88groups feedback
goulnik
November 27, 2007, 12:28 PM posted in General DiscussionI just thought I'd post a few comments about the new 88groups environment.
I'm still not 100% familiar with it, using it mainly for my practice plan, where I have my own group of which I obviously the only member, with Vera as my admin (so to speak). In Grouch Marx fashion I'd quite happily refuse to be a member of this group but since it would then self-destroy...
Anyway, the concept is very useful with an entry for each daily lesson, and room for discussion / comments. I'm a little confused with the navigation at times, but I guess I'll get used to it.
The good thing is I can go back to previous messages and edit them.
On the other hand, not having admin rights, I can't create a topic, which is unfortunate. I really miss that functionality, which should be added in a similar fashion to user conversation as this one.
One last point for now, increasing display size which works fine in Conversations does mess things up in the Profile, where the Latest Conversations start bleeding into the right handside navigation (Featured Groups, Quick Links) - that's with Firefox 2.0.0.10 on XP.
AuntySue
November 28, 2007, 07:27 AMThanks goulniky for the suggestion of adding an editor, but actually that's not the problem I'm having. Simple HTML is easy to type, and for me, I've been hand typing HTML since 1993 so it's easier than any editor. No, the problem I have is that: Two line breaks (blank line) get reduced to one. A
or
gets removed.
A
\n\n\n(where \n means I hit Enter) gets converted to ... and so on. There seems to be no way to make white space like that.
goulnik
November 27, 2007, 12:45 PMJust noticed that it is possible for me to initiate a conversation, that's under Forum, a tab which is only visible when I select one of the Groups from he top navigation. So, under a Group, I have Lessons and Forum (amongs other things). Under Conversations/Dashboard, I see the Latest Conversations, but can't start one, and these include both Lesson conversations and Forum conversations. Those Forum discussions are listed by Topic... So conversations and discussions are the same thing, and a New Post here is called a New Topic there. ok, got it
goulnik
November 27, 2007, 01:06 PMactually, 88groups is a powerful concept, and with a few tweaks I'm sure it'll be very useful and help PraxisLanguage offer lotsa new services. At this point, I guess it's still in launch phase, thought there hasn't been much publicity about it. Something that may seem like a detail, the conversation text boxes do not support html code. For general formatting that's fine, but I'm really missing a feature to enter links, always extremely useful. As it is, links appear as text, could this please be fixed?
goulnik
November 27, 2007, 01:18 PMwhen editing / deleting replies, the page is not refreshed, it has to be manually reloaded - just a little glitch
goulnik
November 27, 2007, 01:20 PMin fact, delete doesn't work at all...
jennyzhu
November 27, 2007, 04:25 PMIt is the absolute uncontested truth that we benefit indefiniely from user feedback. This is just another example of that. 88 Groups is in its launch phase with a lot of room for improvement. Keep your ideas coming pls!
AuntySue
November 27, 2007, 06:58 PMgoulniky, I too thought delete didn't work, but like the edit, it seems to be a delayed response or something, so don't give up on deleting. Try a coffee break and a full refresh. I've been having trouble working out exactly what 88groups can/should/will do, and I find myself trying things that I don't think it was meant to do, which ends up generating new ideas for how to use it. Maybe as we experiment and find ways of using the tool it will evolve to suit our most typical usage and accommodate our best wild new ideas, plus the ideas we steal from each other. At the moment, I'd really like to be able to put a blank line between paragraphs, and have it stay there after editing. Also some way to list items and/or put a sequence of lines with line breaks which stay put after editing. This might be another case of unexpected use that will be accommodated as the system develops. The comments are designed for something small, like most people do, and I tend to ramble on and on and on and on.
goulnik
November 27, 2007, 07:54 PMAuntySue; I guess it shouldn't be to difficult to add one of those BBcode editors or some such. Anyway; I quite like the approach you describe of trying new things out and it's to CPod's credit to let us do such experiments (that they also benefit from in the end)
bazza
November 28, 2007, 01:16 AMI think the lessons page should show more than just the current lesson, at the very least links to the previous lessons like dashboard has.
Andre Reel
November 27, 2007, 12:42 PMAlso forgot to add.... having to log into 2 different portals for the same purpose does serve the question... why? Not meaning to be negative.. just trying to find out why this all came about... I probably have missed a lot of the conversation leading up to this development.
mark
November 28, 2007, 05:14 AMTo tell the truth, I didn't get (看不懂的 don't get) 88groups. I also didn't see an obvious reason for using it. So, I haven't since the first look.
goulnik
November 28, 2007, 05:29 AMmark, I guess the main purpose of 88groups is to allow individuals who subscribe to CPod, SPod or otherwise to create our own mash-ups, i.e. create our lessons groups and generate discussions around them. For instance, if you had your own SIG (special interest group) in the US around business Chinese with fellow CPod enthusiasts, you might assemble your own subset using 88groups. This is one possibility. Or as it is used for the practice plan, a private tutoring area for you and your coach. Meanwhile, I guess you can think o f it as a language 'playground', but I also want to hear from johnb what he really has in mind.
goulnik
November 28, 2007, 06:00 AMalong the lines of Bazza's suggestion, and more specifically for the practice plan or equivalent, it would be a great plus to have a list of upcoming lessons - that's upcoming within the 88group at least this/next week, lessons obviously published here already. The practice plan issue with this is only the coach with in her rights can publish. A list suggested future topics would also be good, but I guess that could be user-generated in the forum.
goulnik
November 28, 2007, 06:01 AMI meant 'with her admin rights'...
johnb
November 28, 2007, 06:16 AMMark, I think that goulniky hit the nail on the head -- being able to mashup/remix content into collections that fit your own interests/needs, and then working together with others that have the same interests/needs in a small group. There are lots of potential users -- companies that want to train their staff, special interest groups that want a place to congregate, non-English speakers that want to remix ChinesePod/SpanishPod material in their own language (see Lernschnecken for a nascent effort in this direction). It is very much a playground as well. We're looking at what people are doing on the site, and then discussing internally (and, soon, externally) how best to support these efforts.
johnb
November 28, 2007, 06:17 AMGoulniky, the ability to see future lessons is something that Practice Plan counselors have been asking for as well. I'm going to crack open the old text editor and see what I can do about that this afternoon.
johnb
November 28, 2007, 07:04 AMGoulniky et al, if you click on "Group Archive" in the Group view (it's the fourth menu item on the righthand sidebar) you'll now be able to see a full list of posted lessons along with links, and unlinked titles for future lessons. It might take a little while for the counselors to start using the feature, but it's there. :) Bazza, I'm going to try adding previous/next lesson links to the individual lesson pages. Would that work?
johnb
November 28, 2007, 07:25 AMOK, forward and back links are done. Other bugfixes/feature requests are being worked on, and we'll announce changes when they happen on a weekly blog post over at the Praxis Language blog. The 88Groups post is scheduled for every Saturday.
johnb
November 28, 2007, 01:37 AMHello everyone. I'm the 88Groups Product Manager, and I'd like to second what Jenny said -- we absolutely depend on user feedback in our product development. We'd like to think that we have some pretty good ideas, but at the same time we know that Big Brain can out-think any of us. In the coming days and weeks, we're going to be doing some tweaks / bug fixes / feature improvements on the current site, and integrating user feedback into the design for the second version of the site. If you have any specific suggestions that you'd like to see action taken on, you can e-mail them to 88groups@gmail.com and I'll receive them personally.
Andre Reel
November 27, 2007, 12:40 PMJust to add on... I too have to use the 88groups environment for my practice plan and would definately choose to revert to the orginal system if offered. I can definately see the value in the groups for many purposes but at the moment, do not see where its offering any further value to me and my practice plan. I also find the navigation to be quite unfriendly but I suppose thats a matter of getting used to.