Scary Update on the way?

It looks like something is happening right now. Some lesson discussions are listed with a very low number of responses, but when you read you see they're all still there, partially marked "anonymous". Smells like a secret massive data transfer to me. ;-)

Hello CPOD. My personal wishlist for V4 is: (1) Please consider having a straightforward list of threads; searchability is a plus, but for many purposes just being able to skim the last 30+ "headlines" which have received posts recently, works just fine. And (2) please don't let things get nuts for users during the transition. Especially cheap people like me, who only pay for "Basic" and don't ask for a lot! Thanks for everything that you and the hard-working team do for us!

Great news about your plans with the Community page. We appreciate it!

Henning,

Yes, good point about the teachers. They're extremely important.

Don't worry, I see your long lists as armfuls of helpfulness rather than puddles of grumpiness. :)

Thanks John,

that sounds great. Also add the pictures of the teachers. Why hire so many good-looking people when not showing off with them?

And sorry for coming over so grumpy. I went through some stressful days which in the end turned out successful, though, so my mood is better again, now :)

Great feedback, everyone. I am pleased to report that we have been working on a better Community page which includes a community search (usernames, user posts, all comments). We are also adding lesson counts to the Channels page (archives). There are lots of other great ideas out there; I agree with a lot of them and will work on getting them implemented.

I've been trying out the new SpanishPod community section, and I agree with some of the other posters here. Listing the most recent posts, rather than the most recent conversations is good while I am hovering over my computer. It may save me some clicks. If I go away even briefly, it quickly goes from difficult to impossible to see what updates have been made in my absence.

If it isn't possible to show users which posts are new to that user then it might help to allow users to see both views - have the new view available for people who are hovering, and leave the old view for people who want to catch up.

Also, would it be possible to allow users to identify their time zones in their profiles, then show them when posts were made according to their own time zone? ChinesePod tells me (in the USA) what time it was in Shanghai when someone in Germany made a post. I can convert quite easily because the difference between Shanghai and the Eastern US is exactly 12 hours, but I'm sure this is harder for others. The new SpanishPod design never gives exact times, it just displays time-elapsed-since-posted in all views. This avoids the time zone problem, but it is only useful if I remember how long ago I loaded the page. An actual time in my time zone (for logged in users) would be clear, and it would remain accurate even if I have the page open for hours. Users who are not logged or have not picked zones could still see the time-elapsed.

A comment filter to show all new comments since your last visit would be nice. That way you won't miss any.

I only had a brief look, but seems like a really nice change. It seemed to load faster than CPod too, which is definitely a good improvement in my books. Cant wait for the change here.

This discussion is required reading for Praxis. Thank you all!!!

Eww, I hate the new home page, but hey, the rest of it seems nice...

Important question:

Where do you find the equivalent page to

http://chinesepod.com/about

in FPod and SPod?

Want to see the faces behind those soothing voices...

Today I agree with Auntie Sue. Why doesn't CPod scrap the present comment system and install something more professional? The forum systems (for example but not exclusively the various versions of phpBB) are much more powerful, very safe, very dependable, and unbelievably easy to install. Of course someone with a solid back ground in web design would have to spend a considerable amount of time on making it look esthetically pleasing, and fit with the rest of the site, but I am sure that the time spent on that would be less than the time spent on maintaining the system they have now.

I do agree with you Sue. It as become very common these days that people building computer services design those services to say "I", "me", and "my" when they mean "you" and "your". Most of the time I don't notice it anymore.

When I hear John say "me" I know it's about John.

When a web service says "me" it is about that web service.

The only time "me" can mean "Sue" is when I say it.

BTW, I am over three years of age.

As for the comments section, I don't hold my breath too hard because I know it is based on the wrong kind of software, blog software (master speaks and rabble responds) rather than forum software (equal members of a team interact), so there's only so much that can be added to the software to stretch it from one function towards the other. They've already worked hard to stretch it to its limits. If it were mine, I'd be throwing it away and starting again with something more appropriate and sustainable, but then we'd all have to undergo a massive change. So I make do, and spend my time on the Forum instead when I want to converse interact listen and share, and own my words so I can fix my typos, and quote and link to others properly, and find those ancient pieces of community shared wisdom. I can always come back here to the masterfully enhanced blog software whenever I want to close my eyes and spew a quick sentence at the rabble.

It would be so cool if we could have a "search discussion" tool. Sometimes I want to go back to something that was said, but I can't remember who said it. I have henning's intermediate guide bookmarked on my firefox. It would be great if I could do it on Chinesepod. And wouldn't it be fantastic if I could put in the lesson name and it would take me to that section of Henning's guide instead of having to scroll through the whole thing? And I'm jonesing for the grammar guide. Dare I hope that it is on the immediate horizon?

There are some great open source tools out there which will do awesome things like highlight threads in which comments have been made since a particular user last looked, then, after opening said thread, highlight the specific comments which are new to that user. They do it efficiently and with minimal storage/processing impact on the server, and it is an awesome boon to those following conversations on the forum. I've wondered why none of these free tools have been implemented on ChinesePod, but I haven't forgotten that a while back a major update to the ChinesePod system caused all previous forum posts to forever be known as posts by "anonymous". Any yet we don't have these awesome features that have become so standard for internet palaver. How much havoc would be wreaked by such a major change?

Geez. It's after midnight here and I should learn not to drink and post. It makes me unnecessarily erudite. :-)

Some more feedback.

I tried to use the sPod mobile site this morning, 居然 this is a premium feature...did not know that...

Optics and Navigation:

- As posted above I think it looks neat. But there is too much wasted space for my taste. It would be nice if the central "content part" would dynamically adjust to the window size to use it more efficiently.

- Pop Ups are talking about "Access Keys". Are those supposed to be "Key Shortcuts" - not working for me.

- Lesson sets. Anybody ever used those on CPod?

- Goulnik made some good points before on revamping the Tags. Make those consistent (e.g. "LiliZhangLiang-series"), maybe add a hierarchy and a thesaurus ("also look for the keyword...") on top of that and we would have a superior browsing approach.What

- I am a friend of numbers. I always look how many lessons are available in total and in a particular level. It shows growth. So I prefer the level-based navigation including the number of lessons. Maybe that is just me.

Wording / Concepts:

- Is "Iphone version" = "Mobile version"?

- Is "Glossary" = "Dictionary"?

- Is "Me" = Study Tools"?

- Is "Community" = "Conversations"?

- Is "Rankings" = "MAU"?

Regarding Conversations:

- I am with lunetta also. I prefer the current CPod version - more to see on one glance.

- The "Write your own Post" button is a bit bombastic. At first I thought it is an ad banner.

- "Newest Users" - I do not think that is particulary useful, especially if there are (as to be expected) only "naked" avatars without additional info.

- I always click on a user profile if a new user posts her or his first interesting contribution. Well, or if she has a nice looking avatar... ;)

- Besides, if you really want to keept the "New Users", maybe better place it on the homepage.

Speaking of which:

- I still miss User Conversations in the "Latest Comments"

- "Latest Comments" could move up, "Personal RSS feed" down (just a one-time-use URL)

- My Archive can move down also, esp. as it is in (relevant) parts redundant to "Lessons"

More in depth (and more friendly) feedback when this */(!-paper is done...

John, I really don't understand why you guys aren't making it more of a priority to improve on the Conversations module. I can't count how many times people have brought up this issue over and over again on the site. We would love to be able to search conversations, view by topic, view all since last login, last since x hours/days, etc. I believe what lunetta is referring to is the ability to subscribe to a particular thread as well. I know you guys are trying to be hip and all, but I really think there must be a way to integrate the features of the many open-source forum tools out there which are soooo much better in terms of features while still maintaing your

own structure and look and feel. Isn't it supposed to be all about community?

We were planning to ask our ChinesePod users to take a look at what we've done with SpanishPod for some constructive feedback, but you guys beat us to the punch. This new iteration of SpanishPod underwent way more testing than anything we've ever launched, but we're still dealing with some tech issues. The good news is that all these issues will be dealt with before we even think of making the switchover with ChinesePod. I'd also like to mention that what you see on SpanishPod now is not exactly what you will get on ChinesePod when we roll it out. There is time to make some changes and improvements, so your feedback now is very important. Check out this conversation post about the new features. (The Listening Test is not new for ChinesePod, however.) The channels/archive issues will be sorted out soon, but one of the things I'm most concerned about is the new "Conversations" format. It's hard to say whether it's really worse, or whether I'm just not used to it. Still, I think I like the old list better. Anyone else besides Lunetta?

Hola todos! Thanks for checking out the scary SpanishPod update :) I can't speculate on what's "looming" for ChinesePod, but I do appreciate the feedback from cPoddies! In fact, your observations are extremely useful to us, especially since as more experienced users, you're very precise with your comments. We're trying to keep all our bug reports and fix requests on one conversation section, which is at Welcome To the Update; this will help us more easily keep track of what still needs to get de-bugged. It's also serving as a de facto upgrade FAQ for the whole community. I would love it if you all could go there and leave your observations (besides sharing them here on cPod as well, of course). It would be great if you could identify yourselves as cPoddies as well, so we know where you're coming from. As for FrenchPod, I don't have any news for you, but I can tell you I went to dinner with the team yesterday. We had Japanese curry.... : )

They talked about FrenchPod in the new ¿Qué Pasa? segment as though it was already live. I'll bet they expected it to be live by the time the segment aired (just like they expected the new SpanishPod interface to be live by the time the previous ¿Qué Pasa?, "Welcome to the Update", aired). I'll bet that FrenchPod is very, very close.

Oh man... Channels? Brings back memories of the good old days of Explore and Connect.

i notice theres a link to frenchpod at the bottom of the spanishpod site. I wonder if that means the french launch is really close

I think we should be glad they are using the currently lower volume spanish pod as a beta site to debug before rolling the same changes across Chinese pod. Lets be constuctive and supportive to help them out with this and see what happens. I think they are trying to avoid another iceberg incident and yet still make some nice improvements. I have my fingers crossed.

RJ

First impression is too much orange on the front page.

I think the sets idea is great. Not sure about the channels thing

The addition of dictionary and new mail to the top of the page is great

Absolutely love the new look for SpanishPod, and I can't wait for ChinesePod to change too. It's clean and fresh, and the changes make it easier to use.

There will always be features people will miss, and changes people won't like. However, the important thing is that overall the new design is far better than the old one.

If I had been unfortunate enough never to have discovered Spanish/ChinesePod before, I'd certainly be much more attracted to use it with the new look, rather than the old one which looked perhaps a little amateurish.

Great stuff - well done once again Praxis!

On the new SpanishPod I can actually remove bookmarks from lessons, which for some reason I can't do on ChinesePod.

I notice that the newest SpanishPod lesson (Elementary: Gardening) has not yet appeared on the basic SpanishPod podcast. I wonder whether that's also related to the update.

I was in the middle of a sentence when I submitted, wasn't I? got distracted, thought I was done...

anyway, While I hope for improvements, and was supportive of V3 even when I too was lost, I hope we aren't going to go through any big headache. Nonetheless, I'll still be here to support ChinesePod no matter what happens to the interface... we all got through this before!

I do hope there can be improvements to the private message system... such a clutter, can't see messages that I've sent, etc. I really like Facebook's message system. (that is, private messages.... I am a Facebook wall, superwall, funwall hater....especially the latter two)

I was just thinking about how it was just over a year now that we went from v2 -> v3 (in web years, that is a long time... :P) While I have a list of wishes for improvements (doubt I'll see many, such as Multi-language selection for ALL the site text, threaded discussion conversations like on IMDB so that when Amber or whoever replied to a question you can see the answer right there rather than guessin what post the reply goes with... but at least hopefully be able to search conversations)

Oh and one very cool thing:

You can batch download the first 100 lessons via BitTorrent. Bravo!

I too go over to SpanishPod on occasion in hopes of one day dusting off my high school Spanish. A few immediate nice things:

• A little message indicator at the top of every page to show if you have any new messages.
• The text box for entering comments is bigger. Yay!
• They are trying to put a little more guidance in the help section. Providing a tour and such.
• On the lesson page, the comments area is a bit wider and the default font used is a little smaller making for better use of space.
• They are grouping related lessons into "lesson sets"
• It looks like you can tag any conversation you start. Although I haven't found a way to search on them yet.

I just reread my own post and just want to apologize for the rambling. It's all over the place...

Just one more thing. I tried looking for the oldest lessons on the new site, and I couldn't find them. One of the best things about ChinesePod is the huge number of different lessons but if you can't get to them easily, what's the point of having an archieve?

I'm not using SpanishPod very often so I hadn't noticed the change before now. Some things are definitely very interesting, especially the resources section, but I'm a little bit worried about the community section. My first impression is too much information and feeling lost. Why do I have to get a preview of the comments? It takes up a lot of space and with a list of the various threads it's much easier to follow a specific subject.

On Ravelry, the knitting community, they have this little gem called Radar. If you're afraid you're going to miss an interesting conversation you can click on that and follow all the postings as they are made.