Do we need a Zinnia forum?

I was thinking... I have traded with many people on here for pieces of my Zinnia collection and thought that we would like to have a Zinnia forum. Any response would be welcome.

Zinnias are an annual. There is an annual forum.
There are so many forums now, there's no way to visit them all.
Bernie

Dasiys,

Like Bernie said, existing message threads about zinnias have appeared in the Annuals forum. Here are a few that I started (my previous forum name was "MaineMan", so I am referred to as MM in several of those threads.) All of the following threads have to do with breeding zinnias at home as a hobby.

http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/747338/

http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/764502/

http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/798070/

Since the Annuals forum access is limited to paid users of Dave's Garden and the Hybridizers forum is "open", I switched to that forum to discuss breeding zinnias as a hobby:

http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/929238/

http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/940238/

http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/969046/

Zinnias are a popular annual, but I have my doubts that a separate Zinnias forum would get a lot of activity. Too bad, because I am an enthusiastic zinnia hobbyist. There has been more interest in zinnia breeding for fun over in iVillage's GardenWeb, but there is also no separate Zinnias forum over there, and zinnias are discussed in an Annuals forum as well. GardenWeb also has a Hybridizing forum and it also has very low traffic.

ZM (formerly MM)

So... no need for a Zinnia forum?

Dasiys,

I would participate in a Zinnia forum, but I don't think that very many people would.

ZM

Thank Zen_Man! I think that with all your Z's you could make it a very interesting forum.

Dasiys,

I would suggest that, if we did have a Zinnias forum, that it not be restricted to subscribing members, in order to have a larger group of potential participants. If you do a Google search for "zinnia breeding", the first two hits are in iVillage's GardenWeb, where I participated as MaineMan for a number of years, and later as ZenMan after we moved from Maine to Kansas. The third hit is in Dave's Garden, for the My zany hybrid zinnias thread that I started some time ago in the Annuals forum here. Unfortunately, despite its prominent appearance in Google, the Annuals forum here in Dave's Garden is restricted to subscribers only, which is kind of a tease for Google searchers.

The vast majority of Dave's Garden forums are restricted to subscribers only, which is kind of a "closed door" policy. I would suggest, to help open that door a little, that all of the current "subscribers only" Dave's Garden forums be made "read only" in their entirety for non-subscribers. That would allow visitors to read not just the first message of a thread, but the entire message thread. Then, if they wanted to post a message in that thread, they would have to become a paid subscriber. I think that might actually help increase the number of paid subscriptions here. [I am relying on my early memory of visiting Dave's Garden as a non-subscriber, so if the current access policy has already been changed to match what I just described -- never mind this suggestion.]

I like different flower forms in zinnias. I'm attaching a picture, taken a few minutes ago among my "indoor" zinnias, of a recombinant (hybrid of hybrids) specimen with daisy-like petals that I like. Eventually I hope to get a strain of daisy-flowered zinnias in a complete color range in my zinnia breeding. I have several other goals, as well. Incidentally, I notice that you can rearrange the letters in DAISYS to get DASIYS. (grin)

ZM

I think that you would by far be out top contributor! If DG decides to have one, I would be most pleased.


~Daniel

More years ago than I care to count Edward Yourdon, in a seminar on system design, told the story of group of ladies in an upscale suburban community outside of New Your City who noticed that on Friday afternoon a commuter train passed through their town without stopping at station on its way to New York City. Several of the ladies advanced the idea that if the train stopped at their station they could join their husbands for dinned and the theater of Friday nights. A committee was organized and the women of the town were surveyed to determine who would be interested in this new train service. With a list of names, the committee submitted a formal request to the train company that the train stop at their station on Friday afternoons.

Several months passed with out a response from the train company. Finally the ladies committee received a nicely written letter from the train company informing them that the train company had dispatched a statistician to conduct a survey at the station each Friday for a month as the train passed through the station and the statistician found that there was no one waiting at the station to board the train. The train company then politely rejected the request that the train stop because there was no customer interest.

If the train doesn’t stop at the station no one is going to waiting to board the train!

Mike

ZM, although I like the subscriber forums the way they are, if you want to discuss that sort of major change I think you may want to start another thread on the DG forum about member/subscriber forum access. That's a much broader topic than whether or not to have a zinnia forum.

I'm mostly in favor of NOT creating new forums if there is a logical place to discuss the topic already (eg, an existing forum like "Annuals" or "Cottage Gardening" in this case)... if there are so many threads about zinnias that they have overwhelmed other topics on the annuals forum, then it would be time to think about creating a separate forum just for zinnias.

No Zinnia forum?

I'm not sure there are that many people who would "watch" and regularly visit a zinnia forum, but I do think that zinnia topic threads on the annuals forum would have plenty of people reading and posting... you can see that on the threads Z-Man posted above... how many of the people posting on those threads would have found those great photos & interesting posts if they were off on a specialized forum?

It's not that I don't love zinnias, I'm just not sure why the topic needs its own forum.