General Forums Reorganization - your thoughts, please . . .

[abcdefg]

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'.

I didn't realize that. Thanks for pointing it out. Must admit I never read the instructions, just began using the forun intuitively.

[renzhe]

There seems to be a slight problem with some subforums.

For example, if there is a new post in the First Episode subforum (under the Film & TV forum), then this post will show up on the main forum page as the latest post, alerting a casual browser that there is something new going on in there.

But the Chinese pronunciation subforum (under the Speaking and Listening forum) does not act like this, so I forget about it. Even if there are new posts, they don't show up on the main page.

Probably an ownership issue of some kind.

[roddy]

I see what you mean - the subforums aren't set to display fully on the forums listing (ie), but are hard-coded as links into the description field for their parent forum. This keeps things a bit tidier, but the latest posts for those particular subforums won't be flagged up.

Not sure how big an issue that is though - you'd only ever get the most recent single post there, so if there were two or more, you'd miss them by that route. Checking for new posts if probably best done via 'new posts' in the header, the listing on the front page, or if you're only interested in a specific forum, clicking through to it.

[renzhe]

It's not a big deal, it just felt strange to see on the forum index, that e.g. the last post in Listening and Speaking was two days ago, when in fact the subforums are bursting with activity.

[roddy]

I'm considering splitting the existing Film & Television forum into two, Chinese TV; and Chinese Movies, with the First Episode Project becoming part of the Chinese TV forum. Any thoughts?

We're also about to get a Nanjing forum, coz someone asked for it, and Nanjing was only just below the arbitrary cut-off point anyway.

[muyongshi]

I think that's a good idea. That section is getting pretty heavy.

[leeyah]

Hey, the new Forum listing on the front page looks NEAT! Makes browsing a lot easier

(I suppose it's new as I don't remember seeing it before )

[roddy]

Yes, that is new. Now that I've basically and for now finished mucking around with the forums structure I'm looking at tampering with the home page > forums listing > forum category > forums > topics set up. I was struck by what realmayo said here and I'm thinking there's more work to do here. Perhaps the front page could feature a series of short articles / introductions for the different member 'types' - ie people who are looking for advice on working / studying / teaching in China; vs those who have a specific grammar question; vs those who need some advice on getting started with Chinese; vs those who are already advanced / native speakers, think the place looks interesting and want to join in generally; etc. Those articles would link in to the most relevant subforums / existing topics.

If that happened the central column of new topics might disappear, or the two versions could perhaps co-exist - on a logged in / logged out basis perhaps.

[Meng Lelan]

The chat forum needs to be separated from language exchange. Chat is just chatting about anything in English. Language exchange is for people looking for someone to exchange languages.

[leeyah]

>those who need some advice on getting started with Chinese

Yes, that would be the Beginner's Forum. Actually I think this one deserves special attention. I'm sure it would be of great help for all absolute beginners who must be having a hard time finding their way through all the intermediate & advanced stuff, perhaps even a classification of some sort, like getting together all threads relevant for beginners: a list of elementary level study resources, Chinese grammar basics, basic vocab, or First year vocab or something, etc etc