[Mithadan]

Feanor, first off, thank you for your kind comments regarding Reunification of the Entish Bow. REB was a labor of love, with the emphasis sometimes most heavily on the word "labor". Each of the two chapters was supposed to run for three or four months and they stretched into years. By the end, we finished by force of will. That RPG was in some ways a microcosm of this forum. Initial enthusiasm gave way to real life demands. Several writers dropped off, some just disappearing and others terminating their characters.

When I first joined this forum, within a month of its birth, there were only a handful of members, almost all of whom were very knowledgeable, extremely capable writers and able debaters. I, personally had abandoned another board that had become swept up in speculation and analysis of the then upcoming movies. The Downs quickly became known as the board for people who wanted to discuss and analyse the books; the "thinking man's" Tolkien board. Even then, we saw members come and go. People would accumulate a few hundred posts, then disappear or become treeish and rarely appear. I miss many of these members.

Even so, when the movies hit, we were inundated and around that time, we saw the advent of members linking old threads when faced with the 30th iteration of "do Balrogs have wings", "who is Tom Bombadil", "was Legolas blonde", etc. The proliferation of members and threads, particularly "chatty" threads, impacted upon our bandwidth and was beginning to cost more money. I am as guilty as any of the practice of linking old threads, though I rarely do so now, except to show differing viewpoints on an issue. Frankly, I would now discourage this practice.

When the huge influx of members happened after the movies came out, many old members lamented the loss of the earlier "bookish" atmosphere and many gave up. We administrators and moderators effectively burned out policing the joint, so many of us are not very active now. Real life intervenes as well. Work and school demands take a toll. One member nearly lost a house in a hurricane. And of course there remains the "nothing new under the sun" attitude. The ironic thing is that the Downs is now more like it was 2000 or 2001 than it has been in years; quiet, orderly and bookish with thoughtful posts and threads once again.

When I came out of semi-retirement a few months ago, I resolved privately to post at least once a week and start a thread or two a month. My results have been uneven. But if everyone adopts this attitude, the Downs will continue in its grand tradition.