Despite myself, I have a bad feeling the forum bubbling may make me try to keep more current on the forum (not good for my time management!).
A couple of feature requests for it (which may well be in hand - I wonder if putting up a public Trello board might be a good way of tracking these and avoiding duplicate requests), which are not supposed to be unappreciative of the effort involved in rolling out new stuff - it does feel real-time and socially, both of which are nice:
View new replies to my topics
Squelch this thread
Navigation working (I know this is a dupe)
Tagging/categories (I know this is planned)
There has been a new post in this thread notifications while composing (and at other times)
Subscribe to this thread (email notifications)
“New thread”'s placement makes it difficult to find as you’ve (I’ve) mentally split the right side off as being related to the current thread. Maybe move it to the left section, that deals with threads, rather than the right, which deals with posts in a thread?
We used to be on Trello, but moved over to Breeze.pm a while back - it doesn’t do the same kind of open board deal, although we could share by setting people as ‘clients’ on a one-by-one basis - having said that, the mountain of work that Ifan is getting through on the website project (which I was just thinking about finding a way to share) also has some discussions about the lesson generating algorithm we’re working on. It might be sensible for us to be a little wary about putting them into the public domain just for the time being.
Maybe it would be a good idea to rebuild a Trello board just for forum/site work packages. Hmm.
I think a Trello (or similar) just for significant forum-related issues would be useful to folks who want to contribute/track feature requests like mine above. I’m not dead-set on it, though.
You could do the same thing just as well with a static page and trawling the forums to track stuff.
I completely agree with the idea - if there was an easy way to separate out the forum-related stuff on Breeze, I’d do it immediately - it’s just the idea of copying all the existing stuff into a Trello board (or wherever else) that makes the heart sink a little…
You could just start by tracking stuff that’s been requested/reported, rather than copying everything in - that’s probably not much more than a dozen cards right now (ok, maybe two dozen). I’d even be willing to type in my eight myself!
Actually, that’s a really good point - I’m being swayed by our enormously long list of pre-existing ‘to do’ items - but in terms of actual user comments, it’s not that many and they can be added by users - I’ll set something up tomorrow…
When you click a thread, it scrolls back to the top of the screen, which means that the link you just clicked jumps from under your mouse and you have to wait to wonder whether you clicked the right thing. It’d be nice for the left scrolly bit to not scroll out from under you when you select a thread.
Hmmm. Hadn’t thought about having different behaviour depending on different rôles, but it’s not a bad thought. I don’t really mind about it being a bit irritating, because the behaviour nudge (-> everyone makes an effort to answer lonely posts) is a big part of the ethos here.
Having said that, the primary responsibility there is for admin. If you give me a Trello name, I’ll add you to the public board and you can stick it under ‘Suggestions’…
You want me to give you a name? Don’t you already have one?
I understand that you’d like everyone to answer, but I think that’s competing with the ethos of wanting everyone to feel like they’re able to subscribe in an unpressured non-judgemental environment.
I understand that you’d like everyone to answer, but I think that’s competing with the ethos of wanting everyone to feel like they’re able to subscribe in an unpressured non-judgemental environment.
Sorry, that’s completely lost me! To subscribe to…??
To the forum (which I realise isn’t /just/ registering for the forum). You have (at least) two aims, and I think they’re in gentle competition:
Make it easy and low-pressure to sign up to the forum, so that people don’t feel anxious about starting out with SSIW and asking their “silly questions”.
Encourage everyone who has signed up to the forum to reply to new posts and be helpful.
I /think/ what you’d really like is for everyone to transition from asking questions to answering questions as they learn, but I’m confident some people won’t feel comfortable answering stuff straight away, and I /suspect/ that pressure to do so would make them feel uncomfortable (I don’t know if it’d make them feel sufficiently uncomfortable that they would run away, but it’d be a shame if it did).
Not sure if I’m putting this in the right place, so apologies in advance. I’ve been reading the new forum posts with my systems head on and I’m becoming concerned that there are tons of requests coming in maybe a bit early. I always think that this is a bit like moving house then taking a 7 pound hammer to the walls before you’ve asked how you’re going to live there. Maybe a short period of stability while we all shuffle round the new house and see how we live with it might help Aran a chriw see their way through the joblist? There are some great suggestions but which do we all really need? Gawn ni weld
Ah, I’m with you again - I could only think about Trello!
Yup, that’s a fair call. I’d just add that I’d expect a fair old time lag between the two stages - so there’s certainly not going to be any overt pressure on people to help answer new learners (although I think there’s a lot more we can do in terms of recognising the people who do help).
It’s not so much signing up to the forum, because people need to register on the site (which gives them forum access) to get the lessons - so mainly it’s about helping people find value in reading the forum, and then in asking their own questions. One of the ways we’re going to try this is by offering people the chance to join a small ‘study group’ when they first register, in the hope that if they get used to talking to the people in their study group, the transition to the main forum will feel easier.
So all in all, I quite like your suggestion that once an ordinary user has read a bluey, it doesn’t stick for them - but I’m not sure just how much extra work we’re talking about there. It’ll definitely get a proper discussion, though, especially since it’s in Trello now…
One of my main rôles at the moment is as a filter - so if Ifan’s not working on something, it’s because I’ve refused to let him… So with that in place, I’m very happy for people to throw as many ideas into the mix as they like, on the understanding that the process of submission -> consideration -> action is going to be a fairly slow one for the time being…
Particularly so at the moment, because unless anything breaks dramatically on the forum, Ifan has got a good three or four weeks of focusing on our payment/voucher/referral systems before we can free up time for another round on the forum…
Thought i’d chuck it in as, perforce, in my working life, I pushed a minimalist view of functionality, mostly so we got on with the business of making medicines. And just look where that got me, back to hedging on the railway …
Aran said:Particularly so at the moment, because unless anything breaks dramatically on the forum, Ifan has got a good three or four weeks of focusing on our payment/voucher/referral systems before we can free up time for another round on the forum…
Now, I think it is absolutely wonderful that you are trying to expand this thing and make a success (monetarily and otherwise) with other languages, but this phrase has been popping up again and again, so I just want to know from the basis of pure curiosity - what on earth are “payment/voucher/referral systems”?
They’re about getting the Spanish course to pull its weight…
At the moment, there are three ways people can access lessons that aren’t for free - to pay per lesson, to subscribe, or to share via Twitter/Facebook.
Extensive testing with the Spanish course has shown that this approach just doesn’t work, and that we’re failing miserably to make the point that free != poor quality. So, broadly speaking:
What used to be free will become ‘via voucher’ - with a standard £50 (=5 lessons) off on the home page, but vouchers available occasionally in other places (Groupon etc).
People who register will also be able to give vouchers to their friends (and thus get extra vouchers themselves, up to a point) - this is the referral bit.
Finally, the courses will be available to buy as units - so you’d buy Course 1, then Course 2, etc. Subscription will only be offered to people who’ve completed the courses, and will be for continued listening practices (mostly focusing on real dialogue with transcripts).
None of this will change in the near future for the Welsh course - and even if the results (cross fingers!) are good enough to make us think that we could reach more Welsh learners by switching from the current approach, all our existing subscribers will always get full access without any further payments…
