The "bad" thing about creating a new forum that is a subset of an already established forum is that gardeners in the established forum are suddenly "eliminated" from automatic viewing of the new forum's specialized subject. Their happenstance exposure to it is gone. Mildly interested gardeners need to re find the new subject elsewhere, and (incredibly, IMO) the extra few clicks are a turn off. Proofs of this phenomenon are right on this forum where people have asked Dave to custom fit garden.org machinery to their individual liking, so they can save a few clicks, because they don't like the work-around that takes an extra few seconds.
So to put this abstract concept in concrete terms:
I like Japanese maples. I like to learn about them despite the fact that they are not hardy here, and only a very select few have been able to keep them in our climate as small shrubs, let alone small trees. So my casual interest is even less than mild, but I like being able to quickly skim info/conversation about them that catch my eye, and consequently I might someday be spurred into the extra work it would take for me to overwinter them here. But I am not interested enough to go to another forum to check it out. So:
ediblelandscapingsc said:I'm not a maple head but what harm would it be to try it?
Then how would you know there is enough sustainable interest for a Japanese maple forum here at NGA? The harm is alienating the mildly interested, by cutting their exposure to the subject.
ediblelandscapingsc said:Traffic would be a lot less likely to come to a thread vs a forum where they can start their own threads...
Disagree! Only brand new traffic
might be more likely to participate.
All of the start up interest in the new forum would be from the Tree and Shrub forum. If there is enough, then a forum could be sustainable and any new traffic would help to keep it going. You make in sound like one can't start new threads on the T&S forum, but would be able to on a JM forum. (I think you mean it would be more inviting? Again, let me roll my eyes. This is way overthinking, IMO.)
You would have to have a thread promoting the new Japanese maple forum within the Tree and Shrub forum anyway, so how is this more advantageous than simply gauging the interest first with a thread(s),
and then go to the trouble of forum disruption when it seems there is a need?
I don't frequent enough forums to know about any cliquishness, but creating such additional forums does separate people. If there is good reason, then great. But we really don't need to create further unintentional ignorance of other gardening subjects needlessly. I much prefer fewer (and bigger) happy families, than so many little groups whose unintentional results are to separate people.
