It's so stupid to merge all SEA languages into one section

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It's so stupid to merge all SEA languages into one section

Postby korn » 2014-08-02, 16:40

It's so stupid to merge all SEA languages into one section. Look at this chaos. I have to browse through threads I don't understand and/or have no interests whatsoever.
Please correct all my mistakes, no matter how trivial they may seem to you, also, please help me to improve my phrases. Thank you in advance!
---
S'il vous plaît, corrigez toutes mes fautes, même si elles vous paraissent insignifiantes. Et aidez-moi, s'il vous plaît, à améliorer ma façon de m'exprimer. Merci d'avance!
---
Nếu tôi viết chỗ nào chưa đúng, dù là lỗi nhỏ hay nghiêm trọng, thì các bạn hãy sửa lại giúp tôi hoặc góp ý để tôi có thể học hỏi và rút kinh nghiệm. Cám ơn các bạn nhé!

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Re: It's so stupid to merge all SEA languages into one section

Postby mōdgethanc » 2014-08-02, 18:16

Looking at this forum, it's barely active as it is, so I don't know what giving each language its own forum again would do. Also, that's not something that's unique to this forum. I have no interest in Catalan or Spanish politics, but I can't avoid it here.
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Re: It's so stupid to merge all SEA languages into one section

Postby korn » 2014-08-02, 18:58

They should structure it that way, i.e. each language it's own section. This way this forum has become less attractive.
Please correct all my mistakes, no matter how trivial they may seem to you, also, please help me to improve my phrases. Thank you in advance!
---
S'il vous plaît, corrigez toutes mes fautes, même si elles vous paraissent insignifiantes. Et aidez-moi, s'il vous plaît, à améliorer ma façon de m'exprimer. Merci d'avance!
---
Nếu tôi viết chỗ nào chưa đúng, dù là lỗi nhỏ hay nghiêm trọng, thì các bạn hãy sửa lại giúp tôi hoặc góp ý để tôi có thể học hỏi và rút kinh nghiệm. Cám ơn các bạn nhé!

księżycowy

Re: It's so stupid to merge all SEA languages into one section

Postby księżycowy » 2014-08-02, 19:17

There are many threads I could careless about in the forums of the individual languages I do study or have an interest in, so I personally see very little difference.

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Re: It's so stupid to merge all SEA languages into one section

Postby loqu » 2014-08-02, 19:21

Nice title to start a civilized thread btw.
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Re: It's so stupid to merge all SEA languages into one section

Postby Car » 2014-08-02, 19:58

We decided to merge several language forums into one because none of them was active enough to warrant a forum of its own. The alternative would have been to have one thread for each of the languages in the "Other languages" forum.
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Re: It's so stupid to merge all SEA languages into one section

Postby Riptide » 2014-08-03, 4:51

Why not have subforums in the SEAL forum for the languages most people are posting about, and then have single topics for the rest in the SEAL forum? That would help with the clutter problem. Also, I think merged topics for these "subforum languages" should be archived.
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Re: It's so stupid to merge all SEA languages into one section

Postby korn » 2014-08-03, 10:14

Car wrote:We decided to merge several language forums into one because none of them was active enough to warrant a forum of its own. The alternative would have been to have one thread for each of the languages in the "Other languages" forum.

I don't understand. Is it possible to reverse the process back? I mean what would happen if each language had a section of it's own? What's the worst thing what would happen? If there is not that much action going on, then it shouldn't be that hard to administrate anyway.

The worst thing that would happen if someone new would have look at this is they'd be repulsed by this clutter (puttng Vietnamese into the same section as Tagalog? Only the Vietnamese flag is shown for all SEA languages - as if Vietnamese represents all SEA languages?).

This forum used to be well structured. Even though I didn't post much, I enjoyed clicking and reading through the threads. There were few threads I was either not interested or have read already, but you can't prevent this in any forum. Now however the number of threads that is (totally) irrelevant to me has quadrupled.

Instead of putting every SEA language into one section you should have find a way to increase user interaction.

BTW: Sorry for the thread title, but putting unrelated language into one and the same category just shows lack of respect for the languages - like they are all the same and indistinguishable anyway. No, sorry they are not. They should be treated with the same respect as other languages. Also, the Vietnamese flag shouldn't represent all SEA languages. I would have maybe, possibly, understood if you had put them into the same language family (e.g.. Austro-Asiatic; Austranesian), but no you didn't. Seriously, it would be the same if you had put Catalan or Welsh into this section as well.
Please correct all my mistakes, no matter how trivial they may seem to you, also, please help me to improve my phrases. Thank you in advance!
---
S'il vous plaît, corrigez toutes mes fautes, même si elles vous paraissent insignifiantes. Et aidez-moi, s'il vous plaît, à améliorer ma façon de m'exprimer. Merci d'avance!
---
Nếu tôi viết chỗ nào chưa đúng, dù là lỗi nhỏ hay nghiêm trọng, thì các bạn hãy sửa lại giúp tôi hoặc góp ý để tôi có thể học hỏi và rút kinh nghiệm. Cám ơn các bạn nhé!

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Re: It's so stupid to merge all SEA languages into one section

Postby Car » 2014-08-03, 18:49

Riptide wrote:Why not have subforums in the SEAL forum for the languages most people are posting about, and then have single topics for the rest in the SEAL forum? That would help with the clutter problem. Also, I think merged topics for these "subforum languages" should be archived.

That's not possible as the forum software doesn't allow such a deep structure. We've discussed this before.

korn wrote:
Car wrote:We decided to merge several language forums into one because none of them was active enough to warrant a forum of its own. The alternative would have been to have one thread for each of the languages in the "Other languages" forum.

I don't understand. Is it possible to reverse the process back? I mean what would happen if each language had a section of it's own? What's the worst thing what would happen? If there is not that much action going on, then it shouldn't be that hard to administrate anyway.]/quote]
We had that before which led to lots of "dead" forums. We're definitely not going back to that. Nowadays, our conditions for new forums are stricter because we had that long enough. It wasn't an easy decision to come up with the current solution.

Instead of putting every SEA language into one section you should have find a way to increase user interaction.

Such as?

BTW: Sorry for the thread title, but putting unrelated language into one and the same category just shows lack of respect for the languages - like they are all the same and indistinguishable anyway.

No, relatedness isn't the only thing to group languages by. Many users are interested in languages from certain regions as opposed to language families.

[quote}Also, the Vietnamese flag shouldn't represent all SEA languages.


That's up to the developers to change it.

Please also take into consideration that several users supported the idea back when we discussed it.
Please correct my mistakes!

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Re: It's so stupid to merge all SEA languages into one section

Postby Pangu » 2014-08-03, 21:35

korn wrote:Only the Vietnamese flag is shown for all SEA languages - as if Vietnamese represents all SEA languages?

Indeed. Using the ASEAN flag would be more appropriate. AFAIK all Southeast Asian countries are part of ASEAN.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Associatio ... _ASEAN.svg

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Re: It's so stupid to merge all SEA languages into one section

Postby korn » 2014-08-09, 18:25

Car wrote:Such as?

Seriously, did you come up with something of your own yet? If yes, have you tried to implement it already?

Anyway, these are my suggestions. I think you should concentrate on fostering interaction with other members, a mean to easily save and access the knowledge here, and increase quality:

interaction system with other members
- Members can follow other members' posts, comments; Members can follow threads (that they haven't created or posted in yet) and topics. The followers will be notified if something new was posted.
- Social media (g+, fb, twitter) sharing buttons, that would automatically send your posts to your social networking sites, as a means to promote this forum (this feature is of course optional)
- Anonymous option, so people can make themselves anonymous, if they want to post a sensitive, too personal information, e.g. letter of recommendations, application letter, love letter, etc.
- Having not only an avatar but also a link on your profile where members can hear a short passage of your own voice (makes it more personal)

Knowledge
- show related threads in the thread you're currently reading
- Wiki to have all the users' relevant knowledge about a paritcular language saved in one place. Example of relevant knowledge are: N-VN/ S-VN spelling differences,
- in each language forum a word of the day quiz for that particular language
- expand your profile so you can save your new learned vocabularies or sentences or grammar rules or exception to a grammar rule

Quality
- high quality threads: initial post should be without spelling mistakes. We need a grammar police that controls and correct their mistakes
- Posts and threads can be rated
- Ratings of posts effect the poster's reputation/ points
- Members will have certain levels. The higher their level, the more features they can use, e.g. a member with level 0 can't rate other member's posts, new members can only create and post a certain amount of threads, posts per day
- Members gain level points by posting, by being rated, by the amount of followers they have, by the number of quizzes they solve
Please correct all my mistakes, no matter how trivial they may seem to you, also, please help me to improve my phrases. Thank you in advance!
---
S'il vous plaît, corrigez toutes mes fautes, même si elles vous paraissent insignifiantes. Et aidez-moi, s'il vous plaît, à améliorer ma façon de m'exprimer. Merci d'avance!
---
Nếu tôi viết chỗ nào chưa đúng, dù là lỗi nhỏ hay nghiêm trọng, thì các bạn hãy sửa lại giúp tôi hoặc góp ý để tôi có thể học hỏi và rút kinh nghiệm. Cám ơn các bạn nhé!

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Re: It's so stupid to merge all SEA languages into one section

Postby Car » 2014-08-09, 19:21

I decided to move this thread since the developers probably didn't notice it in its old forum (which wasn't the best place for the thread anyway).
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Re: It's so stupid to merge all SEA languages into one section

Postby vijayjohn » 2014-08-10, 6:18

korn, first of all, some of the things you want to see are already here. It's possible to subscribe or unsubscribe to any topic or thread in this forum (well, okay, maybe not right now, but it certainly was possible until very recently. I assume there's some reason why it's not possible at least for me atm but also that this was not intentional). There is a thread where you can hear various members read out short passages in their own voices in various languages.

Second, I think if we follow some of the suggestions you're making, the result will be a bunch of pages that look hopelessly cluttered. You'd have these profiles with all this additional material that could easily just go into another thread plus optional social media sharing buttons.

Third, have you noticed that so far, you seem to be the only one who seems so concerned with how the languages are organized on this forum? Why should we make all these drastic changes if no one else on the forum wants them?

Fourth, there are plenty of fairly basic things that still need to be fixed, and my understanding is that the developers are still working on those. So I think demanding that they not only go back to a scheme that they made a conscious decision to abandon but also do even more things to make it work better than it used to is simply impractical.

Last but not least, it's just a forum. Seriously, I wonder sometimes whether people remember that. There's no need to make such a fuss about a freaking online forum not looking the way you want it to look. If the forum doesn't have your favorite layout, at the end of the day, you just have to accept it for what it is since you're not one of the developers. But it's not exactly the end of the world. You want the Vietnamese threads? Help yourself to them; they're all right there! But hey, I'm not learning Vietnamese right now, and yet I don't mind the fact that like most of the threads in that forum are about Vietnamese because I can still find the threads that I want to post in, too!

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Re: It's so stupid to merge all SEA languages into one section

Postby Riptide » 2014-08-10, 23:30

If I might add my two cents.

korn, a lot of the suggestions you made are quite innovative, and I think they would definitely improve the amount of activity that goes on in UL as a whole. However, some of the suggestions you made would most logically be made to every forum, which adds a lot more work for the UL staff. Also, have you considered things we can do to improve the SEA forum? (yes, we includes me)

vijayjohn, yes, it is "just" a forum. However, the main goal of a forum is to promote discussion and conversation. And he's not necessarily fussing about the way he wants it to look so much as to provide suggestions to improve activity on this site.

Car, I never saw that discussion, and there's a work around for everything. It may require a bit of extra work on the developer side, but there is a way. However, it's only a suggestion.

Honestly, I think that the SEA forum can be improved, as well as UL as a whole. I remember a few years back when UL had a lot more daily activity. However, there's been quite a few changes that have been happening and I feel that some factors are not being considered. For example, by constantly merging topics, deleting and adding subforums, etc., the amount of, for lack of a better word, "archivable" topics that are on UL are increasing. Discussion boards are designed so that each forum provides a category of topics, where each of those topics represent a topic for discussion. Furthermore, each of those topics should have a fluid conversation. Take the "Tagalog" topic for example. It's a mixture of several topics, and to prospective and new members of UL, it looks uninviting for discussion because their context for contributing to the discussion is messed up. If you ask me, I think this is a good time to start inviting the UL community to discuss ways to improve UL as a whole, because it definitely needs a facelift.
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Re: It's so stupid to merge all SEA languages into one section

Postby Ariki » 2015-05-04, 21:58

Kia ora,

I'm commenting rather late in the piece and perhaps this has been answered in another thread - if so, can someone link me to it? I would like to know if there will be a forum restructure where we start grouping languages by language families? Has the capability of technology improved sufficiently enough for this to become a possibility? It would be a major overhaul, I understand, and it would take many months to implement fully. I think using a subforum structure based on language families would be a fair way to organise the post data?

I remember this same issue came up when all the Polynesian language forums were merged into one mega forum. Luckily, my expertise is enough to be able to make comment, however limited, to all 34 documented Polynesian languages.

Would be good to hear people's thoughts.
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Re: It's so stupid to merge all SEA languages into one section

Postby vijayjohn » 2015-05-05, 8:18

Ariki wrote:I would like to know if there will be a forum restructure where we start grouping languages by language families? Has the capability of technology improved sufficiently enough for this to become a possibility?

I doubt very much that that will happen. From what I can tell, UniLangers generally speak various Indo-European languages (from Europe), but it's otherwise relatively rare that you find someone who speaks more than one language within a particular language family. For example, nobody is actively learning any Dravidian language except Malayalam right now, no one seems to be learning a Tai-Kadai language other than Thai, etc. So if we organized the forum by language families, there would be a very strong skew in activity towards the Indo-European languages and almost nothing going on with a lot of the other language families, and I don't see any way a forum with that organization could be easy to manage. There's also a bit of a problem with accommodating languages whose linguistic affiliation is uncertain and with mixed languages (which rarely, if ever, can be placed in any single language family).

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Re: It's so stupid to merge all SEA languages into one section

Postby Yasna » 2015-05-05, 14:36

vijayjohn wrote:
Ariki wrote:I would like to know if there will be a forum restructure where we start grouping languages by language families? Has the capability of technology improved sufficiently enough for this to become a possibility?

I doubt very much that that will happen. From what I can tell, UniLangers generally speak various Indo-European languages (from Europe), but it's otherwise relatively rare that you find someone who speaks more than one language within a particular language family. For example, nobody is actively learning any Dravidian language except Malayalam right now, no one seems to be learning a Tai-Kadai language other than Thai, etc. So if we organized the forum by language families, there would be a very strong skew in activity towards the Indo-European languages and almost nothing going on with a lot of the other language families, and I don't see any way a forum with that organization could be easy to manage. There's also a bit of a problem with accommodating languages whose linguistic affiliation is uncertain and with mixed languages (which rarely, if ever, can be placed in any single language family).

I think it would work out alright. The solution to the domination of IE is to make subforums for IE subfamilies, but in other cases to make the subforums for macro-families. Germanic and Romance would require a few moderators, and everything else only one. It's ok if say the Dravidian or Tai-Kadai subforums don't get much action. The families are simply so important that a unilang forum without them is incomplete. I would do it something like this:

Germanic
Romance
Balto-Slavic
Greek
Celtic
Iranian
Indo-Aryan
Sino-Tibetan
Japanese
Korean
Turkic
Austronesian
Niger-Congo
Afro-Asiatic
Austronesian
Dravidian
Austroasiatic
Tai-Kadai
Uralic
American Indigenous
Classical, Extinct
Conlang
Other

I diverge from the family methodology with the American indigenous languages because they are popular (and important) enough to deserve more than "Other", but it would be a hopeless mess to make subforums for their endless macro-families. I think the ruling logic on "Classical, Extinct" and "Conlang" is sound as well.

As far as the issue you brought up of uncertain linguistic affiliation, that is not an issue for any major languages if we can agree to put aside the Altaic spat, which is irrelevant in this case anyway because Altaic is varied and popular enough to get the subforum treatment of IE.
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Re: It's so stupid to merge all SEA languages into one section

Postby Ariki » 2015-05-07, 0:50

Yasna wrote:
vijayjohn wrote:
Ariki wrote:I would like to know if there will be a forum restructure where we start grouping languages by language families? Has the capability of technology improved sufficiently enough for this to become a possibility?

I doubt very much that that will happen. From what I can tell, UniLangers generally speak various Indo-European languages (from Europe), but it's otherwise relatively rare that you find someone who speaks more than one language within a particular language family. For example, nobody is actively learning any Dravidian language except Malayalam right now, no one seems to be learning a Tai-Kadai language other than Thai, etc. So if we organized the forum by language families, there would be a very strong skew in activity towards the Indo-European languages and almost nothing going on with a lot of the other language families, and I don't see any way a forum with that organization could be easy to manage. There's also a bit of a problem with accommodating languages whose linguistic affiliation is uncertain and with mixed languages (which rarely, if ever, can be placed in any single language family).

I think it would work out alright. The solution to the domination of IE is to make subforums for IE subfamilies, but in other cases to make the subforums for macro-families. Germanic and Romance would require a few moderators, and everything else only one. It's ok if say the Dravidian or Tai-Kadai subforums don't get much action. The families are simply so important that a unilang forum without them is incomplete. I would do it something like this:

Germanic
Romance
Balto-Slavic
Greek
Celtic
Iranian
Indo-Aryan
Sino-Tibetan
Japanese
Korean
Turkic
Austronesian
Niger-Congo
Afro-Asiatic
Austronesian
Dravidian
Austroasiatic
Tai-Kadai
Uralic
American Indigenous
Classical, Extinct
Conlang
Other

I diverge from the family methodology with the American indigenous languages because they are popular (and important) enough to deserve more than "Other", but it would be a hopeless mess to make subforums for their endless macro-families. I think the ruling logic on "Classical, Extinct" and "Conlang" is sound as well.

As far as the issue you brought up of uncertain linguistic affiliation, that is not an issue for any major languages if we can agree to put aside the Altaic spat, which is irrelevant in this case anyway because Altaic is varied and popular enough to get the subforum treatment of IE.


A reorganisation of some sort has to happen. I just quickly looked at the African Indigenous Languages forum and found a thread for Amharic which bemused me because it's a a member of Afro-Asiatic as Hebrew and Arabic are yet unless if you were interested in Proto-Afro-Asiatic or wanted to know the origins of Hebrew and Arabic you'd probably never realise that both are related to Amharic which only has a thread under African Indigenous Languages...
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Re: It's so stupid to merge all SEA languages into one section

Postby Yasna » 2015-05-07, 1:04

Ariki wrote:A reorganisation of some sort has to happen. I just quickly looked at the African Indigenous Languages forum and found a thread for Amharic which bemused me because it's a a member of Afro-Asiatic as Hebrew and Arabic are yet unless if you were interested in Proto-Afro-Asiatic or wanted to know the origins of Hebrew and Arabic you'd probably never realise that both are related to Amharic which only has a thread under African Indigenous Languages...

On a related note, people can't be reminded enough that Hebrew and Arabic are in the same family.
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Re: It's so stupid to merge all SEA languages into one section

Postby Tenebrarum » 2015-05-08, 1:56

So when are you going to change the flag to that of ASEAN? That yellow-star-on-red commie banner is starting to irritate me.
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