The Tolkien newsgroups are a sufficiently social community that threads often do drift away from their initial topics, and while this should in no way be discouraged, it is polite to label it when it happens. If you wish to share a binary file with other participants in the Tolkien groups, you have two main options. One is to find an appropriate newsgroup in the alt.binaries. Articles posted to these newsgroups occasionally contain comments that some participants consider inappropriate for younger readers. After much discussion, most of the participants agreed that messages with sexual content would be marked with a tilde in the subject line.
Individual participants can then create killfiles to screen out such messages as desired.
While not everyone agrees that such a system is beneficial, following this convention is the polite thing to do. By and large, the participants in the Tolkien newsgroups try to judge others based on their ideas rather than on details of grammar and posting style. However, there are a few types of simple mistakes that tend to cause some level of bias and annoyance among many group members, which in turn can distract them from your real message. One common mistake of this type that is not related to netiquette is confusing the singular and plural forms of common Elvish words. Return to the Tolkien Newsgroups FAQ Return to my Tolkien page .