These two quotes kind of surprised me:

Here's what I think about the whole video thing.  Scrap it completely!  I don't think it is needed. (Calkins)

I can only speak for myself but I really dont care if there is any video right now. I like the site the way it was. Sure video is nice but but if a weekly thing is not in the cards right now, so what. Make it a periodic treat until something clicks. (RJBerki)

We never wanted to do video just to do video, and it has always been a bit of an experiment (more in-depth explanation about the situation here), but the most important thing is that ChinesePod continues to produce quality learning materials.

The longer we do video, the clearer it becomes that beyond simple experimentation, video requires far, far more time to be done right. We can do daily podcasts indefinitely, but to do video on top of that, in a format that meets our standards, is not something that can be slotted into a weekly schedule.

So to cut to the chase, our commitment has always been to quality learning materials, and weekly video efforts were a worthwhile experiment, but to produce quality materials for ChinesePod, we will not be publishing a new video every week in 2009. (Basically, we're taking RJ Berki's view.)

We are currently developing a video series on ordering food in China (to be released soon after CNY), while working on the longer-term Chinese character video project (much, much planning is needed for that one). We will also be releasing a fun one-off video to YouTube late next week; stay tuned for that.

As always, we welcome your feedback, and we'll do our best to keep raising the bar on the quality of what we offer.

The truth is, once you get to a rather advanced level, you naturally begin learning more and more words and phrases that are perhaps not "ultra-practical." Every lesson has a balance of higher and lower frequency words, and the balance differs somewhat from lesson to lesson... (like the ever-shifting sands of a desert? hehe)

Don't worry, though... we will always have practical lessons!

We cover all these pronunciation issues at length in our Pronunciation Guide. You can download a chart which contains all possible syllables, and you can read specifically about yuan.  If all the explanation is too much, scroll down to the audio.

The messaging system now properly displays a "success" message as a first correction, but it doesn't redirect to anywhere yet.  I'm planning to make it redirect to the page of origin (either a user profile page, or a user's PM inbox).

Thr 2008/2009 lable issue is a rather embarrassing oversight; we will get it fixed immediately.

The reason it's taking so long to fix the ranking algorithm is that messages posted to groups are not properly calculated, but there are actually quite a few issues with Groups that we're going to fix together. I'm sorry that you're so affected by this calculation error, but we will get to it. It's on a long list of fixes, and we're taking care of them one by one.

Ha ha... Hilarious take on 三长两短!

It turns out the one 短est (?) in height turned out to be the one 长est in talent/starpower...

You're referring to a difference in dialect. It sounds like your friend is more used to northern Mandarin, but neither is incorrect or artificial. It's simply a matter of what you're used to.

Yes, there is an element of pattern there, and it is the same verb repeating:

V Obj V Complement

This is actually the same pattern as:

你 说 (V) 中文 (Obj) 说 (V) 得很好 (Comp)。

跑调 can be thought of as a single word/phrase, but as in this case, it can also act as a Verb-Object combo.

@andrew_c: I was thinking the same thing...

Empty orchestra, perhaps, but not empty stomach! That's what karaoke means to me...

Hmmm, that's an interesting idea... A focus not on "all writing," but on writing which needs attention for some reason or another.

Clearly, it makes a lot of sense to use a visual medium to treat written language.

OK, I see some info is missing, so let me explain to you all the factors involved.

(1) When we switched over from an "all podcasts are free" model to an "only Newbie podcasts are free" model, we made a promise to our paying users that we would devote ourselves to a higher quality product for them. The video efforts were a large part of that.

It's true that video takes a lot of time and resources, and facing a global recession, we're not in a position to hire a whole new video team (or even one expensive professional), especially given that there's absolutely no guarantee that investments sunk into video will result in any kind of proportional return (money-wise or education-wise). As Frank mentioned, we've been making do with the talent we have, and it has gone well (with perhaps one recent exception).

So we have felt obligated to our loyal users to produce MORE in order to make good on our promise, and that "more" has been video.

(2) I stopped the Vocab Tour because there really are limits on what can be done well from a pedagogical perspective. It's confusing to have both nouns and verbs in the video, and it's also better to have a theme for the video. With that in mind, we thought of all kinds of possibilities for themes, but most are quite difficult to pull off well. There was even footage of two shoots that had to be abandoned because they yielded nothing usable. And we don't have time to waste.

In addition, we felt that "glorified flashcards" were cool, but our users deserved material more focused on spoken language.

What's the Story was an improvement on the Vocab Tour because it offered natural spoken language, full body language, and limitless topics. It had its own issues, however.

Very few of our employees are cofortable on video, and "thinking up stories to tell" and then being regularly recorded on video isn't part of their job descriptions.  The show was wearing thin for them, and it was hard to keep getting good material.

This isn't to say that neither show couldn't be continued at some point, but both needed a break.

(3) I agree that it makes a lot of sense to place resources on developing and improving existing features and issues.  More quality doesn't have to mean more content.  I actually spent most of Friday afternoon working on Grammar Guide entries because I agree with the views expressed by many of you (and especially Henning).

The Grammar Guide is still a good idea, and will be a great resource when it's done, but it does require regular additions over time. I'm working out a new schedule now to get those additions made.

Over the summer we went through a huge project of re-recording individual dialogue sentences, expansion sentences, and vocabulary (both English and Chinese) for all lessons 1-520 in order to create the necessary audio data to generate the audio review for those lessons. It was weeks and weeks of work, but we got it done. We're not afraid of a big job.

(4) Regarding community contributions to video...  We're not looking for community efforts to replace our own efforts. That would be rather lazy and irresponsible of us.  We're also not expecting professional footage.  But if community efforts could be combined with ChinesePod efforts, I think we might be able to produce something really cool.  If it doesn't have clear educational value, though, then it's probably not worth doing (or at least not worth as much resources and attention).  So that's why we're having this discussion.

We're taking a video break for the holidays, so it is a good time to have a larger discussion about video as well.

This occurred to us as well, but we're very wary of the "video + subtitles = learning" idea. There's already tons of that out there already anyway.

But if ChinesePod users are actually using video to practice their Chinese, and we can somehow augment those efforts and help share them with other users, then there's a lot more potential for real learning...

We've been thinking about what video to do in the meantime. (We're taking a break from video during the holidays, but it will return in January.)

One idea that has been floating around for quite some time is doing some kind of collaborative effort with the ChinesePod community. There's so much creativity and passion out there that it just makes sense. So the question is: how do we work with you to create helpful video content?

Below is just one possibility of how user-created video might be augmented by the ChinesePod team and then returned to the community.

Please note that our primary mission is still producing excellent audio podcasts. Video takes much more time than audio to do properly, and for that reason we can't be out on the streets every day taking footage, combing through it, and then editing it. Please understand that.

Anyway, we'd love to hear your ideas. The best ideas should:

• have educational value
• require a realistic time investment
• be FUN!

We are listening...

我只希望他们以后不会过分地小心起来。

不会，我们脸皮很厚的！哈哈！

When my parents visited China for the first time in 2007, I had them see only three cities: Shanghai, Beijing, and Hangzhou. True, there are more exotic places they could have visited, but they wanted a more relaxing trip, and Hangzhou is definitely slow-paced (plus it's so convenient to get there from Shanghai).

I highly recommend Hangzhou (my home for 3.5 years)!

先祝大家平安夜快乐！ (Xiān zhù dàjiā Píng'ānyè kuàilè!)

That's exactly right.  So, yes, they both follow similar patterns to other verbs and other adjectives. If you're talking about other words flipping the two characters around to change the part of speech, then no, that's quite rare.