The Role of the ChinesePod Forum

Thanks for the feedback Matt! :)

I've created a new topic on the forums for the discussion of these design ideas, and taken your suggestions onboard. One thing I am seriously consdering removing is the Lesson Discussions category. As pointed out many times throughout this conversation, there is more than enough functionality here on the main site for that kind of thing now. So that category on the forums is not really needed any more. It will most likely end up as a single sub-forum of General Discussions. Just like the PinYin and Tone discussion can pretty much be a sub-forum of the Written Chinese category and the Vocab and Translation discussion under the Chinese Practise section.

I must have posted one comment 18 months ago, but never returned to the forum. 对我来说 multiple portals are a drag, and there's enough functionality here now.

"

I'd like for the Topic images to come back too, as they helped space out the topics a little more than just seperator lines.

"

Think about the usability before changing everything back. e.g. extra space might not be valuable, it might actually make things worse (i.e. more scrolling).  Same goes for the hierarchy. There's a compromise between neatness and losing things.  Generally though, try and keep clutter down, including images which are just there because they can be included. I like the new post layout, with the avatars on the right. They can be ignored more easily.

John says "We won't be doing away with the current Conversations section. At the very least, it's the best way to see all the latest lesson comments. It requires no separate login, and ties all user comments and user posts together. Those advantages are too big to ignore."

I don't mean to attack you, but those arguments don't cut it.  Neither are true.  There are other ways to see the latest lesson comments, many other forums (not CP's, true, but others) have the opening screen be the most recent comments, so that feature is probably pretty easy to replicate.  And as for the separate login, that was a decision *you* ("you" = CP staff) made, I would expect that most of us would prefer a single login for both CP and the forums.

[P.S. Is there a spelling checking in this thing?  I can't find it.  And Firefox's automatic spelling checker isn't working here.  Talk about a step backwards!]

Well we need the ChinesePOD Forums image back of course and I don't really like the blue and white.. I think we need to go back to the red and white like it was before.. but may be we could keep the modern look with all the curved edges and all that kinda stuff..

I'd like for the Topic images to come back too, as they helped space out the topics a little more than just seperator lines.

I have just gone through the site and re-structured the forums back to how it was before, so rather than having a big list of forums AND sub-forums on the main index, now it only lists the forums, with the sub-forums underneath.. basically like it was before.

It's quite nice in its new clothes. If it's going to be re-customised, try and keep the height of the top part minimal. Much better to have more pixels devoted to actual posts, than logos and links.

The forum is back up!  It looks quite different now, but it's still totally functional.  Take a look.

Ok.. I saved all the images from the main page, took a screen-shot of it etc. So it should be ok.. anything we miss, we can always come up with something new :)

Hey guys, we're about to upgrade the forum to the latest version of phpBB.  It will be temporarily shut down while we do that.

We've already done a test run using the existing database data, and this time there were no encoding issues, so we don't have to worry about reliving that nightmare again!

Anyway, the forum will be back up soon. It will likely look quite different, and will require some re-customization.

Chinesepod.com rocks.

Thanks John, also thanks in advance for the upgrade and have a good weekend! ^_^

musn't grumble!

Hey guys...

Sorry for disabling regular user posting for so long. It is now restored.

We have not yet upgraded the version of phpBB running the forum, but I will try to make that happen as soon as possible.

Happy posting!

Guys,

We won't be doing away with the current Conversations section. At the very least, it's the best way to see all the latest lesson comments. It requires no separate login, and ties all user comments and user posts together. Those advantages are too big to ignore.

That said, of course the Conversations section could be better. We agree with you there.

I'm still working on the phpBB upgrade situation.

While we're on the subject of conversations, what exactly is a conversation? The front page of CPod shows there are 66000 conversations but there are actually only 166 pages of conversation lists with 20 per page, for a total of 3300. Yes I have no life.

Is a single message classified as a Conversation?

Has any new user mistakenly thought a Conversation was actually a dialog between two native Chinese speakers?

The spam was so bad that blocking the forum was absolutely necessary, the forum was really flooded with hundreds of spam messages rendering it useless.

But I think we could've already re-opened by now to see how it fares.

I think I would favour the discontinuation of the forum, if an in-site forum were to replace it ( see the japanese101 forum, for an example)
. Although I probably would like the current forum better, the fact that an in-site forum would draw much more users would compensate for it's shortcommings.

But we should definitely keep our forum until any such thing is in place.

oh.. I posted a new message when I wanted to edit.. see below...

I second mfalkoff's suggestion.

Finding old conversations about a specific topic is nearly impossible in the moment.

So throw away the "Conversations" section of CP and move everything to the forum (with a modern forum software and CP template) under CP's management.

"I originally thought it was some sort of fansite."

This is exactly how it started and still is.  Initially it wasn't even hosted on the chinesepod.com servers.

I thought this might be a good time to point out that when I first found the forum I didn't know if it was actually a part of Chinesepod or not. I originally thought it was some sort of fansite. These are some reasons why:

- Seperate registration.

- Very different layout.

- Having a conversation and a forum.

- It appeared to be run by volunteer moderators (fans) and not by ChinesePod staff.

It would seem that just sticking to the "conversations" thing would solve this, but things do get buried very fast and it's hard to find what you need. Also (maybe I'm the only one) I feel intimidating posting a new topic, because it's going to be in the top of everyone's vision, and is going to push everything else further down. I feel like it's better be somethign dang good, and this keeps me quiet most of the time which is probably good in MY case ;) but this intimidation may be keeping some very intelligent people quiet.

oh, there was a forum? -_-"

ok "fanboy", where's the turtle?  Actually Sparechange, a more likely scenario is that they (our beloved staff) want to do all the right things but are sometimes blocked by management, either directly or indirectly. This can alienate users. Remember the suits are bottom line focused so if you dont gripe, in essence, if they dont know something may potentially affect their bottom line, it is unlikely to change. Of course there is also good management and bad management. Lets hope our friends at cpod enjoy the former.

In this particular case (forum and comments section) I think there is just simply suggestion overload. You cant make everyone happy.

Yeah no need to stop postings all together, just stop new registerations.

There's a simple way to stop the spammers, just set it so all new users have to be approved by an admin, they're usually pretty easy to spot. Although it is a lot of work for the admin(s).

Why in gods name would you ever even entertain the notion of disallowing posting? Even with spamming, don't let a few bad apples spoil the barrel!

To quote Bazza:

"You lot are very negative sometimes. :P"

Call me a fanboy if you want, but I think maybe we should cut them (the CPod staff) a little slack. I doubt they're getting together every morning to determine how to create the worst user experience on the Net, or how to alienate all their loyal customers.

Hi John, thanks for the info but since this issue has caught so much attention and so many here are calling for a reform of the conversations (+ groups + blogs, etc.) and the forum, I hope cpod will at least consider some more changes.

there is plenty of space for a chinesepod blogs tab and a chinesepod forum tab next to the group tab, so please at least use that space so that this precious ressources get some traffic and are easier to find.

Please be patient with us, we all wanna be constructive and don´t know how much time you can devote to this subject.

I think it's clear that many of you would like to continue using the forum, so I will look into upgrading the version of phpBB that powers it (which I understand will better protect us from spammers). Then we can reopen it to posting from non-admins. Closing posting to non-admins was only a temporary measure to stop the spamming.

I agree with jbradfor. The "Conversations" and "Community" system is extremely primitive, and frankly, a poor way of organizing information. It is difficult to find even posts that I know exist. The main problem with the previous forum, as others have already mentioned, was that it became essentially unsupported by the Chinesepod staff, to the point where it was even shoved off to a separate site, killing all traffic (and thus posts) altogether.

My suggestion is this. Get rid of the "Community" section as it currently exists. Replace it with the following. Have each Discussion from each individual lesson automatically create a thread in a traditional, modern forum format, as the old Chinesepod forums were, organized by folder (ie. Newbie, Elementary, Intermediate, Upper Intermediate, Advanced). Any post that goes in the Discussion tab off of the individual lesson pages is automatically duplicated in the forum's thread. That way you can reference things much easier, everybody can post wherever they feel is most convenient to them (ie. if the Chinesepod staff like posting in the Discussion section of the lessons, they can do that). By clicking on the Community tab, you are linked to the main page of the forum. The rest of the forum can have the same sort of stuff the old forum did- a general discussion, Hanzi-practice, technical issues, and so on. The cross-traffic between the lesson threads and the rest of the forum pages, not to mention a prominent link to the forums from the main site (and that is crucial) will keep the forum lively. You can also even, if you're really ambitious, try to put all of the Praxis Language forums together. The nesting structure would be like this:

Main Praxis Language Forum Page --> Individual Language Communities --> Lesson Level --> Lesson Pages

The forum has been spammed beyond endurance and so the administrator(s) locked it until ChinesePod (or someone else) decides about the forum's future, if any.

Well, upon reading the fact that there was a forum, I registered to find almost all the topics locked, and nowhere to post my question on making the vocabulary export work. 

Although there are theoretically help and technical help threads, they are locked.  Only moderators may post there.

Not only have I an unanswered problem of getting a useful response to how to export the vocabulary, I've wasted time following suggestions from other users which haven't worked.

So I'm guessing that nobody from chinesepod has visited the from lately.

Boran

theres a wiki??!!?? I had no idea, I think its great.

Some of the stuff is a little dated, but I love the vocab list section. It was easy for me to sign up and add 2 items to the household items vocab list (tooth brush and tooth paste).

Who owns that site? I think it should be promoted as a user supported "content only" web site.

Let's face it, the social networking style of the site really sucks, the forum is much better...

Hi light,

A wiki does exist.  Although I only found out about it by another user when we were have a similar conversation like this several months ago (that is, how we should have a single place where useful tips, suggestions and FAQs can be stored).  I'm not exactly sure why the wiki didn't catch on - I think the user community was responsible for it (like the forums) and thus did not get much support from the CPOD staff.

All,

This meta-conversation we are having about the forum, lack of features in the conversations section, fragmentation of useful information, has been had several times even during my short time (9 months) using CPOD.  And I'm sure this conversation has happened many times before I joined as well.  Of course, it's difficult to find these conversations because of the very issue we are discussing :).

The point is I feel all of this discussion has had little impact. More focus is on adding "new features" than improving the basic infrastructure. At this point, I really don't expect any significant changes  regarding this so I'm resigned to just stop by, listen to the excellent podcasts and be on my way.  Hopefully, I'm proven wrong someday.

Another option is a "Wiki". These can be very structured and great for searchable data, as well as have much the same function as these conversations do but categorised so that the content doesn't get buried. The editing of main pages could be restricted to those with admin/mod access; comments/discussions about those main pages could be made by any registered user.

Think of other Wiki's you have seen around, like Wikipedia for example. A very structured site that is very useful.

lostinasia says

For example, when I was looking earlier today for horoscope-related lessons, I entered:

horoscope site:chinesepod.com

Great, but: CP should implement a better community archive w/ search. IMHO the current "Conversations" miss a lot of features that a forum software normally offers.

Wow, I never knew the forums existed as well. I've just checked them out and seems like there is a lot of really good stuff there. I just applied for a login but sounds like it won't be activated any time soon ;-)

I agree with some previous comments, though. Perhaps people like myself didn't know it was there because it somehow isn't really linked in with the rest of the cpod site. Can this be achieved?

I do find that the conversations re lessons are very hard to follow for learning purposes, although they are great for building community. Commonly you will find someone asking a question and the answer may be ten comments later.

Could there still be a forum-like area that was linked into the cpod site and had cross referencing to lesson topics, etc... maybe also through the Resources section.

For example, if there was a forum thread discussing grammar on a particular subject, it could be found also when searching the grammar guide?

I see how it is a rather complex issue though. Hope a great but simple solution can be found.

The person starting the thread can already add keywords, which is a start. Can later posters also add keywords? I don't think so - but I think they should be able to, especially given how often threads veer off into different topics! (Oops.)

A reminder/ tip: if you want to search Chinesepod, go to Google and then type in "(search query) site:chinesepod.com"

For example, when I was looking earlier today for horoscope-related lessons, I entered:

horoscope site:chinesepod.com

Personally I like the conversations for being free of moderations and the fast flow of so much stuff unbound and free to get attention which it wouldn´t get if it would be found only in one category, but the negative side effect is still that every thing vanishes as fast as it´s published.

My solution would be (as I pointed out above) to tag everything and store it in a forum style archive which is searchable and has the categories I mentioned in the comment I made earlyer.

So the person starting a thread could choose a category where the post belongs to and as soon as the attention is gone and it´s off the page, you hit the search and you get straight to where it is now.

That would give us the best features off all the stuff we have now and it doesn´t take to much efford of the cpod staff/ the users.

I really think the user-base here is too transient for something like a separate forum to work - look at those forum postings. Half of those people are never around here now (or at least never posting). Bazza, how much time did you have to spend on running the forum? It must be A LOT of work.

The forum or Conversations or whatever needs to be more closely tied to ChinesePod, and controlled/ moderated/ maintained by paid staff.

I have a question for ChinesePod: are there plans in the works for some kind of "sticky" posting? In other words, a way that useful posts DON'T get buried? Are the groups hoped to somehow do this? Right now the search functions don't cut it.

For example, I was just posting here about how to type pinyin on a Mac. I'm pretty sure I've typed much the same thing before; it's certainly information that will be useful for others months down the road, long after the thread is buried. How can ChinesePod arrange to keep these things available?

To me that seems the main good thing about the forum: keeping discussions and posts "active" or easily found.

Thinking out loud: if a Group called "Mac Users" is set up, would that somehow keep things more accessible? And another group called "Typing in Chinese"?

(Off-topic note to ChinesePod: STOP MAKING US CLICK THROUGH SO MANY TIMES!!!!! When we open the Groups tab, we see giant photos and descriptions of categories, then a tiny list of three groups for each category. And we have to click through for more groups. Give us less blurb, more useful links. Ditto on the Lesson Sets page. And shrink the giant "Write your own post!" box. Anyone who needs an invitation like that probably shouldn't be given one.)

What's annoying is we're all trying to replicate the features of a straightforward forum, without having forum features - and instead just using what features ChinesePod has here. Why not just HAVE those forum features here?

Whatever comes, it should be at one place, linked closely to ChinesePod.

Light, I think that's a great idea (and offer). I think Light or Bazza or somebody else who helped build the forum should take the forum over off-site, if they so desire. Closed, but still accessible and searchable by Google is exactly what the Cpod suits want, IMHO. Instead, let it live.

Moved off-site, without restrictions by Cpod, and operated by a dedicated user would be the best way to carry on the hard-work by all those involved in building it.

Maintaining a forum is a lot of work. You have to think about structure, be aware of the upgrade issues, be concerned about safety, clean up after spammers, helping users (old and new). Then of course you have to look after the forum...how it should look, what you can do to improve it, how to integrate the wishes of the users, etc. Ask Bazza. He knows.

Then there is the issue of moderating the thing. I am not even going into that.

But as a community building tool it can be a great tool. What CPod offers as a proxy, the 'conversations' will never ever even come close to what a properly designed and maintained phpbb forum can do for a community. I am not saying that the converstations are not useful, but they simply won't do because they don't scale. Basically it is only a loosely stiched together collection of blogs. It is fine for commenting on lessons (and adding extra info) and it is ok for discussing general issues which have no or very little 'eternity' value.Why? Because everything that you post in a conversation soon gets burried under tons of other stuff and is soon forgotten. The only exception maybe are the comments on the lessons, because everytime you visit a lesson, they are there. But even in this case, after a while the comments pile up and become totally unwieldy (I would suggest reversing the order for these comments so that at least the most recent ones show up first).

Ok, what should we do then? Well, I have a suggestion. A good solution maybe would be to set up 1 or maybe 2 Google Groups. These could be integrated easily into the website. People could choose to become a member or not. A lot of the hassle of managing these comes for free. Searchability is perfect. You can create pages and filesharing is possible. The pages could be useful to create permanent content (that could be technical guides, hennings character groups, general advice on study methods, etc), some sort of mini-wiki really.

Maybe the CPod team should consider this and offer it as a replacement for the forum. I am on Bazza's side on this. Better scrap the forum. Maybe some info in it deserves to be saved. So, maybe it should be closed, but left accessible.

Marc

I agree with previous comments concerning the integration of the Forum within CPOD.

Presently, it seems to be a case of "too many cooks in the kitchen". Presently, we have (a) Discussion section, (b) Personal Blogs, (c) User Created Groups, (d) 88Groups and (e) the Forum.

Surely there must be a way to consolidate this into only one (1) logically organized forum in one location on the home CPOD website ?

I'm happy to host the forum externally if that would take the load off the cPOD business side of things? Happy to pay the $9.95 annual fee for a domain name, I already have webhost for my other stuff with plenty of bandwidth available..

I, and others on the forum, would like an update from cPOD on which way things are going to go.

Hmmm...long story short:

1. the forum isn´t promoted enough= users are drawn away.(same goes for the blogs)

2. the precious stuff there should be safed!

3. it would be better to turn down those "forum versions" and make up a conversations section with an forumstyle archive which is searchable; has a technic, a media ,a general talk, blogs and a lesson section and it should have an rss feed to keep you informed about new posts and comments made.

...not to forget

4. Birthdays of cpod staff and users should be highlighted at the bottom of the conversations section on the day they happen to be, so that we can congratulate!

As long as some of us are letting it all hang out...I've been wondering for some time now why some of the very popular adjuncts--video hotpot, movie madness, the saturday show--disappeared without an announcement or explanation. I personally loved movie madness (as well as the other two aforementioned) because, even though I don't go to movies, I learned a great deal from listening to the dialogue.

Actually, we did have advance warning about the demise of tss because we had advance notice of Aric's departure. But it really doesn't matter--if a program is popular, you save the show even if you have to create a new host. The saturday show and video hotpot, just to single out two, gave me an education in China, as opposed to Chinese. Amber is doing a great job with providing us cultural experience--a really great job--but what happens when Amber decides to return to Canada? No more cultural stuff?

After writing this (and the stuff in my previous post), it occurs to me that we community partisans are just missing the point. Praxis is a business and to succeed, it needs to be focussed. Its product is serious language learning--they aren't selling tourism to a tongue's homeland, nor are they entertaining us with movies and videos. They are teaching languages for profit.

So, if that's true, why not give up the community part entirely (groups, blogs, comments/conversations, etc) and let someone who isn't already burned out create a new forum or other sort of community (but only one per language) that encompasses all of the other stuff--two-stop shopping with links? Here's the product and here are all the accessories under another roof.

I'm with Auntie Sue on the free-labor business. The forum (or whatever the community is) should be sponsored, owned and handled by CPod. At least one staff member should "own" it. You'll still get enthusiasts contributing amazing amounts of work because it's fun, and you'll also be able to funnel all the users into one easily findable place.

And, to quote myself:

Hotpot Mike Jun 12th, 2007 at 8:11 am

Ok.. the pattern is pretty obvious here…

1) The Saturday Show - most unnoticeable link on the internet (still waiting to be proven wrong)
2) Bloggers - technically you’re only linked from dead sections of CPod or deep down on the off-site Praxis blog
3) Forum.. if community is so valued why is it one of the smallest links on the users home page? Apparently 15000 Chinese language related searchable posts was a threat to the Connect section message abyss.. great way to treat the most dedicated users

Somebody sure seems bent on re-structuring the community their way. I don’t know, maybe your backs were against the wall and you thought these steps were absolutely necessary… but could you at least have finished your [deleted by me]

Ok, and to quote one of the community builders, on the subject of TSS (The Saturday Show) and the forum:

AuntySue Jun 9th, 2007 at 5:11 pm

The forum community WAS supported. The forum was critically injured when v3 came in and basically de-linked the forum from CPod, as well as TSS, blogs and all the cool stuff. As posted on TSS last year:

Hotpot Mike Jun 26th, 2007 at 8:42 am

on the bottom of every web page there is a column called Community that lists both Conversations and Forum, so they are somewhat part of the home website

to me they are the same.  I think every format Chinese Pod tries, it always winds up being a lot of chit-chat with the occasional bit of structured content (approximately). Thats why I always felt someone should go through it all, and centralize all the good tips and links and vocabulary. The conversations are nice but no one has time to read it all, especially the older stuff

Tom

I say shut down the forum and purge it. I don't think there's anything on it that can't be found again.

It seems to me that the problem is really one of organization. I really don't care whether it is the forum or comments made in t he community. However there needs to be a structure.

For example, recently, I made two long posts on terms, one for music and one for tea. These could have been in the forum as well as they were posted mainly for reference... There have been no added comments to them since they have been posted (that I know of) not does there need to be.

However, sometime in the future, somebody is going to want to know about a certain tea or a certain musical instrument... About the only way to find these posts currently is know that I made the post and then search my posts. If there was a structure, this would not be necessary.

A search option that finds posts by keywords would be a very useful tool here. For example many of the previous users provided word lists. At times, I would like find these.

I have to agree with sfrrr on most accounts...more continuity is the key.

Personally, I never (with the exception of a couple times) go to the forum.  For the simple reason that it's one more place to go.  Everything should be in one place, on chinesepod.com.

It just doesn't make sense to me to have a "Conversations" section on the "mother" site and a "Forums" section on a different site.

IMO, everything should be integrated into the main chinesepod site, no matter how it's done. 

I, personally, think that a how-to or software Web site can't grow and prosper without active forums. And although I go through alternating spurts of attending and not attending to it, I am solidly behind the CPod forum. It's the first place people should turn to ask questions. (And, until the last egregious spate of spam, that's what I did. Now I find myself posting off-track questions in the Comments sections of lessons.

ChinesePod the Experience is far too fragmented. We have the lessons with all of their auxiliary content, the blogs (what ever happened to them?), the comments/conversations (which are like primitive forum threads), the forum, and now groups. I'm not sure what the CPod honchos have against the forum (or is it all forums?), but they ignored and resisted it from the first. I deduced they didn't want to do something that wasn't entirely under their control--and, yes, forums are risky. Or maybe it was the amount of work involved in a forum and the fact that the CPod staff would have to participate regularly, as part of their daily schedules, to make it work, but they barely cooperated, IMHO.

Again, IMO, comments/conversations and the forum should be the very same thing in the very same place with the very same name at the very same time. To be a little clearer, make the forums the comments or the comments the forum or link them so tightly together that no one can tell the difference.

The addition of CPod groups has intensified the forum's problems. I mean, how many places can you go every day--Lessons and their accoutrements, Comments, Groups, Forum? We now have three entities that sorely overlap and yet aren't linked to each other so one hand doesn't know what the other is doing. Or saying.

A forum format allows users to be highly interactive with each other--I can ask a question and another user will answer it. We debate about...well, whatever.

You want community? Support the forum. You want to give subscribers help and direction? Support the forum. You want them to form groups? Support the forum. That's what forums are for. And if this seems to lead you away from your corporate mission--to make money--Closely support the forums.

I'm out of breath after this tirade so I'm stopping. My vote for the forum?

KEEP IT.

*sigh*..

I feel partly to blame, I have been in the throes of moving house and only just getting back on my feet. I've only just got my subscription on cPOD back yesterday and logging in very infrequently over the last few weeks. Moderating the forums is a lot of work even when you are there all the time but can get completely out of hand if not done regularly, as I wasn't able to recently.

I think that for the forums to continue to work, the phpBB software needs to be upgraded to a more recent version than we currently have. A huge amount of the moderating limitations and problems stem mainly from the old version not being flexible enough, and making it diffficult to handling series and multiple deletions and so on.

I think there is/was definitely enough legitimate activity on the forums to keep it open but I really think an upgrade is in order before that is a good idea.

I have an inbox with about 100 activation emails and 99% of them are obviously spammers with randomised names, one after the other. Possibly the Olympics has caused an even greater number of spammers to come out of the woodwork than is normal. With the current forum software, it is a little unmanageable even if we had more moderators and admins.

I never knew this forum even existed!!! Is it like a livechat session? A live chatroom for genuine users would be really good to have within the main Chinesepod site.

hedainian, what you just posted to is a Conversation.  The forum is here: http://forum.chinesepod.com/

On the other hand, the forum is not integrated with the rest of the site, which gives the Conversations section a huge inherent advantage over the forum.  Since Conversations are integrated with lessons and groups, this leads to a natural organization, which would have to be done manually on the forums.  In my opinion, the answer is to improve the features of Conversations so it doesn't suffer the drawbacks described above.  To do this conversations could use  threads for intra-conversation organization, the RSS feeds could be fixed to actually work properly, enable tracking threads of conversations, and also searching the conversations.

Although I've been using the site for a long time, I don't know the difference between the "forum" and the "conversation" sections.  Can anyone help me out with this?

I think CP should drop the (very pitiful) conversation section, an actively embrace the forum instead.

The conversation is pitiful.  It's 1980 technology.  Just a bunch of text.  No threads, so multimedia, no way of being informed of updates, no editing, nothing.  Not even easy to search.

The forum is much nicer.

The only reason that the conversation section gets the large amount of activity it does is because the CP staff quickly responds to qusetions posted there.  If the CP staff would spend that much time answering questions on the forums, I predict the forums would get much more activity than the converstaions did.

Regarding the spam, up until about a week ago the spam problem got much better, due to active moderation of several users.  [Thanks to them.]  The last week, however, was exceptional.

"The community wanted it, and we supported the community."  I always got the feeling that the CP staff would prefer to see the forums go away.  But they haven't.  Why?  Because the Forum interface is sooooo much better.

I really think that the forum is much better than the conversations system on the site. The conversations on the site have too much visual fancy, the forum has a more streamlined design that is lot more readable, and it has many useful features. I feel it fosters more thoughtful discussions than the main site.

Due to the good organisation of the forum, old threads do not fall into oblivion, old threads still have a good chance of getting an answer, and constitute an accessible knowledge database.

As for problems such as spam, it has never been a big issue until this unprecedent atack. The moderators should have been aware that they can count on the Chinesepod team in times of trouble, this attack would never have lasted so long had it been the case.

The forum was great for its organization and archiving of posts. IT is not something that I visit every day or even every week. But when I want to find a certain piece of information, it is invaluable.

I recommend keeping it but it does require an active moderator.

I totally agree with pchenery that the huge upside about the forum is its organization. I really looked forward to participating in it but it seems I joined up just before the big wave of spam hit.

The spam is getting annoying but I would really hope to continue the forum in some way, shape or form.

I've always been a itunes+RSS feed+forum user, and have pretty much ignored lesson conversations. Why? The lesson threads get unusable after a short while, and I often find they are generic chat rooms rather than language-specific. If the comments were threaded it might help.

I haven't really grokked "Conversations" on the main site. In fact, it takes a lot to draw me in to the main site at all. NB I have a basic sub. Perhaps I should grab a feed to the main site lesson comments, though I'd want one tailored to my levels.

I believe the recent spam was an anomaly rather than a fundamental problem. Therefore, votes for retention of the forum, unless there are equivalent features on the main site.

The great thing about the forum is that it is organized into logical categories that directly relate to CPOD lessons and language issues. I have found some useful stuff there from time to time. Also, the best place to go to ask about technical issues. 

The spam doesn't bother me, I'm quite good at ignoring it.

And the birthday greetings are something I look forward to (even though my name gets buried in amongst a sea of spammers).   

I almost never used the forum, even when ChinesePod's own conversations were at a much more rudimentary level. One place was enough to visit.

I definitely wouldn't use it now.

I still wish the Conversations here were friendlier to searches and the like, and that threads didn't get so easily buried; perhaps Groups are designed to alleviate that problem.

So I guess I vote for cryogenic freezing of the forum.