Well, we're about as close to the end of the year as we're gonna get without hearing a Slade song...

So, with the forum nearing its first Birthday, on the (mumble-th) of January...(you know...."J a n u a r y" that months which is 20+ gigs away...) I thought it would be nice to find out from member how well they feel their questions got answered by other forum members.

EG: If you asked about "What mixer should I get?", "Which extra speakers?", "What sort of CD-deck would be good?", "Will a single power socket on a wall of a pre-war, pre-fab hut give me 200 amps of electricity? )

So...how about using the forums search facility, Here to find the post, or posts which had your original (or perhaps most important) question featured in it. Remember you can narrow your search down by posts made by you.

(Remember to select the "Search from Any date" option...otherwise your search will only look at the last 30 days posts)

Then post in THAT thread/topic again, with the outcome...eg: Did you buy the item recommended? If so, was it a good choice?, if not, why not?...did you buy something else etc. Maybe you found out some extra info which no-one told you about here on the forum, if so, why not share it now.

Pssst....Remember not to mention where you bought items from , unless you bought them from Chris, of course.

Gary - how strange you should ask these questions! I have only today been looking at other forums - and have come to the conclusion that ours is head and shoulders above the rest... Interesting and intelligent questions and answers - and a distinct lack of 15 year old girls who have never been near a deck in their lives calling themselves "DJ bitch"!!
The No. 1 Forum on the we me thinks!

Gary remember that other forum we knew and the yearlly awards i.e most hepful person best sig ect....... do you think we should do you think we should do 1 on here. sorry that question goes out to everybody

Well, Im not everybody but, I think that the old ex-forum/closed forum, to which you refer suffered a little from some of those award catagories. EG: Worst Avatar, worst signature, and Worst this, worse that...etc... all dragged the winners down.

Also those that didn't win things like "Best avartar" or "Best Signature" etc...then tried too hard (too pornographically!) to make their avatar "better".

Besides, here on DJC, "Best Admin:" would of course, go to Chris, and "Most helpful member" would go to all 960 members, as even the 99% dormant ones contribute something sometimes.

The snag is...when people are asked to reflect on "the best" its natural for "the worst" to pop in to mind too, and thats the sort of negativity (amongst other things) which closed that other forum.

I am very happy with the answers i have got,if i have one criticism then i think some of us (me included) should take a deep breath sometimes before answering posts that wind up\hurt\anger and all those other negative reactions to posts that probably werent meant to insult us!perhaps a little less paranoia is what i am trying to say.

Hmmm, a good idea on the surface of it, since it may encourage people to join in and post - then again it could very well be counter-productive and do entirely the opposite and end up segregating the membership . For an example how would you define "Best Moderator"?, when all of them have been given the role because (1) They take part on a regular basis and have a post count of around 10 times the general membership (2) Have offered constructive and unbiased advice in the past and (3) Keep the forum a safe place for all ages. In other words, it wouldn't be fair to assume that one mod was better than the other or put it up for debate - even for a harmless competition .

I also agree with Gary, anybody with a post count above 0 has contributed something back to the forum.

Although whilst we are all patting ourselves on the back (and it's always the same people doing the patting ) and congratulating ourselves on having such a Community maybe we should be asking why 90% of the membership only posts once a month / has yet to post?. Maybe we should be sending a P.M to those at 0 posts and asking what would encourage them to take part, or whether it was purely a case of curiosity?. Since very little of the forum is viewable to Guests, it could simply be the case of people signing up out of curiosity thinking that by being a member they could access the latest Porn / MP3 / DVD download....in which case they have been disappointed (Unless you include Karens Diet thread pictures! ).

Don't get me wrong it is nice to get compliments on how well the forum is doing, and I must admit that the occasional email that I get thanking us for the advice given makes it all worthwhile. However I just run the forum and pay the bills, the actual credit goes to ANYBODY who has ever posted here, in response to a "How do I" type question, and of course the more experienced D.J's who take the time to visit and often help to run the forum on a Daily basis.

Above all, you don't have to have many years of D.J'ing experience to be part of and join in this community and unlike some of the other forums, we don't allow anybody to be made to feel inferior just because they may be new to the business or have some basic questions to ask. All it takes to join in, is a post!

All good points so i think we should not bother i think there are a quite a few reasons why people don't post but what i do belive is that this forum will just take longer than others to get going because we are different that most of the other forums out there and that we appeal to a certain sort of person

Im more than happy for this forum to take its time to expand its active member list.

Its better that we have 100 regular QUALITY posters, than 256 spammers, or worse still, 231 muppets making suggestions of buying a 1000watt bass bin, to go with a pair of 50watt tweeters, to play only what you want to hear, as loud as you can etc,etc,etc.