Making friends

xiaophil

You are back and have become Chinese?

xiaophil

Wait, this is very weird. How can a post apparently made June 11, 2010 have a comment by a banned user that is marked March 15, 2009? Has Miantiao learned how to play a practical joke on us all?

zhenlijiang

I guess goldenmylove decided to republish, an hour ago, a post he originally made in 2009.

xiaophil

Yes, that is the only way it could happen without a system flaw, but it still is very odd.

JasonSch

This is very...very strange indeed!

xiaophil

Yeah, what makes a person suddenly come back after one year and republish his/her only post? Pretty strange. Then again, I'm not all that normal. To each their own I guess. Thanks for the mystery goldenmylove!

bababardwan

I agree with zhen's hypothesis about how it could have happened with the republishing,but what is stranger is that it doesn't sound like miantiao. After all he's a native English speaker and the flaws in his last sentence are more than typos,and as far as I recall there was nothing wrong with his English [unless he was trying to be funny and sound Chinese I guess...or had a night on the turps,hehe ]. The first part didn't ring true to being him either.

bababardwan

In an effort to explore the mystery I just tried to change my username to xiaophil. Reassuringly it wouldn't let me as it said that username was taken. I do know you can copy someone's avatar easily and use that [I guess it would be much harder for the system to recognise that's already taken]. I think the spelling miantiao is the same. I wonder if that username was taken out of commission [which I don't think should be allowed to occur] and was reused. I don't think that when goldenmyglove republished he could have edited miantiao's response.....unless goldenmyglove is miantiao's new name and he's passed on his old name to the chinese guy who responded to his post. Nah, I'm surely barking up the wrong tree. It'd be great if miantiao's probation was over and he came back on a promise of being on his best behaviour,hehe.

bababardwan

Nope.One hypothesis wrong....that post above supposedly by miantiao is definitely linked to his account [and appears on page 91 of his posts amongst his other posts]

bababardwan

ok,I've just come up with my most plausible hypothesis [IMHO]. I think that post above of his was posted by his [miantiao's] missus using his account. And I think zhen was right in that it was posted by goldenmyglove back in March 2009 and he/she has just decided to republish.....I think he/she was a drive by at the time and thought he'd/she'd drop by again for another shot.End of mystery as far as I'm concerned.

chris

given the time of the posting yesterday, which was very late night in Australia on a friday night (i'm assuming Australia given the avatar) then maybe it was posted after too much ganbei'ing the arrival of the weekend?! ;-)

bababardwan

Can't quite follow that Chris. Miantiao was in China for most of his time here with us in the CPod community [with yeah,some visits back to Oz] though the time difference is not great [China being 2 hours behind]. But miantiao's post was made in march 2009 as can be seen by viewing page 91 of his posts. It was goldenmylove who reposted last night. Always good to see your posts on the boards mate and now that your work has hit a quieter period,hopefully we'll see more of you. Cheers :)

go_manly

Interestingly, miantiao is subscribed to all the Mandarin-Level groups - Newbie, Ele, etc. This means he must have been using CPod since the Cashfraud started up.

Also interesting, goldenmylove's only listed group is General Discussion - no language-level groups. It is as though his account was set up solely for the purpose of making this post.

bababardwan

you raise some interesting points go_manly. Most of my groups that I belonged to before the dashboard I was automatically subscribed to when the changeover occurred. I was also subscribed to all lesson levels before the changeover so I got all the lessons fed onto my homepage. I have a feeling that I did have to join those groups though once the changeover occurred, so I have a feeling you're right. The crucial question is whether you would have been automatically added to those groups if you were already subscribed to them prior to the changeover.

Also goldenmyglove can't be just a driveby as I had suggested above because a 7 day trial account would have expired in March last year. I guess he/she could just be a lurker who manually downloads the lesson without a feed/belonging to any group.

xiaophil

I really don't know, but I think perhaps miantiao only lost his posting privileges, so perhaps he still does come in and look around unbeknownst to us. So he could have possibly updated his groups himself. To be honest, I missed why miantiao got kicked out, and I think maybe it is better if I don't know, but anyway, what I am saying is since I don't know the situation, perhaps my theory is obviously wrong.

This goldenmylove is almost certainly Chinese, or at the very least, someone good at faking being Chinese. He/she says "you are always welcome" like we would say 不客气 in English, but what is really trying to be said is 欢迎. This is a classic Chinglish error.

The funny thing is that he/she says please add me, as if this person doesn't know that this isn't Facebook or the such. I think it is some Chinese person that wandered in with poor English skills, looked around, didn't know what was what, managed to make a post thinking he/she was editing his/her profile, and then one year later came back and edited it again. I think un-paid users can still post, right?

I guess it is actually one of a dozen possible yet wacky theories.

bababardwan

I agree that some that lost posting privileges continued to use CPod for learning and this has been noted before. I think there's a very good chance that miantiao is still using the site. I was just exploring whether it was a foregone conclusion based on what go_manly astutely observed.

You also raise an interesting point about the unfamiliarity with the site and the Chineseness, which takes me back to my original impression that it was a drive by chinese person looking for a language partner. I left that theory briefly because the account is still able to function a year later well after a 7 day trial would have expired. I guess the explanation is that Chinese native speakers may well be treated differently in terms of their accounts in the hope that they will help learners out in the community.

bababardwan

Miantiao,

If you are still following these boards,send us a sign. Change your avatar.

hehe,a feel like a medium right now.

Tal

Come on old sport, fess up! That double post IS a sign, right. You've always been miantiao and 90% of everyone else here, 对不对?