The Role of the ChinesePod Forum
John
July 24, 2008, 04:06 AM posted in General DiscussionThe ChinesePod Forum has been a great learning tool by the users, for the users. Traditionally, ChinesePod staff have not had much presence there (with the exception of our beloved Saint Eileen). The community wanted it, and we supported the community.
Recently, though, the majority of forum activity has been by spammers. We have already taken drastic measures to help forum admins eliminate all the spam (thank you, luhmann!), but now the question remains: how are the users still using the forum?
I think everyone recognizes the value of the forum content, so no one wants to delete it. But if there's no activity anyway, it would make sense to disallow posting in order to put an end to the spam issue.
Please let us know what you think. It's your forum.
lostinasia
July 24, 2008, 04:13 AMI almost never used the forum, even when ChinesePod's own conversations were at a much more rudimentary level. One place was enough to visit.
I definitely wouldn't use it now.
I still wish the Conversations here were friendlier to searches and the like, and that threads didn't get so easily buried; perhaps Groups are designed to alleviate that problem.
So I guess I vote for cryogenic freezing of the forum.
fordbronco
July 25, 2008, 02:27 AMAnd, to quote myself:
Ok.. the pattern is pretty obvious here…
1) The Saturday Show - most unnoticeable link on the internet (still waiting to be proven wrong)
2) Bloggers - technically you’re only linked from dead sections of CPod or deep down on the off-site Praxis blog
3) Forum.. if community is so valued why is it one of the smallest links on the users home page? Apparently 15000 Chinese language related searchable posts was a threat to the Connect section message abyss.. great way to treat the most dedicated users
Somebody sure seems bent on re-structuring the community their way. I don’t know, maybe your backs were against the wall and you thought these steps were absolutely necessary… but could you at least have finished your [deleted by me]
mattwhyndham
July 24, 2008, 06:10 AMI've always been a itunes+RSS feed+forum user, and have pretty much ignored lesson conversations. Why? The lesson threads get unusable after a short while, and I often find they are generic chat rooms rather than language-specific. If the comments were threaded it might help.
I haven't really grokked "Conversations" on the main site. In fact, it takes a lot to draw me in to the main site at all. NB I have a basic sub. Perhaps I should grab a feed to the main site lesson comments, though I'd want one tailored to my levels.
I believe the recent spam was an anomaly rather than a fundamental problem. Therefore, votes for retention of the forum, unless there are equivalent features on the main site.
missgoldfish
July 24, 2008, 06:13 AMI totally agree with pchenery that the huge upside about the forum is its organization. I really looked forward to participating in it but it seems I joined up just before the big wave of spam hit.
The spam is getting annoying but I would really hope to continue the forum in some way, shape or form.
wolson
July 24, 2008, 01:47 PMThe forum was great for its organization and archiving of posts. IT is not something that I visit every day or even every week. But when I want to find a certain piece of information, it is invaluable.
I recommend keeping it but it does require an active moderator.
luhmann
July 24, 2008, 02:45 PMI really think that the forum is much better than the conversations system on the site. The conversations on the site have too much visual fancy, the forum has a more streamlined design that is lot more readable, and it has many useful features. I feel it fosters more thoughtful discussions than the main site.
Due to the good organisation of the forum, old threads do not fall into oblivion, old threads still have a good chance of getting an answer, and constitute an accessible knowledge database.
As for problems such as spam, it has never been a big issue until this unprecedent atack. The moderators should have been aware that they can count on the Chinesepod team in times of trouble, this attack would never have lasted so long had it been the case.
jbradfor
July 24, 2008, 03:25 PMI think CP should drop the (very pitiful) conversation section, an actively embrace the forum instead.
The conversation is pitiful. It's 1980 technology. Just a bunch of text. No threads, so multimedia, no way of being informed of updates, no editing, nothing. Not even easy to search.
The forum is much nicer.
The only reason that the conversation section gets the large amount of activity it does is because the CP staff quickly responds to qusetions posted there. If the CP staff would spend that much time answering questions on the forums, I predict the forums would get much more activity than the converstaions did.
Regarding the spam, up until about a week ago the spam problem got much better, due to active moderation of several users. [Thanks to them.] The last week, however, was exceptional.
"The community wanted it, and we supported the community." I always got the feeling that the CP staff would prefer to see the forums go away. But they haven't. Why? Because the Forum interface is sooooo much better.
hedainian
July 24, 2008, 03:52 PMAlthough I've been using the site for a long time, I don't know the difference between the "forum" and the "conversation" sections. Can anyone help me out with this?
andrew_c
July 24, 2008, 03:53 PMOn the other hand, the forum is not integrated with the rest of the site, which gives the Conversations section a huge inherent advantage over the forum. Since Conversations are integrated with lessons and groups, this leads to a natural organization, which would have to be done manually on the forums. In my opinion, the answer is to improve the features of Conversations so it doesn't suffer the drawbacks described above. To do this conversations could use threads for intra-conversation organization, the RSS feeds could be fixed to actually work properly, enable tracking threads of conversations, and also searching the conversations.
pchenery
July 24, 2008, 04:21 AMThe great thing about the forum is that it is organized into logical categories that directly relate to CPOD lessons and language issues. I have found some useful stuff there from time to time. Also, the best place to go to ask about technical issues.
The spam doesn't bother me, I'm quite good at ignoring it.
And the birthday greetings are something I look forward to (even though my name gets buried in amongst a sea of spammers).
light487
July 24, 2008, 04:33 PM*sigh*..
I feel partly to blame, I have been in the throes of moving house and only just getting back on my feet. I've only just got my subscription on cPOD back yesterday and logging in very infrequently over the last few weeks. Moderating the forums is a lot of work even when you are there all the time but can get completely out of hand if not done regularly, as I wasn't able to recently.
I think that for the forums to continue to work, the phpBB software needs to be upgraded to a more recent version than we currently have. A huge amount of the moderating limitations and problems stem mainly from the old version not being flexible enough, and making it diffficult to handling series and multiple deletions and so on.
I think there is/was definitely enough legitimate activity on the forums to keep it open but I really think an upgrade is in order before that is a good idea.
I have an inbox with about 100 activation emails and 99% of them are obviously spammers with randomised names, one after the other. Possibly the Olympics has caused an even greater number of spammers to come out of the woodwork than is normal. With the current forum software, it is a little unmanageable even if we had more moderators and admins.
sfrrr
July 24, 2008, 05:38 PMI, personally, think that a how-to or software Web site can't grow and prosper without active forums. And although I go through alternating spurts of attending and not attending to it, I am solidly behind the CPod forum. It's the first place people should turn to ask questions. (And, until the last egregious spate of spam, that's what I did. Now I find myself posting off-track questions in the Comments sections of lessons.
ChinesePod the Experience is far too fragmented. We have the lessons with all of their auxiliary content, the blogs (what ever happened to them?), the comments/conversations (which are like primitive forum threads), the forum, and now groups. I'm not sure what the CPod honchos have against the forum (or is it all forums?), but they ignored and resisted it from the first. I deduced they didn't want to do something that wasn't entirely under their control--and, yes, forums are risky. Or maybe it was the amount of work involved in a forum and the fact that the CPod staff would have to participate regularly, as part of their daily schedules, to make it work, but they barely cooperated, IMHO.
Again, IMO, comments/conversations and the forum should be the very same thing in the very same place with the very same name at the very same time. To be a little clearer, make the forums the comments or the comments the forum or link them so tightly together that no one can tell the difference.
The addition of CPod groups has intensified the forum's problems. I mean, how many places can you go every day--Lessons and their accoutrements, Comments, Groups, Forum? We now have three entities that sorely overlap and yet aren't linked to each other so one hand doesn't know what the other is doing. Or saying.
A forum format allows users to be highly interactive with each other--I can ask a question and another user will answer it. We debate about...well, whatever.
You want community? Support the forum. You want to give subscribers help and direction? Support the forum. You want them to form groups? Support the forum. That's what forums are for. And if this seems to lead you away from your corporate mission--to make money--Closely support the forums.
I'm out of breath after this tirade so I'm stopping. My vote for the forum?
KEEP IT.
calkins
July 24, 2008, 06:15 PMI have to agree with sfrrr on most accounts...more continuity is the key.
Personally, I never (with the exception of a couple times) go to the forum. For the simple reason that it's one more place to go. Everything should be in one place, on chinesepod.com.
It just doesn't make sense to me to have a "Conversations" section on the "mother" site and a "Forums" section on a different site.
IMO, everything should be integrated into the main chinesepod site, no matter how it's done.
wolson
July 24, 2008, 06:52 PMIt seems to me that the problem is really one of organization. I really don't care whether it is the forum or comments made in t he community. However there needs to be a structure.
For example, recently, I made two long posts on terms, one for music and one for tea. These could have been in the forum as well as they were posted mainly for reference... There have been no added comments to them since they have been posted (that I know of) not does there need to be.
However, sometime in the future, somebody is going to want to know about a certain tea or a certain musical instrument... About the only way to find these posts currently is know that I made the post and then search my posts. If there was a structure, this would not be necessary.
A search option that finds posts by keywords would be a very useful tool here. For example many of the previous users provided word lists. At times, I would like find these.
bazza
July 24, 2008, 07:36 PMI say shut down the forum and purge it. I don't think there's anything on it that can't be found again.
tommyb
July 24, 2008, 09:30 PMon the bottom of every web page there is a column called Community that lists both Conversations and Forum, so they are somewhat part of the home website
to me they are the same. I think every format Chinese Pod tries, it always winds up being a lot of chit-chat with the occasional bit of structured content (approximately). Thats why I always felt someone should go through it all, and centralize all the good tips and links and vocabulary. The conversations are nice but no one has time to read it all, especially the older stuff
Tom
fordbronco
July 25, 2008, 02:02 AMThe forum community WAS supported. The forum was critically injured when v3 came in and basically de-linked the forum from CPod, as well as TSS, blogs and all the cool stuff. As posted on TSS last year:
fordbronco
July 25, 2008, 02:20 AMOk, and to quote one of the community builders, on the subject of TSS (The Saturday Show) and the forum:
It’s all what we Aussies call Tall Poppy Syndrome, but you know it when we do it. As soon as something threatens to become very popular with the students, its neglected, cast aside, hidden, eliminated, left in a corner of the basement to seem to die of its own accord. Rather than being honest about it, it’s given an insulting token link or a treasure hunt style location, kept on the agenda to appease the masses but tied permanently to the bottom of a constantly growing list of other priorities. It’s a cowardly way of avoiding finding the words to say piss off.
Now tell me I’m wrong, and please explain why history keeps repeating, and why community seems to be valued in words but not in actions. Is it learning on our terms, but community only on yours? Just tell us straight before we waste too much free labour trying to help you to build your business with our community efforts only to have them wasted.
pinkjeans
July 24, 2008, 04:16 PMI never knew this forum even existed!!! Is it like a livechat session? A live chatroom for genuine users would be really good to have within the main Chinesepod site.
Feel free to prove me wrong, anybody, but the links between the bloggers & forum, and CPod, is basically a one way street now, pointing to CPod. So, these community builders in the forum and blog are basically drawing the traffic, re-directing it to CPod, and then being left in the dust. Might be a good business decision in the short term, but not so hot in the long term. All I’m saying is brotherhood is a two-way street.. thank you Malcolm X.
So, maybe you’re exploring alternate home pages, i.e. netvibes, etc, that will completely blow us away 6 months from now, and link the community seamlessly. But, in just 2 minutes with some simple html code, you could build a two-way street, without any technological breakthroughs. How about it?