Hey guys!
Well, as university takes away all my time for the hobby, I've been intermittently following things, and now with the pause between semesters I do have a bit of time.
What's happening with the forum? Is this dying?
There's been no hobby challenge for months now, and everything seems to be deserted... Any assiduous presence care to explain?

Cheers

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Aulë Dwarf Father

My Blog: http://www.middleearthminis.com

As far as I can remember the form went down for a while, perhaps two weeks, about two or three years ago. Users seemed not to have returned as much as they might have and the pool of users has been shrinking since. We don't seem to retain people very long either. New people drop in, ask some questions, then never do anything else. The site always had a high proportion of users who just check in rather than post. With so few posters anymore I'd wager they are drifting off too. I suppose some of the real veterans are still mooching around with us younger hangers on but, yeah, the form is dying. I guess, and hope, that it is Facebook and YouTube that are drawing the more typically active sort away. Then again, even the GBHL and a number of their imitators have fallen off as well. That is just the way of things like this I guess. Life catches up with all of us in the end.

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"Draw your sword with a heavy heart, but swing it with a heavy hand"

Things have dropped a bit from a 2-3 years ago but there's still decent activity here. I just checked the home page and there were 55 users online at this very moment, albeit there was only 1 member (me!) and 54 guests. And it seems that a new member or two register just about every single day....

I think a lot of daily site traffic migrated over to the GBHL Facebook page right around the time the site was down (as Wan referenced), and that's also where a lot of Q&A takes place now, and from what I understand, the majority of the trading takes place there also.

But there's still good traffic here, and lots of regular members checking and posting. Just think, if every single current member just posted one post per week, the site would come alive full and well as in it's heyday !

So Aule, let's start it back up with you - start posting - write at least one new post per week ! I'll do the same and Wan Shi Tong can do it also

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T'was in the darkest depths of Mordor, I met a girl so fair..
But Gollum, and the evil one crept up and slipped away with her..

Yep, I do remember how things where before those two weeks the site went down... The golden age I guess.
I'm currently in my last year of graduation, so time will be short.
Well, the forum really needs some movement (and some things fixed), but for my part I'll try my best.

It would be great to have a new "Tomes" page... If not possible to recover the ancient one, at least a new space for us to publish things would be nice.

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Aulë Dwarf Father

My Blog: http://www.middleearthminis.com

I can attest that I am here from GBHL

Unfortunately the heyday of the forum boards seems to have been and gone. Most people use Facebook groups these days as it is far easier to post pictures and the feedback is virtually instantaneous. Copying links from photo hosting sites and waiting hours or days for any c&c seems tedious in comparison. The GBHL facebook group has around 4000 members alone. Fewer and fewer people were participating in the challenges here to the point it wasnt worth posting them. It is a shame but an inevitable result of technological advances in social networking. However, as long as there are members who use the boards and find them helpful then they will stay open.

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You don't have to be great to start. But you do have to start to be great.

It seemed that when photobucket changed their policy on third party postings it caused a lot of blogs and hobby boards to suffer. I still enjoy this board vs facebook for various reasons and will continue to post here as long as it is available.

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"Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer."

At least I know that I am back in the forum after some years of absence. Hello to everybody!