The Big picture

[The Voice of Reason]

Dear Neo,

I have a suggestion for you and your site that in my opinion is a necessary evil, Or really being a necessary positive.

Being universally interested in developments big and small.

Being interested in environmentally intelligent design.

Being interested in the planning process.

Being interested in mass transit.

Not being focused on the tallest this or biggest that, but the best for the city

[Neo]

The issue with linking to city specific forums from UP is that we're putting our chips 'all-in' by redirecting users away from our site. The 'sister' site as you call it would have no reason to link back to us. Folks go to a city specific forum like ArchBoston.com for discussions on Boston, why would they link back to us for anything? We would effectively be giving up on creating a Boston community here on UP and obtain nothing in return.

I'm certainly for partnering with other sites (and we currently do have partnerships with a few), but I disagree that there is a necessity to simply offload one of our cities to another site that can give us nothing in return.

[The Voice of Reason]

The issue with linking to city specific forums from UP is that we're putting our chips 'all-in' by redirecting users away from our site. The 'sister' site as you call it would have no reason to link back to us. Folks go to a city specific forum like ArchBoston.com for discussions on Boston, why would they link back to us for anything? We would effectively be giving up on creating a Boston community here on UP and obtain nothing in return.

I'm certainly for partnering with other sites (and we currently do have partnerships with a few), but I disagree that there is a necessity to simply offload one of our cities to another site that can give us nothing in return.

[Neo]

Integrating would be much more complex than it appears. One of the simplest things will simply be a burden to users of the various third party sites...username and password. Most of the other forums use a completely different piece of software than we use here, integration is very complex if not impossible given the cost associated with integrating them.

We have always been geared towards growing our own forums organically so we have control over how it grows, etc.

Anyone is welcome to come in and volunteer to head up an under served city here at UP, but it must be done with respect to our set of rules.