Pete suggested someone starting this thread,and seeing I am generally a big mouth here goes!

How do you see Martial Edge expanding to maintain the community values yet at the same time getting a wider range of members to contribute?

My thoughts are things such as encouraging members to contribute to the articles and review sections in order for us all to get a greater insight into what each of us do.

How about some kind of meet up in the future? It's done on other sites to get people to share their skills- although I'm not really interested these days in the "lets meet up and prove who is hardest...." mentality!

I'm sure others out there have good ideas too!

Come on,share them............

Come on people....get involved

Hi Sulin and the team!
I'll just throw my tuppence in:

I think expansion for the sake of expansion should be avoided. As discussed on the other thread, it's no great badge of honour to have a member count into the tens of thousands, if only a handful of those members have ever actually contributed.

I absolutely think that the way to go is to keep getting great content onto the site: great articles, great videos, great interviews, great information on the forums... In this way, decent, knowledgable members will come to us, instead of us chasing people to sign up, just for the sake of having a large user count.

In this vain, I'm currently working on an indepth article about Tai Chi, it's theories, training methods and tactics. Will hopefully have it finished in the next day or so!

Yep,agree with not needing thousands of members.

Looking forward to reading the article. Would like to write one myself as need to get into the swing of it for work as well,just can't decide on a subject matter.

If anyone has any ideas for me to write about send me a pm

This forum will expand naturally as BT has said because of recommendation, good content, good references...

They key here is to moderate it approriately and keep the site in good spirits. Big company's always end up with bad reputations and pee'd off staff due to bad managment.

Listen to the people, have the right capacity to deal with what goes on is my advise. Of course the content and everything else will remain in good spirit because the crap would be monitored...

We are watching this post with interest!

Martial Edge as a concept is something that I hold very dear to my heart. For me I see it as a lifelong work that hopefully will allow me and the people involved with M.E to earn a living from. I say living because quite honestly a massive amount of our time is put into this website and the specialist skills we utilise such as IT guru Ian etc all need to make ends meat.

Hell, me and Jase have never made any attempt to disguise this as business. The reason why is we are not aiming at having an average site but THE martial arts site.

Imagine this...

You log on to your personal profile... You can upload your daily training/make comments in your blog that all feeds into a central hub where other users of M.E. can follow your progress.

A concept we are just kicking off is to provide any instructor with a complete package of a website (that they can set up and manage) with blogs, forums, marketing tools such as newsletters to build up and communicate with their students...etc...

The next step is like what you guys are thinking of - the ability to become publishers and moderators of free flowing information on the martial arts (whether that be reviews, articles videos audio etc)

The reality of the situation is that this requires money. No two ways about it... and it needs like minded people to be using this stuff to the max to grow the site and grow M.E.


The feeling im getting is that the primary concern is growing the site means less community feel. But should that really be the case? I dont want to sound like we are trying to create a utopian vision but if websites such as wikipedia can govern democratically then why cant we?

Just some thoughts - feel free to pull this apart as im throwing ideas out there!!

PeteMills wrote:




The feeling im getting is that the primary concern is growing the site means less community feel. But should that really be the case? I dont want to sound like we are trying to create a utopian vision but if websites such as wikipedia can govern democratically then why cant we?

Just some thoughts - feel free to pull this apart as im throwing ideas out there!!

Need to seperate the forum from the business bud.
Wikipedia is a pile of shit and not comparable to a forum.

Some big ideas, Pete. Hope it works out as you envision. :)

Hey and Mule, don't hold back, tell us how ya really feel.

I see where you are coming from Pete with the business side, but ,as Mule said,Im not sure the forum should be where you are looking to make money.I have paid supporting memberships in the past but I won't do it anymore, as I think hosting a forum should be seperate from a business.I completely understand it costs to host the site etc and that advertising is necessary but in terms of getting drawn in to a huge site with all the instructor stuff, that wouldn't attract me personally.
It's not just about the instructors but all of the members, students and teachers alike. Your business ideas definitely sound interesting, but is there any way you can keep the forum as a forum? There are a few I visit that are pretty basic but the conversation is really lively and I get loads of information from them, they don't have to be all singing all dancing.
I think members contributions in terms of articles and ideas are fundamental and that part of it should definitely be encouraged and developed.


Just some thoughts.

Su Lin wrote:
I see where you are coming from Pete with the business side, but ,as Mule said,Im not sure the forum should be where you are looking to make money.I have paid supporting memberships in the past but I won't do it anymore, as I think hosting a forum should be seperate from a business.
Have to agree.
There are great discussion forums, well established forums you can join for free.
Implement any cost to join discussion and lose the members.
It's them that make the forum after all.
It's a great loss leader for other aspects of a business though.

When you get your FMA weapons section of the shop together, I'd always make you my first 'port of call', regardless of whether they were a couple of quid cheaper elsewhere.

Thick, High Density, 28" Rattan Cane required here!

Some interesting points there.

However guys, as Jason said in the previous thread there is no intention whatsoever for ever charging for use of the forums or paying any form of subscription charges!! Ever!! It would be in my view complete madness to do something like that.

Mule, you cussed Wikipedia but all I was doing was trying to give an example of a truly global site that governed democratically! Sure its not perfect but its an example.

PeteMills wrote:


Mule, you cussed Wikipedia but all I was doing was trying to give an example of a truly global site that governed democratically! Sure its not perfect but its an example.

I'll get the wire brush and Dettol for ma filthy mooth!

I just have issues with some of the 'facts' being touted by Wiki on MA and the people who are using it to 'spin'.
It's anything but democratic in it's inner workings.
Useful for some things, but not trustworthy as a resource for MA.