[tealily]

Where my head goes is to try and figure out who is currently here and what they need - can we do a poll? Even if to get a sense of "beginner" vs "curious onlooker" vs "serious practicer" vs "advanced", as we may all have different needs :)

One thing I do like from the reddit forums is their "Weekly Interpretation Help" thread - it's like the Barefoot Investor's version of the 'Golden Retriever Space' where anyone - usually a beginner - can post up a reading they've done for themselves or others, post up their interpretation, and get some feedback. It's a slightly less-intimidating way to get feedback without necessarily needing to whip up a whole new thread; I've always wondered if there are more people who want to post, but don't feel like it's "their" space, eg a number of the more frequent posters are at a different stage of their tarot journey. We certainly don't want to discourage people from posting, so maybe we need more 'spaces'? (eg tarot subforums or regular beginner-friendly threads) :)

In terms of attracting more folks - particularly to assist SF in getting enough people to join some kind of annual subscription fee to help with covering overheads - I would be curious if we need to go full-on 'That Other Forum That Started With "A" with subforums for Kipper/Lenormand/Oracle etc (and associated Practice Readings/Games threads), or work on at least getting some sort of internal Reading Request/Practice reading subforum and maybe a separate games subforum.

I appreciate the recent sticky requesting in-thread tarot discussion - although my interpretation of the tarot subforum is the whole thing is discussion so maybe looking more into subforums/a subforum restructure may be more appropriate :)

Oh, one other biggie: From an educational point of view, a huuuugggeee obstacle to open education discussion is an inability to link to any 'commercial' online resources (defined as any other website that charges money), even if I cite sources. For example, I've been unable to name 'The Other Forum That Started with "A" ' - similarly, I am unable to link to specific blog posts from The Tarot Lady / various Tarot Deck creators / any other incredibly useful blog post that may have a minor monetisation component (eg even if that blogger has a small section of their website where they sell an online self-help book). I am a huge supporter of 'no spam' / 'no unsolicited advertising' in tarot forums - but for the SF tarot community to grow, I think this is an SF ruling that needs to change.

The good news is that we aren't in breach of copyright (ever) by simply linking to another website that sells product or service for profit - I have always been confused as to why that is apparently the reason why we can't link to "commercial" websites (because all this really is, is free advertising/SEO backlink to that particular page).

To be in breach of intellectual property, you would need to copy and paste (without citing sources AND claiming the text as yours) a large portion of someone else's text into SF. A simple link to someone else's blog post, product, or service is not a breach of copyright :) (again, this is actually just free advertising/a free SEO backlink - which those authors and websites usually desperately desire!).