The decline of entmoot

[cassiopeia]

You can't ban eveyone who joined after Dec 19 because I hadn't joined then! Plus I had read the LOTR several times years before the movie came out and the movie didn't come out here tiill Dec 26. The movie just made me want to learn more and so join a message board like entmoot, which I think is true of many people.
I don't know if its declining cause I havn't been here long, but many people here are young and will make mistakes. It may be in decline if you define it as discussing whether Elijah Wood is weird or the use of hair dryers in the FOTR. I have noticed that more people participate in the movie forum than the Silmarillion forum. One thing that does annoy me is people posting that they had finished the book or a chapter. I mean thats great, but, well, isn't that a prerequisite for participating? I hope I got all the grammer and spelling right in this post.

[Sicirus]

I realy do not think grammer matters it is how much fun you have with the people who enjoy lotr as much as you do and are willing to share your thoughts aboutit.

[jerseydevil]

I can' t really say what Entmoot was like before December. I think I had stopped by several times just to read - but I didn't actually sign up until December.

I go into the archives to get information about what was going on before - I found this dated July 29, 2000 - almost two years ago. It was posted by Tater.

A pledge to Entmoot

I've been a jerk lately, especially here at entmoot. When the board first started I was the mean admin, since I felt it was nesecary since anduin and Ben weren't. I realized I was wrong and stopped being mean for a while. Just recently I started enforcing rules that don't really matter and I've just been a jerk about it. I've been under a lot of stress lately, but that's not your faults and I shouldn't take it out on you. I'm gonna stop. Unless someone's braking a rule hurts anyone (minus starting add threads, that hurts the server ) I'm not gonna enforce rules that are unnesecary. I'd especially like to issue a public apology to anduin, who I think I really hurt recently. I'm sorry, and I promise to try my best to do better. From now on I'll be a changed Tater (that sounds funny). Tell me if I'm a jerk, I'll try my best not to be. This place should be fun, and I'll do my best to make sure it is!

Re: A pledge to Entmoot

Thanks everyone for your support. The two posts thing was part of my tyranical rampage, ignore just about everything I said friday and saturday (unless it was important, though most of that is in the creation thread)

I used to be like that in my early days at the JC. Boy was I annoying

Basically what this is is no different than past things that have gone on before. Admins will always be complaining about spamming and so forth. There is just a lot more now. There are a lot more posts and a lot more people. Also - there are a lot of jerks that come on - post spam and then leave. But it doesn't seem any different than what it was like before.

Now we just have to hold Tater to his WRITTEN pledge he made on July 29th, 2000.

Here is a thread started by Ben on 10/24/1999....

Separation of school and board

As you may know, we've had some trouble with people from my school who came here and disrupted things a bit. That is done now, it won't happen any more. The offenders have been banned. Do not go posting on their 6 anti tater boards (yes, 6, don't comment ) and just ignore them. We don't want any more trouble. I think this is for the best. The general populace of the board just doesn't understand the school people.

This is Tater's comment -

Well, I must say I feel special! PB only had one forum totally deddicated to hating him! Honestly, this type of behavior is the most shamefull desplay I've ever seen. You should be appalled with yourselves, and I hope you realize the lack of maturity it takes to stoop this low.

[Radagast]

Yes I joined after the movie but I lurked and read the board a lot beforehand.

[Khamûl]

I have only been here since March, but let me assure you that I didn't come here because of the movie. I have been a dedicated Tolkien fan for years. If you folks say that the Entmoot is declining, it must have really been something in it's glory days. I'm sure that a good bit about LotR has been discussed ("Do Balrogs Have Wings?" "Who's the Oldest in Middle-Earth?") and now that people have seen the movie and have come here, the discussions have probably become more casual. I do not think that this is evidence of decline. Like Renille said, I think that it's just evolving.

But that's just me.

[BeardofPants]

People always say things like that. Back in the good old days.... blah blah blah. The world is going downhill, it's going to end tomorrow, etc. It's basic human nature to reminisce about the past, and delude ourselves on how good it was.

[Cirdan]

The secret to a happy life is a poor memory. It makes the past seem so great. I'm taking a sebatical from the 'moot. One less "newbie" hanging around, Eh?

[afro-elf]

if you get this PM your e-mail

[Laurelyn]

Oh, Cirdan, it seems you're doing like I did . . . . well, I'll miss you while you're gone, for what it's worth. Namarie.

The moot . . . . declining? Maybe.
Many of my old friends have packed up their keyboards and left, to be replaced by some who posses the same wisdom, some who wish to learn, and some who are here simply for the function of spamming and being the rotten eggs of the Moot. Every message board has got to have some of those, it seems. To unite the folk who care and remove the ones who don't.
I have joined the Moot since the movie came out, but that was because I simply had never thought to look on the web for Lord of the Rings-related things until I saw the address LordoftheRings.net in the movie credits, and one link led to another and I found myself here. Back in January, I thought I belonged here. Maybe I do. I don't know. So much has changed since then, but it can't really be called a decline. Like Renille said, it's evolving. I had never thoguht about it before like that but it's so true.

[TinuvielChild]

I actually hadn't heard about this site until February of this year, when one of my friends was on and i saw something related to Lord of the Rings on her screen, and i pestered her until she told me what it was. I immediately signed up and began posting. i hadn't seen the movie until after i joined the Moot (and, i might add, i didn't intend to). So one might say that the Moot induced me to go see Peter Jackson's masterpiece. i would say that Entmoot has changed since i got on here in February: friends have left (most noticably Nibs), new people have joined, pranks have been pulled for better or for worse (Entmoot Pink and Purple Day, April Fools), and that's life. Get over it.

I have now put in my two cents' worth.

[Earniel]

Everything has it's ups and downs. Maybe the entmoot is having one right now, but frankly I didn't really notice. But I never notice these things, I'm not that observant. And I never could read between the lines.

I don't think the entmoot is worse off, I'm still here. (Okay bad joke) The only thing I might have noticed as decline is the slight dislike of newbies that surfaces once in a while. Just because people join after december doesn't mean they have only seen the movie. I joined in January but I've read LOTR as far back as Christmas 1997. I only stumbled upon the entmoot then because 25 Hobbits had dissapeared and the link was replaced by a link to the tolkientrail.

Goodbye Cirdan, sorry to see you go. I hope I can welcome you back some day.

[Lizra]

I'm a newbie who says Thank-you" for the pleasure of being able to talk about LoTR. I stumbled in here after becoming totally eaten up by LoTR again after seeing the movie. My husband took pity on me and pulled up the Lord of the Rings website for me. Like many people my age I'm a total newbie to the computer. I didn't know what "do a search meant", and still wonder about lol. (land'o'lakes?, what is it?) I try to steer clear of the high school sites, but I wish I'd had a place like this when I was in high school. There does seem to be a traveling party. Partying without going out seems like half the fun though. I remember the getting dressed up to "see and be seen" as the best part. I guess they've added that element with the picture of me thing. I do like the 3 worder tho. There's not a lot to laugh about usually, I really like reading about Gimli getting macaronie stuck in his pants and breaking his zipper getting it out! Thanks for the website and the thoughtful comments from Tolkien lovers. There's lots of good reading from posts in the past. I enjoy it.

[Snowdog]

Has this site suffered from FOTR:LOTR the movie coming out? It seems our discussions have fallen from what they were like before the movie and we have become just another message board, slang, misspellings, abbreviations, and all. We were mentioned in the Yahoo magazine, but are we living up to their description of this site?

This is a cry that has gone up on Tolkienonline and Ringbearer.org, and probably every other reasonably popular Tolkien site since the movies. When you had primarily 'book' people on the sites, whether they were interested in the books or upcoming movies, they tend to be readers and fairly literate. But you now have a whole new audience with what I call the 'movie-only' people who many have no interest in reading the books. They tend to use 'netspeak' and such, and post to the message boards short, one-liner posts and such. It is the price paid for being on the radar scope of pop-culture which the movies have brought to the world of Tolkien. I am happy that Tolkiens works have been exposed to a wide audience, and many who first see the movie will read the books, and probably ask where Arwen is, but this is good. We can only hope to hold the movie-only' folk who dont have interest it reading the books to a higher literary standard.

[Khadrane]

I don't think Entmoot is declining. (Of course, I wouldn't know. I haven't been here that long.) There does seem to be more slang than when I first came here though.

[Wayfarer]

Entmoot isn't declining. You people have always sucked. ]: )

[Sister Golden Hair]

Originally posted by Casiopia:

I have noticed that more people participate in the movie forum than the Silmarillion forum.

What's that tell you?

[Darth Tater]

Welcome to the board Snowdog! I couldn't have said it better myself, and am sick of saying it, over and over and over again as I watch a board I put so much into decline into a staight of pointless banility. Any suggestions from someone who misses the state of Tolkien fandom on the web pre-movie would be greatly appreciated by an administration that is currently considering how to deal with the change Entmoot has undergone.

[Sister Golden Hair]

Indeed Snowdog, well said.

[Eruviel Greenleaf]

It's evolution, not decline!

I love this place. You might have noticed, considering how much I'm here. I'm a newbie, in that I joined after Dec. 19th, but hey, if there weren't newbies, the site would die out!

I know I tend to do a lot of one-line posts, and so on. I'm a hopeless spammer, I guess. Alas for me.

I most likely would not have read Lord of the Rings if it weren't for the movies. But I do not consider myself a 'movie-person,' because I read the books first. And therefore, if it were not for the movie, I would not have discovered entmoot, which would have been tragic

[afro-elf]

I agree that there is a decline but why don't the admin's post more threads as a stimulus

this is just a suggestion not a complaint

the problem is after about 3 years we are working with limited sources and the "big" topics have all been discussed

i fear that without the movies section which is the weakest part of the moot IMO and the GM section the moot would be quickly decline in post do to the dearth of new topics concerning the literary aspects of tolkein

are we doomed to the fate of the arnor?