General Forums Reorganization - your thoughts, please . . .

[Hofmann]

How about changing the "Tattoos, Names and Quick Translations" forum to "Translations?" I don't think anyone would want us to translate their thesis without payment.

[imron]

I think it's important to have it mention Tattoos and Names, and also be at the very top. Most of the posts there are started by people who visit once looking for a translation and then never return. They also don't spend a lot of time thinking about where to start their post. If it's not immediately obvious that this is where they should post, then they'll end up posting in the wrong place.

[Meng Lelan]

Meng Lelan: In three years time 'Story of the Month May 2009' isn't going to look too inviting either. Up to you though.

Agree, it's going to look stale then. Let me see what I can do, probably will use the story name instead of the month, for example instead of Story of the Month April 2009 I'd label the thread as Short Story Selection "我没有自己的名字“。

Reorganization is starting to look quite nice.

[roddy]

How about changing the "Tattoos, Names and Quick Translations" forum to "Translations?" I don't think anyone would want us to translate their thesis without payment.

You'd be surprised . . .

I'm still in two (or three or four) minds about how to handle a) those kind of questions from new, usually one-time, visitors, and vocab / what does this mean queries from regular members. Should they all just be lumped together in one place? Separate Names / Tattoos / Quick Queries / Help me understand & say forums. A 'what does this mean' sticky? I'm perhaps being over-ambitious on the extent to which things can be conclusively categorized. But if we're going to play host to 'what's my name in Chinese' and 'is this a good tattoo' posts, it needs to be clearly marked as such, and right up at the top.

Reorganization is starting to look quite nice.

Good. I know there's a faiir bit of 'meta' stuff going on, what with this, the 'Support Chinese-forums.com' thing I posted yesterday, the Facebook / Twitter topic I keep bumping, but it's all stuff that should have been spread over a larger period of time - I just happen to have had the time for it lately. It'll likely continue for a while as I'm not done yet with the reorganization, there's a significant upgrade to the forum due sometime this year (there's a Beta due to be released in June I think, will likely be a month or two after that before we actually upgrade), and there's a possibility of a server move. I'd also like to look at the overall appearance of the forum, but there's no point doing that till the software upgrade.

Rest assured that once all that's done I'll go back to sleep for the next three years and let you all get on with things.

[atitarev]

I asked the question about language exchange and chat here as well.

[roddy]

Sorry, I kind of ignored that question. Will reply in the new topic.

[character]

I won't deny I'm not keen on the Language Exchange subforum idea - I don't see it as core business, and other sites provide the same service. Thoughts welcome though.

Perhaps have links to recommended sites, not just for language exchange, but for any topic where all (or at least in-depth) discussion would be better served by another forum.

[flameproof]

The Chinese Computing section has been merged into Resources for Studying Chinese

I think it's not a good idea as the Computing section was fairly active in itself and more about technology then about Chinese.

[renzhe]

The new layout seems quite good to me. It will take a while to get used to it, but it seems well organised.

[realmayo]

The http://www.chinese-forums.com/forums.php page certainly looks nice and neat now.

Just a couple of thoughts. Mightn't there be loads of overlap between Reading and Writing Skills main forum and Subforum: Chinese characters? Maybe ... I don't know, have a subforum instead for "memorising characters"? That will clear out a lot of the SRS or whatever repetitive discussions from the main reading & writing.

Also, putting myself in the position of someone new (or fairly new) to the site: is there enough on the main page to point people to this revamped "Forums" page which is, I think, more welcoming than the main page? Maybe it's just me, but I don't know how long it took me to realise the "Forums" link was the most important out of the following list:

Home Forums User CP Community New Posts Search Quick Links Log Out

[crazy-meiguoren]

I like the idea of restructuring. I don't hang out here very often, but I have seen a difference in the layout of the Learning Chinese area. I'm still trying to find my posts in that section.

I understand the concept of deleting non productive posts, even if it means seeing my post count go down to less than five.

Do take caution about excessive compartmentalizing, though. That is the biggest piece of advice I can offer. A commercial forum I belong to through my ISP has angered a lot of community members by creating too many specialized forums. The specialized areas have become graveyards where no one visits. Several well-discussed threads met immediate death after being moved. People want to stay in the general areas where their friends hang out. It's not the only issue that has made the users angry, but members become at a loss as to what can be posted in a forum if too much specialization is introduced. It can dilute the richness of a good discussion.

Just tossing out my opinion, for what it's worth.

[roddy]

Sorry for the delay in following up on this, busy week.

The Chinese Computing section has been merged into Resources for Studying Chinese

I think it's not a good idea as the Computing section was fairly active in itself and more about technology then about Chinese.

Then it didn't need to be under 'Learning Chinese'. Between the existing 'Resources' forum' date=' Living in China and News, I'm pretty sure there's a potential home for everything relevant.

Mightn't there be loads of overlap between Reading and Writing Skills main forum and Subforum: Chinese characters? Maybe ... I don't know, have a subforum instead for "memorising characters"?

There's no overlap in my head, although I realize that might be a special case. I'm thinking of Writing as in forming sentences, paragraphs, essays, reports, and so on; with Characters being specific to the physical act of writing, learning components / radicals, etymology, etc.

I understand the concept of deleting non productive posts' date=' even if it means seeing my post count go down to less than five.[/quote']

This might not even happen, as I (or someone) would need to go back into the archives and actually go through stuff. However the upgrade that's due sometime this year may allow me to easily identify topics that, eg, haven't been viewed for three years. That would be a pretty good indication that the topic is dead, and isn't bringing in any search engine traffic. In that case, it can probably go.

If you're making non-productive posts, you'll hear about it pretty soon. Deleted stuff would more likely be valid questions that didn't happen to get an answer, information that is now out of date, etc.

As for finding your own posts - that's what the subscribed threads feature is for. That's quicker than just looking for them, even before some admin bloke shuffles everything around.

members become at a loss as to what can be posted in a forum if too much specialization is introduced.

Agree with that, but I wouldn't say we've gone too far. The pronunciation and character sections could (and can be, if necessary) be perhaps folded back into their parent forums, but personally I can see the point of them being separate.

I'm not keen on being too insistent on things being posted in the right forum - they can always be moved, and I'd rather people post than feel put off because they can't figure out where things go. But I do think it's fairly clear, and I'm at a loss as to why, eg, this, asking for vocab lists, wasn't first posted in the vocab forum. Maybe I'm too ambitious, maybe I need a set of clear 'what goes in here' descriptions. But would anyone read them?

[adrianlondon]

In order to help search engines, you or other mods could also edit thread titles, such as the current one with "halp" in it, so that the spelling errors are removed.

On another forum I was using recently (for expats) people simply got the permision to edit their, and other people's, thread titles after x number of posts. They could also move them to different forums. Sometimes people had fun with this (it wasn't a serious forum in the main) but it ensured things were usually under the right forums and didn't have typos in the title.

[roddy]

We do sometimes. I won't deny though that when you see the Nth topic titled 'Help plz!!!! URGENT!' in the grammar forum, and it's asking when classes start at BLCU in 2012, it's hard to retain the will to live, let alone edit.

I'm not too keen on the idea of people being able to make edits just based on post count, although it might be an idea. But anyone who likes doing stuff like that can get in touch and we can look at some kind of 'editor' usergroup that can edit all posts and move stuff around. I know for example that some people are busily improving the tags on posts (I just don't know who you are )

[imron]

Haha, I liked the halp in the title, viewing it as a valid permutation rather than a spelling error (similar to say gonna, wanna etc).

[roddy]

Stage 2:

I've created a new category and forum for Studying Chinese outside of China, see here for my desperate plea for someone to post in it.

Living in China + Universities & Schools have been merged into Living, Working and Studying in China, with posts for non-China locations to be split off to the above new category, and posts for the ten most-visited-from cities in China over the last year going to new subforms (Beijing; Shanghai; Guangzhou/Shenzhen; Kuming; Dalian; Hangzhou; Tianjin; Harbin; Qingdao; Chengdu;)

There's a new Visa forum.

Classifieds are now further down under 'extras'

Teaching in China remains, but I may yet break it up.

Any thoughts on the value of a 'Jobs and Careers / Working in China' forum?

Comments and complaints . . .

Incidentally we had our busiest day for ages (in terms of new posts, and excluding special events like the Olympics) last week, and the last couple of days have had a healthy boost in search engine traffic which will hopefully be sustained. So at least I'm not doing any harm. I hope . . .

[renzhe]

Incidentally we had our busiest day for ages (in terms of new posts, and excluding special events like the Olympics) last week

Really? That's great.

I actually had the feeling that nobody was posting anything these days. Perhaps only in the forums I frequent...

[roddy]

Post stuff then - A couple of interesting topics can easily bump an average day into a peak one.

I don't pay much attention to the figures on a day to day basis, but there's no recent fall-off in terms of either new topics, or new posts.

[abcdefg]

This comment isn't really on the reorganization, but I would like point out something I really like which is not universally done on similar forums.

The automatic e-mails that are sent when new comments are made to threads to which I have contributed help maintain my interest and keep me coming back to the forum for frequent additional looks.

(I'm glad I didn't have to tackle the syntax of that sentence in Chinese.)

[roddy]

Doesn't have to be just for topics you've posted in - you can get automatic email updates for any topic via the 'Thread Tools' drop down, 'subscribe to this thread'.

There are also forums subscriptions under 'Forum Tools' on each forum listing. You can manage your subscriptions, choosing between no, instant, daily and weekly email updates. Default subscription behaviour is set here.