Outage or non-availability...

I really like this forum as it's a great place to ask questions when I get the itch, and I don't have anyone locally to ask. Moreover many of the posters are long-termers, and it's good to bounce ideas off of people with the same general experience. I'm taking up studying again, as I really feel the motivation now. There have been a few events recently where my lack of skill really hurt. One art opening where the curator was clearly interested to talk to me even over the invited guests, but the ideas he was expressing were out of my league. He was a cool cat and I'd love to hang out with him and his art buddies. But...that'll never happen with my level. There's also the dark side: one of the guests had lived in China for 16 years and still didn't speak, and I was glad I could. But my level is just not enough. I feel the fire brimming up in me and the desire to concentrate and really learn something. 

"Just use Reddit!" Guh, I despise Reddit. I was a long-time user before the dark times, and after getting silenced for the umpteenth time I spend my time elsewhere.

"Just use Discord!" I dislike chats because they tend to become a little ingroup and clubhouse for the people with the most spare time. They also will drift away from the original topic in favor of people establishing relationships 

"Wechat groups!" Everyone is a beginner so I spend most of my time teaching instead of learning. Also has the clubby/spare time problem. 

I've moderated forums before. It's pretty easy, just clean up the trash and put threads into the right subforums. Head off any spats between members. Ban is a last resort. 

I like the old-fashioned web forum. It's asynchronous which is a big advantage in this age of instant chat and "unless you reply within the first hour you are buried in a sea of other comments." Especially this one, it's actually got a really good archive which I search from time to time. Often I find the answer to my question in a thread from 2006 or whatnot. Because, let's face it, learners of Chinese are going to run into the same problems over and over. And the sad state of Chinese pedagogy often makes people who have suffered through it better able to explain things than native teachers. I think native teachers should be used sparingly until the learner is at a decent level, since when do they know anything about how to learn Chinese as an adult? That's why this forum is so valuable to me, because there's a population here that has done this. I hope this forum stays open for another 20 years! ???

On 10/17/2023 at 1:45 AM, vellocet said:

I hope this forum stays open for another 20 years! 

万岁！Roddy 万岁！Imron 万岁！