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Car wrote:Luís wrote:Car wrote:I definitely agree there.
I think there's an extension that allows users to easily add and manage tags. I can look into it.
Is an extension for that really necesssary, though? Sure, if it's no big deal, feel free to add it, but I was thinking about doing it manually.
E}{pugnator wrote:Just thought I'd leave my two words here. I really don't have the time to go through the whole thread as I'm not an active user anymore, but I was encouraged to do so here by former admin Johanna:
I'm afraid some already less common languages will drown under an even more obscure umbrella. Like having a Kartvelian forum or a Uralic one tells nothing to someone who just wants to dabble in Georgian or Estonian and might even become a serious learner. The many active subforums for smaller languages are the most important attraction that was left off of Unilang, their uniqueness compared to other language-learning related forums. Having subforums sorted by language families is counter-intuictive because people don't search for a language family, like "Ok, now I decided I'm going to learn something Afro-Asiatic". An experienced learner who joins a language community will know exactly where to search, but the average learner might simply leave, thinking the forum for his language doesn't exist, while totally ignoring the Uralic or the Kartvelian forums. I'm particularly concerned about Georgian and Estonian for that matter, as there are two of the only corners in the web where one can actually discuss learning those languages.
E}{pugnator wrote:I'm afraid some already less common languages will drown under an even more obscure umbrella. Like having a Kartvelian forum or a Uralic one tells nothing to someone who just wants to dabble in Georgian or Estonian and might even become a serious learner. The many active subforums for smaller languages are the most important attraction that was left off of Unilang, their uniqueness compared to other language-learning related forums. Having subforums sorted by language families is counter-intuictive because people don't search for a language family, like "Ok, now I decided I'm going to learn something Afro-Asiatic". An experienced learner who joins a language community will know exactly where to search, but the average learner might simply leave, thinking the forum for his language doesn't exist, while totally ignoring the Uralic or the Kartvelian forums. I'm particularly concerned about Georgian and Estonian for that matter, as there are two of the only corners in the web where one can actually discuss learning those languages.
Luís wrote:Car wrote:Luís wrote:Car wrote:I definitely agree there.
I think there's an extension that allows users to easily add and manage tags. I can look into it.
Is an extension for that really necesssary, though? Sure, if it's no big deal, feel free to add it, but I was thinking about doing it manually.
Well, it has some extra features though. Not sure if people would be interested in that or not.
E}{pugnator wrote:Having subforums sorted by language families is counter-intuictive because people don't search for a language family, like "Ok, now I decided I'm going to learn something Afro-Asiatic".
Luís wrote:Car wrote:Luís wrote:Car wrote:I definitely agree there.
I think there's an extension that allows users to easily add and manage tags. I can look into it.
Is an extension for that really necesssary, though? Sure, if it's no big deal, feel free to add it, but I was thinking about doing it manually.
Well, it has some extra features though. Not sure if people would be interested in that or not.
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księżycowy wrote:I will say that so far, we may not have to worry about the NAIL forum. Most people voting seem to be in favor of keeping it as is.
Speaking as both a user and the mod, I am in favor of splitting up the NAIL forum. But I can see the logic in wanting to keep it as one subforum.
Car wrote:Luís wrote:Car wrote:I definitely agree there.
I think there's an extension that allows users to easily add and manage tags. I can look into it.
Is an extension for that really necesssary, though? Sure, if it's no big deal, feel free to add it, but I was thinking about doing it manually.
księżycowy wrote:However with the wealth of information online now-a-days people can easily go from "I want to learn Sami" to "Sami is an Uralic language" and then find the right subforum from there.
I also think if we add in something like the extension that Luís was playing with earlier this argument will become largely moot.
Plus there's the good old search bar, which you can easily type Sami into and find the right subforum.
Also, it's not like we couldn't call the hypothetical (at this point anyway) Kartvelian subforum "Georgian and Kartvelian languages" or something. Same for Sami, or any other forums.
Luís wrote:Car wrote:Luís wrote:Car wrote:I definitely agree there.
I think there's an extension that allows users to easily add and manage tags. I can look into it.
Is an extension for that really necesssary, though? Sure, if it's no big deal, feel free to add it, but I was thinking about doing it manually.
Well, it has some extra features though. Not sure if people would be interested in that or not.
vijayjohn wrote:Doing that manually would be really troublesome for all the threads that already exist, though.
vijayjohn wrote:Maybe they can, but that doesn't necessarily mean they will since they might prefer to just avoid digging around for the information they'd need to find the appropriate subforum, right?
How do you mean? What does that extension have to do with how we organize subforums?
Yeah, but I'm not sure newcomers will necessarily know that.
vijayjohn wrote:Honestly, I can't seriously believe at this point that we're trying to organize the subforums by language family. This whole time, the one forum that has changed is one that used to refer to one well-established branch of a language family (Polynesian languages) and has now been expanded to God knows how many families. (I say this knowing full well that I myself advocated for this change, but still, I think we should be clear on the fact that this isn't organization by language family, more like the opposite). If we really were trying to organize the subforums by family, then that forum should be the first one to be broken up IMO; no other subforum encompasses so much linguistic variety.
księżycowy wrote:I'm curious what you propose then, and what changed your mind.
I don't see a good solution on way or another.
vijayjohn wrote:I guess it was the fact that people have been talking so much about a Uralic subforum and what not but they don't seem to bother about forums for non-European languages
vijayjohn wrote:(as you pointed out, no one seems to want to break up the NAIL subforum). I can understand why, but at the same time, Europe is the world's least linguistically diverse continent. If you want to organize subforums by language family, surely you should do the opposite and start with the most linguistically diverse continent (i.e. the continent of Australia, which also includes Papua New Guinea).
Linguaphile wrote:vijayjohn wrote:I guess it was the fact that people have been talking so much about a Uralic subforum and what not but they don't seem to bother about forums for non-European languages
Except that some Uralic languages are non-European
But if you want to organize subforums by language family, why start with a "continent" at all?
Why not start with a language family, or a few of them, and work from there? (For example, which language families from Australia or PNG have the most interest among Unilang users
or the most languages
or the most speakers
or whatever criteria you want to use?) The reason I've focused on Uralic myself is that it's my current interest and the potential new forum that I'd be most likely to contribute to, plus others seem to be interested as well. (The smaller Uralic languages also don't have a current place on Unilang.) I'm certainly not against reorganizing other forums or creating other new ones, I just don't have enough information to advocate for them. That's really the only reason I haven't advocated for other subforums in the same way.
Yes.vijayjohn wrote:Then I can try to provide information like I just did, I guess.
vijayjohn wrote:The vast majority of languages in Australia are Pama-Nyungan. With Papuan languages, it's much harder to say. There's a putative family called Trans-New Guinea dominating Papua New Guinea, but which languages constitute that family and whether the family is even valid are all issues that are up for debate
vijayjohn wrote:If you want to organize subforums by language family, surely you should do the opposite and start with the most linguistically diverse continent (i.e. the continent of Australia, which also includes Papua New Guinea).
vijayjohn wrote: IIRC księżycowy was studying Arrernte at some point
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