Idea about new forum structure and expansion

[MasterAdmin]

We are thinking of putting all existing topics in ONE forum called "Russian language" and adding three or four forums for other languages. In other words, all the threads from sections like "General discussion", "Pronuciation and accent", etc. will be placed in one new section "Russian language" that will NOT have further subcategories. It will simply have all the threads about Russian in one Forum. So the new home page will look like this:

Site community
-------------------
Russian Language
German Language
French Language
Spanish Language
Japanese Languge

And when you click on, say, "Russian Language" there will be a bunch of posts about Russian without further categorization. And when you click on "German language", there will be a bunch of posts about German only, and so on.

Here is an example of the structure: http://www.webhostingtalk.com The site has a different topic, but you should get an idea. If you compare, then "Web hosting forum" will be "Russian language", "Dedicated server forum" will be "German language" and so on.

We need your opinions. Thank you!

[Alaskan]

Honestly, do you think there is enough support for it? It sounds clique (sp?), but if you spread yourself too thin you end up being bad at everything, it may get cluttered as well. If that is what everybody wants then that’s fine I guess.

Also, the domain name does not really lend people to think this site has more than Russian. If expansion is what you are looking for maybe have links to forums like this one but for their perspective language? I like your temple layout for this forum - use that? Just an idea…

[MasterAdmin]

I forgot to mention, that there will be a new generic domain and this site will go to a sub-section of the new domain.

New site
-----------
masterrussian.net
German Language
French Languge
Spanish Language

And there will be more moderators for support.

[Alaskan]

As with all things in life, change is not always easy. I just don't want to see what I have liked so much about this forum be lost. As long as the proper care is taken (it sounds like there has been a lot of thought on this), then it sounds positive.

[waxwing]

As you describe it, it sounds like a bad idea.
If you want to extend the forum to other languages, that's one thing; but why does that necessitate the removal of the current structure for Russian? Wouldn't it be preferable to add the same structure (Grammar, Pron. etc.) for the other languages?
If you just have one big fat 'Russian' forum then there'll be a *lot* of posts and things will get lost in the noise. The structure is one of the things I really like about this place. I doubt I'm the only one.

The general idea of making this just one of several websites for different languages - well that's entirely different. I've got nothing against that.

[Tu-160]

I think the idea is not very good. I have nothing against creating a new forum for other languages, but it will be very inexpedient to stop support for Masterrussian. My arguments come from the theory of public relations (though I am not a specialist). There is word «позиционирование» in Russian (obviously from English «positioning»). Shortly it is set of requirements and needs which must be satisfied by goods or services. The narrower positioning the more originality acquire goods or services. And like in commerce, a consumer will probably choose, for example, antivirus of a company that all its life has been developing only antivirus products rather than of a company that develops both antivirus, text processor and games. Masterrussian forum has very narrow positioning (satisfy needs in learning Russian) comparing with the future project which has very wide positioning (satisfy needs in learning Russian, English, German and so on), and a consumer (internet user) might expect from Masterrussian forum more quality of teaching than from a section «Russian language» inside a big multilanguage forum. Beyond this Masterrussian is unique forum in the whole Internet. I don't think one can find another so powerful and convenient forum that teachs Russian. If we put Masterrussian inside another forum it will lose all its uniqueness and it will become just «one multilanguge forum among many others». Because of this it will be much more difficult to make this forum popular taking into account its wide positioning and the absence of any originality.

[Mile-O-Phile]

I'm relatively new here and like the idea...to an extent.

I don't see why you can't have the categories like Russian, German, French, etc. and then have condensed sub-categories such as:

• General Discussion[/*:m:3c16jjdp]
• Translation & Vocabulary[/*:m:3c16jjdp]
• Grammar and Pronounciation[/*:m:3c16jjdp]
• (the native country of the language) - Travel, Culture, and History[/*:m:3c16jjdp]

This way you can limit the number of forums per language requiring moderation/administration and also remove those from this forum that have not proven themselves to be of much use (i.e. Word of the Day, Tip of the Day, Immigration to [insert country here].

I stumbled across this forum after first visiting what I believe is the only real multi-lingual forum site at
Language Exchange on the internet thus far. And that site is horrible: poorly designed, does not have support for other non-Latin languages although it has many users from those countries looking to contact others, and charges a fee to contact other users. Even its numerous forums are subject to extreme moderation in that when you make a post it takes 24 hours to appear on the site while thy check it. There was somebody wantng to learn Russian and I said what I was using to get started (i.e. Penguin, this site, BBC Russian Service, other online resources) and gave a link to this forum. The post never appeared.

So, that site does not cater for users as it has so many people wanting to find someone willing to help them with language, ask translations, etc. but because few people pay very little comminique can happen.

It's your forum - ultimately you have to do what you want, and do what makes sense.

[Jasper May]

Nooooo! Please, if you really want to create forums for other languages, use other urls like 'mastergerman.net', 'masterchinese.net' etc. and maybe put links to them from one central site called 'www.masterlanguages.com'
Don't mess with the structure of masterrussian.net.

[joysof]

Don't mess with the structure of masterrussian.net.

Agreed. It's lovely as it is.

[Pravit]

I think it would be wonderful to add forums for other languages but I do find it a terrible idea to remove the current structure of MasterRussian. Other forums that I have been to that don't have categories just have tons of threads all over the place and it's easy to lose your own thread after only a day or so. If you could just maintain the current structure and add other stuff, it would be great.

Now, how about keeping MasterRussian as it is but adding Arabic, Chinese, German and so on as subtopics of MasterRussian? That way you can stay focused on MasterRussian but expand as you wanted to - plus you can see if people will actually go for it. If they do, you can then expand the forum which seems to be receiving the most activity and so on.

If you are going through with this, PLEASE add a MasterArabic and a MasterChinese! You'll be my hero! That is, even more so than you already are!

[Barbara]

What are you trying to accomplish and what is your motivation, MasterAdmin?

Are you proposing to separate native speakers of German who wish to learn Russian from native speakers of Spanish who wish to learn Russian from native speakers of English who wish to learn Russian...by having a different forum for each native language?

Currently, you have native speakers of many other languages from diverse cultures who have a common wish to learn about Russia and the Russian Language. They also learn a fair amount about each other in the process.

I haven't voted yet, but right now I'm vacillating between "bad" and "awful" (if I've understood you correctly). I value the cultural and linguistic diversity of the forum as it is now.

For now, what if you simply created threads for "Spanish/Russian", "Arab/Russian", etc.? I would prefer you show me the demand before lumping all the forum topics together in the masterrussian.net forum.

What is your goal, MasterAdmin?

Thanks for the opportunity to comment.

[MasterAdmin]

Thanks for comments, everyone.

waxwing: the forum script would not allow to make sub-categories for each language forum. We can do is similar to http://www.webhostingtalk.com -- that is a category full of individual threads all in each forum. We can also several sections like "Site community" now for each of the languages. That will be a hell of a forum though.

Tu-160: I agree with niche positioning. That's a good point worth considering one more time (yeah, I thought about it already :)

Mile-O-Phile: forum script limitations as I said before. Plus it would be too much clicking (3-4 clicks) to get to the part of the forum that you are interested in.

Jasper May: I thought about your idea too. But first of all, it would be too much money to buy all masterXXXXX domains. Second, most of them are already taken for resale. If we were to make the structure like you described we would simply register something like "msn.com" (but available) and had subdomains "russian.msn.com", "french.msn.com", "masterrussian.msn.com" and so on :)) By the way, you said "not to mess with structure" but what is you idea of masterrussian.net structure right now? And how do you see it related with .com domain?

Pravit I don't think it is acceptable to add other languages staight to the Russian forum. This way the focus on Russian will be lost. It would be a big off-topic forum. Besides that, there will be no sequels under masterXXXX name. If there are some then name will be totally different, but that's technicalities.

Barbara No, I'm not going to separate foreigners learning Russian by the country of their origin. The goal is to add several more forums for learning other languages besides Russian.

[Barbara]

Smooth, MasterAdmin. (I really don't want to see this in the next Newsletter, though. ) Your response was somewhat enlightening, but will you please tell me how I earned this particular honor?

[Mile-O-Phile]

Mile-O-Phile: forum script limitations as I said before. Plus it would be too much clicking (3-4 clicks) to get to the part of the forum that you are interested in.

..the goal is to add several more forums for learning other languages besides Russian.

Sorry, that's what I meant by sub-categories.


I still think some forums can be condensed as they just don't receive enough attention.

[EffMah]

Could you just take the main header for each of the sections, such as "Site Community", "Your Daily Progress", and "Site Specific" and change them to to different languages, e.g. "Russian", "German", "French", and then you could just leave each area the same, such as "General Discussion", etc.

You could just make the same subsections under each little header "German">"General Discussion" (all viewed on the same page)

This way we can keep the same structure, as I never even look at that "Site Community" header anyway. The forum index would be one long page though, but I'm sure no one would mind scrolling down a little to find the language they want to learn.

[Mile-O-Phile]

Like the forum on this site I've stumbled across? It seems quite new (although it has over 1,000 members) as there's little discussion that I can find. There's nothing much on it, anyway. It's got one hell of a painful navigation system.

[EffMah]

No, just replacing the main headers "Site Community" with different languages. You can go to "General Discussion" of any language from the forum index.

[Mile-O-Phile]

Я понимаю теперь. :P

[EffMah]

In case someone else didn't understand, this is what I mean.

http://jerriko.net/images/perhaps.jpg

That's the gist of it, I didn't want to put all the current categories in there because the image would have bee too big.

[VendingMachine]

What makes this forum superior to most others on learning Russian, is that it has categorization. I have been around a number of other similar forums and I can say that this one is the most well organized and the most well run. For my money, I think it'd be best if the current structure was preserved.