Forums Re-org, simplification, and purge.

[Chris Two Times]

University and School Study

Proposed structure would be

* Studying in China - includes CSC (half a mind to give this a subforum), 'where to study', 'recommend a school'. 

 

Ah! A subforum on CSC inquiries could be good.

 

Warm regards,

Chris Two Times

[imron]

I managed to do 700 in an hour

Surely this is something you could automate?

[roddy]

Quite possibly, but at the moment it's quite fun flicking through them and thinking about how it all works...

[character]

 

We have about 35,000 topics. I've split of the most recent 10% of those with the intention of going through them and scribbling down general topic types in an attempt to produce some kind of clearer category structure.

 

Would you care to share the list of topics?  It would be interesting to see the frequency of words in topics, make a word cloud, etc.

[roddy]

Bump. Time I actually did something about this. Or is it? You decide. 

 

Character, if you still want it let me know and I'll send you something through. Or anyone else?

[zander1]

IMO I think this is a good idea overall especially this "Under this we'd lose Speaking and Listening, Reading and Writing, Grammar, Vocab, Chinese Characters, Textbooks. Topics would end up in General, Resources or Actual Chinese (rubbish name)." I think there is currently way too much specialization in this section particularly which I think is detrimental. 

[character]

1 hour ago, roddy said:

Character, if you still want it let me know and I'll send you something through. Or anyone else?

Yes thanks, I'd like to take a look. 

[querido]

The current divisions, especially "Speaking and Listening, Reading and Writing, Grammar, Vocab, Chinese Characters, Textbooks", are imperfect but work well enough. Retaining them also preserves our communal memory of where things were, and regulars can continue using their pretty good judgment about where to post things. I think it "ain't broke".

 

I would not like to see division-by-subfora replaced by division-by-tagging. I have a truly remarkable argument prepared but I regret that the margin of this page is too small to contain it.

 

 

[Shelley]

How about keeping the forums we have but group them. So Speaking and Listening, Reading and Writing, Vocabulary lists, Characters and Grammar, sentence structure and patterns could all go under one heading for example Language Skills.

 

I don't think we need less topics but maybe only less headings on the main page so that new comers will not feel daunted but once you start looking around you will find all the sub-forums.

 

 

[roddy]

This layout is also an option. It doesn't look great as not all of them have subforums / descriptions, but that's easily fixed.

[Mati1]

@roddy How did the statistical analyses of the topics turn out?

 

I can tell you about my own forum usage over the last three years or so. Many of my visits (maybe half) were only to check for news about a certain graded reader series. To not miss it, I always checked "Reading and Writing Skills" and "Resources for Studying Chinese" + "Textbooks for learning Chinese". That was a bit cumbersome.

Assuming someone would start a new thread "X Graded Reader released" or "About Graded Reader X" I'd rather have it in a single place. Of course, depending on the forum structure, this is also a moderation issue and the more obvious the right place, the less moving around of threads.

However, I don't feel a pressing urge to change the whole structure now; either way is fine with me. I believe a complex forum structure affects a new casual visitor way more negatively than a regular user. What do you think? (It would be interesting to show some examples of forum structures to "outsiders" and see what they deem unclear about topic placement.)

 

"Actual Chinese" - I propose the name "Real World Chinese (Including Learners)" or similar, because that's what it would be.

[mackie1402]

I used to always browse the 'Language Learning Log' from another forum as well. What I loved about it most was how resourceful it was. I would look for topics on learning Mandarin and find posts from people saying "Go check out (name)'s log." Sometimes you'd see a 2 year long post from complete beginner to advanced. It was hugely motivational!

 

I'd be curious to the average time frame from when someone signs up to their first post. If I remember correctly I signed up long before making a post and just browsed. I browsed for quite some time before signing up, too! I wonder how to pull in those users like me and encourage them to be active from the beginning.

[Luxi]

I think the Forums structure is perfectly fine as it is, why would it need 'simplifying'? I have been noticing an alarming tendency to 'simplify' in all sorts of areas: software especially, but also courses, websites, forums, you name it. The results are usually detrimental to the usefulness of the 'simplified' item.  I like having well defined Forum and Sub-forum headers, it helps me target my browsing to save time, find information that  interests me faster, and also find a right(-ish) place to post something I feel may be of interest to others. I even think that 1 or 2 additional Sub-forum headers (by this I mean the topics below the dark blue headers) may help.

 

Would "Chinese in Practice" do for "Actual Chinese"?

 

[RJH]

On 1/10/2016 at 6:30 PM, imron said:

Posts are already editable

 

How?

[889]

Click the button in the SW corner of your post. The one that says "Edit." Of course you'll only see this button when you're signed in.

[Lu]

I think the Edit button is only available for established members. It appears after you have made five posts (or if a moderator has uplifted you, which I just did for RJH).

[RJH]

 

19 minutes ago, Lu said:

which I just did for RJH

 

I appreciate it. It seems to have been too late for me to fix typos in my first post, but onwards and upwards. What's the time limit? Or is there a forum FAQ list, perhaps? (It doesn't come up in a search.)

[Lu]

To avoid spam, the posts of new members have to pass moderation before appearing on the forums. This is done manually, and depending on whether there is a moderator online it can take anything from five seconds to over a day. (In very rare cases it takes longer, but that is only for posts that we really don't know what to do with.) The first five posts of a new member are moderated in this way, and once five posts are up on the forums, the new member is automatically 'uplifted': they can post without moderation, edit their posts and send more than one PM per day. Moderators can also manually uplift a new member before the member has five posts, if it's clear the member is not a spammer and is making good posts.

 

So, long answer short: not a time limit, but a number of posts threshold. I hope you'll enjoy the forums! Feel free to PM or @ me or another mod if you run into issues.

[RJH]

I see, thanks. My question arose because after you uplifted me I still wasn't able to edit my first post (actually I could edit but my edits wouldn't save), which the system told me was because too much time had passed. Is it in fact simply that I hadn't been uplifted when I first wrote it?

[Lu]

Hm, that I don't know. Perhaps @roddy can tell you?