HTLAL vs LLORG

[Systematiker]

I was on HTLAL and am here, though under a different name, and I particularly like the change. Originally, I was about language learning for specific usage, mostly as a tool for academic research, and I was interested in the academic-linguistic discussion, though not a linguist. I happen to have changed in a manner similar to the transition of the forums, so I'm pretty pleased. I no longer do philosophy of language, so I don't really even have an ancillary field to linguistics, so I tend to skim the more technical posts - but I've also largely figured out things that work for me, and I'm not searching for much more information about methodology (what I do now is usually a variation on the same thing, or finding a crutch so I can get to doing the same thing), and that certainly has a lot to do with it (that, and I'm not in grad school any more, so I can't be even an armchair lay expert in everything).

I appreciate the camaraderie of the learning groups, as even before I never had a schedule where I could manage a decent showing in a challenge (I think once I had a decent 6WC, but that's about it). I feel that I participate far more here, as well. I appreciate the more social aspect of the this forum.

I agree with the suggestions about a main site, but the forum as such is something I appreciate even more than I did HTLAL - that's my two cents' worth, anyway.

[Axon]

I am absolutely fascinated by the history of online communities, particularly of course those which I've been a part of. I've already written pages and pages about the changes I saw in Reddit from 2010 to 2017, for instance.

I found this forum in late 2015 I think, and since I didn't get seriously into self-learning languages until early 2014 or so, I've never seen HTLAL in its prime. I've read a fair amount of the archives, but I clearly don't have in-depth knowledge of the main players and their site culture. Honestly I kind of regret it, now that I'm reading this thread about what I missed.

I agree with the sentiment that the language learning world has changed. Duolingo has been out for more than five years and untold millions of people have taken advantage of that very low bar to entry. A good friend and former roommate of mine started Duolingo Spanish around 2014 after seeing me use it for German. He stayed with it, found native chat partners, and later on he picked up Portuguese and just told me he's planning his first trip out of the country - to Brazil. He couldn't have had that experience with Teach Yourself.

And polyglotism has become much more of a thing since I started paying attention. I think my entry into online language learning was probably Benny, though I do remember reading the HTLAL static site articles about Mezzofanti way back then. Five years ago there were some YouTube polyglots, now there are literally hundreds or thousands of "Me speaking 5 languages" videos. Language blogs on Tumblr, language groups on Facebook. I've heard people - strangers - in real life say "I want to be a polyglot."

I would love to contribute what I can to the static site or the wiki, but it really does seem to be an entirely different thing than the forum. I'd also love to explore curated archives from the old forums, maybe some old member's top 3 posts or something. I think the experiments are wonderful, and I've really enjoyed discussions and retrospectives about long-running language learning projects.

Here's something pretty telling: Go to the member list on this website and order by descending number of posts. At the time of this writing, we have 18 members with more than 1000 posts. I bet you can name them without looking. To me it sometimes seems like this forum has about thirty or forty different people total. Don't get me wrong, I love the sense of community and feeling like I know the people here. But it's inevitably going to be a little repetitive, and without tons of new active members all the time we're just not going to see crazy innovation or wild ideas.

[Ogrim]

Here's something pretty telling: Go to the member list on this website and order by descending number of posts. At the time of this writing, we have 18 members with more than 1000 posts. I bet you can name them without looking. To me it sometimes seems like this forum has about thirty or forty different people total.

This is not surprising. Research shows that "in most online communities, 90% of users are lurkers who never contribute, 9% of users contribute a little, and 1% of users account for almost all the action." Also known as participation inequality. I just checked the numbers over on HTLAL, and there 84 users have made more than 1000 posts, while 814 have written between 100 and 1000 posts. The number of members not having posted a single time is a whopping 107123.

I agree that more participation from more members would be a good thing, but it doesn't seem that things have changed much since the article I link to was written, so don't expect the many members of this forum who have never posted to suddenly show up and start posting regularly.

Edit: I forgot to mention that, of the 20 or so top contributors on HTLAL, at least 10 are the most active here. Another indication that LLorg is not a very different forum.

[Serpent]

Only 2 of our members work as translators.

If you mean outside this forum, then it's at least three.

Not sure which ones you had in mind but hopefully Julie will come back too. (she's registered here)

[Xenops]

As smallwhite and tristano mentioned, a tagging system would be fantastic: tagging by language, tagging by method, course, etc. I'm not sure if this forum type/website would permit that?

[jeff_lindqvist]

I agree with the suggestions about a main site, but the forum as such is something I appreciate even more than I did HTLAL - that's my two cents' worth, anyway.

I found the HTLAL static site before I saw the forum. There's a reason I joined there, and there's another reason I joined here. I wasn't a polyglot back then. Now I can at least pretend that I am one.

As for the top contributors, I'm in 13th place. You who write on this very page are still regular contributors. It feels like I read something written by you every single day. Many members have way more "likes" than posts. This means that what you write is being read by a lot of members. And you all contribute to Llorg. In one way or another. I'm glad to be in your company.

[aokoye]

What attracts linguists and ling students?

I don't think this forum attracts linguists/ling students at all. It attracts people who like studying languages. I actually feel like I remember someone asking a while ago why there were so few linguists here. I think it could potentially attract linguistics/ling students if there was a space for ling related conversations that didn't get derailed (which seems like a pipe dream), but I've said explicitly a few times here (likely mainly in PMs) and a handful of times to friends in person that I have no desire to discuss linguistics with any frequency on this forum.

Here's a sample of things I've talked about with friends who are students or linguistics professors in the past week:
conversation analysis
critical discourse analysis
ASL syntax
ideolects
morphology
corpus linguistics
computational linguistics

We talk about plenty of non ling related things too of course, but the discussions I have here that touch on linguistics are nothing like the discussions I have in person (and that's not because of the nature of online forums). And I'm not talking about things like sitting in class discussing these things, I'm talking about chatting with someone over lunch.

[mrwarper]

Not sure which ones you had in mind but hopefully Julie will come back too. (she's registered here)

Unless people have a long record of making stuff up, I generally trust their sources are good, so whatever two smallwhite meant... plus the only one I can be sure about without checking, plus however many more haven't listed 'working as a translator' in their profiles -- any number between zero and several thousands, hence at least three. Plus Julie, it is : )

[CarlyD]

I found the old HTLAL to be a wealth of information--and totally intimidating. And seriously hard to find anything.

Here--I'm happy. Yes, everyone is beyond me skill-wise, dedication-wise, but I plug along and feel like I mostly fit in. I've found a lot of advice here that's more usable to me.

I'm 89th in posts, btw.

[sfuqua]

I was happy with the old forum and I'm happy with the new forum...