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Fate of HTLAL | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion | ( Topic Closed) |  |
| aokoye Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5543 days ago 235 posts - 453 votes  Speaks: English*, German Studies: Dutch, Norwegian, Japanese | Message 25 of 178 23 July 2015 at 6:20am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Are you trying to say/imply that the owner of this site (FX) can shut down the .org site (which is the "other site" where some people, myself included, are also posting on)? If so that just isn't the case. Edited by aokoye on 23 July 2015 at 6:21am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5534 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 26 of 178 23 July 2015 at 6:54am | IP Logged | ||||||||
When there's a messy situation with a lot of people involved, my first instinct is to try to listen to everybody, and to try to figure out what each person wants. It's all too easy to accidentally blunder into a conflict, and to make situation blow up through sheer misunderstanding. But when you listen to people, sometimes a surprising thing happens: You realize that three-quarters of the conflict was totally unnecessary, and that the other quarter can probably be sorted out somehow. So here are some of the things I've heard over the last few days: 1. Almost everyone wants to see the community continue to exist and thrive. 2. Quite a few people are willing to live with the current software, and they would be perfectly happy to remain here. 3. A substantial number of users are frustrated by the situation, and they don't want to do this all over again in a year. 4. Some people are very concerned by the ongoing decline in HTLAL signups and posting, and they're worried about the long-term future if things continue as they are. 5. Some people are enthusiastic about what they could do with better forum software: They could share target-language movie trailers in their logs, or they could browse the forum easily from their phone, or they could follow threads using an RSS reader. 6. Several people with substantial technical skills and resources have offered to step up to ensure that the community has a home if it ever needs one. 7. Our administrator wants (as far as I can tell) to keep the forum online, and he has devoted pretty some serious effort to this in the past. I'm probably leaving somebody out, and if so, I'd love to hear from them. :-) Anyway, as far as I can tell, most of the these desires are totally compatible! I can actually think of two or three possible solutions that might work pretty well for everyone. But it would be a bit silly to try to solve these problems without actually hearing everybody out first. Also, I don't think that it would be effective to try to sort things out right away by ignoring half the opinions involved. I'm happy to live with a bit of ambiguity about the future if that gives us more time to look for solutions that work better for everybody. Edited by emk on 23 July 2015 at 7:01am 15 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| basica Senior Member Australia Joined 3538 days ago 157 posts - 269 votes Studies: Serbian | Message 27 of 178 23 July 2015 at 8:57am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Ok, I think I have been misunderstood. Firstly, the only point I was making was there doesn't need to be a split. One (of
many ways) way of doing this is for the person running the other forum is to shut it down if it turns out that the owner of HTLAL doesn't transfer control to the community. This way it ensures people, even those who prefer the other one end up back here (this of course doesn't appear likely to happen as that admin seems to want to continue running the site, but I am merely giving a theoretical example in any case). I was not advocating this to be done, I was merely making a theoretical point. I've already stated what I want and would do before anyways, so I won't repeat myself here. Like emk, I have patience and I understand this discussion might take a few days or even a couple weeks. They seem to have a game plan which seems aggressive enough to ensure some kind of answer to the question (one of my fears was that they'd simply email him and then not ever get a response and leave it at that). When we get an answer, I'll act accordingly. Edited by basica on 23 July 2015 at 8:59am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| rdearman Senior Member United Kingdom rdearman.orgRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5238 days ago 881 posts - 1812 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, French, Mandarin | Message 28 of 178 23 July 2015 at 9:54am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Actually as the admin your refering to, I would like to point out I didn't actual want to set up the site in the first place, and only did so because we all knew this site was going to go down about 7 days after the domain expired and FX wasn't answering (again). You seem to be assuming I actually want to spend my own personal money keeping the other site open because I have some other motives, but as I've pointed out a lot of times, running the other site is just a hassle for me, and if FX had handled his responsibilites it wouldn't have ever happened. I'm not having a go at him, I know better than anyone the hassle and bother of running websites and keeping domains up to date, etc, etc. But if you're going to setup something like this and take money you have a duty of care to your subscribers (IMHO) Now I have been gifted another headache. Because this forum software is so poor, and I stupidly installed a modern version of software; people don't want to leave the other site. In addition, there are a lot of threads, logs and discussions there from people who were lurkers here, but active members there. All created during the week or so this place was unavailable. So you're proposal that I simply close down that site means I'm going to make a lot of enemies of the users who've placed their trust in me (see duty of care above) to keep their logs and posts alive. BTW there are people who've joined there, who aren't even members here and never heard of the HTLAL.com. So there cannot be an easy binary solution like you are proposing without annoying a lot of other people. So I think it is a little unfair to paint me as someone who is running some kind of pirate site and trying to steal users. I put up an alternative, emergency site in good faith to help the community have some meeting point. I didn't consider that the alternative might be better than the original and people might not want to leave. 16 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Random review Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5785 days ago 781 posts - 1310 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin, Yiddish, German | Message 29 of 178 23 July 2015 at 10:13am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Very convincing post. Surely you are right. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Via Diva Diglot Senior Member Russian Federation last.fm/user/viadivaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4236 days ago 1109 posts - 1427 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German, Italian, French, Swedish, Esperanto, Czech, Greek | Message 30 of 178 23 July 2015 at 10:15am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I like this site. Yeah, it's unstable, I sometimes have troubles accessing it, a lot of features are unavailable to
me since I'm not Pro. Yet I like this site for its simplicity. I don't have anything against the new site, but at the moment it looks a lot like other forums - which is great for a temporary site, thanks to everyone who did set it up! - but slightly different if to use it constantly. Of course this site could use some obvious improvements, and I can't be sure whether I'll still prefer it in case the new site gets significantly changed. But at the moment I wish for this old one to be saved. Hopefully, our administrator will be at least open to discussion. I've been around here since more than two years, and I have to say that HTLAL changed my life dramatically, allowing me to improve my English enough to open many doors I didn't even see by myself. It would be sad to type this address and see a dead page. As simple as that. Edited by Via Diva on 23 July 2015 at 10:24am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| patrickwilken Senior Member Germany radiant-flux.net Joined 4535 days ago 1546 posts - 3200 votes Studies: German | Message 31 of 178 23 July 2015 at 10:22am | IP Logged | ||||||||
I wouldn't call it a 'pirate' site, but it's also not an 'emergency' site if it keeps going after the original site is back up. I very much doubt that you would create a lot of enemies if you simply froze the site for a few days until the community as a whole could come to a decision. My impression is that you don't really care what the community as a whole wants. You are essentially grabbing some percentage of the members away to your new site and are actively encouraging people there not to post further on this site. Having EMK write flashy new plugins etc just adds legitimacy to this move. Edited by patrickwilken on 23 July 2015 at 10:31am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| 1e4e6 Octoglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4292 days ago 1013 posts - 1588 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Norwegian, Dutch, Swedish, Italian Studies: German, Danish, Russian, Catalan | Message 32 of 178 23 July 2015 at 10:38am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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This is essentially a schism then. Some want to stay in the old site, some want to
stay in the new site, but the added factor is that there are new members in the new site not from the old site. The population of both would eventually equalise with most wanting to stay in one instead of the other. To me this is basically like a split territory with their own respecitve communities as I said above: like West Germany/East Germany, North Dakota/South Dakota, Alta California/Baja California, North Vietnam/South Vietnam, or North Korea/South Korea; Both sides have their own opinions and would rather be in their preferred place than the other. To me it seems that those that stay in the old site would have have a fairly stable population number, but more new members join the new site until it equals the old site, and eventually overtakes in number. The new site would probably be a mix of some disenchanted with the old site with completely new members, and the old site basically almost all old members. I cannot really foresee any other result. Edited by 1e4e6 on 23 July 2015 at 10:40am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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