New moderators, and a request...

[roddy]

First off, I'd like to welcome our first new moderators in.... years! @Lu and @陳德聰 have been getting used to how things work behind the scenes for a month or so now and are pretty much doing all the post approving / moving / deleting duties. This might mean some minor changes in what gets through the moderation queue, but nothing drastic, except perhaps improvements in response times in the Americas. Indeed as they've been doing this for a month already, you'll have noticed any changes by now. So thanks to them for offering to help out. And now that they're in place...

 

Second: We should also have a small team of people in a volunteer / curator role. The tasks here would include:

 

1) Choosing content to be featured on the newer version of the homepage. The interface for this is quite straightforward, see the attached image.

 

2) Welcoming new members on-board. We've done this sporadically in the past, I'm hoping to get things running a little more systematically. By way of example, the poster here says she's studying in Nanjing. Right away that means she's got information which is useful to our members (Where? What's it like? So on). There are also topics she could be posting in right away (the fact that topic hasn't had a new post in six months shows the scope for improvement). Obviously not everyone is going to become a regular, but some will. Tools to aid this will include some kind of post-feed (like the new posts block on the homepage, maybe) including only posts by new members, highlighting posts by new members in topics, that kind of thing. Perhaps each new member automatically gets assigned to a volunteer, who gets a notification about their posts.

 

Basically, I want to make sure the first posts by every new member are seen by someone who's thinking not just 'how do I answer this question' but also 'how do we make this person more likely to be here in six months'.

 

3) Similarly, encouraging existing members to contribute more. If someone mentions they're enjoying their new textbooks, suggest a write-up. If someone apologises for a late reply as they were on a trip through the Chinese countryside, suggest a trip report.

 

The above is the top of the list and we can get started on this (enthusiasm permitting) by the end of the year, easily. There are other things I'd like to be doing in the longer term, but I'm going to leave those aside for now.

 

If you're wondering what's in it for you - well, it's basically the above. If that's not the kind of thing you enjoy, continue using the site as you do currently. There'll probably be access to some more stats (tracking how we do on encouraging new members to stick around, for example) and definitely a private forum for volunteers and mods to discuss organisational stuff and post pictures of cats. 

 

If you enjoy the site and would like to help improve it and help others get more out of it, speak up. Don't worry if you're a relatively new member. I'm looking for, I guess, 5-10 people and it'd be nice to have a range of membership 'ages', and also people in different circumstances (eg, folk who are studying Chinese in China, at a university outside China, independently).

 

If you're interested let me know.

admin@chinese-forums.com

Private Message

or reply below. 

 

Questions and clarifications welcome. And don't forget to say hi to the new moderators!

 

Edit: Changed the terminology to moderator, from admin. This is more accurate, we roughly have

Admins: Me and Imron. Full server and back-end access, although Imron only uses his if I disappear. We can never be on the same plane.

Mods: Our two new additions. Can approve, hide, delete, move, edit and generally toy with all posts. Can ban and warn members. 

Volunteers: None yet, role explained above. 

 

[somethingfunny]

Congratulations @Lu and @陳德聰. 

 

I just hope your new admin duties don't limit your ability to continue with your excellent posting! 

[roddy]

Thanks to everyone who's been in touch about this - got about half a dozen expressions of interests, which is decent. Will be next week before we actually get anything started, so plenty of time for anyone else. 

[renzhe]

Excellent choice of moderators! Congratulations and keep up the good work!

[roddy]

Apologies for the delay here folks - my dad passed away a couple of weeks back and that obviously knocked work out the window for a while. Back at my desk now, but it might be a day or two till I get to this (apart from anything else I've completely forgotten what I was doing...)

 

Thanks.

[Shelley]

You have my sympathy and condolences.

 

[Lu]

I'm so sorry. Take all the time you need, and take care.

[Flickserve]

Take care Roddy, The forum is not a pressing issue.

[889]

Sorry to hear such sad news. Let me join the others in offering my condolences.

 

[Geiko]

I'm really sorry to hear that, Roddy, my deepest condolences.

[li3wei1]

Mine too. Going through something similar myself now.

[gwr71]

condolences.

I can see my time in this forum may be limited 

[Shelley]

3 minutes ago, gwr71 said:

I can see my time in this forum may be limited 

Why?

[anonymoose]

Condolences.

[Zbigniew]

Very sorry to hear your sad news, Roddy. 

[abcdefg]

How does one offer condolences in Chinese? Dictionary lists 吊唁 and 慰问, but I've never used either.  

 

In any case, sorry to hear of your loss, Roddy. 

[Publius]

My condolences.

保重身体，节哀顺变。

[lips]

節哀順變

[abcdefg]

Thanks, Guys. 

[Jim]

Sorry to read of your loss Roddy, take care of yourself