A negative idea has been generating in my brain about industry specific internet discussion boards, that's going to be the subject of our lead article in the upcoming October 1st issue of The Mortgageland Journal. I have visited, read, and posted myself probably 10,000+ times in these boards over the past half dozen years. In addition to the logical math that I have come up with; as a long time advertiser in one of them, I got to see the inside numbers of posters vs overall membership vs reader/viewers of information in them. They have a large and wide reaching effect into our industry, and I'm coming to believe it's often been detrimental to the business.

Several minor points I have seen are 1). people ask question in them, and then rely upon the responses from strangers, as being the correct answer to their needs (when frequently I see the replies are incorrect), 2), many people substitute these boards for their industry training and education, and the biggest problem I see 3). those who provide answers more often than not are ENABLING others with help which they should have never had easy access to.