My personal opinion on this is that we are all, technically, amateurs. Unless someone else is getting paid to be here. Then I want to know why THEY are and I'M not. Because that's not fair.
Anyway, I've been here since November (2003), and I still consider myself to be an amateur. I've read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings countless times. I still consider myself an amateur. I've read The Silmarillion a couple of times (and didn't understand a word of it until I heard the book-on-tape
). I still consider myself an amateur. Why? Because I don't know HALF as much as I could. I can "show off" my knowledge to random people, but I don't know that much. I can correct people (nicely) when they make a mistake.
I, fortunatly, have not had much of an experience with "annoying" amateurs. The only ones I know are my brother and my cousin, and they just say stupid stuff to make me angry. And when people do try to show off with false facts, I don't think that it's our place to criticize them. Yes, they are being stupid, and I know that it must be fun to make them look bad, but it doesn't make us look any better to insult them. I firmly believe that this creates a bad image for all of us. Eventually, these people will move on to something else, and will annoy other people. The people who really care will be around in a few years, not those. They will be selling their DVD's at garage sales. Ignore them. But do keep posting their antics here. It's really quite fascinating. Just be polite.