Patrick

Thank you so much for your kindness, CredoTe, John, Nidan Melbourne, Alex, Brian, Danielle, Noah, Bob and Spodo Komodo. I'm grateful for your support. Patrick

Hello, Thank you for visiting KarateForums.com. May 21 is the day that KarateForums.com launched, 14 years ago. The more time goes by, the prouder I am of what this community has become. KarateForums.com is a place where you can respectfully discuss all martial arts-related topics. No matter how controversial something is, the conversations here remain productive. That's a credit to the staff and our great community members. But it's also a choose your own adventure type experience. It can be serious or it can be light. You can share a personal story. You can ask for help and receive thoughtful answers. You can build friendships that transcend our community and stay with you for the rest of your life. It's a cool place, and I'd like to thank you for being a part of it. In honor of hitting 14 years, I wanted to take a moment to specifically highlight a group of members that I have noticed within the forums, that have really been making a mark lately through their outstanding contributions. This group includes wagnerk, Wado Heretic, Wastelander, Spodo Komodo, Shotokannon, chiliphil1, Zaine, bushido_man96, tallgeese, CredoTe, Lupin1, Spartacus Maximus, Nidan Melbourne, DWx, ninjanurse, yamesu, muttley and sensei8. Thank you all. This isn't an all-inclusive list, just a bunch of people I've seen doing great things recently. Please feel free to add more names you appreciate in a reply to this thread. Thank you for reading and for your support of KarateForums.com. Sincerely, Patrick

This looks pretty great! https://www.facebook.com/TheSimpsons/videos/10152908339708697/ For those not on Facebook, here is another video (though it shows less):

Great story. It's always nice to be appreciated. Thanks for sharing.

Thank you so much for all of the kind words here, regarding our community, the people we have, our moderation, etc. It means a lot to us. Thank you, as well, for starting this thread, gronis. I like threads like this because choice is a good thing. Choice allows you to find the community that is best for you or to realize you've already found it. Or just to find another interesting place. Patrick

Hey AsmShir. Glad to have you here. Patrick

Hello, Thank you for visiting KarateForums.com. It was on this day, 10 years ago, that Heidi Wilmott, better known here as ninjanurse, become a moderator (or a Sensei, as we call them) on KarateForums.com. In honor of this milestone, I recorded a video talking about the contributions that Heidi has made here and how much they mean to our community. 10 years is such a unique milestone. Outside of managing KarateForums.com for almost 14 years, I have managed several online communities over the past 15 years. I also know a lot of other people who have been managing online communities for a long time. I have never had a moderator this long. It's very rare. We've been fortunate to have Heidi not only as a moderator for this long, but as a member for more than 12 years and as a staff member for almost as long. In honor of this accomplishment, we decided that we needed to do something special, outside of the community. After some discussion with the staff, I decided that it would be fun to send Heidi and her husband, Mike, out for a great dinner at a restaurant local to them. Heidi follows a vegan diet and while you might think that made this difficult, it actually helped quite a bit because I knew what I needed. An upscale restaurant with an impressive vegan-friendly selection for all three courses, plus drinks. After I identified a restaurant, I didn't want to assume it was the right choice. So I reached out to Heidi's daughter, Holly, through Facebook. I had never spoken to Holly before. With her help, and some additional thoughts from other members of Heidi's family, I was able to get a better picture of the type of experience Heidi would prefer. Holly shared that Heidi really enjoys Ithaca, New York - specifically the Ithaca Commons. With that in mind, we're going to send Heidi and Mike to Mia, a restaurant in the Ithaca Commons that has an excellent selection of vegan-friendly options. Once Heidi selects a date, I'll make the reservation, and we'll happily pick up the check. As I told you via private message, Heidi, I hope that you and Mike order whatever you want and have a wonderful evening. You deserve it, and it is only a small token of the appreciation that we have for you. Thank you for all of the amazing contributions that you have made here. Thank you for your efforts as a member of staff, helping to maintain the standards of our community. Thank you for your kindness, support and friendship over the years. I hope that others will join me in congratulating Heidi on this impressive milestone. Thank you for reading. Sincerely, Patrick

Hello, Thank you for visiting KarateForums.com. We have always had pretty strict guidelines regarding self-promotion within our community. They have served us well and helped to create the high level of discussion that we enjoy here. As time passes, more and more people share video in our forums. This is a good thing because there are plenty of discussions here that can be aided by visuals - such as technique demonstrations and competition footage. However, as people create video and post it here, we have noticed that some have included tasteful branding in their videos - usually for their martial arts school or a resource that they run. This creates a potential conflict with our guidelines regarding self-promotion. Today, after a lot of thought and discussion amongst the staff, we have made an adjustment to our guidelines to clarify that conflict. We want to encourage people to share video here, as long as they are committed to being a member of our community - not just someone looking for video views. As such, we are relaxing our guidelines on self-promotion, as they apply to video, to allow for light, tasteful branding. Here is the new policy, in full: This policy applies only to videos that include branding of companies, organizations, products or websites that are affiliated with the person sharing the video. I'd like to provide some examples to help illustrate how this will work. What does tasteful branding look like? Please see and . What does it mean for a video to start a discussion here? Please see this post. What does it mean for a video to add value to a discussion as a reply? Please see this reply. Our goal is to encourage people to share videos they create, including a plug for their own school or website (much like a signature link at the bottom of your posts in the forums), but to discourage video sharing that feels exploitative to our community or overtly self-promotional. If you have any questions regarding this new policy, please do not hesitate to ask, either here or via private message. Thank you for your time. Sincerely, Patrick

"Street Fighter: The Later Years" is a funny series, RW. Here's a link for anyone who wants to watch it: http://www.collegehumor.com/tag/street-fighter-the-later-years Patrick

Happy birthday, Ken (wagnerk)! Thank you for all of the great contributions that you have made to our community. Enjoy your day. Patrick

Hello, Thank you for visiting KarateForums.com. As there are now two threads for this conversation, I am going to close this one and direct further replies to the other one: http://www.karateforums.com/going-from-shotokan-to-kickboxing-vt48259.html This will make it easier for everyone to follow the discussion. Thanks, Patrick

Happy Mother's Day to all of the Moms here! Patrick

Congrats gronis. Nicely done. Patrick

Congrats on the book. Best of luck. Patrick

Very kind! Thanks for sharing. Patrick

Thank you for sharing that, chiliphil1. I'm sure it's not an easy thing to put out there when martial artists tend to be fairly critical of kids attaining the rank. Side note: I was homeschooled, as well. Thanks again, Patrick

Thanks for the question, Bob and for answering, Shotokannon. In this context, I just mean that the image will display in the post. Like this: http://www.karateforums.com/img/photos/heidininjanurseaward.png Thanks, Patrick

That's awesome! Congrats skullsplitter. Please keep us posted. Patrick

Hey Gary. So glad to have you with us.

Thanks Bob. I appreciate the support. I don't have any plans to bring the photo album back online. However, our software will better handle photo embedding in the future, and I look forward to that. Thanks again, Patrick

Welcome aboard, enjayed. 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. The May selection is... Wado Heretic. Congratulations! Thank you for all of the great contributions that you have made to our community. Sincerely, Patrick

Thanks Bob and Shotokannon. I appreciate it.

Congrats AlbanyDude.

Welcome to KF, Sapper Woody. Glad to have you. Patrick