Content for a new site- language profiles, etc.

[iguanamon]

There are some very good language profiles on HTLAL's site, and the wiki as well. UCLA has written some excellent profiles for many languages under a creative commons license UCLA Language Profiles. All we would have to do is credit them and perhaps link back, or just link, to their site for any new site we may develop. What do you all think? Has the iguana been out in the sun too long?

EDIT: Name changed to more accurately reflect thread direction and discussion.

[Cavesa]

Why not link to the old side, the wikia and so on? I looked at the Czech profile to get to know the ucla format, and I was quite disappointed. Generic and not better than wikipedia.

And do we even need to have langauge profiles of this kind on the new forum? Wouldn't it be a bit better to put "profiles" togetheras when the need arises and with relevant, up to date information based on learning experience? I don't know, I am just asking.

[Cavesa]

Actually, this reminds me of something. Has our relation to the wikia changed anyhow due to the forum change?

I think that langauge profiles are exactly the kind of thing we could put together and place on the wikia, some are already there. We are not starting from zero.

[kimchizzle]

I think language profiles are a great thing to have to attract new people to the site. I've told the story before, but I originally came to the old HTLAL because I was trying to learn Japanese. At the time, I was googling, looking for any site I could find new things about Japanese language, and also how to begin learning. One day, I arrived at HTLAL's Japanese profile and read it, and I liked the arbitrary difficulty rating, and decided to compare the Japanese profile with some other foreign languages. Later, I discovered the forum and noticed they had an active community and lots of people wanting to help others any way they could with knowledgeable information, so I created a username and started posting. The rest is history.

So, having some kind of Language profiles is a good idea to me.

[iguanamon]

Why not link to the old side, the wikia and so on? I looked at the Czech profile to get to know the ucla format, and I was quite disappointed. Generic and not better than wikipedia.

And do we even need to have language profiles of this kind on the new forum? Wouldn't it be a bit better to put "profiles" together as when the need arises and with relevant, up to date information based on learning experience? I don't know, I am just asking.

Yes, I know they are generic. The most common ones and languages of our members, we can, and we have, written better ones ourselves. No problem there. For ones that are not so common or for which our members have not written better ones. We could use these for those coming to the site for the first time like kimchizzle.

I think language profiles are a great thing to have to attract new people to the site. I've told the story before, but I originally came to the old HTLAL because I was trying to learn Japanese. At the time, I was googling, looking for any site I could find new things about Japanese language, and also how to begin learning. One day, I arrived at HTLAL's Japanese profile and read it, and I liked the arbitrary difficulty rating, and decided to compare the Japanese profile with some other foreign languages. Later, I discovered the forum and noticed they had an active community and lots of people wanting to help others any way they could with knowledgeable information, so I created a username and started posting. The rest is history.

So, having some kind of Language profiles is a good idea to me.

The stuff on old HTLAL at the front door to the dot.com (not /forum) was the hook that eventually got a lot of people interested in the forum side, after they realized they needed some advice on how to do things. We need new people in order to continue growing. We should be, simply the best one-stop shop for self-learners to visit when they want to know anything about learning languages on their own.

While, I like having a forum with modern software and more activity,( look what we have done in just two weeks! Thank you emk and rdearman!) I think we have to provide some easy to find information, be it on a dedicated site or the wiki. My only complaint about the wiki model is that anyone can edit it, for the better or for the worst. Not that that malicious editing is going on, but if something can be done, it will be done, at some point. If we do set up our own site, it would be nice to have profiles written by knowledgeable people in each language, vetted before the membership and approved. If no one knows enough about a particular obscure language, perhaps a generic profile, like the ones from UCLA could provide different info to what everyone searches easily on their own- wikipedia.

[tastyonions]

I enjoyed reading the profiles on the old site because they had some personality, being the work of a single guy with his own particular idiosyncrasies. Yeah, there was some stuff on them that was purely his opinion and arguably not very accurate, but it was interesting. I also liked the cactus icons for the difficulty level, heh.

I suppose it would be easier just to give some links to Wikipedia or the work of some "pros," though.

[iguanamon]

[quote="tastyonions"]I enjoyed reading the profiles on the old site because they had some personality, being the work of a single guy with his own particular ideosyncrasies. Yeah, there was some stuff on them that was purely his opinion and arguably not very accurate, but it was interesting. I also liked the cactus icons for the difficulty level, heh.

Agreed, I would totally trust Chung to write any profile about any language he knows anything about! Who better to write a Romantsch profile than Ogrim? The thing is, for many languages, there is no forum resource to go to for a profile. I'd like something other than wikipedia, which, anyone can find on their own, In this case a generic profile, like the UCLA ones, for those languages is preferable to nothing at all and would add to the allure of what our new site should be- the dominant, one-stop shop for self-learners. Something along those lines with some additions at the end, is something a new member probably couldn't find on their own, easily.

Name a method of learning, someone here has done it, can write about it, and write well about it. Imagine the possibilities- emk on cloze deletion- Serpent on using social media and football to learn languages, Expugnator on his amazing simultaneous multiple learning, smallwhite on her method... We could and should have a much more modern and up to date front door than what is on the old HTLAL.

[emk]

Name a method of learning, someone here has done it, can write about it, and write well about it. Imagine the possibilities- emk on cloze deletion- Serpent on using social media and football to learn languages, Expugnator on his amazing simultaneous multiple learning... We could and should have a much more modern and up to date front door than what is on the old HTLAL.

Yes. Personally, I would love to have a group blog, so that members could propose turning forum posts into actual articles. If we turned two or three really good forum posts into blog posts every week, it would be a pretty awesome blog for language learners.

As for wiki software, we can just use the existing wiki for now. But rdearman and a couple of our other tech people have also proposed running our own wiki, which is an interesting idea—Wikia's pretty nice, but it's loaded with ads, and I have no idea whether or not they'll run out of money someday or "pivot" to a new line of business. But we're pretty busy with other stuff right now!

I do enjoy "opinionated" language profiles with a distinctive voice, written by polyglots who speak a bunch of languages.

[Expugnator]

I believe what we can offer in terms of language profiles that is different from a 'neutral' wikipedia article are the actual learning experiences. I mean, people don't have to use the same tone they do at their own log, but it would be interesting to have advice like "this textbook works better at earlier stages and that other one at upper-A2" or "I found those light novels to be the best start into native material and after four translated novels I could tackle a native original novel with an English translation" or even "this or that Youtube learning channel has enough content to keep you busy while you can't watch original series, but you will make a better use of it when you're at an A2 stage".

That is, in addition to describing the language, which wikipedia does, and reviewing textbooks, which Chung already does brilliantly, we could not only review native materials as well but also suggest the best path based on the trial and error of some pioneers in this or that language/learning method.

[Cavesa]

Good arguments, thanks, I agree therefore wholeheartedly we should have langauge profiles.
But exactly for the reasons statted, I don't think we should take generic ones from anywhere as the base. When it comes to languages the community won't have covered, I can imagine a nice invitation like: "Know more about Klingon than we do? Please join and share with us!"

Blog sounds like a good platform, true, but it might be good to start with good preparation directly on the forum: How about a suborum for the language profiles, one thread per language, everyone adds there things they consider important for the language. And than at some point, a profile is gonna be put together out of all that.

We could as well have our own difficulty scale the whole community could partake in creating. I've recently thought of starting a thread on which languages are the most/the least expensive to learn. I think it would be awesome if each learner could vote in a poll to put together a more balanced view on the langauge's difficulty, amount and quality of learning material, spread of the natives and so on.

You know, something like pc games or movie review sites that give you the staff's opinion (in this case "objective" data, such as overlap with other languages, FSI and similar ratings) and than average of that of users (which I think could be even more useful).

A good part of such profiles (which was already among the intentions of those on the wikia, I think) would be linking people to logs and threads with common questions. For example, I think a community based Spanish log should certainly point people in Stelle and James29's direction etc.

Sure, I suppose most of us aren't capable of creating profiles of Chung's quality (I am certainly not) but we might strive for something new.