Is SDF passing away???

I Kinda understand Balances point, thougth from the "other side" of being constantly labeled "anti-china" when I say something that doesent admire china that much. If one wants take out single biggest reason for my fustration (that sometimes leads for me giving back in same ammount) that would be it. And to me its almost in sense of insult, as I am fondly intressed about Chinese military as it presents really unique force among the worlds militaries and expecially as it is rising counterballance to western hegemony outside of Europe.
I would have not spend in chinese military forums and browsing their sites since 1997 (when we got our first computer with internet connection) if I would be anti-chinese by mind.
So In my sense when I try to be neutral I try to cut out the BS and inpropriate behavior of both "parties" as the bunch of guys who really deserve the title "anti-china" are lot worser in some aspect than the fan-boys.

I think this forum attract all sort of people in the beginning, but only retains those that really want information and not the natinalistic bashing and pride.

In a sense this is a unique place that differs from other forum. Most english language forum will be overwhelmingly anti-china. Most chinese that don't speak english well will be frustrated and leave short but blunt comment that make them look immature. Most of the serious and mature chinese forumers will probably be stuck in chinese language forums. In light of this situation, I think SDF has done a good job in keeping the atmosphere neutral and information focused. It is a unique offering in the internet. i believe it will and can be around for along time to come if the Mods that enforce this rule still enforce the rule with iron fist.

My suggestion:
1) keep up the strict modding
2) recruit enough like minded mod so that the forum will be heavily monitored 24/7
3) keep up the constant update of information
4) evolve the operating model of this site

The first three point is to maintain the shorterm success of the site but won't by itself attract more members.

the last point is the one that really can make the difference. Webmasters and mods must really know who and what kind of people is visiting the site. A few suggestion:

1) first know who and what kind of members tend to stay the longest (survey and web analytics)

2) must have a goal and vision of what SDF is in the future: as a source of military info? as a community of military expert? How does owner of SDF see it? How does the forum members including mods sees it?

3) What are the key performance indicator of SDF? how can it be changed to meet new challenge.

4) What are the competition doing? maybe make it more chinese language friendly since its chinese military site and can attract high profile chinese members. Or more interactive and evolve more to the like of community sites? How about merging or being more integrated with sinodefence.com?

5) develope SDF brand awareness, positioning and loyalty. I know SDF is non profit but it will need a brand if it is going to compete and attract more members. What can SDF offer to member other than the functional benefit/proposition such as military information. Can members be proud to be an SDF members (self expressive proposition)? Can members attach emotional values to SDF (emotional proposition)? One of the reason that other members state that people are running away from SDF is because we cut off emotional attribute such as nationalism from this forum completely and only able to offer pure information instead. Not saying this is wrong but in term of branding attaching emotion to the brand is useful. SDF should think carefully about what kind of emotion is useful to retain members loyalty. What about brand story? Having stories about how SDF develops and introducing some key/high profile members is useful. This will make the site more personal and can potentially increase pride from membership. Link exchange with several high traffic blogs or site can be useful too. Members that have professinal blogs should be accessible from SDF. This will increase the communal value of SDF.

Just my two cents....

My thoughts:
Web forums are about sources and discussion. Without sources, discussion slowly dies away. There are first-hand source and second-hand sources. First hand sources are original photos (taken by the poster) and original information. I am not aware of anyone posting first hand sources here. Second hand sources are reposts of first hand sources found in other media or other forums. Since the vast majority of first hand sources will be in Chinese, a successful English language forum will need active members trawling the Chinese language web forums for first hand sources and bring them in as second hand sources. The other alternative is to trawl other English PLA watching sites, but then SDF will never be more than a derivative.

The people who can easily trawl the sources of first-hand sources will need to be native Chinese readers. Unless you are highly proficient you will not get the slang and will be overwhelmed by the volume. Machine translation has gotten much better over the years, but is still not at the point where it replaces native speaker skills. Now, relating to Balance's point, most of those who are native Chinese readers will tend to be perceived as outside the acceptable mainstream on this site. There are a very few members with both the language skills and a background which is compatible with English-based PLA watching forums. And unless one is extremely passionate about PLA watching, and driven to SHARE this information with a largly non-Chinese audience, there is no incentive to re-post first-hand sources here.

Oh, one thing I always wanna ask, but never hade the chance, but who actually is the owner of this site? I mean the entire Blog and Sinodefence.com? I have been on this site and forum since 2003 I think, lost my old login name after I was gone for sometime, and reregistered this new one after the forum was renewed I believe, but never knew who was the owner of the site for some reason.

yehe said:

Oh, one thing I always wanna ask, but never hade the chance, but who actually is the owner of this site? I mean the entire Blog and Sinodefence.com? I have been on this site and forum since 2003 I think, lost my old login name after I was gone for sometime, and reregistered this new one after the forum was renewed I believe, but never knew who was the owner of the site for some reason.

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I'm the owner of SinoDefence.com and its blog, while webmaster is the owner of SinoDefenceforum.com

I started the EZboard version of the sinodefence forum few years ago but lacked time to moderate it properly. So webmaster talked me into a co-oepration plan where he sorts out the technical side of things. The forum also attracted several extremely dedicated like bd popeye, Gollevainen and others, so that I can concentrate on working on sinodefence.com

Hi, Long time no see. I hope you're all well.

It seems to be ages since the last time I posted on SDF. I hardly have any time these days to take part in the discussion here. Just got a new job and as always spend the rest of my time working on SinoDefence.com like crazy.

I share bd popeye's concern about the declining number of posts and visitors. I also believe that strict moderation was not the reason to balme for causing the decline. in fact, I heard in several occassions people saying good things about this forum and one thing they always mention is the fact that there isn't much political BS going on. We don't want to turn this forum into a rubbish dump yard, like many other we have seen before, do we?

I believe that there are a number of reasons for the decline. firstly, 2008 turned out to be a pretty eventful year both in China and around the globe. With the current financial crisis going on, and also Russia appearing to have replaced China again to be the No.1 target, the PLA-watching front may appear to be slightly out of fashion.

Secondly, many people came here to social, making friends with common interests. These days more and more young people are being attracted to those solical networking sites such as Facebook (how many here are on the 'book'?), which almost definitely has a negative impact to forum-based sites like SDF.

I don't really know the answer to the problem, but I think that instead of trying to fight it, maybe we need to adapt ourselves to the change? Ask ourselves these questions: Why do people stop visiting forums? Is it because they are fed up with huge amount of low-quality threads, posted by strangers hiding behind fake IDs? If so, would a personalised appearance (such as blog) possibly be the solution?

PLA watching isn't as good as it was before. Part of the mystique of PLA watching is playing amateur CIA and getting pics of things supposedly forbidden before the other defense media get to it. Its the mystique of the 'forbidden fruit', the more banned it is, the greater the allure.

When the PLA became more open (transparent) part of that allure disappeared with it as well. For example, much on the interest on the J-10 literally took a nose dive when the plane became officially acknowledged. People stopped taking pics at air bases and the CAC air field, when you now have official PLA supplied pics, all clear and high quality, printed in Chinese magazines sold in the street. We lost all sorts of discussion threads when people discussed and debated for weeks over fuzzy pictures, whether they are PS'ed or real, what's this and that, what's the implications and so on.

After that, "shipyard photos" became the next best thing, fuzzy pics of whatever sub, frigate or destroyer under construction, plus what the hell is happening with the Varyag thing. The 054A frigate was in particular, the "star" outshining all other PLA weapons systems in forum interest, although for a brief moment there, someone took an interest on the 094 submarine. After the 054A, I would say the 022 Houbei was second. With the ships finished and only few projects going on now, the interest diminished with it. Jiangnan moving to a new facility that is impossible to get paparazzi photos from isn't going to help. By the time a new destroyer is known, it would already be on the water and sitting at a PLAN base.

Tanks never got this level of interest nor allure because they, the ZTZ-96/98/99, were all declassified early. A few photos here and there were people are going to debate the pics whether they're PSed or not, their significance and analysis, but soon enough the PLA declassifies them and comes out with official pics. Spoils the party.

The Olympics, the Georgian War, the China milk and US financial crisis, and most of all the US presidential race also distracted from the PLA watching. But we're in good company, it seems everything is distracted, looking at the ratings report of fall TV programs.

With Russia again the number one threat, as if the Russians really tried to gain back this title, the number of China threat articles seems to have spiraled downward as well (its been spiraling gradually all these years), and so less articles to discuss about.

I agree with Crobato that those several factors have affected the number of visitors to this forum.

I still believe that high-quality discussions will attract people with real interests in PLA affairs. I have been trying to push the professional discussion board but it never really took off.

crobato said:

PLA watching isn't as good as it was before. Part of the mystique of PLA watching is playing amateur CIA and getting pics of things supposedly forbidden before the other defense media get to it. Its the mystique of the 'forbidden fruit', the more banned it is, the greater the allure.

When the PLA became more open (transparent) part of that allure disappeared with it as well. For example, much on the interest on the J-10 literally took a nose dive when the plane became officially acknowledged. People stopped taking pics at air bases and the CAC air field, when you now have official PLA supplied pics, all clear and high quality, printed in Chinese magazines sold in the street. We lost all sorts of discussion threads when people discussed and debated for weeks over fuzzy pictures, whether they are PS'ed or real, what's this and that, what's the implications and so on.

After that, "shipyard photos" became the next best thing, fuzzy pics of whatever sub, frigate or destroyer under construction, plus what the hell is happening with the Varyag thing. The 054A frigate was in particular, the "star" outshining all other PLA weapons systems in forum interest, although for a brief moment there, someone took an interest on the 094 submarine. After the 054A, I would say the 022 Houbei was second. With the ships finished and only few projects going on now, the interest diminished with it. Jiangnan moving to a new facility that is impossible to get paparazzi photos from isn't going to help. By the time a new destroyer is known, it would already be on the water and sitting at a PLAN base.

Tanks never got this level of interest nor allure because they, the ZTZ-96/98/99, were all declassified early. A few photos here and there were people are going to debate the pics whether they're PSed or not, their significance and analysis, but soon enough the PLA declassifies them and comes out with official pics. Spoils the party.

The Olympics, the Georgian War, the China milk and US financial crisis, and most of all the US presidential race also distracted from the PLA watching. But we're in good company, it seems everything is distracted, looking at the ratings report of fall TV programs.

With Russia again the number one threat, as if the Russians really tried to gain back this title, the number of China threat articles seems to have spiraled downward as well (its been spiraling gradually all these years), and so less articles to discuss about.

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Can add some Russian and Indian watch I guess


btw. GJ with the site DongFeng, sinodenfence is undoubtly the best China military watching site out there, you have been quoted by some Chinese mdia even.

Sinodefence is one of the best design military site, or it was a couple of days ago. I give this site example, to how should be look a well made and comprehensive web page. But with this new look lost one of the major advantage, the well made basic structure in witch the different equipment was put in.