should be open; I'm not sure why the site wouldn't have let you use it.

That would be totally awesome.

Well... sounds like my paranoia was somewhat unfounded... but you never know!

I'll have to do more reading around this site. I'm inclined to do more posting here since it seems a little more stable. It's a shame tho... I felt that some of my best writing was over on the old site.

Buckland... I like it! Seems suitable.

Ironically, my last post over at Bree was from 5 months ago. So reading thru the other posts it will only seem like I've been gone for a month!

(Thanks for the name change Eld...)

No problem, jon.

I'm glad that Bree is at least online again, so that we can read through the old discussions, but it is unfortunate how unstable it's been lately.  That seems to be a feature of forums with absentee admins.  We've put a lot of work into building up a refuge here (and letting the forum grow beyond just that), and I'm glad we've been able to help out during the technical troubles.  There are a lot of Bree-landers posting here now so I do hope you'll stick around.

Welcome to Forumshire Jon.  
You join a long and proud list of Breeland refugees here.

Thanks Petty! Good to see you again!

@Eld - I will definitely be sticking around. Thanks for the warm welcome.

Another refugee from Bree here. I had not posted in quite some time though, maybe 10-11 months. AUJ took a lot of wind out of my sails but sucker that I am I'm ready for the next installment and hoping against hope that it'll be better than the last.

hi jon and Beleg ^^ welcome to this crazy forum

Welcome Beleg. Good to see you here.

Why come we have both a refugees and a visitors from Bree thread?   I guess the other thread takes donations and sets up cots.

Anyway, welcome Beleg!

Beleg wrote:Another refugee from Bree here.  I had not posted in quite some time though, maybe 10-11 months.  AUJ took a lot of wind out of my sails but sucker that I am I'm ready for the next installment and hoping against hope that it'll be better than the last.

Hi Beleg, welcome to Forumshire! I'm in something of the same boat. I'm trying to keep my expectations in check for DOS but I am looking forward to seeing it. And I honestly don't know if I'll like it better or worse than AUJ, which is kind of exciting given how many spoilers I've read for it.

halfwise wrote:Why come we have both a refugees and a visitors from Bree thread?   I guess the other thread takes donations and sets up cots.

You can probably blame Odo's xenophobia. The "Refugees" thread was started up back when the new forum first began because Odo wanted the forum to be called "Hobbit Forum Refugees". (I disagreed because I didn't want us to be defined by our refugee status and preferred that we try to build something new and even better.) This thread was started by Odo as an entry point for people from Bree-land, I assume so that he can ensure they are respectable before posting too much.

hi Jon  

Hi Figgs!   Good to see you again!

I have a couple questions:

1. Over at Bree I was able to look at my profile and see a list of my former posts organized by the most recent first.  Is there anything like that available here?
   
   
2. Is there a Tolkien Trivia thread here?
   
   

You have to go to the statistics tab of your profile to get to those lists, or you can follow these links.

All posts: http://www.hobbitmovieforum.com/spa/jon
All threads you've posted in: http://www.hobbitmovieforum.com/sta/jon

I don't believe we have a trivia thread (or if we do it's no longer active), so you're more than welcome to start one.