New collaborative chinese learning site - Chineseblast.com

[necroflux]

The next major change is going to be the front page. I'm going to ditch the long-winded explanation that really doesn't make sense to anyone, and just jump straight into things with maybe some recent project listings, the "top contributors of the week", "top contributors of all time", etc. People can best figure out how the site works by actually looking at projects I think.

[roddy]

I don't want to compete with Roddy though as he's put together a great central hub for "all things Chinese discussion" already.

Compete away, I've lost track of how many forums there are on similar topics already. If you were interested there's also scope for a specific subforum on here, like the ones Adsotrans and ZDT have.

[hughitt1]

...which is why I think it might be useful to keep 'not yet started' and 'underway' seperate

You could give each project a "% completion" property.. that way people working on it can adjust the % after they are done for the day, and you would have a meaningful way to sort them out if you wanted to.

Does drupal or your website in general assure that only one person is editing at any given time?

For the traditional / simplified issue, you may want to take a look at an earlier discussion on the topic (http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/5615-thoughts-on-implementing-%e7%b0%a1%e9%ab%94%e5%ad%97-%e7%b9%81%e9%ab%94%e5%ad%97-conversion-system)

For the types of content, it would probably be best to decide what kinds of articles are relevant (e.g. translations, reading guides, lessons, etc), then mention it somewhere so people have something to work around? You could always change those guidelines later if you think of something better. If you leave it completely open, i would worry that people either might not know what to do and just copy the first article they see (even if its not necessarily a good article), or that you might end up with some really sloppy un-readable lists of translated vocab, etc.. Not really sure what best approach is though.

Keith

[roddy]

And if you haven't already, get in touch with the Adsotrans folk - if you can get your two servers playing nicely, you could be plugging in a simplified (or traditional) bit of text and getting out both character sets, a pinyin transcription and a first stab at an English translation. But then where would the fun be

[hughitt1]

Ya, it would be really cool to be able to move info across from one site to the other..

Where are you in Taipei btw? Are you in school there or working? I was at ICLP a few semesters ago. great program. I miss Taipei a lot though.. can't wait until i've finished up school here and can go back

Keith

[necroflux]

% complete isn't a bad idea. I'll look into that.

As for the concurrent editing issue, right now here is what would happen:

Person A opens a page for editing.

Sometime later, person B opens the same page for editing.

Person B saves their changes.

Person A attempts to save their changes but the site tells them that someone has already saved an edit since they last opened the page for edit.

If you didn't make any substantial changes, you can just reload the edit window to ensure that you are starting from the most recent material and go from there. If you did make substantial changes, you can copy them, reload the edit window, then paste them back into the page.

Obviously that could get messy if the previous editor worked on some of the same material you did, but this worst case scenario should be relatively limited. So this isn't the best solution, but at the least it prevents the possibility of unwittingly overwriting previous edits.

The best solution IMO, which may or may not be included in an upcoming version of Drupal, is to have a check-out system where an editor "checks out" a page for editing, and until that page is checked back in nobody else can edit it. That would have to include a timeout of maybe one-half hour for obvious reasons.

[necroflux]

Where are you in Taipei btw? Are you in school there or working? I was at ICLP a few semesters ago. great program. I miss Taipei a lot though.. can't wait until i've finished up school here and can go back

I'm in 大值, kind of away from things but it's a nice place to live. I'm neither in school nor working, to the amazement of all I meet here as every other laowai seems to fit into that mold. I'm just here learning Chinese on my own and doing crazy projects like this when the motivation arises.

[hughitt1]

haha sounds like fun. the checkout system would be pretty good. that is what open-source software collaboration sites often use and it seems to work pretty well.

[weixiaoma]

Don't think for a moment that Chinese Blast is open source. The license denies rights left and right while reserving all rights for Chinese Blast. Here are a few exerpts:

Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only and may not be used, copied, reproduced, distributed, transmitted, broadcast, displayed, sold, licensed, or otherwise exploited for any other purposes whatsoever without the prior written consent of the respective owners.

And then a bit further down:

You hereby grant Chineseblast a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicenseable and transferable license to use, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display, and perform the User Submissions in connection with the Chineseblast Website and Chineseblast’s (and its successor’s) business, including without limitation for promoting and redistributing part or all of the Chineseblast Website (and derivative works thereof) in any media formats and through any media channels.

Translation: It’s a “community” site, but all your contributions are belong to us and we aren’t sharing. We might sell your contributions and line our own pockets if they’re good enough, though.

Here's one more choice bit to mull over:

Although Chineseblast will not be liable for your losses caused by any unauthorized use of your account, you may be liable for the losses of Chineseblast or others due to such unauthorized use.

Finally, as far as I can tell, China Blast is just one guy, and yet the site is littered with stuff like "contact us", "We want to keep this site as open-ended as possible", and "we ask that you observe the following simple guidelines".

In short, Chinese Blast is a neat idea and it looks useful. Just keep in mind that it is NOT open source, and that any contributions you make are, in essence, a gift from you to Adam.

[semantic nuance]

China Blast is just one guy

I beg to differ. Why is it just one guy?

[weixiaoma]

I said, "As far as I can tell, China Blast is just one guy." I don't know for sure, though. Do you have any information to share about this? Do you know how many people have ownership in China Blast? In any case, the issue of we/us is small.

The important issue is that somebody/people will own and be able to use, sell or reproduce everything the community builds for him/them. The community, on the other hand won't be allowed to reproduce anything. While Chinese Pod makes a ton of great learning material and lets anybody in the world copy it and make derivative works under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License, Chinese Blast wants the world to make a ton of great learning material that it will then take and put under a restrictive license.

[Toffeeliz]

on a personal note, I could care less about the legal and small print information about chineseBlast. I find it to be a useful and friendly site, and it is good place to practice and get used to the chinese language. I think it has great potential too. It is an open-source as people contribute to it and people work har dtogether.

As for the "lining our own pockets" i think you are casting ChineseBlast in a bad light and if I were the organiser of CB, I think I might be having words.

It might just be an idea to sit and use the website for what it is: a website for learning, instead of looking at it from behind $$signs.

[weixiaoma]

It might just be an idea to sit and use the website for what it is: a website for learning, instead of looking at it from behind $$signs.

Then why claim ownership over everything a community makes and put it under such a restrictive license?

It is an open-source as people contribute to it and people work har dtogether.

Uhm... so your idea of "open-source" is an arrangement where anybody can make contributions to a company that will then own them and prevent others from copying or making derivative works? Actually, open source means almost the opposite: open source means that anybody can copy, redistribute and make derivative works.

If you were the organizer of the site, I'd love to chat with you about your license. Since you aren't, all I can say is that if you understand the license and still want to volunteer your time, then great! Go for it. As I said, I think the site has a nice design. Other than the license, it reminds me a lot of some community Anime dubbing projects back in the day.

[Toffeeliz]

then mayb e that is what you should do

[weixiaoma]

Do anime? Well, that was back in the day, when I was a Japanese major. I've been living in Taiwan for almost four years now, so my Japanese is pretty rusty. Actually, I'm putting most of my time into getting a new buxiban started.

For learning Chinese, I've been spending a lot of time with an excellent series of Taiwanese books about Chinese moral tales, customs, historical stories, etc... I've also been liking Chinese Pod more and more recently. I wasn't impressed at all several months ago, when they wasted huge portions of each podcast with promotional junk, but it's improved a ton since this spring.

[necroflux]

Weixiaoma, you couldn't be further from the truth. I have absolutely zero intentions to ever make a single cent off of the Chineseblast web site. I designed it with only one intention - to help others learn Chinese. So in comparison to Chinesepod, which charges for it's extra learning services, Chineseblast will always be 100% free, and will exist as long as I can personally afford to pay for the web servers.

The license, which I admittedly should read through more extensively to eliminate unecessary confusion, is derived from that of Youtube to offer at least some sort of legal protection for myself in the rare case it becomes necessary. Frankly I didn't feel like hiring a lawyer to write up a custom legal page when I've already spent so much personal time and money on a site that will never make me a cent. The most important aspect of the legal page is the DMCA portion which allows copyright holders to contact me with takedown requests if necessary. Other than that I suppose a lot of the information is extraneous.

In any case I will remove the language you referenced from the legal page, it certainly is not my intention. If you see anything else that looks out of place let me know.

I admit that Chineseblast may look like some grand scheme to "get others to build up a mass of content which I can sell at a later date" but it is not. I genuinely believe that the collaborative nature of the site helps everyone learn and builds up a mass of FREE content which will hopefully always be available to future learners (and will never cost anything).

[necroflux]

The Intellectual Property Rights section of the site's terms has been updated to a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License. As intended, Chineseblast is now legally a completely open web site.

[smalltownfart]

necroflux:

I had a look at your site, and kudos on the fabulous job.

I noticed that there were a lot of uploaded high-res images, don't you have an upload limit per project?

[Toffeeliz]

necroflux

weixiaoma

[weixiaoma]

Necroflux, I'm really surprised, in a good way! The original level of legalize was pretty over the top. It's great to see that the work the community puts into the site will remain free for the community to use. I'm going to start linking to chineseblast right away!