Robert:

In the past eighteen months I have noticed that their are several thousand abstractors listed on SOT, but only a handfull seem to express any opinions on the forum. Is there any way to get these other abstractors more actively involved in the discussions, or is there a way to solicit opinions through a poll.

It seems that the topic under discussion is one that might generate a lot of interest. I do not think that the VM's consider the abstractor's position one iota in their decisions to reduce price, use volume of work as an inducement or penalty to control pricing in a market or to outsource work and bypass the abstractor entirely. They seem to assume that it is a done deal because there is always some abstractor out there who will submit. 

I used to work with the Neilsen ratings when I worked in the television industry before law school. The audience demographic figures for the network's programming was based on a statistical sample of each city (television market) to project each program's audience figures for sales and programming purposes. It was surprising how small a sample in each market was considered statistically reliable as a representative sample for the whole market.

It seems that SOT has a fairly large abstractor membership spread out pretty evenly accross the country. It may possibly constitute a representative sample of the abstractor population.  I do not think that anyone is going to succeed in disturbing the abstractor's lethargy to actively participate in anything as the occupation slides into oblivion, but perhaps they may take a few minutes to answer a few question on the issues in a questionnaire.Possibly the results of their opinions presented to VM's when the issues of price reductions, outsourcing and volume control 
may make some difference in their future decisions. Then again, the abstractor's rank so low on the totem pole that it may not serve any purpose at all. The results of the poll might be interesting though.