Evolution-We've come a long way

I just looked at the old ezboard forum. I never participated in it, but Sinodefnece Forum sure has changed. It is more professional, and certainly has more credibility. This thread is to look at how Sinodefence has changed and where we might go in the future. I'm sure that the mods will have something to say about it. And Dongfeng and Webmaster might even drop in considering its really up to them. I think SDF has a bright future, as we have a dedicated core of members, which I am proud to call myself one of, and are expanding everyday. Another think-Do you think anybody actually reads this forum other than us?

Actually most of the forums have more visitors than members, SDF is no exception. Our visitors are few times more than our members, some of these people eventually will join us. But a lot of them will be just bystanders, so I would not be suprise that there are many people reading our posts each day. Personally, I have actually stay away in EZ borad for many months, until SDF moved to here.

In the future, SDF should become as professional as the CDF, i have no doubt in my mind. Since we have so many knowledgeable members and more profound discussions lately, and as our main site Sino-defence has became a leading and respecting sources for creditable Chinese military informations. The only uncertainty would be, would SDF stays as Chinese military forum or to become something much more.

Well as being in the front seat of withnesing this forums history, I must agree with you. We certainly have achived great deals of changes. Somehow it's like wathcing a childs crowing, first it's rather small, then it crews and comes more active but rather silly and imature. Then naturaly it envolps and gets more mature and starts to recocnize it's being and makes decisions in which direction it wants to go. I think we have selected the right way.

Much of this change is thanks to the adoption of the Vbulletin board instead of the ezboard. It has given us mods much more proper tools to keep the forum in the right direction. Even I first tought that the new style of moderating adopted from the Defencetalk was too hars, but the results speak for itself, we have managed to cut down the BS far more better than in many other forums. There have been times when the moderation have propaply seemed as fasism to you other members, but those where difficoult times and the "martial law" pretty much saved us from turning us going backwards.
But times are changing and we no longer need to sustain as hard line as we have had to for couple months now. The banning and warning list are being more and more rarely visited and actual moderation often is taken to just remembering new members about our policyes.

So I'm Semi-officically declearing the "martial law" off, life can linger back to normal tracks. This however cannot mean any sort of disipline decreasing and thus the "temporarely banned topics"- notice atop every forum remains and are to be followed. The ban over those will be lifted, tough it will propaply mean that some of the issues are being banned for good.

But enough of mod-talk, I want to thank all our members participating to our fine forum and making it as what it is. :china: :china:

...and don't forget the Gollevainen's Quizz Of The Week in member's clubroom

When you Evolution we've come a long way i had that FatBoy Slim song going
in my head you know "Right here Right now".

I think it may be advisable to ask the newer members to submit any post
that they are unsure about to one of the moderators before deciding to post.

and the best rule of all is Relax don't take it personal.

I agree with you guys that the forum has truely developed, though we still have a long way to go to become a "professional" forum. I think our biggest success is to have established a health discussion atomsphere. You can disagree with other members, but you MUST respect them and let them speak, and most importantly know when to stop.

In the next phase of our forum development, I would like to encourage our members to contribute more on the "professionalism" of the forum. You may not know everything about the PLA, but there must be certain aspects that you know a lot. So why not share it with others by submiting a small essay? It doesn't have to be a long paper, even just a small article with one or two photos would be enough. Choose something that you are interested in, could be as big as a plane or as small as a helmet. Tell us something that we didn't know before.

By doing so, we will have more high quality threads, and these would definitely attract more members to join.

Well I already promised to write an essey about finnish artillery to defencetalk, so quess i can post it in here too...and there's always the part III about the soviet carriers so better not promise anything else, there's enough work in those

But in general, the proffesional discussion foorum needs boosting, perhaps new vip-members?

Yeah-I got a couple of ideas for the pro forum. Maybe we could lift the ban on our banned topcs because in the professional forum, everybody is more mature. I also might make a history of the Chinese Civil War. And I have a WWIII story formulating in my brain for the Military Story thread. (Suprise-US and China are on the same side!)