Apparantly not Ed my friend (more exciting, that is). The problem is in your expectation. If you visit here and contribute or visit here and don't contribute the result is the same. You have the choice, so I guess there is some excitement in that, depending on your threshold. What you want is not going to happen, I don't know why.

There are other chat rooms out there but I have found none that are as easy to navigate as this one and that is one of the main attractions for me - its simplicity. The Garden Writers Association even removed their forum. At the Chicago convention I asked why and was told it was getting a little out of hand and impolite. Plus it had the same problem as many forums - it just wasn't being used so the service was discontinued.

This is by no means Forum CPR - but here goes.

I have noticed that there seems to be cycle of questions or interests on all of the forums, you scroll back a few pages and you see the same questions over and over again. Though easy to explain, I think that it also points out the limit to what people want to give and get on the wide open GardenWeb (often GW'ers will contact me privately and the back and forth is much more lively and immediate, some of these "conversations" have been going on for almost a year and get very entertaining). Don't know why this exists but it does. Every once in a while a topic comes up that fires up the ol' engines and everybody puts in their two cents, but that is only every once in a while.

Even with the doornail deadness I cannot thank this site enough, even though many posted questions never get answered I still gain the bulk of the tools for my projects right here, well here and Greenbeam.

Maybe it has something to do with the competitive nature of making a living from writing about gardening, maybe writers only need tiny seeds of information to get the creativity flowing and then find themselves too busy to expand on an idea in the thread, maybe after spending all day or night pecking away at a keyboard they want actuall face-to-face exchanges... who knows?

In case any of this rambling doesn't make sense - I'm the graphic artist that occasionally gets to work on nature or gardening based projects. I work in publishing and work part time for a plant nursery. My immediate goal is to start up a local gardening publication so I'm interested in the green industry, effective advertising, business practices and the purchasing habits of gardeners. Crucial data has been compiled into wonderful studies but access to these studies is very expensive - so my interests and questions are usually limited.

Well...I have been busy. Got invited to go to Tenn and talk about WSing in front of a large group. I'm flying down on Friday. I've been busy working on educational brochures for my new company, the WinterSown Edcuational Corp. I'm now a registered NFP. I've also been doing the HTML for the website I'm creating, which hopefully will be up on the net in two or three more weeks. It's been a long and busy summer.

I guess this forum is still deader than a hosta in winter.

Ah, but hostas do perenially return bigger and better than before so there is always hope. I have an obsessive/compulsive personality and when I come here for my garden forum "fix" and it's not here I do tend to get a bit cranky. Think I'll go out in the garden and kick a few pine cones.

Here is the problem. John is a writer. He looks in at a forum called "Garden Writers" looking for something. Something to take away and use. What could that 'something' be? Writers do not have an endless supply of ideas for stories or new angles on an old story and are always looking.
The way to make this forum work is to give, sure parasites (those who have nothing to offer) will graze but so what?
Only when we see this as an opportunity to share will it rise from the dead and become useful rather than a spot for carrion to pick over the bones or a place for self promotion.

acj:
But I'm not a writer of the garden variety. I come here to learn how other writers look at the world, that's all. That's all I'm looking for. LOL.