Hi guys!

I just put up a new post filling you in on what tech stuff we've been working on, and also asking for specific feedback on how we can improve the Community section of the site.  Please take a look, and if you have ideas, now is the time!

ChinesePod Development Updates, Community Discussion

Question to CPod development staff:

So the Skritter plugin still says it's "Skitter Lite" and that there will be a more full-featured version in the future. Will this future version have the ability to get the words and definitions straight from the vocab list instead of importing them from the Skritter database? I'm studying the pirate lesson and half of the words I added are not in the Skritter database, which is kind of annoying. Also, when you do get the words, sometimes the Skritter definition differs from the usage in the dialogue, which makes it a bit tricky to use Skritter to memorize the vocab.

Any other light that can be shed on the differences between "Skritter Lite" and the future version would be sweet, too.

There really needs to be some pruning or at least some easier way to look for groups you like. There are tons of doubles (something like four different "lesbian in China" groups) and many groups with one member and no posts (many of which are named things like "test group").

It seems to me that groups are supposed to fill the niche of sub-forums, but they don't really seem to be working too well. Nobody really knows how to use them and often posts relevant to a group is posted outside of it. I don't really use the feature at all, really, except for replying to posts that are already in groups (for which I have to join the grou itself, making me sometimes not bother to reply).

I know a lot is happening to the community section these days, so maybe there's a reworking of the group system already planned? If not, maybe there ought to be. Or at least, as I said, a pruning.

(I suggest standardizing a number of groups and making them behave more like subforums, so that all posts need to be in a group (with a "general" catch-all group, of course). The open-source forum system Vanilla (http://vanillaforums.org/discussions) could serve as an inspiration. It has a great way of using categories while still showing all discussions on the same page, so you don't fracture the community and have empty forums just laying around.)