Patrick

Thank you to everyone who has nominated thus far! Your voices are the most crucial part of our awards. If you haven't yet done so, you still have time! Please submit your nominations by 7 PM Eastern on Saturday. Our ballots come from your nominations, so we'd love to have your input as part of this process. Thanks again, Patrick

Welcome to KF, luv2flyjrn. Glad to have you. Patrick

No worries, Karate_John. Thanks for following up! Patrick

If you have not yet submitted your nominations, please be sure to do so! These awards represent the community recognizing the contributors who have made a different in the past year, and your participation makes all the difference! Thanks, Patrick

Welcome back, aurik. Patrick

Hello, Welcome to the 17th 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 16 years, we have honored 148 different members with a nomination and 53 with an award. Both of these numbers will grow again this year. 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 2018 Nominations Guide, serving as a starting point in filling out your ballot. 2. These awards take into consideration all community activity between October 19, 2017 and October 18, 2018. Members must be nominated based upon their activity in this period. 2. To nominate, you must have a KarateForums.com account with at least 25 posts made on or before October 18, 2018. 3. 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. 4. You cannot nominate yourself for any of the awards. 5. Your nominations will be kept private. We do not publicly reveal who nominated whom. 6. 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. 7. Though it is unlikely to occur, a banned member cannot be nominated. 8. 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. New Member of the Year This award is the same as Member of the Year, except that this one is strictly for members that registered on or between the dates of October 19, 2017 and October 18, 2018. Eligible members must have made at least 50 posts by October 18, 2018. Current staff members (Sempais, Senseis and Patrick) cannot be nominated for this award. 3. 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. 4. 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 http://www.karateforums.com/staff.php for a complete listing. 5. 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. 6. 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. 7. Equipment Contributor of the Year This award is for your favorite contributor within the Equipment forum - a member who has added substantial value to that section in the past year. 8. Health, Training and Fitness Contributor of the Year This award is for your favorite contributor within the Health, Training and Fitness forum - a member who has added substantial value to that section in the past year. 9. Instructor Central Contributor of the Year This award is for your favorite contributor within the Instructor Central forum - a member who has added substantial value to that section in the past year. Please note: Due to a lack of activity, the Jiu-Jitsu and Grappling Martial Arts Contributor of the Year award has been removed this year. We hope activity in that section grows, and we are able to add it back in the future. 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: http://www.karateforums.com/privmsg.php?mode=post&u=2715 - nominations will be closed on November 3, 2018 at 7 PM ET. 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 2018 edition of the KarateForums.com Awards! To aide you in doing so, we publish this guide, where we list the 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 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, in each section, 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 members posts within a given section, as you put together your ballot. Nominations Guide With that said, here are the top 10 contributions to award-eligible forums, plus ties, in alphabetical order: Karate Contributor of the Year JR 137 MatsuShinshii OneKickWonder Prototype sensei8 shortyafter singularity6 Spartacus Maximus Wastelander Wayofaswede Equipment Contributor of the Year Alan Armstrong Bulltahr David the Gnome DWx JR 137 LLLEARNER MatsuShinshii mushybees neoravencroft Prototype sensei8 singularity6 Spartacus Maximus Health, Training and Fitness Contributor of the Year Alan Armstrong bushido_man96 DWx JR 137 LLLEARNER MatsuShinshii OneKickWonder sensei8 singularity6 Spartacus Maximus Instructor Central Contributor of the Year Alan Armstrong Bulltahr bushido_man96 DWx JR 137 MatsuShinshii Nidan Melbourne sensei8 singularity6 Spartacus Maximus Wastelander 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

Happy birthday to Bob! Thank you for all of the incredible contributions that you have made over the years. I appreciate all of your kindness and support. Have an awesome day! 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 October is... P.A.L. Congratulations! Thank you for being a member for 14+ years, and for all of the great contributions that you have made during that time. Sincerely, Patrick

Hello and welcome, Hokie6260. Patrick

This thread is like a journal of your son's journey through wrestling. Very cool. It would be a fun thing for him to read through it one day when he is older. Patrick

Nice to have you, nunopicado. Thank you for joining us. Patrick

Welcome to KarateForums.com, 7haponi. Glad to have you. Patrick

Update: The registration form has been fixed. Sorry for the trouble. Thanks, Patrick

Known issue: Our registration form is broken, and we are not able to accept new members. I am working on this, and will follow up. I apologize for the trouble. Thanks, Patrick

It sounds like you are well on your way. I haven't done much Facebook advertising, but they sit on the greatest goldmine of data possibly ever assembled, which allows you to target in the way it sounds like you, Alex and Bulltahr are already using. It's super powerful. The ability to target ads only to X located in X that is interested in X... pretty amazing stuff. That's awesome that you have found success. 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 September is... Chunmonchek. Congratulations! Thank you for being a part of our community for so long, and for all of the contributions that you have made. Sincerely, Patrick

Hey all, Just as a reminder, in this community, we can have the conversation of, "I observed a test where men and women were asked to perform in different ways, what do we think about that?" But what is not appropriate for this community is general observations on feminism, "political correctness" and women's rights. In other words, let's keep it strictly to the martial arts, and what is directly relevant to the martial arts conversation happening here. Please adhere to that from this reply forward. Thank you. Patrick

Thanks for the kind mention, Bulltahr. Interesting question, Liam! As Liam probably knows, but I thought I'd mention for others, the software that powers Wikipedia is free and open source, meaning you can use what they use pretty easily. You can find it here: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki To keep it even simpler (in some ways), you could always collaborate over Google Docs. I think it's a good thing that you are talking about, at a high level, because I think it's helpful to have this information hosted somewhere where you have control over it. Things can happen to Facebook Groups and Pages. Not that it would, but it's always sort of risky putting all your eggs in one basket. I think it just really depends on what is easiest to use for your and your members. By default, I'd probably push people toward (a private) WordPress installation. You can do similar things with it, and I feel like more people are familiar with it. Hope this is helpful. If you've self-hosted a Wiki, definitely post! Thanks, Patrick

Sorry to hear that but congrats on the year mark! Thanks for the update. 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 August is... LLLEARNER. Congratulations! Thank you all of the incredible contributions that you have made over the years! Sincerely, Patrick

Interesting idea. Thanks for sharing, Himokiri Karate. Patrick

Avatar issue fixed. Thanks.

First thing: some avatars are not displaying. Like mine. I'm looking into that. Thanks!

Hey all, You may have seen some errors on the site over the last 24 hours, tied to security. Firstly, everything is fine, there was no real security issue. It was triggered by our web host moving us to a new server without talking to me first. At any rate, we're now on a newer server, and if you see anything that is amiss - anything broken, any error messages, anything at all out of place, please report it here or via private message to me. There may be no errors at all, but to be safe, I'd like your help to make sure. Thank you for your time and patience. Patrick