John Pasden's pm to me... please read
auntie68
June 05, 2008, 02:18 AM posted in General DiscussionDear friends, here is the unedited text of a private message which I received from John Pasden a few minutes ago via my FrenchPod account:
Dear Sharon, It was great to see you embrace FrenchPod. We have a lot of enthusiastic users on the Praxis Language websites, and we're glad to have more. Some of your comments, however, don't seem to add up. It has come to our attention that you're doing an awful lot of talking about the 101 sites on FrenchPod. We have every confidence in our method and the quality of the material we provide to our users and so don't mind the occasional mention of a competitor, but there comes a point when it becomes downright odd. No user has ever plugged a competitor's site on our websites as much as you have, spammers included. If your goal was just to get the word out, I think you can consider that goal accomplished. Our philosophy here at Praxis Language, however, is to create a quality product and let the product speak for itself. Let's just get back to learning. The lesson comments are for discussing the lesson content. Thanks for your cooperation. Sincerely, John
I don't mind sharing it with you.
xiaohu
October 06, 2008, 06:29 PMVikram,
I think it's good to leave threads up no matter what, good, bad or indifferent, or even offensive.
John
June 05, 2008, 04:06 AMauntie68,
I have a record of politely encouraging you to participate in our community for the purpose of learning languages.
This very thread is a perfect example of a totally irrelevant discussion that you insist on having. How does a private message I sent you on FrenchPod help anyone on ChinesePod learn Chinese? I'm sorry, but it doesn't.
I'm here to improve the experience of the learners on the Praxis Language websites. If a user's actions run counter to that goal, then it's my job to do something about it.
Once again: this is an irrelevant discussion. We're all here to learn a language. Why can't we just do that?
man2toe
June 05, 2008, 05:48 AMDear Sharon and John,
You each have an unique passion and fervor for this project called Praxis Language Inc. As a learner of Chinese, I thank you for the passive encouragement (and direct in some cases) I get out of it.
Sharon, I too once received an email similiar to this from our devoted teacher John. At first, I was shocked that I got individually noticed by a Praxis team member and that they took the time to write me personally. The reason I got the email wasn't a thrill but, after consideration, I did find that the message was necessary (1) because I really didn't realize that what I was doing could be viewed in a way I didn't intend and (2) from the business and community viewpoint-addressing my method of commenting was necessary. Not your situation, but, some similarities.
As a frequent user of CPod, I find the posting of this thread to have the smell of malicious intent. A contributing factor of this assessment is the above mentioned scenerio. The thought of posting the email I got also crossed my mind, and the thought had some grievance to it. I am thankful that I allowed that thought to come and go, then choosing to inquire of a third person's opinion before communicating with John directly. John was professional. My thoughts, opinions were respected, and the issue was resolved.
So, maybe you two would like to go outside on a long walk on the Bund or something. We are trying to study Chinese in here. :)
saskiameritxell
June 05, 2008, 06:52 AMOh boy... what is this?
joannah
June 05, 2008, 08:40 AMSo it does actually mean spit battle? i was wondering if my translation had gone wrong somewhere!
marcelbdt
June 05, 2008, 08:45 AMWe are guests at this site, and should act respectfully towards the owner.
I can see nothing wrong with John's PM. Besides, I feel that one should not publish a private message without the consent of the sender.
kimiik
June 05, 2008, 08:48 AM@ perle,
I think 口水仗 got also an entry in the "Love dictionary". But in the context of this thread, it's not pertinent. ;)
auntie68
June 05, 2008, 03:49 AMI don't owe you a reply. I avoided posting at FPOD because it's a new site and you're still building your user base there, so it would have been genuinely disruptive there.
I think it was fair to post this here because there is a substantial overlap at the moment between CPOD and FPOD's member base -- who have been reading my posts and can judge for themselves whether I have been "plugging".
I dare you to come up with ONE post there in which I mention the competitor's French site, which is your only direct competition, unless of course you've already started offering Arabic and Korean and Japanese without my being aware of it?
The only substantive mention I made of the "-101" sites there was in the context of a complaint about the duration of your 7-day trial, when I compared it with that company's solution to the problem of new sites which don't have a lot in the library for users to try out within 7 days. This complaint was not invented by me in a opportunistic way to "plug" your competition but it arose in the context of similar complaints by other users ie it was a "current" issue.
kimiik
June 05, 2008, 09:01 AM[ERASED]
哈哈
changye
June 05, 2008, 09:02 AMDear respectful Chinesepod poddies,
I know I have no right to say such a thing,
but no more posting here, please. OK?
from an old guy
patp
June 05, 2008, 12:56 PMYeah your right Changye, with no disrepect for aunty68 or John as I value your posts, and all the poddies posts. 6 months ago I could not speak a word of Chinese, but thanks to you guys and the crew at CPod you all make it such fun and easy to learn, without my Chinese pod fix, the day would not be the same, it's like one big family here, lets keep it that way, hey!
But maybe we can get a lesson on a "spit battle" out of all this.
That would be Kool!
lostinasia
June 05, 2008, 01:31 PM"Spit battle" (口水仗 = public battle of words) is in the Macao lesson...
http://chinesepod.com/lessons/澳门赌博/discussion
(Sorry to add a post, Changye - I think you're right that this topic is or should be done - but I figured I'd try to find the pedagogical value.)
henning
June 05, 2008, 02:01 PMSorry but I cannot keep myself from adding the hopefully really, absolutely, very last post...
LostInAsia: That is exactly where I learned it. I recently encountered it several times in a row, one of which being in a recent contribution from Princess Remy (黑米公主)
xiaohu
October 05, 2008, 10:02 PMNot to add fuel to the fire, but I wanted to weigh in on this subject.
The point of sending someone a private message is that the sender feels that the nature of the topic is either too sensitive and / or none of the public's business! The fact that you posted any one's private message publicly...with the tag "please read" no less...and without their consent, and when they ask you politely why you didn't respond to them personally you come back with an insult, is completely out of line!
Then you go on to say that you don't "owe John a reply", that may very well be true but you DO owe John the respect of getting his consent before publicly posting a private message!
I was looking over your last several posts, and I have to say that each one is increasingly more irrelevant than the last. I'm sorry, I don't buy your "grumpy granny" excuse.
John is 100% in the right here, your public rants are about minor issues like, fields that have been filled in automatically in your profile, minor changes to the way Chinesepod displays information, a trivial error in the display price of what you paid to renew your account, etc. are not relevant, and not useful to the study of Chinese.
I'm as detail oriented, and dare I say as ANAL a person as they come, and even I think you're being too anal. Your posts have been cluttering the forums with useless venom, venom you'd be much better off spewing elsewhere or at an issue that is important.
Your post for instance about "C-pod quality control" for example, nitpicking CPOD in this way,
"I glanced at my profile today and was shocked to see two new items of information which I hadn't noticed before:
Motivation: "Business" !!!! Level: "Newbie" (*I don't mind that, but it was a conscious choice on my part before to leave this field BLANK) There was a moment of panic when I thought that somebody had hacked my account. Then I realized that you had made another sneaky change to the menu for these two fields, so that the default were "Business" and "Newbie", respectively. No option to leave this blank. I am sick and tired and irritated by these ongoing sneaky changes which you never ever seem to think through properly, let alone bother to tell people about. It's sloppy. It's daft."
Do you really think that Chinesepod is making these "sneaky changes" just so you can be bothered?
Chinesepod just uploaded a brand new version of the site, and with new versions always come new bugs, however updating the site is a necessary evil to continually improving the user interface. C-Pod has shown tremendous commitment to providing it's users with the highest quality language learning material of any site. This they do quite well.
Part of quality control is to ensure that users don't persist in littering the site with distracting, off-topic rants (the topic here being the study of Chinese), and to maintain a pleasant and beneficial learning experience for all those involved.
As a user who has followed your posts for a long time, I have to ask with the deepest respect that you please cease and desist posting these anger-filled and dare I say utterly irrelevant topics, as your posts have nothing whatsoever to do with the study of Chinese.
Xiao Hu
vikram
October 06, 2008, 04:23 PMThere was no need to post on this thread again.
Why wasnt this thread deleted?
perle
June 05, 2008, 08:53 AMUH oh! A mouse over by Chinese pera-kun translates to saliva battle. Am I to take it that it is another sort of contest rather than spitting?
John
June 05, 2008, 03:28 AMYes, that's what I wrote to you on FrenchPod. Interesting that you would post it publicly on ChinesePod instead of responding to me...