There are various notary forums out there, among which, the largest are Notary Rotary’s and 123notary’s.  These two forums are structured differently. 
 
Notary Rotary’s Forum
Notary Rotary has a forum roll, and topics move down the screen never to return. Commentary comes in quickly, and notaries seem to like this form of organization.  They get at least sixty entries per day (mostly responses), and there is a huge diversity of topics.  They have a search function too.  To read the comments, you need to click on the links, one by one, and you can not see all the commentary at once.  This forum has been around for at least a decade. They have tremendous momentum, and their forum is a force to be reckoned with.
 
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Review of Notary Rotary vs. 123notary
 
123notary’s Forum
123notary’s forum is very indexed, and topics fall into about a dozen or so categories.  You can use the active topics link to see all the topics that were added or commented on since your last visit.  This is the most useful feature on the whole forum. Search by category, and see posts in order of which one was commented on or added the most recently.  You can also filter by number of replies or how many clicks a string got.  There is also a search function where you can search by keyword and find highly relevent matches.
 
History of the 123notary Forum
123notary’s forum didn’t start until late 2004, so we had a late start.  We knew nothing about promoting the forum then, and still have a lot to learn!  However, month after month, more notaries signed up to be on the forum, and more started commenting.  It was not until 2007, that I actively started taking an interest in the forum and posting regularly.  We didn’t get much volume on the forum until late 2007, and it grew for a while, and then got slow in 2009 due to the economy.  My interest on the forum had always been interesting topics of discussion.  The notaries on the other hand were interested in reading about signing companies — so, they could know who to avoid like the plague!  What I learned was that discussion topics only really work if there are really popular, otherwise they get ignored for the most part.  I have to thank Ken Edelstein, because he is responsible for a high percentage of the really interesting and intelligent discussion content on our forum, and he has also posted a few really interesting posts on our blog.
 
Which forum is right for you?
Putting aside which type of organization you like, the main thing is looking around to find content that interests you.  Sometimes it is good to use both forums to find really good material about a particular signing company, or discussion topic.
 
What is next?
123notary is thinking about creating a much more user-friendly archiving section, where users can browse through hundreds of categories of discussion issues, and find many posts in each category that interest them. Hold your breath, because that is not coming out until 2012 if we are lucky!  We have other things on the front burner before that!