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First of all, I would like to welcome all newcomers to this great community. Please read the following information so that you understand more about us, what we do etc.
>>Location: http://www.chinahistoryforum.com
>>Birth Date: 1st June, 2004
>>Introduction
China History Forum (short form CHF) was established in June 2004 as an online community for the learning, discussion and exploring of Chinese history. It was established by the founder of the much acclaimed online community "History Forum Simaqian Studio (SMQ) "( i.e. General Zhaoyun), , when General Zhaoyun (GZ) realised that there needs to be a community dedicated to the discussion of Chinese history. CHF is considered to be a brother site of Simaqian Studio, but instead of calling it SMQ China, we prefer to name it "China History Forum " for easier remembering and for uniqueness.
As time passes by, CHF has progressively grown and developed into the main English-language portal on the internet for discussing chinese history. Today's CHF is a world-class intellectual (academic) community featuring high quality postings and contribution from many helpful members. Because of this reputation, it has attracted many Chinese history buffs from all over the world ranging from beginners to experts.
The community also features a unique friendly culture that is open to all who are interested in chinese history. In fact, what most members like about this community is that they can easily receive help from many members. All of this has contributed to the intellectual nature of chinese history discussion in this community. CHF is currently run by a team of active staff volunteers who have taken time to moderate the forum so that it remains friendly to all who wish to participate.
>>Founder and Heads
General Zhaoyun (or GZ) is the founder and head of CHF. He is currently a Taiwanese immigrant residing in Singapore (he holds a Taiwan ROC nationality and Singapore PR). The current chief administrator is Pattie while the deputy vice-admin is Bao Pu.
>>Current Owner
General Zhaoyun owns the URL http://www.chinahistoryforum.com , and hosts this site.
>>Host location
The site is administered from Singapore, but hosted in America.
>>Capital of CHF
Since GZ, the founder of CHF, is based in Singapore, Singapore has been established as the capital and headquarter of China History Forum.
>>Community Philosophy
"Explore the boundary between heaven and people, and understand the changes of past and present. These become the words of a new school" - Sima Qian
"究天人之际，通古今之变，成一家之言" - 司马迁
>>Aims and Missions
We aim to be the main english-language portal on the internet for discussing chinese history and culture. Our mission is to provide a favourable environment for forummers from all over the world to learn and discuss chinese history and culture.
>>Main Theme and Subjects of this community
There are various subjects covered in CHF, but essentially, our main focus is on a field of chinese studies known as "Guoxue 国学" (literally translated as "China Knowledge", but it actually means "chinese history and culture"). Guoxue is a broad field of study covering not just chinese history, but also traditional chinese culture, such as philosophy, literature, language, arts etc. In CHF, we also cover important subjects such as ancient chinese arsenal, chinese art of war, chinese people, overseas chinese etc, thus providing members to have a broader understanding of China, esp. her rich ancient past.
>>CHF's function as a world community
Although CHF has the name "China History Forum", this is NOT a 'chinese' forum created only for chinese. Rather, from the dawn of its creation, CHF has always aimed to function as an international world-based community for all people of different races, ethnicities, religions, nationalities who are interested in chinese history and culture. CHF's policy is to develop itself into a cosmopolitan, world-accomodating and open-minded community that will continuously attract people from all over the world to join CHF.
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<>Educational Aspects of this Community
CHF functions essentially as an academic and educational site for learning, discussion, and research into chinese history, culture and language.
Our educational objectives are listed below:
1. To generate a strong interest among members from all over the world to learn chinese history, language and culture.
2. To enable members from all over the world to learn a wealth of knowledge accumulated over 5000 years of chinese history.
3. To provide an academic research environment for chinese history, culture and language.
4. To promote chinese history, culture and language worldwide through the internet
>>CHF's Educational Philosophy
"Exploring the old and deducing the new makes a teacher" - Confucius (Analect 2:11)
子曰: 温故而知新,可以为师矣。 （论语 2:11)
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<>Core Values of this Community
In CHF, "friendliness", "politeness" and "humbless" are considered the highest core values treasured by all members. As such, it's also our highest goal to make sure CHF has a 'friendly', 'polite' and 'humble' environment.
Friendliness generally allows people to easily make friends with one another and prevent people from becoming 'hostile'. Friendliness also lead to happiness.
Politeness generally allows people to act in a proper manner and prevent people from becoming 'rude'.
Humbleness generally allows members to respect other people's view, share knowledge and prevent people from becoming 'arrogant' and belittling others.
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<>CHF Imperial Exams
Just like a university requiring some form of exams to qualify students or for entry, CHF functions the same way by having its own exam system (known as "CHF Imperial Exams").
CHF is probably the first and only online community to implement online exams. The exam is currently required to be taken for any members who wish to continue their education here and is of interests to any members who wish to test their chinese history knowledge and become an official scholar member of CHF. After taking the exam, members will be classified into Entry Scholar (Xiucai), Novice Scholar (Tongsheng) or Beginner Member.
It is also planned to have higher level of exams at Juren and Jinshi level, as well as for specialized topics. For more detail information about the exam system, please refer to our CHF Imperial Exam Forum
Note that Specialist Expert, Researcher or Talented Artists can be exempted from the exam. For more details, refer
to http://www.chinahist...?showtopic=1915
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<> "Exemption Plan" for those who do not wish to take exam
The "Exemption Plan" is generally created for some members who wished to continue to participate in CHF, but do not want to take our exam. These members might not wish to take the exam, because they fear that they will fail the exam or they lack the confidence in taking exam. CHF thus offers the chance to be exempted from the exam, if one participate in the "Exemption Plan". For details of "Exemption Plan", please refer to
http://www.chinahist...showtopic=19216
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<>Additional Community Info
The following additonal community info should get you familiarise with various activities and policies implemented in this community.
>>CHF Grand Historian Award
If you're a newcomer, you may be wondering what this award is all about. Basically every month, CHF rewards members who have actively contributed to this community by giving them a permanent title "CHF Grand Historian Award". For more information about this award, refer to CHF Grand Historian Award.
>>CHF Newsletter
A bi-monthly newsletter will be e-mailed to all members (usually at the start of every two months) by the administrator. It will keep you updated about any news and information in this community. If you do not receive this newsletter, please inform the administrator. You can also read the newsletter in the CHF newsletter forum. See also Information about CHF Newsletter.
>>CHF Projects
Besides discussing chinese history, you can participate in projects in this community. CHF project and articles is the forum to go, if you're interested in doing projects. For more information about CHF projects, please refer to project information.
>>CHF Members Library
You can borrow chinese history materials (books, video etc) from other members or lend yours to others. To do so, visit CHF Members Library.
>>China History Info (CHI)
This is CHF's site for hosting projects contributed by members. The location of China History Info is http://www.chinahistoryinfo.com .
>>Other Awards in CHF
There are also a number of awards in CHF such as "CHF Avatar Award", "CHF Joker Award" and "CHF Artist Award". These are awards for members exhibiting certain qualities such as humour, creativity and talents in art etc. For more information, refer to the sticky threads in the CHF News and Announcement Forum.
>>Comparing CHF's past and present
Check out CHF in 2004, with just 40 members and its present size. You should see how CHF has grown and developed so rapidly to become today's leading portal for chinese history and culture.
See also:
>>Staff Information
>>Info on Ranking System and Policy
>>Forum Rules
>>Frequently Asked Questions
>>Information about supporting or sponsoring CHF
>>Disclaimers of CHF
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<> CHF Management and Governing Philosophy
The CHF staff team has adopted various governing principles and management philosophy in order to help run the online community. These have enabled CHF to become a well-moderated community with a friendly environment. The governing principles have been influenced by both eastern and western thinking, and the staffs use them flexibly to help run CHF.
The general principles are listed as follow:
>> Legalism principle
The use of law (forum rules) to make sure forum is in good condition and order. Somewhat similar to legalism philosophy of ancient chinese legalism such as Han Feizi, Li Si etc.
>> Confucian principle
The stress on "doctrine of the mean" and "benevolence" to ensure harmony in CHF. The philosophy aims to make CHF members as happy, friendly and harmonious as possible.
>> Democratic and Marketing Principle
CHF staffs continously collect and gather feedbacks from members in a democratic way (using polls etc) in order to make decisions on improving CHF.
>> Motivation and Morale Principle
The philosophy of motivating members to be interested in chinese history and culture so that it will make them come back to CHF to learn more about chinese history. Keeping the morale and spirits of members high is also an objective of staff team.
>> A strong member relationship
The focus on building strong member relationship through various communication or even hold activities. By building a strong member relationship, members are bonded more closely together making CHF more cohesive.
In addition, many of the staff members have indepth knowledge of chinese history and have gathered certain historical lessons and apply to the running of CHF. For more information, refer to CHF governing philosophy.
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<> History of CHF
>>Initial Foundation
Towards the middle of May 2004, GZ, the founder of Simaqian Studio(an online community for discussing general history) came across THFA (a new community founded by Janissary for discussing turks history). After frequenting THFA a few times, he came forth the idea that there should be a community focused on the discussion of chinese history (i.e. there is a focused forum for discussing turks history, why can't there be a chinese history forum?).
He decided to surf the internet to check if there is any good community for discussing chinese history, as he was also interested in chinese history. The search result was that there were many chinese-language forums for discussing chinese history but no english-language forums focused on the discussion of chinese history. As there were already many forummers in SMQ (Simaqian Studio), AE (All Empires), SoSZ (Scholars of Shen Zhou) who are interested in chinese history (and some even request to have one), GZ made up his mind to establish a community for discussing chinese history. As this community could also help support SMQ by diverting some traffic there, it was decided that it should be considered a subsidiary (or brother site) of SMQ. This was the foundation of this community.
In order to make the community unique and easy to remember, instead of calling it "SMQ China", the name "China History Forum" was chosen. The invisionboard forum software was selected, but instead of hosting it on his own, GZ chose Invisionfree, a forum host who provides hosting of invisionboard forums free of charge. And the forum was founded at http://s7.invisionfr...a_History_Forum (currently closed down)
By late May 2004, the forums were created and established. GZ also recruited a small team of staffs that consisted of chinese history freaks from SMQ and AE. They include Liu Ce (now called Tyler), Yihesan and Book of Faith (staffs from SMQ), Yun, Thirdgumi and Sephodwyrm (forummers from AE). On the 1st of June 2004, the site was officially opened and soon many new forummers began to pour in.
>>June 2004 to 2006
When the community was opened in June 2004, there were only 24 members at a start, but as the forum developed, membership and posting began to grow rapidly.
In mid August 2004, owing to the need to help boost the discussion activities, an expansion was carried out and 9 new forums (chinese history by dynasty period) were added. New moderators were also recruited including Ghost of Han, WuTao, Zelbest, Astralis, Bryan, RollingWave. The traffic and membership continued to increase and by end of August 2004, membership reached 170 and no. of posting reaches more than 8300.
Around 8th September 2004, CHF decided to migrate to its own site and server using the URL http://www.chinahistoryforum.com. From late 2004 to 2006, CHF grew rapidly into the premier English portal for Chinese history and culture. In March 2006, "Guoxue" (chinese history and culture) was officially made the main theme of China History Forum. Stricter regulations were made to the forum rules In October 2006, the posting activities and membership had reached a new height, but unfortunately, as the membership grew larger, it became increasingly difficult to monitor the junk posting of troublemakers such as nationalist, spammers. This resulted in a shift towards discussion on irrelevant matters such as chinese current affairs, social issues and degraded the content of the site (esp. those on chinese history). By the end of October 2006, many quality members were increasingly frustrated or disappointed by this.
To solve this problem, the staff team carried out radical reforms including pruning of topics in DGI forum, removing China Current Affairs. A new online exam system (called "CHF Imperial Exam") was created to filter away irrelevant members as well as to increase the pool of scholar members.
>>2007 - 2008
From 2007-2008, CHF enjoyed relatively growth and peace. The most important event during January 2008 was the re-establishment of CHF Editorial Board as an independent staff team dedicated for the creation of the Newsletter and Han Lin Journal. Kaiselin had been chosen as the Chief Editor. Together with a team of writers being recruited, the Newsletter and Han Lin Journal were not only exceptionally professional, it also provided rich source of information relating to CHF, as well as academic Chinese history and culture
information. After feeling rather tired, General Zhaoyun made a decision to retire from the staff team.
>>2009
CHF continued to enjoy relative peace during 2009. But in March 2009, CHF suffered the worst hacking crisis ever. The entire site was effectively hacked and stolen. The administrator's account were compromised. Even the URL was also stolen. The hack was a great blow to CHF, as it caused CHF to be down for almost 3 weeks. Luckily, with the help of many kind members, CHF managed to get back its domain name. By end of May 2009, the site was effectively returned to the hands of General Zhaoyun, owner of CHF.
The hacking caused the resignation of 4 senior staff members, but soon a reshuffling of staffs took place. Pattie and Bao Pu became part of the administration team. In September 2009, a new major upgrade took place and new skin design transformed CHF's environment, continue to attract good scholar members from all over the world.
(History of this community will be updated on a yearly basis as time progress)
This post has been edited by General_Zhaoyun: 18 September 2009 - 12:03 AM
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