Thread: Blog feature will be disabled soon. Votes accepted.

Due to low popularity of blogs, attempts to advertise commercial products by spammers, and little original content about learning the Russian language inside blogs, I plan to shut down the blog feature until further notice. Please, vote.

Alternatively, if you consider blogs to be a useful feature and plan to run your own blog about your experiences with learning Russian, please reply with a commitment that you'll be updating your blog at least once every two weeks or more often. Thanks.

I don't care. Never been there.

Oops! I vowed not to post any longer. Sorry, it was automatically.

Then the 3rd option is for you.

I am concerned the question may be misleading for many of the people here. I understand it but, It would have been better to say: Should MasterRussian retain the blogs?

Yes
No
Don't care/unsure.

I fear people may "support" having blogs and fail to click the "oppose" option... (opposing the removal of blogs)

In New Zealand we would call this a "John Key poll".

I'd like to keep my blog. Even though I was quite busy lately, it isn't abandoned and after the holidays it will be updated much more often.

I believe that Unsure and Don't Care are two opposite things and should be voted separately .

Originally Posted by CoffeeCup

I believe that Unsure and Don't Care are two opposite things and should be voted separately .

They both display neutrality when you don't pick "Support" or "Oppose".

For all those in doubt, the question format was borrowed from a scientific poll

If you are Unsure you have some doubts (You don't need it at the moment but maybe you'll use it in future for this or that way).
If you Don't Care you don't have doubts.
For a ten scale where 0 is oppose and 10 is support I would say that Don't care is 4 and Unsure is 6.

It's a yes-no scale.
The third option is for people without a strong opinion.

Originally Posted by Chemist12

..............

In New Zealand we would call this a "John Key poll".

Ha!

I haven't posted a blog yet, but I have been strongly thinking about it. I would like the option to be available when I come around. I have a few ideas about a blog. There are so many funny things that take place while studying Russian. It would be fun to write about.

It looks like some users are interested in keeping blogs. Still there's a majority of users who don't really care and never used them. We may give it a test run and see if blogs take off with the support of users (if they fail to revive in 1-3 months there will be enough evidence about their necessity). However, there will be more precise rules as to the nature of blogs. It will have to be blogs about personal experiences with learning Russian or personal travel experiences in Russia. No reprints or copy-and-paste from other blogs/sources will be allowed in blog posts.

Я только в последнее время там создала предмет. Жалко если им будут упраздняли. Это крутая, интересная особенность. Я не бы хотела видеть эту отличительную черту искалеченная. Хочу стараться там еще раз сочинять предмет.

Originally Posted by MasterAdmin

It will have to be blogs about personal experiences with learning Russian or personal travel experiences in Russia.

Are these the only topics that should be written about?
i mean, you said :

Due to low popularity of blogs...

If they are not popular, it means they are not interesting for the users "or" users do not know what to write about.
I think you should allow more interesting topics besides what you have already mentioned , like Movies, Latest News,Travel (to anywhere including Russia), Fashion, Short stories and etc... which related to Russia somehow!
So it will be more general!
someone should take a step... and 'make' it popular!

Blogs were an experiment to see if they can complement the main subject of the site, which is learning Russian and about Russia. It looks like they don't do that at the moment.
Some forums don't enable blogs for the lack of direction in blogs. So if blogs will be off-topic or mere republishing of news found somewhere else then they don't fit the idea of the forum.

Originally Posted by MasterAdmin

Blogs were an experiment to see if they can complement the main subject of the site, which is learning Russian and about Russia. It looks like they don't do that at the moment.
Some forums don't enable blogs for the lack of direction in blogs. So if blogs will be off-topic or mere republishing of news found somewhere else then they don't fit the idea of the forum.

well yea, that's right, in that case i think it will be disabled by you, soon,you know there are many topics that can include traveling to Russia . so maybe that's why.

Several language forums I know have personal “learning log” sections where people can track their progress, get corrections, encouragements, advice, etc. It goes along the line of some goal setting research (Dan Ariely, Predictably irrational, IIRC) that when set your goals publicly the probability of success is somewhat higher than the other way around. So, I don’t believe that those who are currently planning to keep learning blogs would suffer much if your remove the fist letter ‘b’ and suggest them substituting blogs with logs instead.

From now on, the blogs will be "learning blogs". They should be about learning the Russian language and personal travel experiences to/from Russia.
Blogs are intended to track user progress, get corrections, encouragements, advice, etc.
Reprints from news sites and promotional reprints from other blogs will not be allowed. If you want latest news from Russia, you can visit Google or Yandex or RussiaToday.

I've been writing a blog for a while now. Does it fit with your criteria? No one else seems to be writing any...

Yes, your blog is wonderful. People like reading your stories and leave comments.