Brand new chinese learning webpage released! (Still in beta stage)

[Sphery]

Hello everybody!

So we actually "finished" the chinese learning webpage which I've been recently talking about. It uses an interactive flaschcard system (in the learning mode, because it has several other modes) to help you memorising the phrases or characters you can find in our site. (It has a very little vocabulary yet [~1500+ words], but now we just want to test out the gaming experince.) So feel free to register, use it, play with it or just look around. We're looking forward to your feedback. You should mention critics, or really good, so that we can improve our site! Please keep in mind that it's still in BETA phase, little bugs, misspellings may occur.

Thank you very much!

The link to the webpage: www.checkgame.info (When you register with Facebook, it'll not post anything to your wall, it just needs your basic data)

[aroberts42]

You can't access the website if you have a proxy on (I use Astril if that makes a difference), so I had to turn my proxy off to access the page, but if the proxy is off you can't sign in with Facebook. You might try to find out why it can;t be accessed with a proxy on and fix that. It's just a bit inconvenient is all.

[feng]

Doesnt seem to allow you to access the site without first divulging personal details.

Why do you need to know so many personal details?

[Sphery]

Why do you need to know so many personal details?

What do you mean by so many personal details? You need to give just your real name and a birthdate, we need the birthdate because the site has an age limit. The other infos you might consider "so many" are optional.

You can't access the website if you have a proxy on

We'll try to fix this soon!

[roddy]

Can't see why you'd need anyone's real name, and an 'I am over 18' checkbox is all you need for an age limit. I suspect you'll need to make it more accessible to get much feedback - there's no indication I can see from the outside of what it even does.

(We do, FWIW, ask people to get in touch before making posts like this - not so we can tell them not to make the post, although sometimes we do, but so we can point out the obvious issues members would raise)

[Sphery]

Can't see why you'd need anyone's real name, and an 'I am over 18' checkbox is all you need for an age limit.

Yes, a checkbox would be enough, if it were just the age limit, but we're planning to add more features, as social engine and stuff, so would more accurate information about our users. We want it to be more interacitve.

there's no indication I can see from the outside of what it even does.

That's right! Now we start to work on that, so when we'll have something to show to guests I'll give a comment about it! Thanks for the idea!

[imron]

What do you mean by so many personal details? You need to give just your real name and a birthdate

Yeah, it's not like such information is personally identifying or anything. Personally, when I come across websites asking for this information I do one of two things:

1) Enter completely random information

2) Point my browser elsewhere.

Usually it's the latter.

[roddy]

Signed in and had a look (with a birthyear of 2005). It's basically a type-the-pinyin flashcard program with what I'm assuming are the usual CEDICT definitions. I can't see anything new here to attract the people to make a social engine worthwhile, to be honest.

[Sphery]

I can't see anything new here to attract the people to make a social engine worthwhile, to be honest.

I think most of the people, as you, forgot that this site is not JUST for Chinese. Just the English content is only the Chinese, but we're working on math, history, literature too in English. In Hungarian it has math, history, french, german, literature. Chinese is just a small part of it, but you can see just that, as you don't speak Hungarian, but if you switch to Hungarian more content will be available for you.

[roddy]

I have to admit I did not investigate the Hungarian language content.

[Guest realmayo]

... which is an extremely effective all-purpose explanation for a multitude of sins.

[feng]

What do you mean by so many personal details? You need to give just your real name and a birthdate, we need the birthdate because the site has an age limit. The other infos you might consider "so many" are optional.

First name, last name, gender, date of birth, and email address, thats at least four things. I never hand over these sorts of details to a web site unless I am sure I trust the owners of the web site, and the benefits of using the site outweigh the risk.

Thats not even to talk about what connecting to facebook reveals:

• 允許此程式取得我的基本資料
  包括姓名、個人檔案、性別、人際網路、用戶 ID、好友清單，和其他設定為「公開」的資訊
  
• 取得我的個人檔案資訊
  關於我和生日資料
  
• 發送電郵給我
  「 CHECK 」可以直接寄電子郵件給我在 xxxx@xxx.com 的信箱 ·
  

[Sphery]

Okay... We made this site to help everyone with a new learning platform, not for stealing data. These informations will be used just for making your stay more comfortable during the usage.

It's kind of confusing that you trust Facebook Inc. more than us. Facebook actually sells you, as a product, as it knows much more about you than anyone on Earth does, and it's actually making money of selling your data to corporations, but you still use it. Our site is not operating for commercial purpose.. Did you see any kind of advertisement? Nope. But whatever, if you don't like it, don't use it.

P.S.: Actually from a visit (just clicking the link), we know your exact location from your IP address, welcome to the Internet.

[imron]

we know your exact location from your IP address, welcome to the Internet.

No you don't. You know the approximate location of *someone* (either that, or you know the location of a colocation facility in Texas some several thousand km from where I live, that houses the server used by my proxy/VPN).

You only know *my* approximate location once I've given you personally identifying information such as my name, date of birth and so on, and can tie that information to my otherwise anonymous IP address.

We made this site to help everyone with a new learning platform, not for stealing data.

I'm sure that's the case, but the problem is, as a new site, people have no reason to trust you and plenty of other choices. Your assertions that you are trustworthy and are not going to sell your users' data may well be true today, but who knows what the situation will be one or two years from now (Facebook is a prime example of this - see below). Anyway, there's a reason why modern websites usually require very little information from users before creating an account. It's because people actually make detailed studies of minor design/UI changes to see how it affects things like sign-up rates and other things (do a search for A/B testing for more info), and evidence/experience shows that the less compulsory information you require of users, the more likely they are to sign up for your site. Welcome to web-design 101.

It's kind of confusing that you trust Facebook Inc. more than us. Facebook actually sells you, as a product, as it knows much more about you than anyone on Earth does, and it's actually making money of selling your data to corporations, but you still use it.

Facebook was a lot better about this in the early days. Then they realised they needed to start making money, and so they starting selling out their users. I deleted my Facebook account almost 2 years ago for those reasons.

[Sphery]

It's because people actually make detailed studies of minor design/UI changes to see how it affects things like sign-up rates and other things (do a search for A/B testing for more info), and evidence/experience shows that the less compulsory information you require of users, the more likely they are to sign up for your site. Welcome to web-design 101.

That was quite informative! Thank you for the tips! I'll definitely look up those things. Maybe you're right, you don't even know what this site does when you first arrive to the homepage. (Though now we're actually working on to show some inside images of our system to encourage people for signing-up.)

I'll give a comment about it, so you'll don't have to register the site to take a look at the inside of it.

[Sphery]

Okay, so we made some inside images of the site, so you can decide whether it's beneficial to use the site and it outweights the "risk" that we will sell you, and your given data, to corporations. http://www.checkgame.info/welcome

[roddy]

Three months later, how fares our new site?