Part 1: What I've been up to...

[roddy]

Short version: I've been trying to run the site better and have had some partial success. 

As some of you will know, I've been running this site since it started, very nearly 11 years ago now. That's quite a chunk of anyone's life. It's about 30% of mine. 

I've never run this site particularly professionally. It started as a hobby and my only criteria for success were probably 'is there something interesting to read today?' I guess I had a kind of idea of the site I wanted it to be, and I tried to steer it in that direction. I never kept track of post numbers, or how many members who joined actually posted, etc. 

This has probably been a disservice to the community. If it'd been better run I suspect it'd be bigger (in fact we'd probably have spun off into multiple viable sites by now) and more profitable. But despite that we've done pretty damned well, especially considering we've seen the rise of Facebook, Twitter, a plethora of blogs and a million other suitors for your attention. This is down to all the excellent members. 

I've long had it in the back of my mind that I should be running the site better, but I wasn't quite sure how to go about this. I'd have this idea, then I'd have that idea, and things would stop and start. Veteran members can probably think of an example or two.

At some point last year I realised there wasn't much point in trying to re-invent the wheel and I started doing some reading on online community management. There's actually a good body of work on this, and it's been interesting to see how big the gap is from what is regarded as best practice (some of which I naturally don't particularly agree with) and what actually happens on here. 

First thing I had to do was collect data. How many new accounts were registered last month? How many of those passed email validation? How many of those actually made a post? How many new topics were posted? How many posts? By how many members? 

 

 

 

That showed that things were steady, which was reassuring. Looking further back was more worrying - we'd been busier in the past, and that's not the direction things should be going in. I'm not quite sure of the reasons for this - could be on-site changes, could be search ranking, could be a changing marketplace.

Next step has been to try and increase degree of engagement with the site. I killed off the banner ads for a few months and experimented with different combinations of ads / "join our site" messages / current topic listings. New visitors now see a message encouraging sign-ups alongside ads. Number of new registrations that made a post for Q1 2013 was 327, for Q1 2014 366. So that looks good. 

I'd also like to get people posting more. That doesn't mean promoting quantity over quality, I can't see ever going that route (as I've said before, if that was my aim I'd have registered HotIndependentTaiwanandTibetBabes.com and never looked back). There were two strands to this. 

First was to engage more with regular members. I've variously prompted, encouraged and pleaded for realmayo's 锵锵三人行 efforts, Meng Lelan's short story topics, group reads of graded readers, laurenth's 鬼吹灯 topic, and plenty more. You may well have also noticed me popping up to request feedback on old topics - I try to scan new posts daily and set reminders to come back to these after a certain length of time. If I see someone mention they're going to study in Tianjin, I'll ask them where, then invite them to post about it. If I notice a regular hasn't been online for a while, I might drop 'em a 'we miss you' note. 

Second was to grab hold of new members and try to get them more involved. Anyone who's registered in the last six months or so and has reached a total of five posts has maybe had a welcome message from me. I look at the member's posts, point them in the direction of stuff they may find interesting, suggest where their expertise may be useful, etc. This is kind of time-consuming, but I feel like the results and feedback are worth it. Selection of comments I've received in reply: 

"This forum really is one of the best resources I've found for learning Chinese. There are so many knowledgeable and helpful people here. "

 

 

"This site has been invaluable so far."

 

 

"Thanks!  I love this site!"

 

 

"You all are the best! "

 

Not everyone gets that welcome message. If your 5 posts are all about one tattoo, or if you happen to hit your five posts in a week I'm particularly busy elsewhere, you might not get one. 

So Q1 2013 total topics / posts were 500 / 4985. For Q1 2014 that was up to: 598 (+20%) / 7058 (+40%). Looking to Google Analytics for some engagement stats, for the returning visitors segment, pages per visit are up 12%, visit duration up 14%, 

How much of that was down to me is anyone's guess, but it doesn't look like I did any harm. There's a very strong multiplier effect here - if I get one person to start two topics, and each topic gets 20 replies, plus someone else thinks 'oh yeah, I have a similar question I meant to post'...

Another thing I've started doing is a monthly newsletter, in which I pick some of our best content from the last month. I'm going to put up a post specifically about that in the near future. 

So that's as far as I've got for now. I just wanted to let people know what's been going on in the background. Further installments to follow, and if anyone has any thoughts, now's the time...

 

[欧卡去饭馆儿]

thanks for the info. I haven't been active on this site too much but I love all the info that has been gathered here! So much information to answer questions during my study of 普通话。谢谢您！

[Yorin]

You've done a really really great job.

 

I've only joined half a year ago, and from what you've told here, it's clear to me now that this must have been after you started

your efforts to get people more involved.

 

In my opinion, it's not just the size of a site that matters, not just the number of members. Well - financially I guess it does, but not so much for me as a user. And I think and hope you're not just measuring your success from a financial point of view.

You've given countless people a place and opportunity to find each other over the years. To learn, to have fun, to discuss a topic that matters to them. The important thing for me is that the site feels like a community, and you've pulled that off very successfully. There are a lot of bigger, more 'successful' sites out there which don't emanate this feeling.

 

No matter if you could do better as a businessman, don't forget that you're doing pretty damn good as a human being. Thank you.

[Nathan Mao]

So you're saying I'm not special? ;)

 

Seriously, I think you've done a great job.  I felt welcomed, and you encouraged me to write a few topics that were fairly well-received...I might not have thought to do that without your suggestion.

 

You are really on top of all the little things going on, it seems.

I've been very impressed, and I wish I'd found this place a long time ago.

[Lu]

I've been on this site for almost its entire running time and it's always been exceptionelly well-run. Moderation is great, topics are interesting, members are helpful, there's no 'disservice to the community' that I can see. I hope that in addition to bringing interesting stuff to read, you make a little money off it.

That said, two thoughts on possible improvement:

- A logo perhaps? If there is no designer on board to do it for free, perhaps just hire an outsider if budget permits?

- It would be good if there were more native speaker members. Occasionally someone pops up looking for language exchange, or posts a few things, and then disappears again, and that's a pity (the disappearing, that is). There are a few native speakers here and they are great, but they're really only a few. I have no idea what to do about this though.

[renzhe]

- A logo perhaps? If there is no designer on board to do it for free, perhaps just hire an outsider if budget permits?

I vote for having the blue boy with the briefcase back

[gato]

Roddy is so modest . I ran an online forum for a few years some years back. It takes quite a bit of effort to maintain the quality. It's not easy to have the energy to keep it going.

A couple of things I've been curious about. I wonder if anyone has any thought about it.

- It seems that CSC scholarships threads attracts a large number of new posters, but it seems that these posters don't seem to come back after their scholarship matters get sorted out.

- Any idea of the ratio between in-school students and independent hobbyists/students among regular posters? I have the impression that most of the regular posters are in the latter group. Is there any way to attract more in-school students to become regular posters? (Do you want them to be? ). This is related to the first question, as most CSC applicants are in-school students.

[Meng Lelan]

I vote for having the blue boy with the briefcase back   

 

 

 

I do too! Let's have a poll!

[Shelley]

Well I have to say i think you are doing a splendid job. I don't know exactly what is invoked but I don't suppose it is easy, probably also time consuming. So hands together for a job well done.

 

I really like the monthly newsletter, works well to interest me in topics I might have missed and remind me of topics I have fallen behind with.

 

Right now I have got that out of the way a few thoughts and suggestions.

 

Been hanging about on this forum for a good 5 years or so now and have found it very helpful.

 

One thing I have found is that some responses to questions are particularly abrupt. I think this maybe because the responder doesn't  want to spend too much time on the answer because it has been asked many times or it might be their English is not good so their answer is short and consequently not so sweet.and the poor newbie or even a long time learner can feel some what put out.

 

I wonder if we should build a little bunch of stickies (permanent post) that flag up their existence when common question are asked such "I am confused, WHEN do I use 了?" and similar common grammatical and usage questions. i propose doing it slowly perhaps a topic to invite people to post their helpful little bits. Not long complicated things, just some short explanation or clarifications to help the learners out, maybe with links to more complete answers that the more interested or those that need more info can follow.

 

As for a logo, I like to dabble in graphic design (not professional by a long way but I enjoy it) would love to play around with a few ideas. Rather than just vote yea or nay for the blue boy and his briefcase maybe we should engage the artistic side of the members and ask for their ideas and maybe run a little competition/vote for the new Chinese forum logo.

Not strictly connected with learning Chinese but hey we all do other stuff than just learn Chinese don't we?, don't we?

 

I like the whats on in London topic, perhaps members from other parts could post whats going on in their area. I am sure with a bit of effort i could find out what was happening here on the south coast and post stuff when there is anything, maybe a general whats on topic as well as one for London ( we can't all get to London) and we might be missing stuff otherwise. 

 

So all this might be laughed out the door but its my 2 cents worth.

 

Keep up the good work, Roddy.

[roddy]

You can all hold the praise until the 11th Anniversary topic next month. Thanks for the suggestions though, will take a proper look tomorrow. And it's good to see some interest, as Part 2 is going to be "... and what you can do to help."

[Shelley]

Oh goodie, looking forward to part 2

[imron]

Moderation is great,

Yes, I agree, the moderation team is excellent

[Yadang]

Although I've only been a member for a little while and I've only known about this site for about 2 years (because that's when I started studying), so far, it has been the first and usually last place I look for any answers relating to Chinese.... I also feel like the moderation is awesome, and just the people in general are really "cool beans".

One thing that I think would be really cool to see however, are more ways to find different content. The search feature works very well if you're looking for something specifically, but if you're just looking for, say, a good idea someone had, you just kind of have to come across it. However, I believe it was in the big review done by Tamu (I think that's his name...) where you pointed to a link that showed the site's best voted content. I had never known that had existed and it's really cool to see and peruse, because all the stuff that I've read from there so far has been very worth it. I don't really have any specific ideas (that's the hard part), but things like these are really nice. I also think there should be a link for the best content, very big and very obvious right on the front page, as I think a lot of people don't realize that this exists, and I think it's a great place to start, or to go when they're looking for something that they know will be interesting and most probably really helpful.

A second idea that I have, and I have to idea how to implement this, but so often people (most of all I can think of is Imron) links to posts that they made a while ago which are just filled to the brim with useful info. I often feel if I took all of these type of posts, put them in a book and sold it, it would be the coolest book. While that might not happen, it would be cool to somehow be able to sort posts on how much good info they have or something... I know this is a bit subjective... hmm... Or what if we left it up to each user? What if they could on their profile star posts of their own that they consider to be helpful - stuff that they've linked to a lot or something... I know that the "helpful" link exists, but a lot of the posts that I have found really helpful, aren't rated very helpful...

 

I don't know, I feel like I'm going off on a ramble here, but basically, there is some amazing information here, and I have found a lot of it, but I feel like there's also a lot more to find. I really like that some of it can be found by the most helpful posts link, but I feel like if it were possible to make more resources like this to find good material, that would be really cool. I definitely think you should put the link for the best rated posts on the front page, so it's accessible and obvious...

 

One more thought... sometimes I am concerned that people (including me) use the "helpful" button like a "like" button on facebook... The only problem with this is that some posts may be marked as helpful, when really they were just a nice witty reply or something, and one wants to give recognition - but this may distort how helpful the post is... Would it make any sense at all to have more tags that you could kind of "tag" a post as, and then this would help filter out things when people are looking something? Maybe this could even be integrated with the search function, so I could search for "X" but only the "helpful" posts... Do you think this would even be useful??

Just some ideas... I feel that the site has so much info, but it's hard to browse though the good stuff... Don't know how to solve that though...

Anyways, overall the site is ridiculously awesome - and I thank all of the posters who put so much time into making it an awesome place. It's just ridiculously amazing how much good information there is here...

[roddy]

To respond to all the "great job" posts - thanks, it is appreciated. 

However, I should point out that all those comparisons I gave you were comparing Q1 2013 to Q1 2014 - ie, last year against this year. If we go back and compare Q1 2014 against Q1 2012.... we're actually less busy. Total posts down 17%, members posting down 10%, number of new discussions down 10%. Point one, that shouldn't be happening. Point two, when it does happen, a professionally-run site will at least notice.

 

I'm not beating myself up about this. It's not like we entered a death spiral of inactivity or anything. Even a quiet month sees over forty posts a day, and Google's still sending us plenty of potential new members every day. The boost 2013 to 2014 is encouraging. But there's scope and reason to run the site better.

 

Yorin, I'm definitely not judging success on a financial basis. It's all about the activity (and the harder-to-measure quality). And while size isn't everything, a site like this should grow consistently. If you look at community growth models, it should actually grow to the point where it starts to segment into sub-communities. 

 

Lu and Shelley, yes, the lack of a logo is a bit of a running embarassment. Last time I tried to do anything in this direction I got kind of discouraged. 

http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/34421-forums-logo/?hl=logo

At the moment I guess it's kind of a 'nice to have' item, rather than something I see as urgent. But maybe that lack of branding should be taken more seriously. 

 

Lu, I agree with what you say on native speakers. From the moderation side of things, the problem is that a huge number of the native speaker posters we get are very keen high-school or college students who want to practice their English and 'help foreign friends'. But they have little skill in explaining (and often understanding) their own language, and we get a lot of 'Chinese has four tones', 'I don't think foreigners need to worry about this', or my personal favourite 'These words are difficult, perhaps you can look at a dictionary' posts.

 

One of the things I want to post about in the near future is what members can do to help bring newcomers into the community and keep them here. There's definitely scope to apply that to native speakers - if you see a well-meaning post that misses the point, offer advice and encouragement. Etc.

 

Gato, the CSC topics are an odd one. They're always active, and it's obviously the kind of thing we do, but there's always been a limited transfer of members from those topics into long-term activity. I did actually get in touch with haoyu (who's been doing great work in those topics lately) about this a week or so back

http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/42466-csc-scholarship-2014-general-discussion/page-9#comment-331098

and have posted directly myself in past years. 

 

Also, I'd quite happily have more in-school students on board. I'm not sure they need us so badly though - they get their textbooks, they get their lectures, they get their past papers. They're not stuck in darkest Germany with no idea where to start. Possible direction for future networking though. We are on resource lists for some courses, I think.

 

Shelley, on abrupt answers - yeah, they were probably mine. We do get a lot of repeats, or questions where we're not being given the necessary information. A more welcoming approach to new arrivals is necessary. Although at the same time, I don't want to foster a flood of one-line topics.

 

As for ideas such as Grammar Stickies - well, there's this

http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/3034-all-simple-yet-confusing-grammar-rules/

from way back. But better ongoing curation of information would be great - this is why a few years ago I set up a specific Universities in China topic - one university, one topic. 

 

And if you (or anyone else) wants to start an events topic for their locale - go for it. Don't expect a rush of attendees if you're out of a major city, but if it's the kind of thing you keen an eye on anyway and posting here is just 30 seconds extra work, that'd be great.

 

Yadang, on best content - there is actually something which I never finished working on (remember what I said about not running the site very professionally). There's a link in this topic

http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/34885-use-of-the-reputation-system-an-appeal/

It might be very slow if it needs to cache the info. 

 

I believe Imron did mention something recently about a 'Collected Wisdom of Imron', not sure where he is with that. Some kind of favourited topics... could be done, but it'd need to be built from scratch, and I think it'd overlap very much with the 'best' content. And I agree with the helpful / funny issue. I think my view on that isn't that people aren't liking funny posts too much, they're not liking the helpful ones enough. I certainly don't want to be telling people off for liking the wrong thing (policing behaviour is a time sink)

[li3wei1]

If you had a logo, you could sell coffee mugs and t-shirts. And give them away as prizes. I'd buy a coffee mug, or at least try to win one. These in turn serve as advertising for the site, both for new members and to remind old members to revisit the site.

 

I think the world would be a better place with more logo'd coffee mugs and t-shirts.

[imron]

I believe Imron did mention something recently about a 'Collected Wisdom of Imron'

Well, there's always this post here.  I've also been putting together a series of articles expanding on those concepts and a few more, but life has also been keeping me busy with other things at the moment so that's fallen on the back burner a bit.

[Lu]

Yah, I remember that thread. But now that I saw it again, I saw that halfway in you mentioned asking a few professional designers, did anything come of that?

Anyway. On one hand I think it's actually kind of cool that a long-term, succesfull place like this one can do without a logo just fine. But if you'd decide to want a logo, my suggestion is to not throw it into the community, but perhaps:

- First open a thread for ideas. Keep open for a while, have everyone who is interested put their opinion out there. Then close thread.

- Then either pick some of those ideas and send them to a designer of choice;

- or first make another thread for anyone who is so inclined to provide their (finished, immediately useable!) designs;

- and then either have everyone vote on the options, or just choose the one you like best and put it up there.

I too like the 'stuff going on in London' topic, even though/but it's useless to me. I'd be happy to start a 'stuff going on in Leiden/Holland' thread, but I have the impression there's not really anyone else here on the forums that it would be of use to, and that the people interested in these things already find out about them elsewhere.

[Yadang]

 

 

Yadang, on best content - there is actually something which I never finished working on

hmmm, I read through all of the posts... I don't know if I should post there or here now... I guess I'll post here... 

 

I think just making those two links of best content right at the top of the main page would be a huge improvement.

 

This one: http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?app=ccs&module=pages&section=pages&folder=&id=5

And this one: http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/best-content/

 

I think if you had these linked to on the top banner to the right of "Forums" "Blogs" "New" "Followed". Then you could add "Higest rated content of all time" and "highest rated content by week and month"

Actually, maybe you could combine all of that into one page, and so someone could see it by week, month, year, all time, and the highest rated members also...

 

 

 

And I agree with the helpful / funny issue. I think my view on that isn't that people aren't liking funny posts too much, they're not liking the helpful ones enough. I certainly don't want to be telling people off for liking the wrong thing (policing behaviour is a time sink)

I agree. But I think there still is a bit of an issue with people rating up comments too much, as you explained in the other post you linked too. I'd still be very for exploring options of a few more buttons, even if it was just "helpful" and "like". That way it's not too complicated - only two buttons. If someone genuinely thought something was helpful, they'd probably select both - no problem there. And if it was just funny, witty, or anything else, I think they'd only select "like"....

As for up voting more where  it is deserved, yeah, I agree... not sure how to solve it though...

[gato]

Yes, the "Recommend Posts" link should definitely be linked to at the top of the page.  I didn't even know it existed.  It could be modified to add more recommended posts in addition to this automatically generated list.  This dynamically generated list currently loads pretty slowly more me, probably because of the processing needed to generate this list.  If this list is to be added to the top of the page, some optimization should be done to speed up the loading (for example, by generating the list once a day rather than on-the-fly).  

http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?app=ccs&module=pages&section=pages&folder=&id=5

Recommended Posts

[Yadang]

Hey here's an idea:

 

I usually "follow" a topic even if I'm not actively participating in it, and even if no one has replied for a while, just as a way to easily bookmark it too look at it later, or to review it even though I've already read it. What if there was a "favorite" button that would allow people to either "favorite" their favorite topics, or posts, or both. Then, this could be used in two ways. It could be used first for the user, who could go to their favorite topics and posts - maybe they could also label them and sort them. So for example, say I was reading the "TV Series Recommendations and Index Thread". There's way too much info there for me to use at once. So I'd probably favorite the topic as a whole to come back to it. By and by I'd come back to it and see some of the posts that were linked to, and favorite certain single posts. So it would be incredibly helpful as a user to organize content that they've read and don't want to forget about, or content that they've seen and want to read later. 

And then, you could use the data to make a list of most favorited topics and most favorited posts. Also - if the "labels" that people applied were remade instead of custom, this would allow other people to search, say, for all time favorites under the label "reading suggestions" or under "general advise" or something like that... I highly doubt anyone would favorite good jokes - and if they did there could be a label for that too, to keep it apart from the rest.

 

So it would serve both a bookmarking and easy access for the user as well as a search feature. What do you think?