Regarding the Groups

simonpettersson
February 04, 2010, 07:02 PM posted in General Discussion

There really needs to be some pruning or at least some easier way to look for groups you like. There are tons of doubles (something like four different "lesbian in China" groups) and many groups with one member and no posts (many of which are named things like "test group").

It seems to me that groups are supposed to fill the niche of sub-forums, but they don't really seem to be working too well. Nobody really knows how to use them and often posts relevant to a group is posted outside of it. I don't really use the feature at all, really, except for replying to posts that are already in groups (for which I have to join the grou itself, making me sometimes not bother to reply).

I know a lot is happening to the community section these days, so maybe there's a reworking of the group system already planned? If not, maybe there ought to be. Or at least, as I said, a pruning.

(I suggest standardizing a number of groups and making them behave more like subforums, so that all posts need to be in a group (with a "general" catch-all group, of course). The open-source forum system Vanilla (http://vanillaforums.org/discussions) could serve as an inspiration. It has a great way of using categories while still showing all discussions on the same page, so you don't fracture the community and have empty forums just laying around.)

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pretzellogic
February 04, 2010, 07:23 PM

It would be nice to get an update from John on community improvements overall.

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simonpettersson

Agreed. What's in the pipeline, John?

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simonpettersson
February 04, 2010, 07:47 PM

Agreed. What's in the pipeline, John?

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go_manly
February 04, 2010, 08:41 PM

I think the ChineseClass101 forums are set out well:

http://www.chineseclass101.com/forum

 

Digressing, its interesting though how few posts there have been since they started up early last year. The site seems pretty dead. There is a list of logged-on users, and I am typically there by myself. Incidently, I only just discovered on that site that Frank Fradella had a heart attack last year. Was that reported here?

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sebire

I only heard about his heart attack recently on his blog. I believe he is back in the US now. Poor Frank.

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sebire
February 04, 2010, 10:14 PM

I only heard about his heart attack recently on his blog. I believe he is back in the US now. Poor Frank.

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xiaophil
February 12, 2010, 12:50 AM

CPod, I thought I would revive this post and mention one other thing. I notice that in the Most Active Group section, News新闻 is the number one group despite being last updated more than two months ago and being discontinued. Actually, many of the 'most active' groups are relatively inactive. I suggest that CPod find another process to determine 'most active'. This isn't critical of course, but it would be an improvement to at least some degree.

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ousijia

Thank you Xiaophil for your suggestions, we will certainly look into this.

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ousijia
February 12, 2010, 02:36 AM

Thank you Xiaophil for your suggestions, we will certainly look into this.