First off, thanks for updating the site!

1)SEARCH FUNCTION
2)SEARCH FUNCTION
3)SEARCH FUNCTION

The search function is basically useless. Try searching for anything. My first-page results always display things from 2007. One way the search could be improved is by adding options for how results are listed: by date, relevance, and popularity for a start.

The site is generally awesome, IMHO.

First and foremost - - you do a great job and provide a great service! Perhaps a separate site for those who only think they are clever - - and want to make "clever" comments.

Keep it up. Cheers!

Someone asked for more local news, or more national news for that matter. I remember this request being made a couple of years ago and the reply referred to the sensitivity of some news that may be available in 'western' media. We all know that CCTV-9 is mostly propaganda (Many expats don't fully understand why) and GoKunming could provide a great service by copying from 'western' sites. Of course, I don't mean copying 100% of certain politically sensitive stories but a good writer could rewrite stories and other statistics in such a way that will not close down this excellent site.

1) Keep doing what you do best - local content that is useful and of interest to the local expat and English-speaking Chinese community.

2) Offer more systematically local resources relating to the needs of the local expat and English-speaking Chinese community both the tools (like maps, directions, how-to-guides of short trips) and perhaps more "official" reviews of clubs/restaurants/university language programs.

3) Perhaps clean up/consolidate the menus so that it is easier to go deeper into the site faster (with the minimum of clicks)

4) And make the search function a be more precise

As other people have said, yes the search function is practically useless. More local news would be great but a brief daily update would probably take a lot of work. National and foreign news? nah, we can get that elsewhere. The forum could use some updating including more features and categories. I'd love to get more stories on short day trips to interesting places near Kunming and although I know there is a vibrant biking community here and the articles they write are good reads we aren't all into fighting 18 wheelers on the freeways.

All in all your concept seems fitting for this city and I don't really have any big ideas as you guys are doing pretty good with this site already. The forum though,,,

A big thanks to everybody who has taken time to give us his or her input. We will integrate as many of your suggestions as we can...and, yes, the search function is going to get an overhaul.

-Dan

I am guilty of making an ambiguous comment earlier. I did not mean to suggest that GoKunming should become a national (or even an international) Website, but there are occassions when statistics (for example) between local and international media differ. Then, there are local statistics that appear only in the foreign media, for example, rural peasant protests, and why. I do not believe that the majority of people (Ex-pats and local Chinese) are fully aware of these incidents.

Would it really be politically insensitive for a professional writer to mention these local issues.

Having given my 5 yuan worth of advice, I do agree that GoKunming should continue to provide excellent bike trail advice, and a well-moderated forum.

First I would like to thank the team for the nice service they have been providing to the expat/student community.

Second I would like to point out that i think Gokunming is walking the narrow chinese line between censorship and information with kudos and providing those of us with poor chinese an unvaluable insight into Chinese news. I can't count how many times I had interesting conversation with my chinese partner because of the insight provided by Gokunming.

Here is my take for the site improvement.

1) resolution of the website is definitely too low, pick a higher resolution as your base resolution and offer the option to switch to lower res with a button at the top of the page. After all, this is mostly an expat site viewed from fairly recent laptops.

2) Current search engine is not very heplful

3) "Classified latest" and "forum latest" secction on home page are both too short! currently each can hold about 7/8 entries, on busy days this is what is posted in just a few hours. It would be nice to see the classified of the last 24hrs, or at least the latest 20 classified in just one sweeping glance.

4) Still about "classified", Some annoying people posts 3 times the same classified (often borderline advertisement), clogging the whole thing. Maybe it would be nice to automatically remove classified that have more than 70% of identical body text (leaving only the most recent one being posted and avoiding smart ass reposting the same under different titles).

5) Chingis suggested to start a "Heterosexual/ celibate life in Kunming". He should do it if he really think this is missing but frankly I think that most of the events and posts on Gokunming are done by or for single heterosexual. You just have to have a social life (go to language corner and night club) to have a heterosexual life:). I am pretty sure it is a little bit harder for Gay and lesbian to get together (hence the need for a forum).

6) I think it would be a nice touch to have a "Clubs & corners" section separated from the forum. This section would allow people to form more or less informal clubs, like the German expat club or the Hiking club or the Nordica Language corner club. Each club page would behave like a forum where people can inform each others of events or relevant info and there would be a page listing all the active clubs (at least one post in the last 6 months). I think this would be the addition that would nicely fill a big gap in the current community dynamic fostered by gokunming.

Thanks again for all the good work
Guillaume