Smaug_the_Mighty
Member
We have a few goals in mind for this project:
The first thing is to preserve all of the wonderful questions, answers, ideas, and discussion points we as a community have raised during Corey’s Exploring the Lord of the Rings sessions, and on the discussion boards after the broadcasts. As Corey says, we may not be able to answer all questions about the Lord of the Rings, but we want to do our best to ask every question! So we need a place to keep all of those questions for posterity, and provide a place for people to discuss and do their best to answer many of them, for many years to come.
Secondly, we want to be able to track certain themes and discussion points throughout the text. Due to the wonderfully slow pace at which we are reading through the text, it’s hard to keep all of these different themes in our memories long-term, and so we need a place to write them all down. This way, we can add more data from the text as we progress through, and eventually come to some conclusions about the themes we are discussing.
Thirdly, we would like to reduce the barrier to entry for newcomers to ExLOTR. By the time we get to Return of the King, it’s likely there will be thousands of hours of videos or podcast episodes to wade through for anyone to be able to “catch up”. Though I’m sure there are people out there who would love to binge on the whole lot as a full time job for several years, it is just not reasonable to ask everyone to do that! By summarising and consolidating the material we are generating, for example making highlight reels and summary articles, we can make it easier for newcomers to feel like they are not missing out by not listening to the entire backlog of episodes.
Lastly, we want to create a place for people to continue discussion of the Lord of the Rings in our "Exploring" style for many years to come. This series will be going for a long time yet, and even once it is finished, I'm sure many of the current participants and followers will want to continue discussing points that have been raised over the series. New participants are always arriving, and we want to be able to welcome them in and provide them with the possibility of contributing, even once the broadcasts have finished.
The first thing is to preserve all of the wonderful questions, answers, ideas, and discussion points we as a community have raised during Corey’s Exploring the Lord of the Rings sessions, and on the discussion boards after the broadcasts. As Corey says, we may not be able to answer all questions about the Lord of the Rings, but we want to do our best to ask every question! So we need a place to keep all of those questions for posterity, and provide a place for people to discuss and do their best to answer many of them, for many years to come.
Secondly, we want to be able to track certain themes and discussion points throughout the text. Due to the wonderfully slow pace at which we are reading through the text, it’s hard to keep all of these different themes in our memories long-term, and so we need a place to write them all down. This way, we can add more data from the text as we progress through, and eventually come to some conclusions about the themes we are discussing.
Thirdly, we would like to reduce the barrier to entry for newcomers to ExLOTR. By the time we get to Return of the King, it’s likely there will be thousands of hours of videos or podcast episodes to wade through for anyone to be able to “catch up”. Though I’m sure there are people out there who would love to binge on the whole lot as a full time job for several years, it is just not reasonable to ask everyone to do that! By summarising and consolidating the material we are generating, for example making highlight reels and summary articles, we can make it easier for newcomers to feel like they are not missing out by not listening to the entire backlog of episodes.
Lastly, we want to create a place for people to continue discussion of the Lord of the Rings in our "Exploring" style for many years to come. This series will be going for a long time yet, and even once it is finished, I'm sure many of the current participants and followers will want to continue discussing points that have been raised over the series. New participants are always arriving, and we want to be able to welcome them in and provide them with the possibility of contributing, even once the broadcasts have finished.