Hopefully it’s ok to ask this, what’s wrong with a little mild speculation between collecting friends? Just curious as to the reason

Gerontius Took wrote:

Hopefully it’s ok to ask this, what’s wrong with a little mild speculation between collecting friends? Just curious as to the reason

We want the site to have a reputation for publishing facts that can be verified and not speculation. The problem with speculation is that people come across it in the future and think it is factual. There are plenty of other sites that thrive on speculation, but not this site.

Other places where speculation is encouraged are our Discord Channel, https://discord.gg/dU8XWdacGn

Trotter wrote:

Gerontius Took wrote:

Hopefully it’s ok to ask this, what’s wrong with a little mild speculation between collecting friends? Just curious as to the reason

We want the site to have a reputation for publishing facts that can be verified and not speculation. The problem with speculation is that people come across it in the future and think it is factual. There are plenty of other sites that thrive on speculation, but not this site.

To add to this, it becomes more important as times change and more people use AI to help with their searches. Bogus information posted online gets mixed into these results and we end up with blended results that in all seriousness are useless. It is why researchers (reputable ones) do not use AI to gain knowledge. They find it for themselves and qualify their results. We want people who visit here to find information that is reliable and can be verified.

It is one of the reasons we do not fill in the blanks on our Guides, such as the Guide to Tolkien's Letters where sometimes we could be forgiven for assuming that we know a letter type. Almost all letters from, for instance, George Allen & Unwin to Tolkien will likely be typed, but we don't actually know for certain so we use the 'Unknown' type for the majority of those letters. We could assign them all as TLS, and we would probably be correct 90-95 times out of a hundred, but we would be wrong that other 5-10 times. That is a poor example as there are far more important examples, but wasthe one on my mind.

One feature that I like about how this site is laid out and constructed is that everything is time and date stamped.

While I understand and acknowledged the integrity of accurate information; that is something to be taken into an account.

When a book is announced, we know a lot more after it’s publication than we do before, due to the fact that it comes into existence

Trotter wrote:

Gerontius Took wrote:

Hopefully it’s ok to ask this, what’s wrong with a little mild speculation between collecting friends? Just curious as to the reason

We want the site to have a reputation for publishing facts that can be verified and not speculation. The problem with speculation is that people come across it in the future and think it is factual. There are plenty of other sites that thrive on speculation, but not this site.

Totally understand, makes perfect sense Thanks for explaining :)

Gerontius Took wrote:

Trotter wrote:

Gerontius Took wrote:

Hopefully it’s ok to ask this, what’s wrong with a little mild speculation between collecting friends? Just curious as to the reason

We want the site to have a reputation for publishing facts that can be verified and not speculation. The problem with speculation is that people come across it in the future and think it is factual. There are plenty of other sites that thrive on speculation, but not this site.

Totally understand, makes perfect sense Thanks for explaining :)

We have a long history of limiting speculation on this site, as this is a guide website for the Tolkien community and speculation without evidence is not helpful to anyone.

rosshm16 wrote:

I've made numerous orders from Kenny's on AbeBooks and have always been happy with them.

There is no tracking information on the shipping (on orders from the US at least) but the books have always arrived in a reasonable time, well packed, and in great shape.

I saw that and was tempted, but I have W&M LotR set, so I want them to match :/ It's sooo much cheaper than Amazon.

Out next week :) hopefully HC ship on time, or early :)