You snooze, you loose
mark
August 23, 2007, 05:58 AM posted in General DiscussionI have the impression that Chinesepod staff monitor comments and questions on lessons for a day or two after the lesson comes out, and then get less responsive. This impression has an affect on the kind of comments that I post (am able to post). It is realatively easy to respond quickly with a comment about the lesson topic, but takes me longer to study the lesson and come up with scholarly comments and questions about fine points of the lesson.
<> My current study practice is to digest a set of lessons over about three weeks. The interval is determined somewhat by the length of my commute. Anyways, week 1, I listen to the lessons casually, week 2, I study the transcript, make sure I can follow the dialog word for word, and go over points I don't understand with a native speaker, week 3, I continue to listen to the lesson and play repeat-after-me with it. Somewhere in week 2 or 3 there are often some things about the lesson that I notice I don't quite understand, but I don't usually post my questions to the blog, because I think they are now dated and not likely to be answered.
<> Is my impression correct? If so, is it something that should change, or is it just a hint that we should develop resourses outside of Chinesepod to help with our study? (I personally have found it tremendously helpful to my study to make friends with native speakers. So, maybe a push out of the nest is not bad. )
<> What do you think?
goulnik
August 23, 2007, 07:49 AMout of curiosity, how many comments do they have to sift through every day (average over 7-days obviously)?
John
August 23, 2007, 08:37 AMWe have staff members combing through the Conversations section and RSS feed twice daily, Mon-Fri in order to ensure that we don't miss any lesson comment questions or questions in "New Posts" in the Conversations section. I must admit that we were not always as responsive as we are now, but I think Amber does a wonderful job with our current system. I frequently see her at her computer, answering user questions all morning long. The worst time to post a comment is Friday at 6pm (Shanghai time), but even so, it should get answered within a few days.
eileen
August 23, 2007, 09:00 AMJust to continue on John's point, we do have people looking at the RSS feeds the whole day (one in the morning and one in the afternoon) to make sure we catch as much questions (whether it be technical or academic) as possible and in turn, these questions gets past on to the right people. We do occasionally miss some really good questions/posts though and this is mainly due to the influx of comments we get everyday and also human error. If we missed your questions, we apologize in advance; it was definitely not intentional. Also, John's right... The worst time to post the questions are usually on Friday 6 pm until Sunday 12 midnight since the staff is technically on their weekend break. Some of the CPod staff do visit the site on the weekends though but this is usually on our own discretion. :-)
wei1xiao4
August 23, 2007, 11:30 AMMark, I've had questions answered about really old lessons that I have just gotten to. It was pretty amazing. They do keep track of new incoming posts on old lessons, so don't be inhibited to ask. Also, reading through some of the lesson discussions, I find that my question has already been asked and answered. It was good for you to raise this issue. Now others know that the lessons do not have an "expiration date".
Kyle
August 31, 2007, 04:17 PMDon't forget that you always have the rest of the community to fall back on as well. =)
henning
August 23, 2007, 06:21 AMI do not have that impression at all. Just take a look at Ambers posts.