Personally, I would see such a forum as a plus for the overall hobby forum here, however, since SWF is primarily a store, it is untenable to have people try to milk this site for free advertising and free selling. Think of going to a LFS and setting up your own stand there to sell your stuff without making any kind of arrangement with that store. No business is going to put up with that. The occasional problem can be handled, but it was daily.
Other forums, as mentioned, are not stores. They set up forums for their own vendors. I would like to see a vendor forum here and have suggested it.
I agree about the lengthy time of getting an operational forum up again. This occurred as a result of SWF trying to actually offer members a better forum. The problem snowballed into a major issue when the upgraded VB forum became practically unusable. A lot of members were lost. Also, the problems with this new forum has taken some time to iron out, with still the occasional bugs here and there. We lost countless new members due to the automated mod defensio (you guys should appreciate the flesh and blood mods after experiencing the auto-mod we had
) I have noticed a significant drop in activity on this forum, however, that could also be due to other factors--such as a rotten economy and exit of many hobbyists from the hobby.
I hope things will be picking up soon as the issues get ironed out, and as the economy allegedly improves.
