The end of TAC?

[emk]

Second, I looked at our membership numbers and found that we have 493 members. Of those, just about fifty have more than 100 posts. Another 150 to 200 have less posts than that and most members have no posts at all. So, and this is my best guestimate, we will have a pool of maybe 100 members who will be active in the forum.

We actually have some really interesting forum members who only post, say, once a week, when they update their logs. It's the quality of the participation, not the frequency. And one post a week could be fine for a TAC participant—here's what I did this week, and a few short responses to several team members. So you should set your participation threshold lower, or look for people who regularly post a couple of times per month. TAC team members who post up a storm in January and then disappear are less useful, if I understand things correctly, then people who keep plugging along with occasional but consistent status updates.

[tomgosse]

Second, I looked at our membership numbers and found that we have 493 members. Of those, just about fifty have more than 100 posts. Another 150 to 200 have less posts than that and most members have no posts at all. So, and this is my best guestimate, we will have a pool of maybe 100 members who will be active in the forum.

We actually have some really interesting forum members who only post, say, once a week, when they update their logs. It's the quality of the participation, not the frequency. And one post a week could be fine for a TAC participant—here's what I did this week, and a few short responses to several team members. So you should set your participation threshold lower, or look for people who regularly post a couple of times per month. TAC team members who post up a storm in January and then disappear are less useful, if I understand things correctly, then people who keep plugging along with occasional but consistent status updates.

Excellent points !
EDIT: My only point is that possible pool of people who join a TAC or study group may be small.

[Spoonary]

EDIT: My only point is that possible pool of people who join a TAC or study group may be small.

Or perhaps a lot of those members who haven't posted anything yet are waiting for a study group to join and post in.

[Radioclare]

I’ve been looking through this thread and so far it seems like there is a lot of muttering along the lines of, «I’d love to join a group for _______ language, but I don’t want to be in charge.» Except for Tomgosse’s French group (which may or may not be a TAC group, I’m not sure) there doesn’t seem to be anyone interested in actually taking on the responsibility of starting any groups. Of course, it’s still early, not even December, so maybe people are waiting for closer to the start of the year. Anyway, here’s a list of potential teams that people have expressed an interest in joining:

French
Italian
Esperanto
Spanish
Spanish/German
Germanic including Scandinavian
Russian
Serbo-Croatian
Slavic
Celtic
East Asian

I might have missed some. And in any case, none of these are definite teams and some were perhaps suggestions for study-groups. I’m just listing up what has been suggested.

I'd be happy to organise and Esperanto group and/or a Serbo-Croatian group, whether in the form of TAC or a study group. But I realise these are not the most popular languages on the forum (or anywhere else!) so in the case that there isn't enough demand, I might just create some resource threads instead. But probably nearer Christmas

[Serpent]

Yeah, perhaps what we need are resource threads or question threads like Gemüse's random German questions, but where everyone can participate.

[druckfehler]

I thought TAC was really great. It's what kept me at HTLAL and also what kept me learning Korean when I was in the early intermediate stage. In 2013 I organised the thread for a really great East Asian Team, but although we won the challenge, we never got the TAC winner badge. That was disappointing. It's also difficult to find a working team for languages like Persian, so that made me even less enthusiastic. With all the other challenges being organised, I think the TAC really has ended for me. This year I was still part of a team, but really only nominally...

[AiyaLianxi]

Disclaimer: I read the first 4 pages and the last page. If things have been decided already, disregard my comments on that.


I joined in 2014 through Reddit, was involved through the end of June when life slapped me upside the head. I joined the HTLAL forums but was overwhelmed by how huge it is.

I like what's been posited so far, about having individual language logs, but a more cohesive support group. In 2014, it was me and one other person posting for most of the year for Team Korean. And again, I had to drop out due to IRL problems.

In 2015, I've been tracking my own progress the analog style, which doesn't really give me the accountability.

Another thing I didn't particularly care for (again, I was in reddit, not HTLAL) was people would make marvelous plans but not necessarily follow through. I'd rather go for a flex/stretch goal than aim for the stars and then not hitting it.

I do like the idea of monthly challenges, I think those would be a lot easier to make people feel comfortable starting. If you join halfway through the month, your "goal" is for the remainder of the days left. And with a constant brush yourself off and try again, it's less intimidating than thinking about the whole year.

And I like the idea of teams not being language specific, or maybe slightly more generic? Having a team for every language seems a bit much, and lonely. I like the idea of having teams as support groups, and then threads for specific languages you can check in on for resources. Having active, year round language learning support I think is a lot more important than having everyone isolated into teams.

[Brun Ugle]

The 6WC (6 Week Challenge) is 4 times a year, so that might be good for you if you like shorter challenges. It just ended, but there will be a new one in February. It's lots of fun.

[reddit lurker]

Disclaimer: I read the first 4 pages and the last page. If things have been decided already, disregard my comments on that.


I joined in 2014 through Reddit, was involved through the end of June when life slapped me upside the head. I joined the HTLAL forums but was overwhelmed by how huge it is.

I like what's been posited so far, about having individual language logs, but a more cohesive support group. In 2014, it was me and one other person posting for most of the year for Team Korean. And again, I had to drop out due to IRL problems.

In 2015, I've been tracking my own progress the analog style, which doesn't really give me the accountability.

Another thing I didn't particularly care for (again, I was in reddit, not HTLAL) was people would make marvelous plans but not necessarily follow through. I'd rather go for a flex/stretch goal than aim for the stars and then not hitting it.

I do like the idea of monthly challenges, I think those would be a lot easier to make people feel comfortable starting. If you join halfway through the month, your "goal" is for the remainder of the days left. And with a constant brush yourself off and try again, it's less intimidating than thinking about the whole year.

And I like the idea of teams not being language specific, or maybe slightly more generic? Having a team for every language seems a bit much, and lonely. I like the idea of having teams as support groups, and then threads for specific languages you can check in on for resources. Having active, year round language learning support I think is a lot more important than having everyone isolated into teams.

Like AiyaLianxi, I also came from and participated on the reddit side. There is a subforum over there for people participating in the TAC challenge, but it's less of a community and more individual posts.

I think it would be a wonderful idea to kickstart the new forum with a successful TAC and would participate it in for sure!

Just to provide input on what I liked the most about the TAC:
I really like the accountability factor of it, and the fact that it combined groups of people all studying the same language together, so that they could ask questions and share resources together. I particularly liked the idea of the "godfather/godmother" role where there were residing members who could help guide these study groups and maybe even do activities like skype sessions together with the TL learners.

I do understand that the role of a team leader is hard, though. I remember a post Woodsei wrote before about how he/she would always default to Japanese, even though it was Mandarin/Korean/Japanese, because it was the language that (s)he was studying. I was amazed at how well Team Rare turned out though, would love to see another!

I like the idea of more "generic" teams with also "generic" monthly challenges to make it easier for team leaders to be inclusive to all their members regardless of what language everyone is learning.

I think the way tomgosse has setup a "French Study Group" thread is good. We could do individual study group threads for each language that anyone could join at any point, and have godmother/godfather figures for those threads. These would remain separate from "TAC teams." If these individual study group threads would like to supplement TAC monthly challenges with challenges targeted for their language, that would be cool and up to them (for example: Japanese Study Group has a monthly challenge for January - show your kakizome for the New Year; kanji challenges, which other languages couldn't do). Then we could just have a stickied thread linking all the study group threads.

That way TAC teams still get some fun activities like challenges without it being restricting on the language. We still get the accountability factor with our teams and a competitive spirit. The only part that is missing is that someone learning French would need to take the initiative to find other French learning logs rather than having them all compiled up in one "Team" post like how it was done before. But then again, they could all be compiled in the study group threads and imo, regardless of what language my teammates would be studying, I'd read their logs regardless so I think depends on the preference/initiative of the person as well anyway.

[galaxyrocker]

Like AiyaLianxi, I also came from and participated on the reddit side. There is a subforum over there for people participating in the TAC challenge, but it's less of a community and more individual posts.

I think it would be a wonderful idea to kickstart the new forum with a successful TAC and would participate it in for sure!

Just to provide input on what I liked the most about the TAC:
I really like the accountability factor of it, and the fact that it combined groups of people all studying the same language together, so that they could ask questions and share resources together. I particularly liked the idea of the "godfather/godmother" role where there were residing members who could help guide these study groups and maybe even do activities like skype sessions together with the TL learners.

I do understand that the role of a team leader is hard, though. I remember a post Woodsei wrote before about how he/she would always default to Japanese, even though it was Mandarin/Korean/Japanese, because it was the language that (s)he was studying. I was amazed at how well Team Rare turned out though, would love to see another!

I like the idea of more "generic" teams with also "generic" monthly challenges to make it easier for team leaders to be inclusive to all their members regardless of what language everyone is learning.

I think the way tomgosse has setup a "French Study Group" thread is good. We could do individual study group threads for each language that anyone could join at any point, and have godmother/godfather figures for those threads. These would remain separate from "TAC teams." If these individual study group threads would like to supplement TAC monthly challenges with challenges targeted for their language, that would be cool and up to them (for example: Japanese Study Group has a monthly challenge for January - show your kakizome for the New Year; kanji challenges, which other languages couldn't do). Then we could just have a stickied thread linking all the study group threads.

That way TAC teams still get some fun activities like challenges without it being restricting on the language. We still get the accountability factor with our teams and a competitive spirit. The only part that is missing is that someone learning French would need to take the initiative to find other French learning logs rather than having them all compiled up in one "Team" post like how it was done before. But then again, they could all be compiled in the study group threads and imo, regardless of what language my teammates would be studying, I'd read their logs regardless so I think depends on the preference/initiative of the person as well anyway.

I have to agree with all of this, and, in part, the failure of the Reddit one falls on me. But, I also feel that the lack of a very engaging and supporting community hurt as well. That said, I'd be willing to join here. I can't be a leader (see my failed attempt at creating/leading a Celtic team), but I'd definitely be willing to participate, and would love the challenges to help keep me accountable.

I do like the more generic teams, that way I could do Irish and whatever other language I wanted to participate with (since wanderlust is an issue I struggle with), and not have to be super limited, or have to post for multiple teams.