Not many Newbies?

Come on Freddy ...put em up ... put em up

 

This is the truth. I've used many forums covering many subjects over the years, and can honestly say that the busiest ones also have the most fights.

I guess you could compare it to the pub. There's the super pretentious trendy bar on the main strip, that everybody tries once 'because its the place to be', then the combination of overpriced lager in an odd shaped glass, long waiting time at the bar, the inability to make yourself heard, and the drunken yoofs that keep bumping into you, all accumulate to make you lose your rag, leave and never come back again. Or the nice local with the decent beer in a proper shaped glass at a proper price served promptly in an environment where you can safely have an enjoyable chat with your mates, and it becomes your second home

 

It would be a very good thing. This is already a great forum and it could be better with a bit of tweaking to the home page.

There are loads of experienced gardeners on here who have really good advice and information to give but they can't do that if there are barely any newbies asking questions. Beginners must feel that there are better places to go for info as evidenced by the fact that they are choosing to go to other forums. This is a real shame because the expertise and advice is here for the taking. Gardeners here are more than willing to share not only their expertise but their seeds, cuttings and plants too.

I don't know a lot about these things, but would having a more prominent "Beginners Section" affect speeds that much?

 

You lookin at my pint?

 

Your pint?

 

I've told you once.

 

I often drop by without logging in and generally only log in when I wish to contribute in some way or see a larger picture.
Non Sequitur what are the robots referred to under Users Online Now always intrigued me that has.
I moved here from another forum that became more and more moribund. After having looked at some of the others around. I liked the general feel of this one, there were a wide range of subjects covered both gardening and non gardening, a decent number of people were contributing some regularly than others, the site admin took an active role and no area seemed to be restricted to a small group, a degree of irreverent humour. Probably most important though I found useful information, queries were responded to rapidly and there was a wide range and depth of knowledge shown.
I also like the ease of use in posting pictures, quoting etc and the ability to flag items as like, agree, disagree and so forth.
Some of the other sites are associated with magazines or gardening organisations so these will tend to be larger and more visible to people searching for answers.

 

They also grab Google's search and possibly make it look there's only/mainly year or more old posts on here.

 

Theoretically, that problem can be eliminated with the use of either a robots.txt file, or a couple of clicks Google's webmaster area.

 

I'll give GC a plug at our next garden club meeting in May. As the weather is good now, I suspect that a lot of folks are simply busy in their gardens after a long winter of enforced captivity??