[Tlhingan-hol] Beginner's Grammarian: The hunt is on

[qurgh lungqIj]

On Tue, Nov 10, 2015 at 6:09 AM, Lieven <levinius at gmx.de> wrote:

> Am 10.11.2015 um 03:56 schrieb qurgh lungqIj:
>
>> One of the reason the old BG line was broken, was that there wasn't
>> enough traffic on the list to warrant a new BG.
>>
>
> For anyone interested: I made an anlysis of the traffic simply based on
> the archive, right here:
> www.klingonwiki.net/En/EmailDiscussionForum


That's good info. Back when the BG was going strong we got at least 5000+
messages. The position seems to have died when we dropped down to around
2000.

I'd be interested to see membership levels over the same time period.
Unfortunately we don't have access to any of that kind of data.


> in activity due to qunnoQ and the new words has been great, is it really
>> enough to warrant a new BG?
>>
>
> Yes. I would say it is, even with very few beginners, there should be
> someone appointed to welcome these. Even if traffic slows down, even with
> only one newbie in one month, there should be someone to say hello. What
> can happen? A workless BG will not starve to death.
>

True, but is a workless BG worthy of the title of "Grammarian" after
helping three or four people over a year? I (and others) have helped way
more people than that for the past two years in the "Learn Klingon" group.
If we are going to tie a title to dealing with a workload, then that
workload needs to be equal for each participant in my opinion.



> We've seen recently what should be avoided by a BG: beginners ask a
> question and either get ten answers at once, or none at all. That's  why we
> need a BG.


Except that when I mentioned this same thing on Facebook, Qov said
something along the lines of "It's good for them to get multiple answers,
then they know it's not being made up" so there appears to be counter
arguments to this part of the BG paradigm. I also think that multiple
different descriptions of the same thing is very helpful for a student, as
it gives them multiple view-points to look from. We also have enough people
that each one of the four beginners that have recently raised their hands
could get their own, personal, BG. Why dump all the work on one person? If
the goal is to help people learn, then giving them one-on-one service seems
like it would be them most efficient system.



> People just don't use mailing lists the way they used to
>>
>
> That's true, it's almost an oldfashioned way of communication, many prefer
> facebook which they can use o  their phone, instead of an email account you
> need to log in or use a special software on your computer.
>

Here's what a new student looking to learn Klingon said about mailing
lists: "Wow, a mailing list - makes me feel like using Windows 95 or
 something!"

Also we just had someone ask for the Facebook group as it would seem they
prefer that format.


>
> Nevertheless, it still has more advanteages than Facebook, eespecially
> archiving and searching treads.


Facebook groups have both archiving and searching. They do keyword
searching just like we do on the KLI site.



> Facebook group has over 900 members and adds more weekly).
>>
>
> Although many people join groups only because "Hey look, I'm in a group".


That argument was true for this list for many many many years. Just look
through the archives for all the spam. Also look through it for all the
"How do I get off this list?" messages from people not reading the intro
message. We also had to deal with people subscribing others to the list. At
least with Facebook you can see every person that is joining and they have
to be approved, and spam is quick and easy to deal with. In fact, being the
BG might be easier on Facebook, since they could send a personalized
private message to each person as they join.



> While the BG role has been very important in the past, perhaps we should
>> look at other ways to use the list in lieu of new students.
>>
>
> I still think that it's good to have somebody "in charge", so that newbies
> know where the teacher is. Just somebody who is "always around", someone to
> trust.


I have no issue with someone being in charge. In fact, I've been looking
for someone to take on the running on this email list for over a year (with
no luck, so I've been doing that too), although by "in charge" you really
mean "keeping an eye on the messages and responding to certain things".
Technically this list could disappear tomorrow and there's nothing any of
us could do about it.

qurgh
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