I live in Arizona and the Arizona Gardening forum allows me to see the Exchange Page because I live in Arizona.

So just guessing but it sounds like the powers that be don't see the value in none local exchanges.

To get around this in the Fig Forum members just post what they have and post what they are looking for. Not all members are honest and this can lead to some hard feelings. In time you learn who you can trust and who you can't trust.

Local trading has nothing to do with it. Many forums like the African Violets Forum, the Alliums Forum, the Asian Vegetables Forum, etc, etc have exchange forums. There are even many stand-alone, non-local exchange forums like the Aquatic Plant Exchange, the Plant Exchange Forum, and the Seed Exchange Forum.

For some reason, Gardenweb has neglected giving this forum, the Trees Forum, and the Conifers Forum exchange pages. All of these Forums have lots of people willing and wanting to do swaps. It's weird because many of the other exchange forums on Gardenweb have had almost no activity in years. Yet Gardenweb keeps those forums going and ignores the need for exchange forums here and in other forums.

I think it would take a real concerted effort to get Gardenweb to make the change. They seem resistant to sensible change in many instances.

The lack of exchange here dates from when Spike ran the site and no members pushed for an exchange forum here. Now things are more or less set since this site has pretty much been on autopilot since nbcuni bought it.

Scott

But they have added quite a few new forums. They just don't like us tree-people as much (-:

Yep, they must not like us since we could use pictures for fruit ID, disease and other help reasons. Yet flowers get pictures, but worse than flowers, TRACTORS get pictures.

Pictures can, and frequently are, easily attached to post here. The small, limited-size pictures, that you can directly upload on some forums, are really really really nothing special.

We can't attach pictures, we link them, and only if you have space somewhere else that allows linking.

Besides, it's the principle. We have a reason to need pictures that goes beyond "look at my tractor" or "look at my flower".

Yeah myk1, my post got slightly messed up in the editing process, but you probably knew what I meant.

Milehighgirl, if you want to start a campaign, I'll be happy to send in my vote. I think it will take MANY people sending in a similar suggestion CONSISTENTLY over a long time to achieve results, but I do think it could be done if someone really committed to making it happen.