Citing the Scottish Rock Garden Club's (SRGC later) web-site based forum as an example, I would say that there are some powerful advantages to that arrangement. For instance, that forum uses email notification to alert participants to new messages. One simply clicks on the link included in the email notification and then reads the message in question. Older and newer messages are there with it, in time order. Another nice thing about the SRGC's site is the ease with which images can be posted with messages. These images appear with your message, and - and this is a very nice feature - the images are clickable to show a larger image. Furthermore, this larger image is displayed on the same page - you don't have to back out to continue reading subsequent messages in the same thread, or to click on other images in the same thread. I think there is another advantage to this: I often have images which are not "wiki quality" - images which might be interesting for one reason or another but images which definitely are not ready for prime time. I wouldn't hesitate to post these on the SRGC site (or to include links to such images in my postings to the PBS forum) - but if they are not wiki quality, I don't want them on the wiki. The PBS wiki is a unique and valuable resource. The PBS wiki is very user friendly for those who just want to search for information or look at images. I hope that never changes except to get better. But "user friendly" is not the first thing I think when uploading images to the wiki is mentioned. I'm not exactly computer illiterate, but I stumble now and again when uploading images to the wiki. Uploading images to the SRGC site is quick and easy. With respect to the SRGC site, on the downside I'm not sure how easy it is to search their archives for particular images. A lot probably has to do with the way such files are named. If Maggi is reading this, perhaps she will comment (Maggi Young is the site's apparently indefatigable moderator.) The system the SRGC uses handles multiple threads extremely well. So if the time comes to re-work the way the PBS forum is presented, we have several other forums to check out for advantages and disadvantages. I would like to hear the considered opinions of others who participate in multiple forums, email based and web-based (are there other options?). I would be interested to read some elaboration from Jim and Adam with respect to why they dislike web-based forums. Once we understand those objections better, it might be possible to design a web-based forum which gets around them in some way. Jim McKenney jimmckenney@jimmckenney.com Montgomery County, Maryland, USA, 39.03871º North, 77.09829º West, USDA zone 7 My Virtual Maryland Garden http://www.jimmckenney.com/ BLOG! http://mcwort.blogspot.com/ Webmaster Potomac Valley Chapter, NARGS Editor PVC Bulletin http://www.pvcnargs.org/ Webmaster Potomac Lily Society http://www.potomaclilysociety.org/