Patrick

Hello, Thank you for visiting KarateForums.com. We recognize one member every month as the KarateForums.com Member of the Month for their positive contributions to this community. Our honoree for July is... @KorroddyDude! It's been great to have you in the community, KorroddyDude! Thank you for all of the contributions that you have made thus far. Thanks, Patrick

No worries! That happens to everyone. I just wanted to mention it in case it was a post that might have been considered missing. Thanks again.

Hey all, If you haven't yet submitted your nominations for the 2024 edition of the KarateForums.com Awards, please do! It just takes a few minutes, and it is an incredible way to recognize some of your favorite contributors from our community. It's as easy as sending a private message. You can find all of the details here: https://karateforums.com/topic/51932-karateforumscom-awards-2024-nominate-your-favorites/ Thanks for reading, Patrick

Hey all, If you haven't yet submitted your nominations for the 2024 edition of the KarateForums.com Awards, please do! It just takes a few minutes, and it is an incredible way to recognize some of your favorite contributors from our community. It's as easy as sending a private message. You can find all of the details here: https://karateforums.com/topic/51932-karateforumscom-awards-2024-nominate-your-favorites/ Thanks for reading, Patrick

Hey all, If you haven't yet submitted your nominations for the 2024 edition of the KarateForums.com Awards, please do! It just takes a few minutes, and it is an incredible way to recognize some of your favorite contributors from our community. It's as easy as sending a private message. You can find all of the details here: https://karateforums.com/topic/51932-karateforumscom-awards-2024-nominate-your-favorites/ Thanks for reading, Patrick

Thank you to those who have nominated thus far! If you haven't yet, please do. This is a great chance to recognize some of your favorites in the community and every ballot counts. I appreciate you taking the time!

Thanks for coming back to confirm that, KarateKen. I also just saw a post you had made on the football thread (either that or the baseball thread) that was meant for the hockey one, so I moved it over there.

Hello, Welcome to the 23rd annual KarateForums.com Awards! Through these awards, we recognize just a few of the individuals who have made outstanding contributions to KarateForums.com in the past year. Over the last 22 years, we have honored 169 different members with a nomination and 68 with an award. Your participation is vital. It is the members of this community who select the nominees and vote for the winners. What You Should Know Before Nominating 1. Review the KarateForums.com Awards 2024 Nominations Guide, which can serve as a starting point in filling out your ballot. 2. These awards take into consideration all community activity between October 19, 2023 and October 18, 2024. Members must be nominated based upon their activity in this period. 3. To nominate, you must have a KarateForums.com account with at least 25 posts made on or before October 18, 2023. 4. Only one member can be nominated for each award. In other words, you cannot nominate two members for Member of the Year. You have to pick one person. One person can be nominated for more than one award, however. 5. A nominated member must have contributed to KarateForums.com or to the specific section recognized by an award within the above date period. 6. You cannot nominate yourself for any of the awards. 7. Your nominations will be kept private. We do not publicly reveal who nominated whom. 8. Please do not attempt to artificially inflate our nomination totals in any way. This includes, but is not limited to: Trading nominations, encouraging people to nominate indiscriminately (publicly or privately), sending spam and any other behavior that could lead to results being artificially skewed. Members found to be participating in these activities will be disqualified from nomination in any category. 9. Though it is unlikely to occur, a banned member cannot be nominated. 10. Please note that you do not have to nominate in every category. You can nominate for as many or as few as you would like. Please go for as many as you feel comfortable with. The more valid nominations we receive, the better! From these nominations, the ballot for each award will be chosen, consisting of the top 4 nominees plus ties. Through the poll system available on these forums, you will be able to vote for the winners! Categories Important note: All members (including Sempais and Senseis) are eligible for nomination in any category, except where otherwise noted. However, I (Patrick) am ineligible for nomination in any category. 1. Member of the Year This award is intended to acknowledge the member who you feel best exemplifies the qualities that KarateForums.com puts a premium on. Knowledge is valuable, but most valuable is a kind and helpful nature. You don't need to be a martial arts expert to be nominated for this award - you need to be someone who is kind and who shares what they know in a productive fashion that helps others. Current staff members (Sempais, Senseis, and Patrick) cannot be nominated for this award. 2. Community Spirit Award This award should go to a person whom you feel has a strong passion for this community. A person who is all about the home team - in this case, KarateForums.com. 3. Staff Member of the Year This award is the same as the Member of the Year award, except that this award is for current staff members only (except Patrick). If you are unsure of who is on staff, please visit https://karateforums.com/staff/ for a complete listing. 4. Funniest Member of the Year Humor is an important aspect of the forums, and this award recognizes the member who has brought a smile to your face many times. 5. Karate Contributor of the Year This award is for your favorite contributor within the Karate forum - a member who has added substantial value to that section in the past year. 6. Health and Fitness Contributor of the Year This award is for your favorite contributor within the Health and Fitness forum - a member who has added substantial value to that section in the past year. 7. Instructors and School Owners Contributor of the Year This award is for your favorite contributor within the Instructors and School Owners forum - a member who has added substantial value to that section in the past year. Ready to Nominate? Please nominate. You will find a blank ballot at the bottom of this message that you can copy and paste. You nominate by sending a private message to the account with the username Awards through this link: https://karateforums.com/messenger/compose/?to=2685 - nominations will be closed on November 17, 2023 at 8pm Eastern. Please do not post your nominations publicly in this thread or elsewhere in the forums. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to private message me or reply here. Thank you for reading and for visiting KarateForums.com. Your participation in these awards is what makes them meaningful. I can't wait to see who you choose to honor this year. Here is a blank ballot that you can use:

Hello, Thank you for your interest in participating in the 2024 edition of the KarateForums.com Awards! To aide you in doing so, we publish this guide, where we list members who have made the most posts in the sections that are represented within our KarateForums.com Awards categories. We recognize that it can sometimes be difficult to choose nominees and hope that this guide will be helpful. How to Use This Guide Post count is not necessarily what you should look at when deciding who should be honored. Perhaps someone doesn't post as much as others, but when they do, their posts are amazing. Maybe they made a post this year that really stood out to you, and you want to recognize them for it. Maybe someone makes a lot of short posts in that section. For this reason, we are going to list the top 10 posting members from the last 12 months, plus ties, but without the actual number of posts and in alphabetical order. Our goal here is to provide a useful guide, but also to not prejudice the nominations toward only those with the highest quantities of posts. We hope this will provide you with a reasonable starting point for your nominations. However, you can nominate members who are not listed here at all, and I encourage you to conduct your own research by viewing and thinking about a member's posts within a given section as you put together your ballot. Nominations Guide With that said, here are the top 10 contributors to award-eligible forums, plus ties, in alphabetical order: Karate Contributor of the Year aurik bushido_man96 DarthPenguin KarateKen Montana Nidan Melbourne sensei8 Spartacus Maximus Wastelander Zaine Health and Fitness Contributor of the Year aurik Bradlee bushido_man96 DarthPenguin Fat Cobra JazzKicker KarateKen Nidan Melbourne sensei8 Zaine Instructors and School Owners Contributor of the Year aurik bushido_man96 DarthPenguin KarateKen Luther unleashed Montana Nidan Melbourne sensei8 Spartacus Maximus Wastelander Zaine For the full details on submitting your nominations, please see our nominations announcement. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me directly or ask in that thread. Thanks, Patrick

I'm looking forward to it. I never watched anything tied to the Karate Kid franchise until the Cobra Kai series was brought to Netflix, but now I am hooked.

Hope you had a nice birthday, Bob. Thank you for the kind words.

Thanks for mentioning this. I was playing with some settings and wanted to turn something off and that inadvertently removed the reactions. They're back now!

Thanks for confirming that, KarateKen. I'm sorry for the trouble.

Thanks for asking, @KarateKen! Liam/Nidan Melbourne's answer is correct. It's to denote staff. Previously, with our old software, it wasn't possible to show a staff member's regular belt, the one they have earned as a member. I doubt they care all that much, one way or another, but to me, when I was setting options, it felt like a nice touch, to recognize their contributions as a member in that context. That said, it can stretch out the page a bit more, so I'm open to feedback on it. You'll also notice it with the Member of the Month. Previously, their regular belt would disappear in favor of the rainbow one. But now you can see both at the same time. Thanks again for asking.

Thanks for letting me know, @KarateKen. When this happens, you don't actually see the reply posted, do you? Like the way you posted here and can see it, you don't actually see it after you press "Submit Reply"? It never advances past the Submit Reply button, right? There wouldn't be an explanation for that, so I am guessing what is happening is some sort of loss of connection somewhere (WiFi, cell network, possibly on our end). Thanks again.

Thanks Liam! That's very kind of you. The main person here for this migration was my friend, @Chrispian. I've known him for a long time, and he (and some other friends that I have) is always willing to help me when I run into some technical issue. But beyond, it's just me, the Senseis, and Sempais!

Definitely pumped for the postseason. Our toddler shows random flashes of interest, so that is fun.

Welcome LoneWolf1401. Glad to have you.

I'm working my way through the Stranger Things Omnibus Volume 1. It's a collection of official Stranger Things comics which tell the stories on TV, but also new stories before and after. For example, there is one that follows Six (like Eleven, but obviously she was earlier, haha).

So glad to hear that! Thanks Brian.

Thank you for the kind words, @ashworth! Happy to accept them and acknowledge the wider team at the same time. Also glad the new software is growing on you!

Getting excited!

Thanks so much for mentioning this, Ken. You did not make a mistake. I believe what happened here is you experienced a new feature here, which is that the software will try to save your current draft in the event of an error. So, for example, if the website went down or your internet went down, and the post didn't go through, it'll try to save whatever you wrote at the last point it was connected. I'm sure it's not perfect, but it will save some posts.

Hey all, With the launch of the new KarateForums.com behind us, I thought it would fun to periodically shine a light on a new feature and talk about how it works. Technology-wise, our community was the same for a long time, and there are so many new things that were added in this update. Most of them will be simple, straightforward additions that hopefully make your experience a little better. Some of them might be a bit bigger than that. Follow Topics Today, I wanted to highlight the Follow Topics feature. I will use the words topic and thread interchangeably here. On our old software, you could opt to receive email notifications when a thread had a new reply. This new feature operates similarly, but you have more options. You can receive notifications via: Email, like before Notification list (the community-based notification system represented by the bell icon at the top of our site) Push notifications, if you have them enabled on your browser or mobile device You can set these options from your Notification Settings, which are accessible via the Account Settings link, which you can find by clicking your username at the top of the site. I'll include a screenshot of that this area looks like below. Where to Find Follow Topics At the top of each thread, you can find a "Follow" button that will allow you to follow a thread without replying to it, which is handy if you are interested in a conversation only as a reader. It looks like this: You might be wondering, how can threads here already have followers? That is because we wanted to respect the choice members made to previously follow topics here. So if you had previously subscribed to a thread on our old software, you should still be subscribed to the thread. You can also find the option to follow a thread when you are creating or replying to one. Here's what that looks like: Customizing Your Settings If you want to automatically follow any thread you create or reply to, you can do that, as well in your Notification Settings. I made a deliberate choice to leave this off and put it in your hands, effectively making it a deliberate choice that you can make for yourself. By now, I think we are all used to communities and platforms that want to addict us and turn various notifications on my default, and we only notice them when they start flooding our inboxes or devices. That's not what I want for this community. You can easily adjust your notifications at any time through our Notification Settings, which also includes the ability to silence all push or email notifications, each with a single click. I hope you have found this post useful, and if you have any questions about this feature of how it works, please feel free to ask them here. If you see a question you can answer, please feel free to do so! Thanks for reading. Patrick

This is the first Member of the Month that has been honored since we moved to our new software and with that comes a small (but I think cool) change: In the past, we could only display one rank for a member. So while someone was Member of the Month, their rank in the forums could not be displayed. But now, we are able to display both at the same time. So, if you look at any of ashworth's posts, you'll see both the rainbow Member of the Month bar, but also the belt rank based on post count (which is currently Brown). It looks like this: