The Chinesepod long-term wish list...

nicolas,

all my life experience tells me otherwise.

To really move something one needs to present even the most negative feedback in a friendly way, keep calm, and provide positive suggestions. Especially if the critizism is referring to the results of hard work.

The non-constructive way might be fine for venting anger, but its results are not sustainable. It just poisons interaction and lets the other side think you are a jerk.

I yet wait to see an example where non-constructive feedback became "valuable" or even opened "market opportunities".

I am *not* talking about Asian environments.

@Henning,

a troll or a "non constructive" negative feedback may sometimes be immensively valuable. So I don't reject them a priori.

But I know it can imply a mental revolution for an Asian to accept that.

Just noticed the newly added "pop-up" function, which conveniently addresses my above request without having to install additional software or open additional tabs. Thanks CPod!

I agree with Bryan that it would also be more user-friendly to have the vocab. audiofile available in our tagged sections without having to expand all the way down the list.

Oh, and you are of course welcome to extend the data model as much as you love to to turn it into something "relevant". I can send you the Visio file.

@nicolas,

I am afraid you misunderstood both my post and my reply to Joachim.

This was never intended to become be a short term bug list but rather a long term vision. And, yes, it might be indeed of low relevancy. It wsa designed to be that way. The post was written in a lighthearted, easy mood. I am sorry, if it did not come over as such.

If I disrespected negative feedback as you imply I wouldn't have given that much myself, wouldn't I?

And regarding the "whining" post you cite: please go back to see it in *context*.

I regard constructive "negative feedback" as highly important myself - directed towards myself or towards others. However, I deeply abhor the way of the troll.

Lyrics attached to the mp3s again? Being in China, I want to download as little as possible and detest pdf files.

Speaking of testing, is there one place where we should report bugs? And if the services of beta users would be of value, where do we sign up?

@Henning,

I agree with Joachim.

+ If you're afraid that making the learner a central part of your diagram, would make your diagram a little complex..., I may question the relevancy of your diagram.

+ solving users problems and respecting negative feedback are much more important than adding functionalities.

Negative feedback = problem = solution = market opportunity.

So any company should beg to get negative feedback or users "whining" as you wrote in one post.

Adding functionalities if user problems are not solved, like those mentioned in this thread, make the problems just worse.

Imagine the disaster if all your new functionalities were part of Chinesepod with maintenance being handled the way it is today.

I just noticed that you can play the vocab after expanding with the plus 30 minutes ago before coming to read mandomikey's comments. Weird coincidence. I do think however, that it would be nice to have the little icon right inline without having to expand...

And I'd like to retract my other wish about having the audiofiles follow the tagged vocab, I see it's there once you hit the + button to the left... so that makes 2 handy tricks I've learned so far today, and it's not yet 4pm my time. What a productive day!

Hmmm? Hey, that works! Wow! Thanks for granting my wish, AuntySue... do I get 2 more?

What's wrong with using tabs in the browser to toggle between them?

I do have a laptop, but I don't like being chained to it when I'm working, traveling, etc. My "wish" would for there to be a Chinespod that could be more easily navigated (in the respect I mentioned above) on every computer, not just my personal one.

if you have a laptop, you can take it with you and you can use it at work as at home.Just a suggestion. Another one is: if you bring a laptop with you, take good care of it and lock it somewhere if you have to leave it for a while. ;-)

Goulniky: thanks for that software suggestion... however I work for a school run by state government which means there are firewalls and restrictions around every corner (for good reason, I'm sure). However, I imagine I could expect to encounter the same problem (inability to simultaneously toggle between exercises while playing the audio clip), if I were using a public computer at a library or internet cafe, right?

I've only been a premium subsriber for about a week now, but I can see the benefit of having the mini-audiofile links for vocabulary words carried-over to our "tagged" lists. Hearing a word or phrase repeated on demand would help it sink in auditorally, just like reading it does visually.

Henning... the data model is "just a little complex"? I'm stuck trying to decipher whether the model will help guide me through the maze of hutongs in Beijing, or if it will make me some money in the office March Madness (college hoops) pool!

In all seriousness, nice job. :u)

Joachim, to clarify, I wasn't talking about four hours down every month, but rather, a four hour period during which there might be short periods of disruption or degraded performance, or indeed the odd half hour of downtime some months.

Even if it was down for four hours one maintenance time (most unlikely), wouldn't that be better than what we've just experienced?

If you want to restrict all this to a one hour period, sorry, that's useless, gremlins don't work to a schedule. If that's all you'd accept, we'd have no choice but to go back to the old idea of three weeks of "it should have worked" unanticipated peril twice a year, and not knowing about it in advance.

The fact is, there MUST be downtimes and/or degraded performance in order to keep a system this size working at all. Would you rather push it under the carpet and have long unexpected ones which are complex to repair, or rather put up with regular shorter known periods of risk? Fact is, there's no way round it so no use pouting and pretending until the whole thing crashes around our ears.

When you hold onto something too tight, you lose it. That seems to be exactly what we're trying to do if we restrict maintenance. Think, what happens if you try to run your car without putting air in the tyres or handing the whole car over for a grease and oil change or new brake linings? It's not negotiable.

AuntySue: A fixed schedule for maintenance sounds like a good idea to me if it's an hour once a month only. Unless, of course, it deprives listeners in the CET (CEST) longitudes of their daily new lesson at around local breakfast time.

I guess Henning, Bazza and Christian are in support of this request! ;-)

My wish list contains only one item, and I don't want anything else until we get it. What I would like to see is a regular time for technical maintenance each month, something like "9-12am Shanghai time on the first Tuesday of each month". During this maintenance time some or all services could be taken off line for a period of time, if that month's maintenance required it... or if something went wrong as we know it can, although most months we wouldn't even notice work was being done. It's a safety net, for all of us.

The advantages would be that

- maintenance could be performed incrementally, following the best practice principle of changing only one thing at a time rather than saving them up for a big bang.

- there would not be undue pressure on tech staff to schedule around marketing rather than need, so they'd be able to do their best work according to their own best plans

- maintenance could be performed in a proud responsible manner, without shouting about a few token enhancements to pretend that they were the real reason. We're all grown up, we know what maintenance is, and that it's gonna be essential and frequent to have a reliable system, and for most of us reliability/predictability is the most critical feature.

- we would know when the maintenance is likely to happen, always, and nervous types could work our studies around it "just in case". The majority of the time when there was no visible effect on the system, we'd be pleased, rather than the other way round. It would also prompt us to (optionally) mark our own study calendars for a monthly extract of vocabulary or whatever, and we might even use that memory jogger to do a regular backup of our own home computers (wonders never cease!)

- if the site was a little slow, we'd look at the calendar, go oh yeah, and be pleased that work is being done, instead of kicking and screaming about missed study opportunities and lack of communication

- there would be no requirement for communication about technical maintenance, no need at all, we wouldn't even want to know about it, whenever it was carried out within that monthly four hour period

- it would give better opportunities for all the diverse talents within the organisation to appreciate and support each other's projects and aspirations, whether their areas be academic or the more essential prerequisites like servers and software

Then, after that's happened a few times and future planning kicks in, ask me again about a feature wish list. Until then, I don't want any new features, ever! :-)

Nicolas,

The 6000 characters (well, 6763, if you want to get picky) comes from the number of characters encoded in the GB2312 standard, which is still the most widely used encoding scheme for Chinese. For the most part, if the character doesn't exist it GB2312, its not going to be found in anything modern, so it makes it a good character acquisition goal.

why 6000 characters ? where does this number come from (vs 5000, 7000, 8000, etc.) ?

I liked Memory Isle too, although I never figured out what the 2 hour animated ending was supposed to mean.

On the server speed problem -- we're aware of the issue with response time -- SpanishPod traffic is starting to cramp-up our CRM. I'm hoping to solve this soon by adding extra server capacity in the US. Trying to arrange this as quickly as we can given the fact that we're here and they're there....

I am going to post some psychology vocab in relation to the Phobia lesson I just went through with Vera today. I've posted other vocab lists before, ideally this and other user-generated content should be integrated into the knowledge base. Not sure how, point being that all comments are valuable but some of the banter is loosely related to the lesson topic, technical support and general discussion stuff.

Sounds reasonable to me!

(And yes, I do remember Memory Isle...)

Joachim,

you are absolutely right.

The more I read here and look at it the more stuff I see that is missing (e.g. measure words, further descriptions,...). The learner entity type is integral and should be connected to almost everything including reflexively to itsself. I am becoming slightly afraid the diagram could turn out to be just a little complex... :-o

*** Warning: Some readers might be offended by the following comments. *** 1. As an idea I was thinking of ChineseBot - you're ultimate Chinese learning companion, hooked to the net, adapted to your individual needs and capabilities and always willing to explain the difference between 十 and 四 etc. 2. As a VISION Chinesepod should go for being the ultimate learning method to easily, reliably and individually acquire language competence to confidentially communicate in Chinese and express oneself. 3. Critical comment on Henning's suggestions: I don't see the learner in those diagrams. He or she is obviously supposed to sit in front of the machine. In my view, this is the wrong way to model things. Furthermore, the network perspective is missing, i.e. it's about a community of learners. ;-)

I am in complete awe!!! One's wish list is another's present. A Christmas present for poddies and chinesepod.

mandomikey; performing downloads on {ahem} computers can often be done using {meha} software such as {frusartlu}. You need to work it out in the looking-glass lest it self-destroys in the great firewall though.

Definitely support the dictionary suggestion, and the creation of learning games.

How about the ability to play a lesson/dialogue while simultaneously being able to jump between expansion, exercises, and posting comments (for those of us that are prevented from performing downloads on our {ahem} work computers).

-an extra-section with chinesepod fan-articles

-a little window at the "home" page where you can enter lesson requests so that you can send ém in right when you have the idea.

Web services!

Faster page response times

I can hear Ken now: "The following staff meeting is brought to you by Henning!"

Many good suggestions, but I especially like both of goulniky's and Henning's about the QW/grammer guide homework.

And Henning, in the future, with your permission, instead of giving my students tests, I think I will inform them that I'm offering "Enhanced Progress Tracking Features."

for starters, I'd only ask for The Fix to be recorded retroactively on older lessons (whatever the impact on my mp3 storage), measure words to be listed along all nouns in the vocab, and this section to be searchable.

WOW! That's unbelievable! It makes me head spin just looking at it.

You ask for a Data model? The following one I did I think in March 07 in a kind of modeling delirium: ;)