General Forums Reorganization - your thoughts, please . . .

[imron]

It would be targeted more at those who don't check in every day. Also, it was kind of a joke because like the wiki, a newsletter was started before, but sort of fizzled out.

[Meng Lelan]

I can see why the newsletter fizzled out. If we want to know something, we check in. If we don't want to know anything, we check out, or something like that.

[imron]

It fizzled out more because of the hassle of writing it rather than because it didn't serve a purpose. There are plenty of occasional members who pop by maybe once every couple of months. For them the newsletters provided a nice roundup of interesting things they might have missed if they were just looking through new posts since their last visit, which could easily number over a thousand.

[roddy]

Good to see more comments, forgive the brevity of responses:

As to a 'beginners' forum' date=' that might be useful, but a discussion can trail off to more advanced things, and what do you do then?[/quote']

That's what I'd like to know.

I didn't see you mention the 'tattoos and quick translations' forum' date=' but make sure you keep it, a lot of people get good answers there. Also you didn't mention the various 'Chinese Culture' forums, please keep those![/quote']

No changes planned there, I think, although suggestions are welcome if you'd like to see any. The Tattoos and Quick Translations forum has actually been quite a nice success for my money, and throws up some interesting stuff.

Directed by Chinese - I think that's specifically for Ang Lee for now. Brokeback Mountain was good, wasn't it?

Good, yes. But Chinese? Seems tenuous. "The works of Ang Lee" seems plausible, but "Incredible Hulk - best Chinese film this year!!!" is pushing it.

Would that automatically produce threads related to news articles' date=' that people could then comment on? That would be cool.

[/quote']Yes. However there's a risk that we just end up with hundreds of new topics every day and no comments on them. Hence the feeds would have to be chosen carefully, anything that didn't get a comment in 24 / 48 hours would get deleted, and it would need to be only visible to those who have asked to see it, to avoid flooding everyone else.

It fizzled out more because of the hassle of writing it rather than because it didn't serve a purpose.

I should have just sent it to the entire userbase and risked annoying people - making it explicitly opt in meant it didn't go to many people, hence not much point in writing it. I may yet revisit this, but that's a different topic.

[wai ming]

Because you asked for input, even if it's just 'Don't care, whatever'...

I think the restructuring proposal sounds good and makes sense, although I'm not looking for anything too drastic, I quite like the forums the way they are now

Agree that more stickied threads might be the way to go in terms of helping out beginners.

Meng Lelan has asked about subforums for non-Chinese dialects/languages, just wondering if you have any plans for the Non-Mandarin Chinese subforum or if you were planning to leave it as is?

[roddy]

No plans, no. Like I said though, I'm open to suggestions. If someone points out that, hey, 50% of the topics in here are Shanghainese, isn't it time we had a specific forum, it's something we can look at.

[Guest realmayo]

Because you asked for input, even if it's just 'Don't care, whatever'...

I think the restructuring proposal sounds good and makes sense, although I'm not looking for anything too drastic, I quite like the forums the way they are now

100% ditto!

As to a 'beginners' forum, that might be useful, but a discussion can trail off to more advanced things, and what do you do then?

Is there a way to make it clear that posts posted in the beginners forum should be -- in the first instance at least -- targetted at beginners? I check the forums via the "new posts" so never really notice what forum a particular thread is in. A couple of lines at the top of all threads in the beginner's forum? It might also suggest that if a question there has already been addressed in the first few responses, someone wanting to continue a more "advanced" discussion should start a new thread, but making sure to include a link to "哥哥" in the beginner's one too?

Tags:

Are people encouraged to tag with Chinese? I mean, if someone had a question about 只, and the discussion was tagged with "只" (obviously) ...I'm not clear what I'm suggesting, but, say, it would be easier to find grammar posts about 只 this way than by the regular search maybe?

[roddy]

On beginners - how about giving people the option of having a little 'Just getting started' icon under their username. That would flag up that they (and particularly any topics they start) need a little extra TLC.

On tags - Chinese is welcome and encouraged where it's eg, the word or structure under discussion. I wouldn't be so keen on, eg, a discussion about books being tagged with 书.

Right, I just spent some time trying to figure out new arrangements. How does this look

Learning Chinese

---Chinese Characters (Chinese character learning strategies, lists, mnemonics)

---Pronunciation (initials, finals, tones, tone patterns, post your pronunciation)

---Skill Development (developing conversation skills; learning to write sentences, paragraphs and more; improving listening; building reading abililty. Or should we keep the current R&W/S&L; or go productive (S&W/ receptive R&L))

---What does this mean; How can I say

------Quick translations

---Grammar, Sentence patterns, Structures

---Vocabulary, Idioms

---Software, Websites, IMEs

------Chinese Stuff (links to, or requests to, interesting Chinese news stories, videos, blogs, forum posts, etc. MUST not just be a link-and-run, needs to be introduced and justified.)

---Textbooks

---HSK and other exams

---Chinese Corner

---Non-Mandarin Chinese

---Chinese Computing ( (complicated) technical issues)

------Support forums for Adso, ZDT

Studying, Living and Working in China, Chinese schools and university courses

---General issues (for anything not specific to a certain location, or for a location where there isn't a subforum)

---Teaching in China (as above)

---Beijing

------BLCU (? not sure if we want university specific forums, but seems to make sense)

---Shanghai

---Kunming

---etc, etc.

---Chinese Schools and university courses outside China (this is an area we should be covering)

Chinese Culture

---Literature and Art (books, poetry, short stories, the written word in general. Not sure how much actual art discussion there is, but this seems the right place for it - higher culture, if you like. Book and Short Story of the month would go in here, or perhaps 'Chinese Stuff above?')

---Chinese Music

---Food

---General discussion on Chinese topics (the current 'Society')

---Film and Television

------First Episode Project

---Chinese History

---Chinese News Forum (as is, still members only)

------RSS Feed Forum (this would be host to a range of RSS feeds. Anything with no response gets deleted, anything that generates discussion gets moved to News, or perhaps elsewhere if appropriate. Requires group membership, to avoid flooding the 'New posts' listing. Or perhaps we can exclude it from that listing)

Extras (members only)

---General Discussion (anything not on the China and Chinese theme)

---The study of other languages ('cos you're all such linguists)

[Meng Lelan]

The study of other languages ('cos you're all such linguists)

Yes, exactly, excellent observation. Keep the "Study of Other Languages" in your plan, and I trust the rest of us will get busy filling it up from French to Farsi in no time at all.

Literature and Art (books, poetry, short stories, the written word in general. Not sure how much actual art discussion there is, but this seems the right place for it - higher culture, if you like. Book and Short Story of the month would go in here

Book and Short Story would be best served under Literature and Art, I would think. Those two threads are really much more advanced than just learning to read and write. For example I notice that Jia is getting a lot of political and literary analysis in the Book of the Month thread.

[atitarev]

Can we have an Audio Lounge? For beginners' - how do you pronounce this or that? Don't mind this to be heavily moderated. This could be used for checking the pronunciation.

Audio Lounge example on MasterRussan.net

I would also separate chat and language exchange, it's too much chat now and very little little language exchange.

[abcdefg]

Yeah, I was thinking about that. Maybe the most commonly discussed / visited from cities. In terms of visits,…

I would find such a "place-based" compilation of various discussion topics quite useful. It would definitely save some searching time.

[imron]

In the quick translations, make sure it still contains the words Tattoo and Chinese Name, and it should also be at the very top of the list so that newcomers will spot it easily.

[atitarev]

I hope the Japanese subforum will be created. It may work better than Social Groups.

By the way, I saw "New Posts" being configured on other forums so that some subforums are excluded, if not interested. E.g., if I don't like to read "current news", I exclude them from my profile and they won't appear on your "New Posts".

[Lu]

Learning Chinese

---Chinese Characters (Chinese character learning strategies, lists, mnemonics)

---Pronunciation (initials, finals, tones, tone patterns, post your pronunciation)

---Skill Development (developing conversation skills; learning to write sentences, paragraphs and more; improving listening; building reading abililty. Or should we keep the current R&W/S&L; or go productive (S&W/ receptive R&L))

---What does this mean; How can I say

------Quick translations

---Grammar, Sentence patterns, Structures

---Vocabulary, Idioms

(...)

I think 'skill development' is a bit too broad and vague, I'd like R&W/S&L better (and I think that for Chinese at least, it makes sense to keep written and spoken language separated, since there are many things you can say but not write and vice versa).

Vocab and idioms can maybe go into Quick translations, or into R&W/S&L, whichever the poster is looking for.

[querido]

I agree with the above post "I'd like R&W/S&L better"

Your previous long post looked good to me. Breaking up your current "Grammar and Vocabulary" as you suggest looks good.

Some overlap between "Software, Websites, IMEs" and "Chinese Computing ( (complicated) technical issues)" seems unavoidable, so I wouldn't worry about it. Naming them *just right* might help, but while working on some suggestions, I noticed that your current names are working just fine.

[Scoobyqueen]

Anything that doesn't get a reply in 24 hours gets deleted

That would be a shame. I have often benefitted from someone's review of a school or book which had not necessarily received a response or comment simply because it wasnt phrased as a question for example this recommendation by Wushijiao

http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/8525-hsk-%e5%90%ac%e5%8a%9b%e9%a2%98%e5%9e%8b%e5%88%86%e6%9e%90%e4%b8%8e%e8%ae%ad%e7%bb%83-%e5%88%9d%e4%b8%ad%e7%ad%89 which received 2,000 views without a single response.

Apologies if this has already been evaluated and consequently rejected or previously suggested: FAQ section which outlines the questions often asked ie HSK, Beida, other university reviews, best dictionary, etc, not necessarily with links but just to let people know that through using the search button it is possible to find the answer to many questions.

Consider introducing a section on colloquial terms for example subcategory of vocabulary.

Edited April 28, 2009 at 03:46 PM by Scoobyqueen

[renzhe]

I believe that the "delete anything without a reply after 24 hours" only referred to automatically created threads about current events in a special subforum.

[roddy]

Atitarev, what exactly would an audio lounge be? I did look at your link, but . . well, it's in Russian . . .

Lu, querido - I've changed my mind a few times on this already. 'General Skills' does of course seem very broad and vague, but I suspect once we have separate forums for Chinese Characters, Pronunciation, and 'What does this mean / How do I say / write this', there might not be much left. I've just gone through the Reading / Writing forum, splitting appropriate topics off into Chinese Characters, and there's a MASSIVE number of 'translation help', and 'What does XXX mean 'topics that would go into the (as yet theoretical) new 'What does this mean / How do I say / write this' forum, plus a load of Chinese name type topics that shouldn't be there.

What I think I'll do is try and leave that decision till last. It might make sense though, to have a space for 'How can I improve listening skills' type discussions, alongside with general learning issues, like today's motivation topic.

I think once this shakeup is done, I'm going to need to look at getting stricter about using the correct forum, using appropriate titles (the number of 'translation help' topics isn't even funny) and perhaps have some policy on deletion of old topics - we've got language exchange requests dating from 2003, etc etc.

To make things easier as I'm shifting stuff about, the forum pages are currently listing 500 topics instead of the more usual 20. Apologies for any ugliness.

Edit: Chinese-forums.com > Forums > Learning Chinese > Grammar & Vocabulary > Living Costs in Kunming.

Edited April 29, 2009 at 09:18 AM by roddy

[HashiriKata]

I'm going to need to look at getting stricter about using the correct forum

I think the two "Grammar-sounding" forums there may give you a lot of work to do. What about changing "Grammar and Vocabulary" into something purely vocabulary, such as "Chinese Vocabulary: words and phrases" ?

PS: Just look at it again now and there are two identical "Chinese Grammar, Sentence Structures and Patterns", along with "Vocabulary". I suppose things are being organised/ moved.

[roddy]

Yes, we had two grammar forums, and then two vocabulary forums. I also had a 'what does this mean / how do I say this' forum for a few minutes, but I couldn't see how people weren't going to think 'hmmm, I don't know this work', and post in vocabulary, or 'hmm, don't understand this structure' and post in grammar.