Anyone up for a challenge?

[roddy]

As everyone knows*, the collective attention span of a forum is inversely proportional to the activity in it. I give the prospect of having people hang on for months an epsilon of probability.

I'd probably agree with you if I knew what an epsilon is. But you're right, committing to doing something on the Internet, and doing it, are two very different things. And I speak from experience, this site is littered with things I've said I'll do and haven't finished. Still, in some cases I got as much as half-way

If you're going to start some kind of challenge, I'd keep it as simple and easy to participate in as possible. If you decide we're going to learn the names of all the animals in the zoo, there will be people who aren't interested or who already know them. Decide on a 200 new word target, and give people links to a few different wordlists to choose from. Or rather than 'read a book in a month', do 'read an article a day as often as you can for a month' - that breaks it down into small manageable chunks, and if someone misses a week they can drop right back in without having to read seven chapters over the weekend.

I'd like to see something based around getting people using actual native material. Listen to the news every day, use the First Episodes, read an in-depth magazine article a day, etc. I've thought recently about doing something with the GFEP, as that's sadly neglected and deserves a lot more attention.

In honesty - I'd set yourself a challenge and just get on with it - anyone who likes it will join in, and you won't feel bad if nobody else does.

I personally would love to see reading 余华s 活着 in a few weeks as a challenge. That book has been standing on my shelf for far too long.

We've done similar things. You need a 'lead' poster to head it up - Imron and Wushijiao I think did a lot of the BotM efforts, I and later Renzhe on the GFEP, Feihong (and others? I don't read comics so much) on the comics. But even so, native level material is hard, and sustaining interest is tough. Peer pressure is great, but Internet peer pressure is a very diluted thing.

[Scoobyqueen]

5 words a day doesn't sound like much, but the number of people who can consistently learn 5 words a day every day for a year is quite small. The difficulty in learning words is not the number you learn in a day but in the number of days you can persist with learning

Up to a point but my problem would be the number of words I forget a day!

[edelweis]

Imron mentioned the aims and objectives thread, this reminds me that in another forum there are monthly or weekly "habit conformance" topics. The difference with our yearly topic is mainly update frequency.

Yearly topic: update every month or when a goal is reached.

Monthly or weekly topic: on the first day they usually create a personal post detailing their personal goals for the month or week (i.e. personalized challenge rules) at the beginning of the thread. This post is updated with habit compliance data as often as they wish afterwards (for instance, daily). Then they also can add discussion posts to the tail of the thread.

Here is a recent weekly challenge example and another one and a slightly older monthly challenge. It requires a dedicated forum member to create the topic every time...

(In case you're wondering, "Vanilla No S" refers to following the basic rules of the NoS "diet" without personalized modifications. In case you're really really wondering, I lost 11kg in 18 months with that "diet", but in the past 2 years my habits slipped a bit and I slowly regained 3kg . Perhaps I should take part in that weekly challenge to get back on track...)

[jbradfor]

1. A list of people who want to participate. I'm setting the minimum at 15 people. once we reach that amount, we can then think about a starting date. I am number 1, so please list yourself as number 2 and so on.

2. We then need to decide on the type of challenge. Learn characters, learn words, etc. First one to get 10 votes? 15? Perhaps we can even set up a poll once we gain enough ideas.

I think posters above said it better, but.... My take is if you take this approach, nothing will happen. Post ideas here for feedback, but ultimately one person *cough* you *cough* needs to step up to the plate, pick a challenge, and hope people go with you.

[imron]

Based on my previous experience I would say 15 people is rather ambitious. If you can get 5, that would probably be considered a large turnout. It definitely needs a single person organising it.

[feihong]

Based on my previous experience, I would say 5 people is ambitious. I am happy if I get 1 person besides me interested. (But that one person is usually awesome, which makes it worthwhile.)

[Gleaves]

Lots of good ideas from Roddy.

I would join a GFEP challenge as my TV watching has hit an unexpected and unwanted standstill.

daofeishi - I'd join a 活着 effort if you want to take the helm.

[roddy]

I would join a GFEP challenge

Good enough for me. Challenge you!

[daofeishi]

daofeishi - I'd join a 活着 effort if you want to take the helm.

Alright Gleaves, I've taken you at your word.

[jasoninchina]

I have learned something valuable from this thread. If you want to start a challenge, just pick one and start it.

On the upside, three other challenges have popped up on the forum.

[jkhsu]

@jasoninchina - Your post also inspired me to start the song translation challenge. If you can use this forum in a way to motivate you to improve your Chinese, then do it. But don't let whether or not others join in affect what you want to do. You should ask yourself what is it that you really want to learn or get better at?