Plans for the future

[Serpent]

Keeping a site up costs money - what do you think will occur when the revenue isn't there?

It seems fairly likely that the revenue never covered the expenses, nevermind brought profit.

[rdearman]

I have to say that the future seems to be NOW. The work from zenmonkey & t123 are already making a difference in the ways you can customise the site to suit your language. And I've been a bit overwhelmed by the amount of volunteers who've already stepped forward in the few hours since the moderators made their announcement.

You rock!

[Kamlari]

Just logged in to wish you all the best.
When I come back in a year or two, I'm sure everything will topnotch and you'll be thriving.
Unfortunately, I cannot help in any way.

[rdearman]

Dropping this out of the announcement section. But still a live topic!

[t123]

Maybe something that'd make the site more attractive is allowing blogs. Basically use GitHub pages together with Jekyll. You can create a multi blog site with it apparently.

Point a subdomain, and free blogs for users at zero cost.

You could of course host other static content there instead, and Git provides all nice things like versioning, history, merging etc, all useful in a multi-editor environment.

[Zegpoddle]

Worst things about the old HTLAL site that I'm hoping this reincarnated version can avoid:

(1) The search functions that never worked well, when they worked at all.

(2) The hyphens in the URL. Hyphens are the kiss of death for a site hoping to attract visitors. I'm on the board of a nonprofit that actually took a vote last year to eliminate the hyphen in our name. Our website is much easier for people to find now.

(3) The extremely hierarchical "Pro Members" vs. "Others" class system that was very off-putting and discouraging to newbies.

(4) The language profile forms that took FOREVER to fill out and which never worked anyway. Which languages I knew, and to what level, seemed to change every time I logged in.

(5) The endless repetitions of the same questions being asked again and again. Maybe there should have been separate dedicated rooms for "Which language should I learn?", "Do you think I can learn language X in Y weeks?", and "Study Z languages at the same time–good idea?" Even better would have been some sort of organizational structure that would have referred people posting these questions to the many long threads that had already been produced on these topics in the past. I don't know what such a structure would look like on an open forum consisting of user-generated content; the format itself seems to invite endless duplication of the same topics. (The moderators usually did a decent job of providing links to relevant past threads, but it was always on an ad-hoc basis.) Casual users want to be able to post their burning question without doing an extensive search first, and they want a personalized answer to show up in the same place where they posted their question. They don't want their post to be moved to a more appropriate category even when it is justifiable. I understand that, and I wouldn't want new users to be driven away. But even the relatively broad category headings in the old forum were endlessly misleading. I would find posts about books or audio resources all over the place, not just in the "Language Programs, Books, and Tapes" category, and my reaction would often be "God, I'm lucky I clicked on this discussion, or I would never have known about this book/website/podcast! It's not where I expected it would be." I realize that some posts, and some meandering threads, are inherently difficult to categorize, but on the old HTLAL, the classification was left entirely in the hands of the person who was posting the question or comment, and they did not always choose the most logical category for their post. I wish the moderators had been (or had been allowed to be?) more proactive about moving misplaced posts to the correct location, perhaps leaving a copy where it had been originally posted (for the benefit of the original poster so that s/he could find it again), adding a single short reply to direct the original poster to the new location, and marking the original somehow to make it visibly clear that the follow-up would be in a different room. The usefulness of a vast trove of information depends entirely on how well it is organized and indexed for quick, accurate retrieval, and it seems to me that the old HTLAL grew progressively less useful the larger it grew. Searching for the needle in the haystack became more and more difficult. It should never have been that discouraging. Could a more careful system of labeling, and more active management of that function, have preserved the practicality of the resource even as it grew?

(6) Sometimes the moderators seemed to be asleep at the wheel. After reading Michael Erard's Babel No More, I did a search for "gay polyglots" on HTLAL and couldn't believe some of the vile, hateful remarks that certain members posted again and again--and which moderators allowed to continue for days and days. So much for my naive misconception that polyglots, with their multicultural exposure, might be a bit more tolerant of differences than the average thug. If the same opinions had been expressed in reference to a certain nationality or race, they would have provoked general outrage and, I have no doubt, a serious warning to the offender, but the rules about respectful discourse on HTLAL apparently didn't extend to sexual minorities. It wasn't the offensive remarks in themselves, but the lack of any negative reaction to them, that nearly drove me away from the site forever. It probably did drive away some unknown number of visitors. I hope the newer version of the forum will be more sincere about its pretensions to being a "community."

[garyb]

The hyphen in the domain name is a bit of a shame, but one is better than four at least... I'm guessing the version without the hyphen wasn't available so it was a compromise.

Regarding the repetitive questions, people started to address that by adding articles on common questions like studying multiple languages to the HTLAL Wiki. These articles tend to be balanced and present several viewpoints from experienced members. However, most new people arriving don't know anything about this Wiki, you have to be "in the know" to even realise it exists. For this new site, I think there should be more prominent links to it (or to a static part of the site with that sort of FAQ content, as has been discussed) that will be seen by people who come to ask these questions.

There has already been a lot of discussion of discrimination etc. and the new moderators seem very keen to address it and be more strict, especially regarding sexism and LGBT.

[zenmonkey]

Worst things about the old HTLAL site that I'm hoping this reincarnated version can avoid:

(1) The search functions that never worked well, when they worked at all.

(2) The hyphens in the URL. Hyphens are the kiss of death for a site hoping to attract visitors. I'm on the board of a nonprofit that actually took a vote last year to eliminate the hyphen in our name. Our website is much easier for people to find now.

(3) The extremely hierarchical "Pro Members" vs. "Others" class system that was very off-putting and discouraging to newbies.

(4) The language profile forms that took FOREVER to fill out and which never worked anyway. Which languages I knew, and to what level, seemed to change every time I logged in.

(5) The endless repetitions of the same questions being asked again and again. Maybe there should have been separate dedicated rooms for "Which language should I learn?", "Do you think I can learn language X in Y weeks?", and "Study Z languages at the same time–good idea?" Even better would have been some sort of organizational structure that would have referred people posting these questions to the many long threads that had already been produced on these topics in the past. I don't know what such a structure would look like on an open forum consisting of user-generated content; the format itself seems to invite endless duplication of the same topics. (The moderators usually did a decent job of providing links to relevant past threads, but it was always on an ad-hoc basis.) Casual users want to be able to post their burning question without doing an extensive search first, and they want a personalized answer to show up in the same place where they posted their question. They don't want their post to be moved to a more appropriate category even when it is justifiable. I understand that, and I wouldn't want new users to be driven away. But even the relatively broad category headings in the old forum were endlessly misleading. I would find posts about books or audio resources all over the place, not just in the "Language Programs, Books, and Tapes" category, and my reaction would often be "God, I'm lucky I clicked on this discussion, or I would never have known about this book/website/podcast! It's not where I expected it would be." I realize that some posts, and some meandering threads, are inherently difficult to categorize, but on the old HTLAL, the classification was left entirely in the hands of the person who was posting the question or comment, and they did not always choose the most logical category for their post. I wish the moderators had been (or had been allowed to be?) more proactive about moving misplaced posts to the correct location, perhaps leaving a copy where it had been originally posted (for the benefit of the original poster so that s/he could find it again), adding a single short reply to direct the original poster to the new location, and marking the original somehow to make it visibly clear that the follow-up would be in a different room. The usefulness of a vast trove of information depends entirely on how well it is organized and indexed for quick, accurate retrieval, and it seems to me that the old HTLAL grew progressively less useful the larger it grew. Searching for the needle in the haystack became more and more difficult. It should never have been that discouraging. Could a more careful system of labeling, and more active management of that function, have preserved the practicality of the resource even as it grew?

(6) Sometimes the moderators seemed to be asleep at the wheel. After reading Michael Erard's Babel No More, I did a search for "gay polyglots" on HTLAL and couldn't believe some of the vile, hateful remarks that certain members posted again and again--and which moderators allowed to continue for days and days. So much for my naive misconception that polyglots, with their multicultural exposure, might be a bit more tolerant of differences than the average thug. If the same opinions had been expressed in reference to a certain nationality or race, they would have provoked general outrage and, I have no doubt, a serious warning to the offender, but the rules about respectful discourse on HTLAL apparently didn't extend to sexual minorities. It wasn't the offensive remarks in themselves, but the lack of any negative reaction to them, that nearly drove me away from the site forever. It probably did drive away some unknown number of visitors. I hope the newer version of the forum will be more sincere about its pretensions to being a "community."

Some good points - most aren't concerns here.
On 6 - I'm not a moderator but I certainly would not stand for that here. I expect the mods would deal with that quickly.

[CarlyD]

In response to zegpoddle's post:

Could we have something like a "New Members Discussion Board" that could have a welcome thread and then all the normal new people threads. Then later new people would have their initial questions already answered, or could just keep the threads going.

[Mohave]

In response to zegpoddle's post:

Could we have something like a "New Members Discussion Board" that could have a welcome thread and then all the normal new people threads. Then later new people would have their initial questions already answered, or could just keep the threads going.

I think this is a wonderful idea! I have seen this successfully implemented in other forums with stickies with links to key topics!