Most Active Commenters

ditto changye and auntie68 on the editing comments suggestion.

I will give my vote to deleting and comment editing, because I often catch grammatical mistakes in my writings ONLY after posting comments. At the same time, I will support auntie68’s suggestion about “edited by user at [time]” and “no more editing after the next comment posted” principles.

Anyway, even careless linguistic mistakes, especially in Chinese, could sometimes generate very interesting discussions and enable you to obtain a lot of warm and useful advice from both teachers and learners, which is why you don’t have to fear making mistakes here in Chinesepod!

It's just a bad thing to be higher than Bazza. (Sorry Bazza, had to say it)

@weixiao, yes it's a good thing to be on the list, yeh for you!

@Hank

True to form, you've come up with a great idea. A time limit for editing comments is brilliant! I always read my comments after I post and that 10-15 minute window would allow corrections without throwing off the thread.

I am often overwhelmed by the number of comments if I look at a lesson that is more than a few days old. I would love some way of organizing comments, i.e. only looking at the ones relevant to academic questions and answers if I want, but I don't know how that would actually be done.

I can't believe I made the list! It is a good thing...isn't it?

Or perhaps: Allowing edits -- maybe with a note eg. "edited by user at [time]" -- so long as no subsequent comments have been submitted or posted? Once the next comment has been posted, no more editing is permitted. Just an idea borrowed from BBs.

How about just allow comments to be editable up to 15 minutes after posting and then lock them down to preserve some continuity in the conversation?

I learned about Flickr the same time I learned about ChinesePod in 2006, heh. I think it was to see pictures of our wonderful hosts (uhem, i.e. Jenny) back before there were avatars. Haven't used it much though, except to see Frank's pictures, etc.

@john: I'll have to have a look at Flickr. No one seems to comment on my photos so I've tended to use it as an online archiving tool rather than a social forum. Always nice to hear where the inspiration comes from.

*sob*

sorry John, - that was below the belt :-) but......

I believe the appropriate expression is 废话!

别逗我们 -next you will be promising us a grammar guide

Thanks John, only been waiting 2 years for that option. ;)

Hey everybody... There are some good points here about the comments. Navigation and community-wise, Flickr has been an important source of inspiration for us, and I think for comments, it makes sense to continue to learn from Flickr (especially before we head down the path of "threaded comments"). What this means is: users should be able to edit or delete their own posts or comments. It never really causes havoc on Flickr, and I think there's little reason to believe it would on ChinesePod either.

However, weighting in the quality of the sources Bazza dug up, his contribution needs to adjusted upwards by a large factor. No matter how you approach it, he will be on the top of the list. And he has been consistently been up there since the dawn of CPod time.

Bazza is top of the heap for comments but on word count he probably is way down the list. Is he 'gaming' the system?!

To all of you who are in the top 20 - a very big thank you from those of us who are more or less babies when it comes to Mandarin. I know I definitely appreciate the insights and words of wisdom that all of you provide. Please keep it up

I should talk less and study more.

-RJ

First, wow, I'm still on this list even though I've been kind of mute the last week or so, as I am struggling to get myself to write my two essay's for Chinese politics and Chinese economics class... eeek!

Second, really is good to have Casie here, and to see her posting so much (looks like she is my rival on posts though, ha ha... gotta keep posting :P)

Third, on comment editing, like it was said, many forms have this. What has to done is that the post itself with have a note at the bottom saying *Editted [time/date]*. Yet what would also be nice, even if edited, one could see the original post. I haven't been using many forums except this one, so I am not sure if that last one is an existing feature. It also should be that if you've posted, and within X minutes, and no one has followed up on your post, that the *Editted* tag wouldn't be needed, etc.

I think two things that mitigate (but in no way remove) the issue of mixing up the thread are threaded comments (not sure these would be a good idea here) and the ability to quote previous posts. This way the quote would remain intact even if the original entry was modified.

The conversations on ChinesePod have a lot in comment with blogs rather than a forums. One user writes a post or article and others subsequently comment. I don't know of many blogs that allow you to correct or modify your previous comments. Please let me know if there are any as I'd be interested in seeing how they work.

@goulniky: Sorting would be a great addition. I get round this by using an rss reader, but there are some strange bugs in the links in the rss feeds whereby you often can't identify who made the original post.

I'm one of those "silent" users, content to do more reading than posting. The user feedback, especially on the language related posts, really augments my learning. Thanks and keep those post coming !

I hate to admit, but I had the same thoughts as billgloveruk, with some worry that the thread might get all mixed up.

Not sure why this should be a problem, that feature is available in most forums and doesn't create havoc.

So I'm with henning, with the additional request of displaying posts in reverse chronological order, so as not to scroll down looongs pages (at least the option to select sort order).

@henning: I almost wrote that, but then realised that there were potential downsides to allowing users to be able to make changes to their comments.

Imagine what effect it would have on the "flow" of conversation if people were able to modify their comments.

Bill: "I think Cpod is amazing."

A: "I agree."

B: "Me too."

C: "I think everyone here agrees with Bill."

Now if I was able to go back and modify my original comment to say the opposite, it would appear that A, B, and C were all in agreement with me. Probably an extreme example, but worth thinking about.

A vote for comment editing, not just for comment preview.

@Henning: Is that another vote for the ability to preview comments?

Arg.

MAU, sorry!

You can divide my number by 2, every second post is a correction.

I clearly have a lot more work to do if I am ever going to appear on one of these lists.

It would be intersting to see how many silent (but active) users there are. For some reason I remained a silent user for quite some time before I started to comment on the site. Even now I don't comment as much as I should.

henning, I'm humbled to be there, don't recall posting any mud here ;-) though that's the kind of game I love to play. In fact, I have a comment parser on one of my mashup scripts, but I don't run it systematically (tends to timeout). Incidentally, I'm about to add some word analysis stuff to my recent character analysis post.

Wow - 12887 comments in 3 months means about 140 a day.

And I'm also impresed that 1331 users posted comments - it's great to see CPod creating such a huge community.

John,

but if you add up Jenny's, Amber's, Clay's, and your posts you get a round 960 "CPod posts". And that is even more than Bazza has.

I am humbled that I am only #16.

The users make all the difference!

I guess "the most active 20%" does only include users with at least one post? How does that number look if the complete user base is taken into account (even more meaningful: numbers restricted to paying users).

Didn't goulnik post an "all-time" MUD analysis several months ago (even considering pre-V2 user-name changes?).

casie - you are a phenomenon. A native Mandarin speaker being one of the most active users at a Mandarin learning site - for the mere fun (?) of helping out clumpsy foreigners with their helpless Mandarin attempts. That is almost an overdose of altruism. But whatever reason you do that for: Thanks a lot! :)

Wow, i am one of them!

Thank you hankfdh for sharing this research.

And i found that those guys are so familiar that i can see them everywhere on Chinesepod.

Thank you guys for your interesting, useful, brilliant and innovative comments, i learned a lot from Chinesepod and you guys! I will keep on studying hard and cherish the rest of my college life(only one more week later, i will leave my college and start my internship time. )

I love you Chinesepod, I love chinese and English! I love you all the poddies!

I need to get out more. hehe