# Why not post?



## ArwenStar (Oct 22, 2019)

We have... 1,2,3... 456,457,458...... 976,977,978......... 1720,1721,1722..............2998,2999,3000..... 3900 members currently. So many new ones! One every day. But looking closer.....🔍🔍🔍🔍.... hang on! Barely any are posting? Are you shy peoples? Unsure of where to start? Am i annoying you. Do not be put off! We don’t/can’t bite you! We have plenty of suggestions for places to start!!! And I’ll try not to annoy you! So if you are new and are reading this, please post below and join the forum properly!!!!!!!!


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## Erestor Arcamen (Oct 22, 2019)

A lot join just to read things they're interested in or looking for an answer to something and don't post. I post only because I've been here so long but there are some days I just browse without posting because some of the discussions by more versed members is so interesting to me.


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## Squint-eyed Southerner (Oct 22, 2019)

And I've noticed people joining in order to ask one specific question, then disappearing. Nothing wrong with that -- but I hope they'll come back!


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## Erestor Arcamen (Oct 22, 2019)

Well, they'll receive the newsletter unless they unsubscribe so maybe that'll interest them .


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## ArwenStar (Oct 22, 2019)

still. ttf is awsome


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## Squint-eyed Southerner (Oct 22, 2019)

Yes -- and when no one's around, it's an opportunity to dig through the older threads. Lots of interesting and informative discussions to be found.


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## Olorgando (Oct 23, 2019)

Squint-eyed Southerner said:


> Yes -- and when no one's around, it's an opportunity to dig through the older threads. Lots of interesting and informative discussions to be found.


I'll take that hint and run - er, make that stroll - with it.
Just doing a quick scan of the number of threads and messages in each of the sub-forums.
OK!

“Tolkien Media”, “New Line Cinema’s ‘LOTR’ Trilogy … and Beyond” has 1.9K threads, 48.4K messages
“The World of J.R.R. Tolkien”, “The Lord of the Rings” has 1.7K threads, 35.7K messages
“The Halls of Tolkienology”, “The Hall of Fire” has 789 threads, 15.9K messages
“The World of J.R.R. Tolkien”, “The Silmarillion” has 747 threads, 12.7K messages
“Tolkien Media”, “Other Related Topics” has 436 threads, 4.6K messages
“The Halls of Tolkienology”, “Bag End” has 416 threads, but 14.7K messages
“Bars & Inns”, “The Floating Log” has 404 threads, but 23.4K messages! Third highest message total.

OK, I did a quick scan of “The Halls of Tolkienology”, “The Hall of Fire”. 40 pages of threads.
Interestingly, “[Balrog] Wings or No?” with a poll has been attached to the top of the sub-forum as a sticky thread. 778 replies on 39 pages.
Well, being the 9999-pund gorilla that I’ve found so far, no wonder. I wondered why not Tom Bombadil?

I think I just found that other, the 8999-pound, gorilla that I was sure must exist. In “The Halls of Tolkienology”, “The Hall of Fire”, page 8, thread “What IS Tom Bombadil?”. 409 replies on 21 pages, started 04 September 2001 by Telchar, last post 19 November 2012 by Arvedui.
I don’t think I want to “necro post” this thing “back to life”, it’s probably been chewed through several times over.

Awks! Talk about a hot potato! Page 15, “Who is the most beautiful woman in Middle-Earth?”, with a poll, yet. 193 replies on 10 pages. Snowball’s chance, flying pigs, ten-foot pole etc. if you get my meaning.

Anyway, my quick scan of the 40 pages I noticed quite a few repeats, even multiple repeats (not everyone has the patience to look back to see if a topic has been raised before). That discussion was at its most feverish around the time of the LoTR films. And that some threads are starting to look cute, and have “historical value”, if they fizzled out before the next film trilogy.


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## Squint-eyed Southerner (Oct 23, 2019)

Well, I hope you enjoyed doing all that digging!  

It's good to answer specific questions people may ask, i.e. "How many Nazgul were there?", but with an open-ended subject such as the nature of Tom Bombadil, a link to an earlier thread is often helpful, if only to keep the rehashing levels down a bit. I always try to encourage new members to take a stroll (if not necessarily an archeological expedition!) through the older threads here.


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## Olorgando (Oct 23, 2019)

Squint-eyed Southerner said:


> Well, I hope you enjoyed doing all that digging!
> 
> It's good to answer specific questions people may ask, i.e. "How many Nazgul were there?", but with an open-ended subject such as the nature of Tom Bombadil, a link to an earlier thread is often helpful, if only to keep the rehashing levels down a bit. I always try to encourage new members to take a stroll (if not necessarily an archeological expedition!) through the older threads here.


There was no "digging" for the threads & messages stats. That's right on the surface of TTF, at "root" level as one used to say in the old MS-DOS days. 
You must remember: black screen with C:\
This thingy:

🤓
*Serious* *arch*aeology would involve the *arch*ives. 
I really wonder why Erestor Arcamen offers to resurrect *archived* threads! 😟
I mean just the "big seven" sub-forums I listed above total about 6 400 threads and 155 400 messages!!! _(This is Excel time!) 😳_
Assuming just for the sake of argument that you need a minute to read each message (some will take much longer, but lots of them a lot less), that totals *pure reading* time:
15 weeks, two days and 22 hours (or 107 days and 22 hours). 😲😧
This does not take into account any time for scrolling, "turning" pages and all of that site reaction time stuff which can be very variable. 
It is not to be wondered that real-life archaeology has gotten so ridiculously fragmented in its specialization. 🤓🥴


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## Halasían (Oct 23, 2019)

Olorgando said:


> There was no "digging" for the threads & messages stats. That's right on the surface of TTF, at "root" level as one used to say in the old MS-DOS days.
> You must remember: black screen with C:\
> This thingy:
> View attachment 6149
> 🤓



....and to think I work at an "advanced smart-metering" company where the Meter Management System database is in FoxPro and the twelve meter test racks complie their data in .txt and are batch-uploaded by DOS command....

Getting back to the young lady's original question.... in the near twenty years I have been on this site I've only posted less than a thousand times. Usually browsed and used PM more.


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## Olorgando (Oct 23, 2019)

Halasían said:


> ....and to think I work at an "advanced smart-metering" company where the Meter Management System database is in FoxPro and the twelve meter test racks complie their data in .txt and are batch-uploaded by DOS command....


Erm … except what's to be found in the very current Oxford English Dictionary (I'm guessing), and that only for single words … you might as well have been posting Mandarin Chinese, Halasían. Oh dear, since my retirement this year my company vocabulary has apparently seriously degraded. Good thing, I would guess off the cuff in the sense of clear thinking. Not so good a thing, apparently, as clear thinking seems to be headed for dinosaur territory (the bit about the tiny, near-useless brains pre-asteroid).


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## Grond (Oct 23, 2019)

Olorgando said:


> Erm … except what's to be found in the very current Oxford English Dictionary (I'm guessing), and that only for single words … you might as well have been posting Mandarin Chinese, Halasían. Oh dear, since my retirement this year my company vocabulary has apparently seriously degraded. Good thing, I would guess off the cuff in the sense of clear thinking. Not so good a thing, apparently, as clear thinking seems to be headed for dinosaur territory (the bit about the tiny, near-useless brains pre-asteroid).


Back in the day there was The Guild of Tolkienology (which I was fortunate to lead) and The Guild of Ost-in-Edhil (led by Ancalagon). We had debates, contests, arguments, and so much more. We had over 20 members in Tolkienology and Anc had at least that many in Ost-in-Edhil. There should be lots in the archives from those days 2000 - 2003.


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## Balrog47 (Oct 24, 2019)

ArwenStar said:


> still. ttf is awsome


what's ttf?


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## Squint-eyed Southerner (Oct 24, 2019)

Us!


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## Balrog47 (Oct 24, 2019)

Squint-eyed Southerner said:


> Us!


Oh duh The Tolkien Forum


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## Squint-eyed Southerner (Oct 24, 2019)

Welcome to TTF, Balrog!


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## Erestor Arcamen (Oct 24, 2019)

Welcome Balrog, glad to have you here!


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## Squint-eyed Southerner (Oct 24, 2019)

BTW, here's a section where you can, if you like, introduce yourself and/or your areas of interest:









New Members


Meet and greet the newest TTF members. -- [ One thread per new member only! ] --




www.thetolkienforum.com





As always, I recommend a browse through the various forums -- you never know what you might find!


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## Halasían (Oct 24, 2019)

Olorgando said:


> Erm … except what's to be found in the very current Oxford English Dictionary (I'm guessing), and that only for single words … you might as well have been posting Mandarin Chinese, Halasían. Oh dear, since my retirement this year my company vocabulary has apparently seriously degraded. Good thing, I would guess off the cuff in the sense of clear thinking. Not so good a thing, apparently, as clear thinking seems to be headed for dinosaur territory (the bit about the tiny, near-useless brains pre-asteroid).



Ah.... based on past conversations and your posting a DOS box, I thought you were old-tech-savvy. I stand corrected. 

Moving on.... yes, back in the day I remember those Tolkienology debates. I usually stayed clear of them as my enjoyment of the books as published didn't depend ondissecting every letter of every sentence. It was entertaining to read some of it though.


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## Olorgando (Oct 24, 2019)

Halasían said:


> Ah.... based on past conversations and your posting a DOS box, I thought you were old-tech-savvy. I stand corrected.


It was never more that fiddling around a bit in DOS. But then, I forget which of my private PCs (starting in late 1989) was the first one that did not land you at the DOS-prompt, as it was called here.
Anything that got a tad involved, like having a menu for variations of autoexec.bat and config.sys, splitting up the hard disks into logical disks to reduce cluster size, or a bios-patch for dual-boot use (my first Pentium-class, an AMD affair, was split into a Win3.5 and a Win98 (upgraded from that beta affair, Win95)) boot possibility; don't ask me why anymore …), I had a buddy who was always some steps ahead of me and kind of my private help-desk. And never mind Unix or anything even more involved.


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## Balrog47 (Oct 24, 2019)

Balrog47 said:


> Oh duh The Tolkien Forum


There is a .ttf file....


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## Erestor Arcamen (Oct 25, 2019)

Balrog47 said:


> There is a .ttf file....



I didn't think of that. It's a font file extension, isn't it?


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## Olorgando (Oct 25, 2019)

Balrog47 said:


> There is a .ttf file....





Erestor Arcamen said:


> I didn't think of that. It's a font file extension, isn't it?


Eh? OK, so I'm not current on stuff like this. All I can remember are .tif (or .tiff - tagged image file format?) files. But this is from the 8.3 DOS format file names time, so never mind.


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## Erestor Arcamen (Oct 25, 2019)

Yeah, here's some more info:





__





TTF File Extension - What is a .ttf file and how do I open it?


Learn about .TTF files and view a list of programs that open them.




fileinfo.com


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## Ithilethiel (Oct 27, 2019)

Squint-eyed Southerner said:


> I always try to encourage new members to take a stroll (if not necessarily an archeological expedition!) through the older threads here.



Ummm....I seem to recall you chiding my digging about until you too caught the bug...hmmmm SeS?


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## Squint-eyed Southerner (Oct 28, 2019)

Jes' funnin'!


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## ArwenStar (Nov 2, 2019)

🙂 

And sorry not to say it sooner, but welcome, Balrog!


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