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A few thoughts on the community’s future | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| JohnPaul Diglot Newbie United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5709 days ago 28 posts - 63 votes  Speaks: English*, French Studies: Spanish | Message 1 of 7 05 October 2015 at 11:08pm | IP Logged |
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This is cross-posted here and at forum.language-learners.org. I am registered under the exact same
username as I am at the other site. I just wanted to share a few thoughts on the future of this community based on a previous experience. In late 2006 I was feeling dissatisfied with my life and I knew that I needed to make some bold changes in my life if I wanted to be happy. I needed out of the city I grew up in. A city that had never entirely felt like a good fit for me. I love to travel and so I decided to apply at several airlines to become a flight attendant. I began researching the job online. There was not much good information available. I then discovered a forum called FlightAttendants.org https://web.archive.org/web/20121227130404/http://www.flight attendants.org/. It was a community of 40,000 (I believe that was the number) current and former flight attendants from around the world. The members of the forum helped educate me on life as a flight attendant, how to apply, where to apply, where not to apply, labor issues, etc. I genuinely believe that the members of that forum helped me land not one but two offers at major American carriers. I became a flight attendant, moved across the country and started a new life that has been extremely rewarding. Funny enough I only lasted about a year as a flight attendant but I did happen to meet the woman (also a flight attendant) who in 3 weeks will be my spouse :D. Having worked in aviation, and now about to marry someone who works in it still, I have learned a tremendous amount about the culture that exists within the industry and in particular within the subset of employees that are flight attendants. The work is unique and it is hard to explain to people who live outside of the industry, even those who fly a hundred thousand miles a year. A couple of years ago I started thinking about writing a book that would attempt to capture some essence of what life is like for the modern flight attendant, largely because so few people understand what it is like, and because I feel that there is something of value there that needs to be recorded before the next major change in the industry. I immediately set out to the aforementioned website to begin asking for interviews only to discover that it had essentially been shut down by the owner. He was a former flight attendant, and had lost what he felt was his connection to the industry and thus did not feel up to maintaining the website anymore. I was very upset when I discovered this. It wasn't because the forum had been instrumental in my employment years earlier but because along side all the very practical information shared, there was a treasure trove of anecdotes, travel advice, and a record of the changes in the industry over more than 10 years, and most poignantly the emotions surrounding the loss of our colleagues on 11 September 2001. The loss of FlightAttendants.org is actually quite huge. It was an incredible primary source archive that vanished into the ether. In early 2009 I was again feeling dissatisfied with my life but this time it was not the city that I was living in but the fact that growing up I had heard French at home and that I realized that I could hardly speak it anymore. After a few months of trying to figure out how to relearn the language I discovered the HTLAL forum. I have been a member of how-to-learn-any-language.com since the 7 April 2009, and in that time I have made 27 posts. I am not a regular contributor to the forum, however, I am very happy to have it as a resource, and to have the opportunity to contribute where and when I can. Over the past 6+ years the HTLAL forum has been important part of my regrowth as a francophone, and while I doubt that anyone recognizes my forum handle immediately, some of yours I do. Thank you for all your contributions, what you (we) have created in the HTLAL forum is a tremendous community with a unique culture. I believe that this culture is important, and that it deserves to be preserved. Recently there have been serious issues with the website and a regrettable lack of involvement from the owner. My recommendation is this: do not continue waiting. The community of active members and mods needs to move the community to site that is operated by a trust. Each and every one of you has created something that is bigger than Mr. Micheloud's original intention. I would hate to see the death of another special community. Best regards, JohnPaul Edited by JohnPaul on 05 October 2015 at 11:09pm 20 persons have voted this message useful | |
| AdamDM2 Newbie Australia Joined 3835 days ago 2 posts - 2 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin, Japanese, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Arabic (Written) | Message 2 of 7 08 October 2015 at 6:53am | IP Logged |
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Great post.
... but "Wayback Machine doesn't have that page archived." (I hope Wayback Machine itself is sufficiently diversified that it continues to survive). CU on the new forum. cheers, "Adam" on ALLF 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4888 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 3 of 7 08 October 2015 at 9:42am | IP Logged |
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I can relate so much to this post.
There have been a couple forums that have been important to me over the years. Some were focused on silly pop culture stuff, some were deeper - but they all had a strong sense of community. One imploded after a lot of infighting, two were bought out by corporate interests, and one was on yahoo groups ... and who knows what went wrong with yahoo. Or Yahoo! And now HTLAL is fading fast. It always feels like a forum disappears. I can find occasional snippets on wayback, but it's not the same as an active forum. And I'm feeling like an exile at the moment. I don't have a home computer (I keep blowing all my extra money on travel, and that's not going to change soon), I can't access the new forum at work, and there are no more internet cafes. It's like all my buddies moved to a new country, and I can't get a visa. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5261 days ago 2241 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 4 of 7 08 October 2015 at 5:01pm | IP Logged |
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Kanewai, we miss you. Try this for a visa: free proxy server list. It's a bit more of a hassle, you will have to copy and paste the url into a proxy server. Cookies and forum preferences won't work, but you should be able to access it via a proxy server from work. Edited by iguanamon on 08 October 2015 at 5:02pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6596 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 5 of 7 09 October 2015 at 3:20am | IP Logged |
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You can consider getting an inexpensive tablet :-) It has language learning benefits too ;)
(I don't have one btw :D) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4888 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 6 of 7 09 October 2015 at 9:32pm | IP Logged |
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I can watch the forum on a proxy server (or even better - using google translate!), but
I haven't figured out how to log-in over a proxy. I'm still working on out-smarting the system! I actually do use a tablet at home, which I like a lot. It's ok for writing quick posts, but not so good for long posts or discussions. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| cords05 Diglot Newbie United Kingdom Joined 3339 days ago 15 posts - 20 votes Speaks: English, Swedish* Studies: Russian | Message 7 of 7 11 October 2015 at 1:57pm | IP Logged |
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I was active on this site some years back and recall a fairly big exodus of people who got banned or dissatisfied and started an alternative forum. Can't recall what it was called. I registered but was never very active there. Can't recall precisely what the issue was, or why these people got banned. I think one reason was a sudden and big influx of new Mods, some of whom got a bit overzealous.
Personally I disliked the premium member setup here, and got irritated on the huge bias or exceptionalism towards English and native English speakers. I decided to scale down my participation when I felt I had started ranting, snapping at people, and constantly being irritated at some of the modding. Technically, this forum is very outdated - it's using software that is well upwards of 10 years old. Average lifetime and supportability of software solutions is 5-7 years. Unless regular backups are taken, and unless backwards compatibility remains for the forum software, the forum will sooner or later stop working, and/or the effort of maintaining it will be more than the Admin is prepared to spend. It's actually not that difficult to set up a forum. I run a forum for about a year. Depending on how "fancy" you want it, it's between a few days and a few weeks to set it up properly. It's a labour of love though - probably almost impossible to make money off a forum. Or it takes a year or so until it breaks even - assuming you don't shy away from ads, asking for donations or both. This forum has become a valuable repository of language learning information. It would be very tragic if all the accumulated information here was lot. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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