Everyone, I've created and opened up a new forum for Road Trip Assistance. It is a private forum, viewable by only registered members. Posts in this forum aren't included in search indexes or in any kind of search. It also won't be pinged to the blogosphere, or appear on external search engines like google. Check out the main forum page to see it.
I'm concerned about the possibility of deceptive posts going here, let me know if my warning message is too much. I've thought about other ways to manage access to the forum (say if a member has made 25 forum posts) but I'm still thinking about it.
Regarding a source of information for willing members to share their contact information, or a separate troubleshooting section. They are both great ideas, but I need to see some more "amens" before I make that happen as well. The challenge with applications like this is that they are seldom useful if there are few contributions. In other words, a directory of willing member contacts isn't much help if there are only twenty names. Same goes for troubleshooting, we wouldn't look like helpful folks if there were only a few articles submitted. The system would be easy to use, and work within the existing framework of this site; like the classifieds and photo albums do.
Hope this helps,