Veteran ChinesePod Users: Thank you and Where are You Now?

A distinct and separated "language exchange corner" indeed makes sense. 100% agree with such a solution.

What actually bothers me are not the language exchange posts by themselves but the fact that they are piling up in the general conversations, often misplaced in arbitrary user or lesson threads.

hey urbandweller, I know!  I don't think "wild natives" was negative; it reminded me of the deer that used to come by my friends' (in Burbank), feeding off the trees around their driveway.

hey zhenlijiang

I didn't mean anything bad by the wild natives remark...i was jsut trying to be funny.

and i do agree with you...Cassielin is an actual contributing member to this site...so she is set-apart from the others. She is one of the special ones that actually stuck around for awhile! :)

**double post deleted by user

I personally don't think "nuisance".  What I do think is there is an obvious need considering the amount of traffic, for good ushering on this site which would mean someplace for all those interested to be ushered to.  And I think this could be a very good thing for the community, as obviously there is interest the other way as well.

Things you all suggest above like bilingual notices, banner welcoming Chinese who come here for language exchange etc would make a lot of sense.

Not to make this a full-fledged language exchange venue though ... there are other plenty of other places to go for that.

btw I think we all agree, cassielin definitely does not count as one of the "wild natives"(!)  There's a distinction to be made between people who have committed to become members of the community here and those who haven't yet, no?

Not a bad idea, especially if could get a network going on Skype

I personally dont mind the wild natives coming here to look for conversation partners...I've made some interesting and cool friends because of it...Cassielin being one of them!

I like xiaohu's idea for a "language exchange" tab...i bet that might work and benefit people on both sides.

Maybe cpod could put a big banner on the homepage that reads"你是中国人吗？”for the natives. Then they just click on it and it automatically sends them to the language exchange portion of the site!! I am joking but maybe something like that would work!

antony73

I also feel that not offering trial users posting privileges would be a detriment to the site.  Like I mentioned in my earlier post, I've found many great Chinese pen pals through this site, and not only are they terrific people and getting to know them, grow closer to the Chinese culture, and learning their perspective on the world is very enriching, but also having constant correspondence with native speakers from different regions of China helps me perfect my Mandarin (not to mention 方言) like nothing else can outside of living in China or Taiwan.

Perhaps a way to keep it under control would be to also give those users their own place under Groups.

Right now there is Interest, Regional, Schools and Corporate.

Perhaps adding "Language Exchange", for non-paying Chinese members (those who identify themselves as being based in China through their profile anyway) a "Language Exchange" tab or banner will show up in their "Me" section directing their attention to that particular forum directly, thereby decreasing the amount of language exchange solicitations made throughout the rest of the forums, and keeping the index clean and manageable in the process.

This would be a place where a Chinese speaker interested in learning any language, not just English (one of my pen-pals wants to learn Spanish too) can find a study partner.

Henning could do German exchange, Changye could do Japanese exchange...a world of possibilities!

I'm not sure about making posting rights unavailable to trial users. A lot of good comments have been made by trial users, and native chinese users at that, who obviously aren't here to learn chinese.

I know spam (if most of it can indeed it can be called spam) is very annoying, but even recently with the amount of "spam," it's not people being bad and almost all of it isn't business advertising.

If there was an answer it would be great, but I can't see there is one without sacrificing the good comments we get.

I haven't read chinesepod's Policy Notice, but I'm sure a brief, clear and bilingual Policy Notice addressing this issue would help a little.

xiaohu and zhenlijiang, on language exchange, last week I felt sorry for a young lady seeking an exchange partner, so I contacted her.  She told me that she came here because an English-learning site that recommended CPod for exchange partners.  (She gave me the name of it, but I long-since deleted the e-mail.)  

Anyway, I really think that poddies need to be maintain perspective on local Chinese coming here to visit.  We see a constant stream of Chinese posting, and think nuisance.  They some here based on a recommendation, walk into the site, and get hammered.

Unless we want CPod to become the new Foreign Quarter of the Internet, I think at least benign neglect is in order.

xiaohu,

I agree that there's room to improve the services and organization for the community here, and you bring up many good suggestions.

It's just that the "less than ideal user experience" hasn't kept me from staying involved pretty consistently. But of course I have only been here 4 months.

tvan has recently mentioned elsewhere, and I agreed, that it might be a good idea to provide a place on CPod for finding language exchange partners. If that happened, then I suppose any of the copious posts "seeking mutual teaching" that tried to go up elsewhere could be rejected.

zhenlijiang

What I was posting about has everything to do with Chinesepod's service.

Henning brought up a lot of other valuable points.  filtering through the myriad of personal ad, language exchange and business opportunities posts would improve the boards.  I'm on the fence about the language exchange posts, because I've found quite a few great Chinese pen-pals through their solicitations on this site.

Basically better and more complete management tools would vastly improve the experience.

Maybe some kind of matching service would be appropriate to give computer aided searching to more quickly locate forums, topics and other community members that interest us.

With the new way the forum works, without better filtration tools, the forum index can quickly turn into a vast sea to wade through.  When I dig through past the first few pages, I can often times get overwhelming.

Bookmarking threads, marking as read and unread, color coding, rating, feedback buttons can all help us better manage which forums we feel are helpful, which to flag as useless trogging, which are unrelated to learning Chinese and which are purely just scammers.

More organization would be helpful, and I've always felt the drop down menu that Chinesepod offers (All Conversations, My Conversations, User Conversations etc.) seems a bit incomplete.

Henning's suggestion to make posting rights unavailable to trial users makes a lot of sense--I think that's a change that should be made ASAP.

bababardwan,

I see. Thanks for clarifying!  I guess too because I don't really talk to that many people here (therefore, was horrified the first time I casually went to look at Rankings--hmm what's this? and found myself there ... how did that happen ...?  didn't know I was blabbing so [not, I emphasize here, that you and all the other contributors are.] ... if only henning would come and post 20 comments w/in the next 36 hrs or so he would overtake me then maybe the next person would overtake me as well and I would fall off the page for the month ...) being notified when someone has replied to you just never occurred to me to be a need. Though I would still say that need doesn't seem compelling enough to require CPod to introduce e-mail notifications.

大姐姐，我也来踩踩啊。真羡慕你的英文这么好啊，都不知道用英文怎么跟你交流啊，不知是否可以跟大姐交流请教，学好英语啊，我的邮箱是：huxinzhou5566@126.com,QQ:345283561

barbs

yeah come to think of it, for you, "my conversations" would be the same as the "all" tab. Im not being critical at all, just thought that was funny. Just think how many emails you would get if that were turned on. A place to store useful things like you mentioned would be nice and I was hoping it would be taken care of in the new user guide areas created by cpod. Useful tools page or something. Maybe its there, I havent studied it in detail yet.

zhenlijiang,

Sorry if my tone came out wrong.I think we're on the same page here actually.I wasn't really talking about myself.Personally I do try to read all the posts and do get a great deal out of reading others posts that aren't addressed to me.Heck,I've learnt heaps that way and love reading them.Often great for a good laugh too.But I can see the point of view of others.Particularly for a more advanced user like xiaohu where many of the comments will probably be a bit old hat,or for people with other pressing time commitments,it would be nice to be able to go directly to comments directly addressed to you.I would think this would be useful myself on occasion though it's not how I would usually use the community section.

RJ,

Yeah,I have been aware of the my conversations tab since near the beginning but I rarely use it for a couple of reasons.Firstly,I'm interested in reading nearly all the threads anyhow.Secondly my conversations is not too different from the all conversations at times.Thirdly,last time I checked,it only took you to the thread,and not to the reply.But hey,I'm not complaining.I'm just saying such options may be useful.I've never been on other forums so I'm not sure exactly how they work.As for things lost over time,I'm mainly thinking about things like references to cool programs like skritter,pinyin input systems,tv programs.Things that I mean to look into and then don't get around to at the time.These sort of things could be addressed with an updated faq section.

@Lost in Asia

found again, welcome back. I kind of thought you left because traditional support was so slow in coming. Better now, stick around.

@Henning,

I have to agree, the language spammers are begining to get to me also. There is just too much of it lately.

@baba mate

you do know that you can look only at "my conversations" and see only those posts in which you have commented, right? I dont particularly like forum formats. Maybe Im just so used to this one, but it is easy. Granted things are lost over time, but do we really need to turn it into a reference book? Keep it light and current.

As for email notification - way too cumbersome and if you are posting much, your email box would be flooded. If you can check you email, you can check the posts. Its all a function of how bad you want to know, and how much time you have.

bababardwan,

(did you maybe misread my tone--?)

I'm not saying that everybody ought to be looking at all posts. All posts go on these boards as part of public discussions. I could ask a question or make a remark here and benefit from someone's reply to me, but the premise always is that other people will have also benefited from the exchange. I'm only suggesting the obvious I guess--that if you only looked at responses addressed specifically to you, you would likely be missing out, maybe even missing points made that are actually relevant to your questions.

Having said that, I do understand that to some of us like yourself, it's a lot more important to know immediately when someone has responded to a post (not so much questions, I guess) of yours so that you could then get back to them again immediately.  I know that kind of exchange can be very satisfying and good.  Again, it's not something all of us regularly do though, as you have said already.

I still do think that the first reasaon xiaohu has mentioned for his own "inconsistent participation" in the community has more to do with self/time management matters than CPod service issues. But it's not that I can't understand your sentiments on this xiaohu!

Because all of us obviously care, about what we bother to say up here.

"But if it wasn't a response addressed to you, you wouldn't look at it?"

..I would mostly agree with xiaohu here.It's not necessarily the case that one isn't going to look at posts not specifically addressed to oneself when one has the time/inclination.I don't think that's the point.It's more that sometimes when time is of the essence it's important to have the option to just efficiently check for replies to one's questions/posts without having to sift through other posts.I think everyone's requirements are going to be different and sometimes it'd be nice to have other such options.

As for:

"It would be wonderful to have Chinese only forums, strictly enforced by a moderator.  Anyone's post that contains more than just a few english words would be immediately ejected."

..I can certainly see xiaohu's point of view here.This would seem to belong to Advanced and Media level.I would think that perhaps I would go for a slightly modified version of this suggestion which would be more like a mirror image of what is required of Newbie/Ellie posts.That is that anything in English must have an attempted Chinese to accompany it.That is,the main objective should be to be posting purely in Chinese at those upper two levels,with any English merely to clarify what one is trying to say in Chinese. 

It would also be great to have a way to bookmark threads or individual posts of particular interest.

xiaohu,

I appreciate your sentiments regarding response and how it relates to your participation here, but I do feel that this is a matter of each of us finding a good balance in our own schedules, and that e-mail notification is not necessary. I'm in the dark w/regard to how much extra work this would involve, but it just doesn't seem important to me.

I myself often respond generally to the direction a certain discusion is taking, w/out addressing it to any individual participant. Yet if you were taking part in this discussion my comment might be something you find personally relevant. But if it wasn't a response addressed to you, you wouldn't look at it? I mean wouldn't you go through all the posts anyway?

My experience--I often just stay logged on through much of the day, logging off only to leave the house or take a really long bath or something. I take (sometimes not so) little breaks off work by just clicking on the browser tab to see what's up.  It's passive enough for me.

Lack of response to posts written in Chinese I would imagine is more a matter of not enough students here yet who have that level (confidence) of proficiency. As I've said before it's not that people have no interest. But Activity Stream has been, as far as I can see, so good for that!  Elementary level has been consistently active, with people writing to each other in Chinese.  I do feel your wish for a Chinese-only zone is valid--I don't know about the rejecting people who use English though ...

If you can wait another half-year, I promise to start doing more myself.  I won't be fluent though unfortunately.

Xiaohu, Is it wishing time again? Let me join in! :)

The current Conversation abyss quickly buries things that interest me. We need some kind of hirarchical structure. And I totally agree with Xiaohu that we need stricter rules enforcement.

Lesson posts, language posts, content feedback, technical feedback, group posts, culture posts should be separated from each other. And mark the number of new, unread posts to guide our attention.

Well, yes, that is a Forum, I guess.

But most important: Ban the (language exchange, business opportuinities, friendship seeker) spammers. Maybe just don't give those trial-users the right to post. That should solve 95% of the problem.

And bring back uservoice.

If I may venture to offer up some suggestions...

One of the things I think would help us all stay more active in the community would be to get an e-mail when someone responds to our posts.

Checking back over and over again throughout the day to see if someone has replied to a post just gets too time consuming.  Everyone, regardless of how busy (or not busy) their daily schedule is all have many other things they need to allocate time to besides participation in the community, and I firmly believe that this kind of passive approach would lead to an increase the number of active users.

We no longer have to keep logging in again and again, which makes us extremely active for a time, then begin to lose steam after a while.  E-mail responses would serve as reminders, and would free our minds up to concentrate on other things as well.

I'm speaking from personal experience, I would get really active for a time, get hot and heavy in the community (so to speak), and then after a few weeks begin to suffer from burnout.  Part of it is from CONSTANTLY checking back throughout the day to see if I've gotten any responses.  After a few weeks I feel like, in an effort to balance my life, I have to moderate my time spent in the community and scale it back to just checking in and posting a few times a week, before long, due to the out of site out of mind factor, it just starts to dwindle down until before I know it, it's been months since I even checked in to the Chinesepod community.  

After a few months I'll begin to be active in the community once more, and then the process starts all over again.

One thing that would be a great service to us is if we could respond to a specific post, just like on Youtube, you can post a new general response or post a response to another post, and there will be an e-mail sent out to remind you to log in and take a look at it.

This would also be applied to Activity posts as well.

Another issue that detracts from consistent participation in the forums is lack of response back to Chinese language posts.

I believe that is because there is no forum set aside for Poddies who only want to post in Chinese.

It would be wonderful to have Chinese only forums, strictly enforced by a moderator.  Anyone's post that contains more than just a few english words would be immediately ejected.  

This way, those of us who want to just post in Chinese can have a forum all our own in which to do so. Those out there that still want to post in English are more than welcome to, only on the boards that allow English.

我真高兴看到这么多元老/yuan2 lao3/veteran的留言! (Veteran in this sense is 元老。It is 老兵 in the military sense).

We should do this online meetup from time to time!

Azerdocmom,

Great to see you again! I hope we still keep you motivated. Did you get a chance to try the loose powder/散粉/san2 fen3?

Lostinasia,

Are you in Taiwan? Near Taipei?! There's going to be a CPod meetup! Details yet to be determined...

http://chinesepod.com/community/conversations/post/4804#comment-116994

Wow, I think this is the first time I've ever seen my name (?) referred to in a forum before... thanks Calkins!

I'm back visiting the site due to a promotion ChinesePod is offering. I didn't want or plan to go away, but this school year I've been teaching at a different university, and what with totally-new courses and planning, I've been frantically busy, so the Chinese has alas taken a back seat.

It's now midterm week and it looks like I've got most of the rest of the year planned, so perhaps I'll be able to return to the studies soon, or maybe it'll wait till summer vacation.

I remain shocked that I can live in Taiwan and yet regress in level. When I stopped studying, I was on the threshold of Advanced... now many of the formerly-easy Intermediates confuse me. What may be most depressing is that some of the Chinese in my own previous posts confuses me!

It looks like I first paid for anything on the site in January 2006, although I'd been lurking and leeching for a while before that... much as, er, I'm doing now, I suppose.

Anyone else remember Clarence/ Xiaohahaha?

Re: the site... one reason I stopped subscribing was the afore-mentioned "threshold of advanced". I found myself with 100+ Advanced lessons already on my computer, all pretty much new material to me, and for a month or two (until the semester really got going) I was working through that and wasn't looking for any new material. This strikes me as a bit of a flaw in the business model - it suits me fine, since it saved me some money, but back last summer when my renewal came up I realized I didn't really need to spend the money because I had a mass of "new to me" material to work with.

The current promotion, which seems very much intended to draw older users back, is a good idea.

And now I'm off to explore the apparently-improved traditional character support...

@antony73:

老手/lǎoshǒu sounds good for not invoking any military background etc.

trax,

I fully agree with calkins.

Let me add there are more "vested interests" for learning Chinese then being a heritage speaker. A long-term business comittment , partner, or even a massive interest in the language can indeed be long term. I see dozens of examples at this site. I myself have been around for 3 years now. Maybe, I am even a better customer than a heritage speaker because I am learning much slower :P

For me, the "strange lessons" like some of those you mentioned are in fact those which are binding me here. They just can't be strange enough for my taste. Regarding that tame dancing instructor lesson - that was at best mildly funny, but very far from being "strange". The Jizhou series was great, but still not creepy and SciFi enough.

Regarding pricing: Ken has stated several times that the target group is not students and the majority of paying customers are business users. The price is fine.

Where I do see potential, though, would be "pay per use" options of all sorts, maybe in combination with student discounts. This could be a door opener to this indeed untapped market.

trax, if I may:

"But many of us can't spend $1000 plus per annum."

You can get a Premium subscription for less than US$200 per year.  Less than $17 per month.  IMO, easily worth the value Cpod provides.

"Also, some of the topics to are not of our liking, such as that strange series about "Zizhou" to be too bizarre, and not relevant to learning Mandarin.  

Even the "Saved by the Gong" series, seems to be bend on being outrageous, and detracts from serious learning.  That strange lesson on dancing with the 'Gay instructor' was too strange."

Not all lessons will be applicable to all people, but these "strange" lessons are invaluable to many of us...especially to us strange birds;-)  And with an archive of 1,200 lessons, you're surely able to find something that you can relate with.

"We would like some of the vocabulary from lessons to be inter-related, so some of what was touched about in previous lessons can be reinforced again in subsequent lessons."

IMO, Cpod does a great job of repeating and reinforcing vocabulary, at least up to the Intermediate lessons (I don't really study beyond that yet).  I constantly see the same "everyday" vocabulary used...similar to how you'd encounter those frequently used words in everyday speech.

"The PDF printouts, take too much paper. Think Green and save trees."

Like many of us do, you can easily copy the HTML transcript and paste it into your editor of choice, then format it to your liking, saving space and trees.  Or better yet, don't print at all - put the PDF or HTML/doc on your PDA or phone.

Hoping that you and many other lost users come back to Cpod.  Obviously, the more paying customers, the better the service and more diverse the community.

我尊重你的选择。

Jenny

I first caught ChinesePod back in December 2005. I signed up for a couple of years.  But as your pricing went up to the sky, I dropped out, as did many of my friends/relatives. 

Cpod Pricing: 

Current pricing is too expensive, and not affordable for high school/college students.  You have priced out many previous students and potential students.

 Perhaps, some of your students are corporate students, they can afford your price structure. But many of us can't spend $1000 plus per annum. Many of my friends drifted over to CSLPod.com and iMandarinPod.com for their free lessons/pdf content. 

 Your dedicated students are those that have a vested interest in learning Chinese, such as those of us that are of Chinese heritage and grew up speaking a Chinese dialect.  We are more prone to be long-term users of CPod. Figure out how to keep us, we can be your 'cash-cow' over the long term.  The short-term business man or traveler only wants to learn some quick phrases.  

Also, some of the topics to are not of our liking, such as that strange series about "Zizhou" to be too bizarre, and not relevant to learning Mandarin.  

Even the "Saved by the Gong" series, seems to be bend on being outrageous, and detracts from serious learning.  That strange lesson on dancing with the 'Gay instructor' was too strange. 

We would like some of the vocabulary from lessons to be inter-related, so some of what was touched about in previous lessons can be reinforced again in subsequent lessons.  This is how students learn. I know that CPod doesn't think that is the way to teach, and skips from one subject to the another. 

NOT GREEN:

The PDF printouts, take too much paper. Think Green and save trees.  The pitch of the print fonts are huge, and seem to be made for children or those with eye problems. Surely you guys can squeeze more of the content into fewer pages. Sometimes, the last page only contains one or two lines.    

Increase the margins top to bottom, and on the sizes.  But implement changes to save paper.  Think about the large picture, of having to print every single CPod PDF print-outs, and how much paper that would consume, and end up on one's desk.  "Paper and ink" aren't cheap anywhere, don't you know.  HP charges $50 for two toner print cartridges. 

This is just my honest opinion, and I hope CPod takes it as constructive criticism.  Thanks for asking. 

Thanks for Jenny Zhu and John Pasden, the man that saved ChinesePod. When he joined in April 2006, it raised the level ten-fold.  

Cpod Founders/Partners: Give Jenny, John and Connie salary increase and some stock in ChinesePod. They are voice of ChinesePod. 

我是中高级学生。

@Joachim

How about 老手/lǎoshǒu? An old hander

你们学中文，我来学英文好了。好网顶起来

One day, I aspire to be a Chinesepod veteran...

Hi Doc,
excellent to see you are still around! Definately hope you will find the time again to drop by more often again!

Dear Jenny

I am so touched by your lovely post. But, it's really I who thank you from the bottom of my heart for the invaluable daily joy you and your staff bring to me. In particular, your humble and gracious demeanor is inspiring and touches so many around the world. It is because of your humility that you have become the refined podcast star that your are; you are ever eager to listen to our suggestions in order to better yourself. Thank you for being who you are.

As for "veterans," I'm not so sure I qualify, but thanks for a shout out to me. I'm still here, but my life is like white-water rafting: it propels me at a sometimes uncontrollable pace. It's hectic being doctor, wife and mom. But, I have you, John, Ken, Connie, Amber, Jiaojie and the others with me everyday in my iPod. I don't go anywhere without it, thus we are, essentially, inseparable : )

What's veteran in Chinese: 退伍军人 tuìwǔjūnrén or 老兵 lǎobīng ? Is the latter more colloquial?  Can it be used in a non-military sense, too?

Just like Mike I don't consider myself to be a formative member but I've been using the site since 2007 and have been known to leave a comment once in a while.

I'm still using ChinesePod everyday but when it comes to being an active poddie you're more likely to find me over on ItalianPod. I've always loved the help from the more advanced users here on ChinesePod and hope to be able to do the same for the users of ItalianPod.

Mike,

I consider you a formative member, and Im sure others do as well. We will see you for many more years I hope.

Well I have been around for years, but I don't know whether I am presumptious enough to consider myself a formative member!

calkins

Thanks for the shout out.  I like to think I'm always able get a lively debate going.  I miss you guys too.

I'm still around, but a myriad of disasters in my personal life has pulled me away for a time.  I guess you could say I'm a victim of the 全球经济危机.

I'm trying to get focused again.

I like the new features like the Chinesepod version of Twitter, and Poems with Pete.

I miss Amber though.

I think since you're always so active in the community that's why people are under the impression that you've been here since the beginning.  How's life in Taiwan?  A friend of mine is going on vacation there and I encouraged her to join Chinesepod.  

What part of Taiwan are you living in?  Do you have any pictures of your life there?  I'd be interested to see them, as I believe would many other Poddies would be as well.

Thanks for the post Jenny. This is my first post but ChinesePod has been such constant, educational and important part of my daily life for a while now. Whether I am on a long train ride to Cardiff for work or on a short taxi ride back home, there is always Jenny, Ken and John to keep me company with one of my daily lessons that Helen has planned for me! Off course there is also Connie, Pete & Amber (although I am fast running out of Dear Ambers :(. I love Chinese Pod and you guys are great!

PS Thanks Helen for being so patient even when I seem to have to change my scheduled call every other week!

Henning,

Yes, Kitty. The cat from hell. Auntie is now an author and probably cruising every other language site on the internet. Changye is of course still here and I cant begin to describe how helpful he has been but I am preaching to the choir Im sure. Yves has been great also, if I ever catch up with him I will make much more use of his work. The community is definitely one of cpods strong points. Helpful and entertaining at the same time. I have learned so much about culture (not just Chinese) from the boards and it helps one become a truly global person. I have made friends from all over the world, some of whom I have managed to meet in person. I wouldnt trade the experience for anything. Lets hope it continues this way.

I must admit, life hasn't been the same since my turtle left me.

Honestly, I would like to be more active in the community, but I don't have as much time for that lately. If it looked like I "took my ball and went home" after the last site upgrade, it was only because I upgraded to the Guided subscription at the same time, and thus most of my time on the site was spent looking at lessons (those teachers make you work!).

That said, I have my share of sentimental feelings about the "old days" as well; even though I, like calkins, have only been here since 2007.

As for what else CPod could be delivering, I think Jenny hit the nail on the head:

Along side what you guys already love about ChinesePod, we need to provide more structure and guidance especially now that we have such a large archive of lessons. From user feedback, we know that you want courses, a pathway and help along the way to achieve their learning goals. This is our focus at ChinesePod now.

Not that I'm opposed to the inductive approach so highly esteemed by Ken and John, it just seemed like something was missing. If, after listening to several lessons, I finally felt like I was beginning to understand a grammatical rule or structure, there was really no way to verify that I understood it correctly. I feel like that has been changing lately, which is a credit to the CPod team's committment.

I can't end this note without giving a shout out to 曹老师 (cáo lǎoshī), probably the most patient person in all of Shanghai.

By the way, Jenny published this on her blog as well.

I've also been studying with CPOD since its birth, so maybe I can be considered a "veteran". Although I don't post much, due to time constraints, I certainly appreciate the contributions of the frequent CPOD posters, present and past alike.

I still have many of the original "sketchy" lessons that have since been re-recorded. I keep them for nostalgic reasons. Those were the days when Ken was playing the part of voice actor in some of the Intermediate lessons.

It would be interesting to know where the former poddies vanished to and whether or not they are progressing with their Chinese.

kimiik/kmk,
I guess that is the most intuitive definition - veterans as V3-survivors.

Hi Henning,

It would be easier to consider that everybody who was active on the Cpod website before the V3 is now a veteran.

Btw, I see that you made the connection between kimiik anf kmk. ;o)

I don't consider myself a veteran, though I appreciate the sentiment Henning.  I've only been here since 2007.  Just been babbling so much since then, it probably feels like I've been here from the beginning ;-)

I also miss the likes of:

• auntie68 (even though she was banned, she was a huge benefit to this community)
• xiaohu (able to get a healty argument going)
  
• lostinasia
• sparechange (maybe he left with his award-winning avatar that died after V3?)
• and many others

Oh wait, I missed my favorite...last, but certainly not least:

• licha

RJ, are you thinking of chittywangwangwangwang?  She had a great sense of humor!

____________

Woops, sorry Henning...missed your post just before mine.

RJ, do you mean kitty?

Talking about avatars: Best of all time: sparechange & wolson (in times they were still moving - ah, there is another suggestion for uservoice)!

If I am not mistaken, kimikk is a veteran also - formerly active under the name of KMK in the forums (?).

Dont forget Dave. A little brash, but he made me laugh at times ,when he wasnt crossing the line.

Henning, what was that little gals name with the smart mouth. Wo de ye man nv you.

I do miss Taipan. The over endowed squirel with a great sense of humor. I still talk to Jonathan once in a while but he has become too busy for Cpod.

And Mark, of course you're a veteran. And youre still here. You and Tvan. Bazza is off trying to break Tweet records. Going on 2000 last I heard.

I don't know if I count as one of your veterans.  I didn' t discover CPod until March 2006 and post regularly, but not extensively, and often just a wisecrack at that.  However, I am very happy that I did find CPod.  Iam learning a lot and enjoy studying the lessons.

BTW, is there an archive of the old advanced lessons (pre 2007).  I have some, but not all, and would like to listen to the rest, if I could find them now.

I too have been around from the first, although I think it took me a few months to subscribe. Those were the days of AuntieSue and Marc the martial arts expert, and the beginnings of the CPod forum, and a brief moment when Bazza thought he wasn't ready for the Intermediate level. And Yves Goulnik. And Lantian and his scheme to post transcripts of entire lessons, not just the dialogues. And Yves Goulnik. Before John--who did the intermediate lessons with Jenny then? Oh, and let's not forget Yves Goulnik.

henning:

哎哟！

"... have been around since the dawn of time ..."

Actually, there are still quite a few of the first- and second-generation Poddies around.

Don't forget goulnik who joined about the same time as I did - although he changed his screen name quite a few times (yves, goulnik, goulniky, goulnik, sputnik, goulniky, goulnik). The absoulte high-octane powerhouse around. And if I remember correctly, calkins, RJ, and Joachim have been around since the dawn of time also and they are definately parts of the current community engine. 

There are other steady contributers who have been here since the very first days, e.g. jamestheron, Bill, or al.

And eventually Bazza is also floating around, even if we don't see him as often nowadays. He just needs to find his way back from the lofty twitterscape.

While we've seen community contributors come and go, we've also seen CPod staff come and go.  I would like to thank all those who acted as the face of CPod and also those behind the scenes who make it all happen.

From "Do you hear the words coming out of my mouth?..." to now, we've seen many changes.  A big thank you goes out to the community, past and present, on both sides!

skyfx,

多谢你顶我！请教谈不上，互相帮助吧。咱们网站上有好多热诚学习中文的外国朋友，作为中国人，看了以后你会更明白我们文化的魅力。也祝你天天开心！

Hi Poddies,

Your comments are yet another example of the truly phenomenal users you are.

But I also want you to know that we have been thinking about what ChinesePod isn’t delivering. When we started, our approach was completely fresh, practical and engaging. We solved people's problem by bringing real language to you in an accessible and engaging way. But after three and half years and over 1300 podcasts, this approach alone isn’t enough. Along side what you guys already love about ChinesePod, we need to provide more structure and guidance especially now that we have such a large archive of lessons. From user feedback, we know that you want courses, a pathway and help along the way to achieve their learning goals. This is our focus at ChinesePod now.
So thank you for your phenomenal support and we should be delivering more to you! Stay tuned!

What a lovely post Jenny.It's so touching to see how much you care.Well said reigau.I think you said it best when you said:

"You are one of China's finest ambassadors"

Even in the short time I have been here I have felt the loss of some of the veteran Poddies and have myself dwelled on this a little lately.It would be nice to have them back,but as you say life's circumstances change.This emphasises the importance of keeping the archives intact also.You have a heart of gold Jenny.Keep up the great work.Cheers.

I think the web site need to spend money to study new lessons is one reason.

If we don't spend money ,we'll be not allowed to listen the new lessons. 

Hi Jenny

I have logged on ChinesePod for about a week.

It's very wonderful,useful and meaningful.

In china,there is few web sites to teach chinese.

I'm very glad to meet so many friends from all over the world.

As a chinese,I hope your web site is  more and more  popular!

I particularly miss Lantian's 热心 (rèxīn-enthusiasm).

Wow Jenny, you sure do work late nights! (It's 3.53am Beijing Time as I write, and the script after your post says '2 hours ago').

I commend and second your sentiments. I was learning from and using the site for some time before I decided to start posting comments, and I recall most of the names you mention. They live on (in a way) in the comments archive anyway don't they? Life does often take people along new paths it seems. Henning still seems to play an active part though.

What's cool and lovely about your post is how your own commitment and involvement with your work shines through. It's natural to lack expertise when we get started in such an endeavour! I cringe too when I recall the mistakes I made when I started out as an English teacher! But the important thing is caring about what we do and caring about getting better. We create the world with our thoughts!

I'd like very much to congratulate you re. the interview in the Star which I enjoyed reading yesterday, and also to thank you sincerely for all the hard work you put into CPod. You are one of China's finest ambassadors, and all true-hearted poddies love you!

Jenny's right. Most poddies are indebted to the veterans for their excellent posts,queries and examples.

I've been a poddie myself since 2006 November albeit not posting much but i still remember how much the posts from the veteran poddies have helped me make my chinese learning easier.

Where are you guys? Do come back

姐姐的英文真是好，应该好好请教你了哇

虽然我没有听课程，但是同为中国人帮姐姐顶了，哈哈

祝姐姐天天开心。