A few years back, the membership of this forum was almost 50% N. Americans and 50% from the UK. Over the years, this balance has shifted and now it seems that as soon as a non-American posts, they are quickly referred to other forums. Although this may appear at first to be helpful, it sends a message that this is a N.American forum and they are not welcome here. I believe this has been the cause of this shift in balance.

Let's remember that this is an international forum with members in UK, Australia, Hong Kong, Canada, US, and many other countries. Let's show them respect and support by answering their questions here or allow someone else to answer when we can't.

Thank you,
PKF

I have noticed the same as pkf. If a international newbie shows up here and has a question other than general kite stuff they are passed on to another site (I may have done the same myself). I'm not saying this was done intentionally to drive them away , but I have noticed it more and more lately. I know we are just trying to do our best to put them in the right place to get the info. they desire. I guess we need to get more international folks on the forum to help our international newbies to this forum.

I visit a few other forums that are UK based, and pick up a tidbit of info from time to time there. The wealth of info available here is 10 times anything else I've found. That should bring in people with like interests regardless of geography. My impression was that some people have been sent elsewhere if they are looking for local specific info. Just my gut feeling.

I believe that this thread was started because we had a question about where one might go to visit a kitesurfing resort. The post itself reeked of SPAM (IMO), and when the post was answered, the person who was asking was referred to another forum.

Maybe we didnt answer because it seemed like a fake post. Maybe nobody on the forum that is from the UK knows any resorts to go kitesurfing at... the criteria may have been too many.

I would like to think that the question just didnt get answered because nobody knew how to, or because we dont want to encourage spammers. Anyhow... I think that this forum is pretty good. I would like to see more international participation.

But if some suspicious post pops up bragging about some remote resort, and asking where others are.... I wont answer, because I dont know.

No, it was not about any one post, and you're right, PKF members are great and very helpful. My point, again, is that although it seems helpful to link someone to a another site, it may send a message that PKF is exclusive to one region.

PKF is an international forum and everyone is welcome here! There may be questions that we cannot answer... better to leave them for someone else. It could appear offputting if our first response is to send them somewhere else after the time they spent to register and post.

How about the other question PKF is there more North Americans online now? Are the overall numbers down?

sounds good PKF....................Ill watch my p's and q's, first impressions are lasting ones. Im all about spreading diplomacy for the PKF site.

Numbers? Definitely UP! Our web traffic has grown over 5% each month for the past several years. 2008 has been the best growth year so far - regarding membership - with no signs of slowing.

A stat I'd be interested in seeing is number of members that have posted and those that have visited in various time frames. Like today, past month, and past year. That data might be laying there to extract since you already know someone's last post and when they visited last. Would this be a quick addition to the stats page? Or is it a whole day off spent to put it together? Sorry for the hijack, it just evolved close enough to remind me of this idea.

We log stats on the server, but the only stats available on the forum are on the stats page and members list.

Anyone notice we're almost at 50k posts?