I'm a new member here and relatively new agent. my first impression was "where's the NY forum?" "where are the CA and FL forums?" am i blind or are there no state by state forums?
thanks
marcus.

There are currently no state forums here. I have a couple of concerns about having separate forums for each state and province.

1) It takes up a heck of a lot of room on the forum list page and
extra bandwidth
2) I would have another 60 or so forums to remove spam from
3) Looking at the other real estate forum sites that have separate
forums for states and provinces I see this
- either no one (except spammers) use them - or at best, there are very few posts. In many
cases one post every few months. In cases where there are posts there are often no responses.

Having empty, inactive forums is not a good thing - it usually is just
an invitation for spammers to post their junk - which is why I have not been anxious to have separate state forums

Having said that, I am not adverse to having individual State forums at Agents Online. If you think that there is enough interest to warrant a separate forum for you state or province and you volounteer to moderate it - I will set it up.

I have the states on my forum and it does get cluttered. I would definitely advise not to have all states on the home page of the forum.

Hello Doug,

I don't think having a Nevada forum would be so bad. There seems to be a growing number of Las Vegas agents on the board, and Nevada/Las Vegas is one of the fastest growing city's in he country. And Yes, I will volunteer to moderate it. I wouldn't mind at all

Please at least keep me in mind in case you want to open a Nevada forum later on

If you post a forum about a few states, I'm sure you'll start getting a flood of requests as well as frustration from users of others states. It's going to be all or nothing.

I'd say have plans of putting all the states in (Because that's a good point Dee), but someone from the state has to volunteer to keep a eye on it before it's opened to the public for posting.

So, if we put up a Nevada Forum as a test... that raises the question of where to place it. It probably belongs in the "Real Estate" section but let's just suppose that we end up with some interest and other state forums are set up - that ends up pushing other popular areas like "Successful Net Presence" further down the page which would result in a drop in activity for those forums. If we put the State forums further down the page instead then there would probably be less activity there.

It seems that we may be trying to be all things to all people - and that may not be a good thing. Perhaps a poll to try and guage the interest in State forums?

Doug,

I think what we should do is like put the poll in, but do like what you did with the "shooting the breeze" forum. Have it towards the top of the page for say, a day, then move it down the page to just before like the "Products and Services" forum? Then maybe post like "An important topic" towards the top of like the Agents And Brokers forum and such to get the word out there that we are testing this and pending how well it goes, we will add other states.

As with the state boards getting less posts, Most of the boards I see with them, have very few users and that will effect the number of posts. Where as we get a lot of traffic here, being high up in the search engines helps alot. I don't know if you've thought of it this way

Plus, if the state forums work out, maybe the "Ask an Expert" should be closed, then when people come here with a question, they ask it in the state fourm, which they will then get a little better answer, because it will be based on local laws and practices of that state.

Just a few ideas.

I don't know how it is with this forum software but in vBulletin we have an option where the State categories are not viewable on the home page except the parent category displaying the title of the latest entry.

They are visible here but on the home page they are not.

It also encourages people to post more in them because everyone wants his entry to be the one to appear on the front page of the forum

Personally I'm against seperate state forums. Someone could post a topic in a particular state that would be benefical to the entire board. However I don't know many who would take the time to review 50 different forums. Plus how would you find that many moderators? Maybe you could make an additional column beside the "topic" column that would have the postal abbr. of the state if the topic is state specific. This way a user can specify. Just my opinion.

I think if you could do something like what SiteTutor has pointed it, it might work well.

As for Ben34105's point of view, that's true, but then we get rashes of posts that mostly deal with one state only. Why should we have to sort though those if we don't want to.

Anyway, We get a great number of people though here looking for advice on just their state. They might not read everything like under the Agents and Brokers forum nor care to.

And as it says above, before anyone could post in a state, it would have to have someone from the state volunteer to moderate it.

The vBulletin script allows for subforums and the software used for this board does not. I can set it so that all that is displayed is the categories and not the forums - but then that affects all the categories. It can not be applied to just a State Category.

I have moved the poll over to the Agents and Brokers forums where hopefully we will get a better feel how others view this issue.

Sounds good doug, but why is it under the Forum FAQ still?

There is a just link to the moved message - the Poll itself has been moved.

Oh, my mistake. Sorry

I really just don't think state forums are necessary. Most people will still post in the brokers and agents forum because they know it will be read by more people. I can't find any other bulletin board that has widely used state forums. I bet we'll see a lot of double-posting, which clogs the servers and defeats the purpose.

"Most people will still post in the brokers and agents forum because they know it will be read by more people."

That's true, but that's why I say we make it truly what it is, For Agents & Brokers. There must be a way password protect it so normal users cannot post in it. Only people who have been granted the right to post in it can. That will prevent most double posting. Also, some states are just going to be slower then others. A state like Rhode Island may only get a few posts a week, but a huge state like California or Florida (where a lot of agents are from on here) may get many posts a day.

I think it is a must to have State forums. Not only are real estate laws different from state to state but the market differs greatly. I am a new member and was amazed that the site doesn't offer that choice.

I guess we can consider the Gulf Coast Real Estate Forum as a bit of a test. There has been some interest - not overwhelming. We can probably expect about the same level of interest for a forum covering one of the larger states I would think.

No harm in trying it - so if anyone thinks that a forum covering their state or province would be a good idea and they want to volounteer to moderate it and clear out the spam - let me know and I will set it up