Super Challenge: questions and discussion

[jeffers]

The all-new 6 Week Challenge site is up, both the frontend and the backend were redone completely, and it no longer relies on people using any external site to submit their logs.

In the future, I could imagine federating other challenges (so people can submit their studies in one place and have it count towards all challenges they may be in) or outright hosting smaller challenges that we come up with.

Now that this 6WC is over (or is today the final day?), have you thought any more about using your site for people to record their Super Challenge progress? I like the way your site works, but the tricky thing is you would have to add the ability for people to record pages alongside time. Reading might still require time if you want to page to work for multiple challenges at the same time.

What's your current thinking about how feasible this would be @Sprachprofi?

[jeffers]

(I was thinking about the SC, because I was wondering if I wanted to commit to 2,500 pages in Spanish this time around. My starting level will be too low, but I think I could bridge it. And by the time I reached 2,500 pages, well, my reading level would probably be approaching B2 anyways.)

I've already sent some Hindi subtitle files to my Kindle, and I plan to read episodes after watching them, and then try to watch them again (possibly with no subtitles at that point). Something like that might work as a starting place for you.

[Sprachprofi]

The all-new 6 Week Challenge site is up, both the frontend and the backend were redone completely, and it no longer relies on people using any external site to submit their logs.

In the future, I could imagine federating other challenges (so people can submit their studies in one place and have it count towards all challenges they may be in) or outright hosting smaller challenges that we come up with.

Now that this 6WC is over (or is today the final day?), have you thought any more about using your site for people to record their Super Challenge progress? I like the way your site works, but the tricky thing is you would have to add the ability for people to record pages alongside time. Reading might still require time if you want to page to work for multiple challenges at the same time.

What's your current thinking about how feasible this would be @Sprachprofi?

It's only a few weeks' work, but right now I'm snowed under. That will only get worse until the European elections (June 9), because I work for a political movement and have somehow gotten myself listed as a candidate as well (for MERA25 in Germany). Remind me to work on it in July.

[jeffers]

We have successfully run the Super Challenge at least 5 times (or maybe 6? I tried to work it out by searching for my old Tweets, but it turns out searching for my own Tweets is tricky). It has become one of the major organising principles of how I study languages: 20 months focusing on input, 4 months focusing on grammar. It has pushed me to read more, listen more and watch more than I ever would have done without the challenge. For this reason, I would love to see the challenge continue, and to grow in popularity and usefulness for other language learners.

For these reasons I have a couple of suggestions for tweaks moving forward:

• First of all, I would suggest simplifying the film requirements somewhat. Although I have always defended the rules as set the first year, they have always caused confusion and disagreement. My suggestion would be to allow any type of audio to count as film and any length as well, but retain the concept that a total of 90 minutes counts as one film. So new audio would count, and short videos would count (but of course someone would have to watch a *lot* of 2 minute videos to get to one film). This will deviate a bit from Cristina’s original vision for the challenge, but I think that the challenge has been in our own hands long enough that we could make these modifications as long as there is general consensus and agreement.
• Secondly, I think it might be helpful to set up another discussion hub on another site or forum. One reason is to attract more competitors, and also as a backup in case our beloved site goes down. I know in the past the 6WC has had competitors from places like the Duolingo forum. This may have happened with the SC as well, but I’m not aware of any attempts.
• Finally, although I didn’t use it this time round, a nice bot is a good way to build enthusiasm and to gain inspiration from the successes of other competitors. I know rdearman is working on a new bot, and I’d like to offer my help with that.

The next Super Challenge is fast approaching! Yay!

This means we need to get ready with the rules and also with the various means that people can track their progress. So here are a few questions:

• Are people happy with the minor rule sinplifications I suggested above? Nobody commented either way.
• Does anyone mind if I discuss this on Reddit to encourage others to join in?
• Does anyone want to advertise the challenge on other language sites/forums?
• Is the bot ready? Does rdearman need help and/or testers?

Please share your thoughts!

EDIT: when I wrote "new audio would count", I meant "news audio" (because the rules to date have allowed us to count watching news, but not listening to news).

[emk]

This means we need to get ready with the rules and also with the various means that people can track their progress. So here are a few questions:

• Are people happy with the minor rule sinplifications I suggested above? Nobody commented either way.
• Does anyone mind if I discuss this on Reddit to encourage others to join in?

I will almost certainly participate, given the simplified audio rules, with the goal of a 2,500-page SC for Spanish. I've been pushing hard to get my reading from sub-A1 to a point where I can maintain the necessary daily pace.

I also think it's worth mentioning the challenge on other forums that are interested. The Super Challenge is the single best thing I ever did for my French comprehension, and the 5,000-page version is just about the right size to get people to roughly C1 comprehension in Category I/II languages. It's an idea worth sharing more widely.

Also, since I'm back and hopefully participating, the forum should be a bit more reliable. Umm, yeah.

Let me know the bot status—if someone else writes one, perfect! If not, I will probably eventually get frustrated enough to make a tracker website, though it wouldn't have X/Twitter integration. But someone else doing the hard work is definitely ideal, from my perspective.

[deekin]

I'll be participating for the first time, focusing on Spanish (maybe a 1/2 Super Challenge for French??). I'm onboard with either the original rules or the minor changes proposed above. Either way, I'm looking forward to it.

[Anya]

I am for simplified audio rules!

[rdearman]

This means we need to get ready with the rules and also with the various means that people can track their progress. So here are a few questions:

• Are people happy with the minor rule sinplifications I suggested above? Nobody commented either way.
• Does anyone mind if I discuss this on Reddit to encourage others to join in?

I will almost certainly participate, given the simplified audio rules, with the goal of a 2,500-page SC for Spanish. I've been pushing hard to get my reading from sub-A1 to a point where I can maintain the necessary daily pace.

I also think it's worth mentioning the challenge on other forums that are interested. The Super Challenge is the single best thing I ever did for my French comprehension, and the 5,000-page version is just about the right size to get people to roughly C1 comprehension in Category I/II languages. It's an idea worth sharing more widely.

Also, since I'm back and hopefully participating, the forum should be a bit more reliable. Umm, yeah.

Let me know the bot status—if someone else writes one, perfect! If not, I will probably eventually get frustrated enough to make a tracker website, though it wouldn't have X/Twitter integration. But someone else doing the hard work is definitely ideal, from my perspective.

I forked and updated the bot and put it on my GitHub page. I wrote a system for updates from Mastodon and via email, since Twitter stopped working. Although I think I could probably resign up for a twitter dev account. The original died when Elon took over and changed the rules on the dev accounts so the account which surrilix opened was shutdown.

I will try to start it up again before May and test the Mastodon part. Email is fairly flaky because the responses hit spam filters and get blocked, although the email did work when sent to my email server, you just didn't get a response and can't tell that it worked. I didn't do a web front end, but in hindsight this would have been the better option. I really should have done this before I started the new job!

[jeffers]

Does anyone remember how many times we have run a Super Challenge? Or what year we actually started?

[emk]

Does anyone remember how many times we have run a Super Challenge? Or what year we actually started?

May 2012 through December 2013, I believe. This is based on dates from my log.

The original challenge involved twice as much reading, but (1) only a few people actually read 10,000 pages, and (2) if so remember, the consensus afterwards was that 5,000 pages was often enough to get people to reading at a pretty high level. So I believe the modern version of the challenge would have first happened in 2014.