There are still a few spam threads on there.
I personally would prefer that the root and vegetable forums were merged, I did not even realize there WAS a root forum, and if the goal is to get more traffic because frequent use means more eyes watching out for spam, then in my mind it is too many subforums. But perhaps I am missing a good reason to divide them.
I would volunteer to be one of multiple moderators, if it is no big deal that I can't devote much time to it and may sometimes be away for months at a time. When I'm around, if it means I can help delete spam I certainly don't mind doing so. I just can't commit to being the only moderator there, or to being there in any regular capacity because sometimes I'm around daily, and sometimes I have to be away for several months.
I like the vegetable forum and personally wish it were not a separate forum because I prefer to stay in one place to write all my messages, and I don't know that growing vegetables is really so different from growing fruit - they're all plants, they all need sun and water and soil, and many technically are classified as fruits, and many that are on the fruit forum technically are eaten as vegetables (like for instance green mango, or a bunch of other fruits that are really not sweet). Then we have people writing about nuts here in the fruit forum, and one could argue that could be a separate category too, but again, really they're all plants that in the technical plant sense produce "fruit" and "seeds" and are all edibles. Plus sometimes a nut has an edible fruit that grows around it.
On the other hand, while I would like to merge all the edible plant sections if it were just up to me, I would LOVE to have a forum for ornamental plants (don't personally care if it's separate or not from fruit), because a lot of us have interest in and are growing attractive landscaping plants and I could really use some help with them - but just because they have flowers and no fruit, or no edible part, they don't fit in here. It would be nice to be able to ask people questions about tropical landscaping plants (and also the tropical weeds that show up among those plants) and I can only assume I am not alone in that desire.
I would think, based on the name, that it is clear this forum is primarily about Tropical Fruit. But to me, I don't see a disadvantage to allowing members to post their discussions about other tropical plants, whether they be technically vegetables or nuts or ornamental, or occasionally "exotic" or rare but not actually tropical, all in the same place so the maximum number of people see it and can respond. But I am only putting that out there as a way to think about it in case it hasn't been considered, since I clearly am rather new as a member and have not even been around reading nearly as long as a lot of people have been here. And someone has a vision for this website and it is their baby, not mine.
I just think plant hobbyists tend to like multiple kinds of plants, and although some people do specialize and focus on only one species or category, most people have a variety. And it's nice sometimes to encourage people to try an area they have no experience in yet. I find it to be an extra step to remember to exit one forum and enter another to talk about one type of growing, and then exit and reenter another forum to talk about another type of growing, when in my yard and in my mind these plants are all right next to each other, growing in the same conditions, and often suffering from similar problems, or having similar success. But perhaps other people find the compartmentalization of the topics helpful. Everybody thinks in a different way.
