FAQ or "tutors"?

A seniority tag would be interesting. There is a "Technical Questions" link on the bottom of the most pages. A while back, a FAQ was also maintained on the ChinesePod wiki. The FAQ link is now broken, but there is still some general purpose info on the wiki.

Maintaining the/a wiki is a lot of work. I have done it for a while. Ask Bazza, he has done it longer than I did. It is also a bit frustrating, because anytime you don't look someone will have messed up the pages, unintentionally or intentionally (spammers). Coming up with a good structure and making the wiki an easy place to find things is also difficult. It involves categorizing, checking all possible sources, like these discussions for addtional info. Maintaining the pages that already exist. Dealing with orphaned pages, etc. IMHO it would involve CP to commit resources to this, I mean HR resources, some sort of wiki-master who would be able to control, consolidate, etc the contributions of other members. In theory this could be done by volunteers, but I guess most of us are too busy studying Chinese for this type of (long term) commitment. :) Marc

jamestheron: The technical questions help pages are hierarchically organized and don't appear to be context sensitive. For someone new to CPod it's probably not that easy to discern between *ChinesePod Resources* and *Connect with Others* to figure out that your profile is mentioned under the latter. Some websites have live customer support services. I was thinking in that direction.

I am with Joachim. There is indeed need for a FAQ that is visibly placed here and be sent to new users right after registration. "Technical Quesions" are not enough, and the Forum is no alternative. Certainly not the Wiki. Furthermore there are a couple of basic mandarin (grammar!) questions popping up again and again which seriously need to be attacked in a QW. The time Amber needs for answering the one million variants of the 会 vs. 能 vs. 可以 quesion she could probably produce 3 additional QWs per month. I would not support that "seniority" idea, however. We are all paying customers. It is fine if we voluntarily help when having the time, but that surely cannot be expected.

Hello. I'm with henning on every point he made above, all the way. Thanks!

The wiki lives?

billgloveruk: For some reason, the wiki is allowed to stay on life support, with nobody looking and tending to its vital signs. So yes, the wiki continues to live, but what type of life is it living? Sometimes the hard decision has to be made.

Henning: I am not suggesting that people HAVE to be available all the time, but it could be similar to instant messaging where you could indicate that you are available or not.

I see. I think that one of the strengths of the existing system is that it stresses the freedom of people to skip past questions which they don't know how to answer. And basically it's an open system, where the quality of the answer you get also depends on the quality of the question you phrased. Imagine how unhappy some "freshmen" might feel if they can see that 5 or 6 "mentors" are available, yet nobody is answering their question. Virtually adding insult to injury... The current system is messy, but in a way it does seem to work. I am fortunate to already have THREE personal mentors -- changye, henning, and casie --, who between them always seem to come in with answers to my questions, and even friendly encouragement.

I think the CPod forum is a good place to ask and answer questions already. But of course it is not as well structured as a FAQ site or wiki.

Any suggestions on how to revamp the wiki? Btw: Does anyone remember this line: "Great Teachers on your Pocket, Superb Resources On The Website." Those were the days ...

@joachim: Thanks for the link. My initial reaction would be to archive it and start again. It seems as if a lot of the material now available on the wiki is fully integrated into the CPod site itself (transcripts etc.) and no longer needs to be there. My experience in setting up wikis is that they need a few people to sit down and create a basic structure before they are opened up to the masses. Contrary to popular belief they don't tend to maintain themselves and require a surprising amount of maintenance to keep them useful. But, first questions first, what do we want from the CPod wiki?

I would like to suggest a Chinesepod wiki to deal with those FAQ: basic Chinese culture, history, things to do and NOT to do. Of course, entries should link to appropriate lessons if available.

Will these Conversations one day be searchable? I think would-be wiki-ists should find out about that first. If the Conversations became searchable, and developed into more of a forum, I suspect a wiki would become unnecessary--and all the work on it would have been for naught.

LostInAsia: Even if the Conversations are searchable (one day, I hope!), I still think the wiki would be a nice place to summarize some of the FAQ type questions Joachim talks about. If it's a truly frequent question then it would be very convenient to go to one place rather than searching though multiple Conversations to find the most up-to-date information. I think most information will still originate in a Conversation or forum post but the relevant stuff would eventually be summarized or distilled into the wiki so it is more concise and discoverable. Generally, I believe the wiki would be a good place for factual information (example: a description of all available Chinese language learning software) while the Conversation section would provide the opinions and commentary (example: what software is the best?).

Have a look at http://wiki.chinesepod.com/index.php?title=FAQ. I think this needs some reorganisation. Firstly, I wouldn't put everything on one page. Secondly, not everything is a FAQ.

Personally, I'd lean more towards the Cpod sponsored and written FAQ model for learning how to use the site. The user community seems to get it right eventually, but the route can be circuitous. The grammar FAQ... that's a tough one. I'd lean towards a list of recommended references (e.g. Schaums) to study on your own, but that wouldn't solve the 1,001 questions on 能 and 会.

jamestheron: As the general idea of a Wiki is to be written by every user with the inclination to do so, it is in our hands to improve it. For that reason I hereby include a link to it: http://wiki.chinesepod.com/index.php?title=Main_Page. Have a look and go back in time regarding design and content ;-)