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Fate of HTLAL | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion | ( Topic Closed) |  |
| bryanpeabody Groupie United States Joined 4987 days ago 48 posts - 79 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 137 of 178 11 August 2015 at 1:58pm | IP Logged | |||||
Good God. Just what I wanted to read about while I ate my breakfast this morning. Thanks for that. Maybe we could, you know, get back to useful conversations about language learning and not people's personal agendas. 14 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5264 days ago 2241 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 138 of 178 11 August 2015 at 2:36pm | IP Logged | |||||
One of the things I would love to see on a new forum is more respect for languages other than English. The multilingual lounge mainly is a place for other second language learners to practice their second language with each other. The last thing I want to do is interact with other native English-speakers in a second language on a regular basis. The Portuguese thread on HTLAL seems to have more naative-speaker participation than the Spanish one, but still focuses on Portuguese as a language and less on just general language-learning. What I would like to see is the same or similar discussion about language-learning we have in English, in Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Hindi, Mandarin, Arabic, German, Esperanto and French. On a practical level, it would mean a dramatic increase in moderators- native speaker moderation, such native speakers would have to sign on to the forums rules and enforce them. They would need to be bilingual to interact with the administrator(s). It would mean native speaker members would have to tolerate mistakes from non-native speakers as we are accustomed to doing in English. It would mean a better text correction interface. If it were a place where native-speakers felt comfortable in posting and they knew that they would get answers/responses from other native-speakers in addition to second-language speakers, then I think we would really be on our way to being truly international. As it is now, the multilingual lounge is dominated by non-native speakers and there is little serious discussion about language-learning in general and more discussion about the second language in question itself. In essence what we have said is that a high level of English is the ticket price for entry into the forum and if you want to talk about language-learning in general in your native language, forget it. I would love to see posts from Spanish-speakers and Arabic-speakers for example, asking about language-learning methods and resources. Of course, such a vibrant and viable forum would take time to build and be sustainable. We already have enough of a base of native-speakers in several languages other than English. Perhaps this may be something to consider for any future iteration of HTLAL. 10 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| AlexTG Diglot Senior Member Australia Joined 4640 days ago 178 posts - 354 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Latin, German, Spanish, Japanese | Message 139 of 178 11 August 2015 at 3:28pm | IP Logged | |||||
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But how many of the people interested in HTLAL would prefer to be using it in their native language? Not many I would think. The reason
the multilingual forums are dominated by non-natives is that they are the ones itching to use those languages. The native speakers would prefer to be using one of their target languages (of which, more often than not, English is one). Edited by AlexTG on 11 August 2015 at 4:13pm 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| AlexTG Diglot Senior Member Australia Joined 4640 days ago 178 posts - 354 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Latin, German, Spanish, Japanese | Message 140 of 178 11 August 2015 at 4:08pm | IP Logged | |||||
I'm not sure where you're getting these numbers? The members list page here says "There are 106415 forum members". When I run some queries on an sql database of all posts that existed when the site went down I get: 11,354 active users over the lifetime of the forum, 624 in 2015. Unrelated: lol, 5 votes for a post whining about talk of periods, for crying out loud people, pull yourselves together, it's a basic fact of life for half the population. Edited by AlexTG on 11 August 2015 at 4:12pm 9 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| mrwarper Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Spain forum_posts.asp?TID=Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5228 days ago 1493 posts - 2500 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2 Studies: German, Russian, Japanese | Message 141 of 178 11 August 2015 at 5:25pm | IP Logged | |||||
Off the top of my head, but now you just made me check.
I should have said '520000 people tried to register', for user IDs are assigned or reserved sequentially, but that doesn't mean they got in. Expecting at least two thirds of 'spammers', ~100000 seems reasonable, but we don't know what that means exactly -- is it 'active accounts' or what? I can confirm 11400+ (not 14000) different users have posted over the forum history. I guess I could do a complete check of the forum users list to see how many silent users there are (88600?), but the server is slow enough without somebody poking around just for fun, and I'm not feeling bored enough. Edited by mrwarper on 11 August 2015 at 5:28pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Juаn Senior Member Colombia Joined 5347 days ago 727 posts - 1830 votes Speaks: Spanish* | Message 142 of 178 11 August 2015 at 5:31pm | IP Logged | |||||
Definitely. If the new forum is going to be run like this one, the outcome will be the same. I have found that the less time I spend online, the more happy and productive I am. If I am going to devote time to reading and writing in a forum, I will not put up with discussions being shut down simply because a moderator did not find them interesting or relevant him/herself. Edited by Juаn on 12 August 2015 at 1:45am 5 persons have 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 143 of 178 11 August 2015 at 7:46pm | IP Logged | |||||
I won't argue against it, but just note that it works differently for people. I am quite the opposite here, I almost crave communication, attention and support when I learn languages. Just pointing out that such people exist. 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4846 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 144 of 178 12 August 2015 at 12:30am | IP Logged | |||||
I don't completely get what exactly this is supposed to say, but as I am mentioned by name I feel the urge to respond nevertheless. If there is some kind of sarcasm involved here, it's eluding me, if on the other hand this is a critique concerning the wording I have used, I would like to add a few lines. First of all, you're ignoring that I opened the post you quote with the words "pardon my French". I was aware that what I had to say wasn't very polite, however I didn't find any other words to phrase what I was feeling. If someone who doesn't even feel the need to learn the preterite in German comes along with some halfbaked theories concerning the history of this tense, this is in my book bullshit. Hailing from a culture where we say what we think in a very direct manner, I felt no need to conceal this from the said person, so I used this wording. The person in question didn't seem to bother, instead he or she responded with some loosely associated Wikipedia quotes and totally dismissed all my arguments, although I'm a well-educated native speaker of the language we were talking about. Anyway, the important thing is the person didn't bother that their theories were called "bullshit", so why bring it up here? Is this supposed to be an example for the uncivilized tone in this forum, or what seems to be the problem? We can't tip-toe all the time to prevent people from realizing the truth. When I haven't even studied a language to a reasonable level, I don't concoct theories regarding its history based on some Wikipedia articles I've read, sorry! I work in science, so discussing theories is my daily bread. I've experienced more than once that very good arguments are completely dismissed because they were uttered in a softspoken manner, while people with halfbaked theories get all the attention because they are cocky and cry out the loudest. I simply can't stand this bad style of discussion, so maybe I get a bit sensitive when somebody utters a wild theory with a lot of self-confidence and maybe I have acquired a rather robust discussion style myself. However, singling me out here is bad style as well and I don't really get the sense of it. If you don't like the way I act on the HTLAL forums, you can always contact me via PM. If you wanted to comment on the quote, you could have spared out my name. However, this way of presenting the quote and commenting on it in a by-clause, is a bit offensive to me. Maybe, I'm not getting some sort of sarcasm here, because I don't really understand the idiom involved, but anyway I'm a bit irritated right now. Other than that, I second Cristina that a new HTLAL forum should be a place where we can really talk about things. I'm really fed up of every discussion getting turned down as soon as it gets remotely interesting and starts touching on real-life issues. As interesting as discussions about Assimil, Anki, and Ziad Fazah can be, we shouldn't forget that languages are spoken in the real world and not within the textbooks we use for learning them. I'm a long-term user of this forum and, to be honest, I don't feel the need to explain for the umpteenth time why the preterite is an important tense in German, why Spanish is an "easy" language for native English speakers, and what language programs I like the best. This forum has lost a lot of its attraction since I joined it and the restriction of topics is one reason for this. What am I supposed to talk about after several years on this forum when I'm not allowed to talk about what's happening in the real world and what's important to me? To me, it's not the end of the world if discussions get heated and if mild expletives are used. That's why I wouldn't want certain aspects concerning political correctness integrated into the forum rules. Discrimination and ad-hominem attacks should be banned, but otherwise you should be free to talk about what you want, if you can do it in a civilized manner. If someone doesn't share my point of view, I can talk with them and try to convince them with arguments. I don't need some rules to protect me from other people's opinions. This may be a very civilized place compared to the rest of the Internet, but to be honest, most of the time it's also rather boring. I keep coming back because I'm used to writing a log here and because there are some interesting discussions now and then, but most of the time I click through the "Active Topics", read what interests me, and leave without commenting on anything, because it's the usual same old, same old. It would be nice if a new HTLAL could be a different place. 9 persons have voted this message useful |
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