OK, there are a bunch of people that will be at the swap that haven't posted anything. Come on guys/gals, the swap is coming up quickly! There's a few posts but not nearly enough. Laura worked hard to get the forum up and running and now we've got to make use of it.

Hi Brandon,

We talked about doing this on the MTPS site some time ago but decided that most people probably already do what garden foruming (new word?) they have time for here at GW. (And a couple of other big sites.)

You may be witnessing the proof of that idea. "Build it and they will come" only works if you have an untapped market and get the word out widely. Here, you are trying to draw people away from a site that has a lot more to offer. Nothing against the forum you guys created, but it is rather narrow in focus when compared to the GW forums.

It'll be a tough sell. Personally I like the idea of a dedicated forum, but it does have some downsides. Like attracting new people for starters.

No, that's not it at all. We've had the forum up for the last few years and got huge responses. Many of our traders LOVE preswapping. Some (no names mentioned to protect the guilty) are truly addicted. If all the traffic we've had for previous years was moved onto the Tennessee Forum, it would have driven the rest of you insane.

I think there are two things causing the low turnout this time. It's a fall swap, and fall swaps are traditionally a little bit less active than spring swaps. But, probably the biggest reason is that the forum was down for redesign/update for a while. The traffic usually starts building a few months before the swap and then escalates up and up. We had problems with spammers this year, and so the forum wasn't set up as early this time.

I think we'll have plenty of traffic, I just want to encourage people to jump on quickly. It would be nice if the pace picked up a little faster this time because the swap is coming up fast.