I'm probably not the best referee for a political section, particularily when I don't follow U.S. politics deeply. But then again, it could be an advantage since an outsider has no stake to take 'sides'. The section is probably better moderated by someone with some formal background in political science and strong knowledge of North American history with international perspective/travelled and lived for a few years outside of their home country. As well, participation would be like a book club, do readings on certain pieces as a starting point.

As for trying out different topics...I will admit on my part, there is self-censorship to a certain degree because of the dynamics of the group here. Do not interpret this as bad. Each person has a core personality..but it translates abit differently with each different social group within society. We show different facets of ourselves or at least certain facets come out more strongly depending which social group we are interacting with. For instance, I am a slightly different person/show different things to:
My partner, my family, my closest friends, work colleagues (I respond a shade differently to those within my profession vs. outside of profession), a group of cyclists, etc.

I even am different, depending on which language I speak. I am much more forceful in Chinese because of language limitations. Whereas ENglish allows me to be complex, nuanced and therefore I will be viewed differently and people will respond to me differently.

It's great that others are reading the forums though they don't post. If that's what is meant by more traffic. Maybe I'm not here so often to see more different women posting, versus us enthusiastic regular posters here.

I am not so sure we're that diverse in terms of participants. THis forum is meant for boomer women, which already is a particularily subsection of society. But still, there's a whole pile out there that probably could use some casual chat here in friendly way. More than ever before, there are alot of forums, blogs on the Internet competing for attention so it might get harder these days to draw new participants unless one seeks out to inform groups of women who don't normally cross Dotsie's path or mainstream media where this site is crosslinked.

Hope my thoughts are intended to help Dotsie,....EXPAND active membership of these forums. There is an enormously huge group of English-language speaking boomer women out there. What would the response be if a group of middle-class/educated immigrant women were shown these forums at a community centre / church? What type of feedback would they give to make them more comfortable here in the forums?

A market survey would be useful one day.