Forumosa as a resource for students

[bob]

[quote=“bob”]…we could avoid the problems associated with a Learner’s Forum (I think that was the original idea) by not having one basically, and having a Business Forum instead. Target business people who generally: 1) Have money. 2) Have a job that needs doing. 3) DON’T have time to participate in a lot of online discussions or to ask a lot of dumb questions. Who most likely don’t even have time to read the forums.

With a business forum we could establish a potentialy lucrative link to the larger community while maintaining the quality of the writing and we could do that without over-burdening the moderators.[/quote]

What am I a ghost around here?

Why not CHARGE businesses a nominal sum to join a forum where they could check there business letters, advertisements, or the signs they plan to put up around the premises. If there was a service like this that was well known to the local community (which it would be after forumosa announced it to the newspapers) we might even see an improvement in the English we see around on signs and such.

At the same time there would be businesses looking for an ongoing relationship with a native speaker who over time became familiar with their business and who could help with all manner of English problems. These people would also be charged a nominal sum to join the Business Forum and would be allowed a certain number of posts before they choose a “polisher” or paid again.

This is a wicked good idea no?

[jdsmith]

[quote=“Durins Bane”]I get queasy just thinking about hordes of local students ruining, yes ruining, this site with drivel.

A linked site is just one step closer to a full scale invasion.

But if the powers that be want to set up some sort of student site then I would be very happy to volunteer Bassman’s and jdsmith’s time to help answer any questions that arise on the site. [/quote]

Thanks. :s Like I don’t have enough things to do.

I look at it from a business perspective. I like the idea of Forumosa Junior for locals trying to up their skills. Change the forum strategy: Mods start threads, guests/posters cannot. They can PM the Mod with thread ideas. Put a limit on how many posts they can make in a day
…(something I hope NEVER happens to me)
.

If possible, charge them. Then you can pay mods to help out/clarify/correct writing…etc…

I see it as a job. There is an obvious market.

One cannot fail or succeed if one never tries.

Also, the idea that locals lacking the ability to keep up will over run the site is small IMHO. They won’t be able to keep up and will get bored and leave, go to Daves cafe or someplace.

[Limey]

I’ve been thinking about this a whlie, in fact I advocated setting up a “Learning English” forum here, now having read your points of view (paticularly Toasty’s) I’ve changed my mind.

Maybe a linked site is not such a hot idea, but instead it should be a totally seperate entity. If people come here looking for help then they can easily be directed to the other site, by way of an ad or a friendly nudge when they post. I’d hate to see the "Buy a f

[Toasty]

[quote=“Loretta”]Toasty, I think you’re missing the point.

This is an expat site, and as such it tends to attract Taiwanese looking for English practise or help with their homework or other things. Some of those people contribute to the site, a great many are just nuisances.

As the site grows and becomes better-known, and as we promote the new classifieds section, then the numbers will increase.

I’m not talking about adding another service just to attract Taiwanese. I’m talking about penning them out of the way so that they don’t spoil the site. If there is a ‘forumosa lite’ then hopefully the ones who appear on the main site will be the ones who have something meaningful to say, and the rest can ask their questions well away from Bassman.

As Maoman said, there isn’t a need for it yet. We can build it when the need arises. It’s just a discussion-topic at the moment.

Yeah! Working for free is not a good idea, and no-one wants this site to become an extension of the working day. But if forumosa is to genuinely serve the ex-pat community it has to facilitate the doing of business - it has to link paying customers with service providers who need the money. You can’t do that without having English-learners around the place. How to deal with them without becoming labelled ‘unfriendly’?[/quote]

Sorry, Loretta. It is you who are missing the point. You talk as if having learners around is an inevitability. It isn’t. It definitely isn’t at the moment-- and it doesn’t need to be in the future either.

You cannot simply resort to “penning” up learners. If the proposed learners’ site is associated with this one at all, learners will frequent this one. That will change the dynamic of this site.

Again, I do not like-- nor do I believe-- the economic necessity arguments. We do not need learners around for this site to function. Some may want them to line their pockets, but let’s not pretend the site will die tomorrow if no learners are permitted. It has survived this long without them.

This site has a unique feel and culture in its current form. It’s purpose is to serve a very specific group of people. Associating the Forumosa brand with English teaching and learning will change this site. Opening this site to learners amounts to commodifying it (and its users) in an attempt to sell it to locals (come hang out with all the cool foreigners!). It will become a second coming of ICRT-- western feeling to locals, but completely repulsive to most foreigners. The day the name Forumosa becomes synonymous with English teaching is the day it ceases to serve expats. The needs of expats and English learners are not compatible.

[Jefferson]

@Loretta

But if forumosa is to genuinely serve the ex-pat community it has to facilitate the doing of business - it has to link paying customers with service providers who need the money.

I completely disagree. Forumosa serves the expat community by providing a meeting place for expats. This is a FORUM, a place where people (expats in this case) come together, mingle, share ideas, and branch off in whatever direction they choose to go as a result of that meeting.

Not everything has to be turned into a business scheme. Very few posters are primarily here to “network” in a business sense. People may ask for help from people in the same field, or look for ways to expand their working horizons, but for most posters, that’s peripheral to the primary objective for being here - that being to socialize, vent, relax, and talk about this crazy thing called life.

I think the site owners need to be extremely careful about how they’re going to generate money from this site. Some posters are already starting to feel like cattle here to generate income, and that’s not what you want. If that goes on, and the level of interference with the site’s original mission increases much more, I think you can expect a dramatic change in the nature of the site and its members’ participation.

You know what, now that I think about it, having read Ironlady’s post again, why don’t you charge companies for placing Help Wanted ads? Surely this is the most natural and appropriate way to generate money from the site. The ads are directed at ex-pats. This site is for expats. Companies, which are profit oriented, are benefiting from this service.

You could take that a step further and require posters to pay a fee for advertising their services. I know there are several threads dedicated to the advertising of some service or another. The thread starter is set to make money off the ad. Ergo, he/she is circumventing the banner ad route (which costs money) and getting free advertising. If you close that loophole, there’s another natural and appropriate revenue stream.

So if you think about it, there are plenty of non-intrusive ways to milk this cow. Just don’t mistake the posters for ole Bessie, and you’ll be fine.

[Loretta]

Jefferson, :bravo: :bravo: :bravo: :bravo:

I agree totally. I don’t want to be part of the resource that this site’s owners milk to pay for their dancing girls and Ferraris either.

You may have noticed that we’re now using the same software as tealit to host a more seperate advertising service, which will actually have a different URL for the target customers. The obvious plan is to promote the use of this service until it becomes so successful that we can charge for it, or sections of it. We can charge for teaching job ads, or we can charge for rent-a-Tetsuo ads.

This would be a great service for us, and a benefit to employers, so we all win. But it won’t be successful if no-one knows about it. So it has to be promoted.

I think there’s a danger of learners stumbling into forumosa as a result. It’s not inevitable, but we have had situations in the past where teachers have told their students to come here and practise.

The question is, if it happens, do we slam the doors and put up a sign saying ‘buy a bloody dictionary’, or do we have signs saying ‘this way’ and direct people into a suitable environment? If the latter, will it lead to an even bigger problem?

I hadn’t thought of that, which is often the problem at this site. Things get done without any real thought for the consequences. It’s good that people are exploring this a bit more deeply in advance, just in case.

Keep at it.

[Bassman]

[quote=“Loretta”]Jefferson, :bravo: :bravo: :bravo: :bravo:

I agree totally. I don’t want to be part of the resource that this site’s owners milk to pay for their dancing girls and Ferraris either.

[/quote]

Unless of course you could also get your own dancing girls and sports cars.

[ironlady]

I say, be subtle about it.
Register a separate, catchy, Taiwanese-friendly URL. Establish your English-learner-friendly site there. Encourage regulars from Forumosa who are so inclined to become a core group of mods/posters/ teachers/whatever over there. Then link and advertise on forumosa, but don’t give away the fact that the two are related.

I think that if learners are attracted to this site, as some claim, they will go to another site, too,especially if it is more learner-friendly. Heck, I’d like to read a fairly intelligent site in Chinese of that sort – the real Chinese bbs are sometimes just unintelligible to me, with all the local slang that’s used. Interesting, but I could use a guide.

[GooseEgg]

Loretta, I only said I wanted 2 dancing girls and 1 Ferrari - Maoman can keep the rest

We are using the same software as Tealit, but we are not happy with it. Folks, here’s a tip - we’ve been testing a new Forumosafieds for a couple of weeks now. And we are planning to switch over to it by the end of this month (yep, in a couple of days)

The data and input forms are still the same as Tealit (if it ain’t broke) - but this software allows us to share data more easily between the Forums and the Classifieds. So expect to see Forumosafieds continue appearing in the margins of Forumosa

[sandman]

Something that could potentially be very lucrative for forumosa would be to invite companies that need English polishing done on their business letters, advertisements etc. to submit their work to a forum where the people who are interested in that kind of work could take a crack at fixing whatever was submitted in hopes of possibly developing a more formal, ongoing, paid relationship with that company. There is quite a lot of demand for this kind of service, and for sure a lot of people who would make use of one if they knew anything like that existed.

You’re damned right they’d try to use it. I charge NT$1,200/hour for that.
If they had such a thing here I’d for sure be "taking cracks at it – turning it from Chinglish to excruciating Chinglish.
If Forumosa starts to threaten my livelihood like this I WILL fight it any way I can.
Madness. Tell you what – why don’t we have a pool of Forumosans who want to “have a crack” at teaching and can ride out to learners’ homes and give them, say, 2 or 3 hours of free tuition? That would be so cool!

[jdsmith]

@sandman

[quote]Something that could potentially be very lucrative for forumosa would be to invite companies that need English polishing done on their business letters, advertisements etc. to submit their work to a forum where the people who are interested in that kind of work could take a crack at fixing whatever was submitted in hopes of possibly developing a more formal, ongoing, paid relationship with that company. There is quite a lot of demand for this kind of service, and for sure a lot of people who would make use of one if they knew anything like that existed.

You’re damned right they’d try to use it. I charge NT$1,200/hour for that.
If they had such a thing here I’d for sure be "taking cracks at it – turning it from Chinglish to excruciating Chinglish.
If Forumosa starts to threaten my livelihood like this I will fight it any way I can.
Madness. Tell you what – why don’t we have a pool of Forumosans who want to “have a crack” at teaching and can ride out to learners’ homes and give them, say, 2 or 3 hours of free tuition? That would be so cool![/quote]

I used to have this type of job…easy as pie…me like…good

houston we have ignition…crack of the bat…first down…did I miss anything?

who is repsonsible for that quote?

[bob]

@sandman

You’re damned right they’d try to use it. I charge NT$1,200/hour for that.

Take it easy there Sandman. The way I put it had it’s flaws no doubt but what I am certain of is that there is a mountain of this kind of work going down the drain because Taiwanese don’t know how to access this kind of service.

1,200 an hour is about what I get for this kind of work too. Only problem is there isn’t nearly enough of it. Perhaps there is some way we can use Forumosa’s market prescence to 1) Make some money. 2) Improve the quality of the English we see around here.

That’s all I’m suggesting. Exactly how that would be done is undoubtably something that would require a lot of fine tuning. Charging busineses more than a “nominal sum” might be a good place to start.

[Loretta]

@bob

Perhaps there is some way we can use Forumosa’s market prescence to 1) Make some money. 2) Improve the quality of the English we see around here.

Forumosa doesn’t have a market presence, not with the local companies. It would need to be marketed, which costs money. So it’s a business venture, and someone would have to run it. Gus and Maoman are busy, so we’re looking at hiring someone or giving them a franchise to run a business on ‘our’ behalf.

Is this any different from any other bunch of translators/editors/teachers pooling some resources to market their resources more effectively? There’s no need for this to be a forumosa venture. Just get a few people together and away you go. (I’m sure many of us have though similar thoughts in the past.)

The only difference is that if this is a forumosa venture it’s open to anyone to participate. That’s all good from a democratic perspective, but it probably means that a lot of unqualified people will be jumping in to undercut everyone else in order to get the work.

What forumosa needs is a directory of forumosans who can provide different services. A sort of yellow-pages that can be established as the premier resource for finding language help, trade agents, models, patent writers, consultants, salsa teachers, software engineers, DJs, you name it.

Initially I would allow anyone to look at any listing, but in time - and this is related to the forthcoming classifieds ads service - I would make certain sections viewable only to fee-payers. Take a look at myu.com.tw as a good example.

There’s a listing of teachers available. Anyone can view anyone’s details, but you need to pay money to contact the advertiser. Now, imagine if that database was searchable. “I’m looking for someone with one year of experience, willing to work for NT$600/hr teaching kindy, available on weekday evenings.” And up pop ten names.

“I need a bilingual software engineer for a temp project, start immediately.”
“I need someone to translate my menu for my new restaurant, and make sure the sign on the disabled toilet doesn’t say ‘cripple’.”

A service like this would be great, but if it was a part of forumosa it would attract language learners to forumosa.

[bob]

Thanks for the reply Loretta. I’m not sure that anyone here quite gets what I’m saying yet though. What I’m talking about is establishing a place where Taiwanese can come and check whether their signs, name cards etc are even close to being correctly written. Piddly stuff. Tommy Lee the Tailor wants to stop people from changing their clothes next to the window but doesn’t know whether “Please don’t clothing in this area” is exactly what his sign should say, so he comes here to ask, perhaps in exchange for putting a forumosa polishing (I know I have to find a better word than polish here - otherwise it will be their poles they bring in for polishing) service flyer in his window for a month. And I don’t think it would be cutting into anybodies business to provide an answer to that question. If it was a more substantial piece of work that needed to be done than some monetary arragement would need to be made of course and this would have the effect of “increasing” the amount of work available to people like sandman.

If forumosa were to put a bit of focus on this kind of service the word would spread fast and before long and with minimal effort and expense Forumosa would have a market presence with local businesses for the simple reason that this sort of service is so badly needed. Maybe I’m wrong but judging from the amount of bad English I see going up on signs all over this country I doubt it. Why don’t we help with the easy stuff as a way getting a lot of free advertising and connection to people who need ongoing, paid support?

The franchise and the directory you mentioned would get optimum mileage out of their advertising dollar if they worked this angle… I guess that’s my point really. By offering this sort of service we could both find work and help to do something about the poor quality of English we see around the island. Other than complain about it I mean.

[Jefferson]

Loretta - I think you’re drifting in the right direction, which I think is where Bob should head as well. They’re both perfectly fine schemes in their own right - no question. But they have NO place on this site. So I suggest a few of you get together to have a private pow wow, and then keep your discussion off-line or take it to MSN chat, etc.

Forumosa is what it is. Don’t try to make it all things to all people, and don’t try to use it to launch every scheme that comes to mind. It’s a big Internet. There’s plenty of space for 2 or 3 Taiwan based business sites.

[Loretta]

Jefferson, discussions about living in Taiwan, making a living, helping people out, etc. are central to the purpose of this site.

Instead of telling people that they have no place here you should try applying a little imagination to the discussion so that you more clearly understand what people are proposing. Or maybe you should find another discussion to take part in? This one is not going to go away on your say-so.

I’m happy that there’s a forumosa calendar now, which happens to be maintained and operated by someone other than the owners of forumosa. It’s not forumosa, it’s useful, it’s presented as if it’s part of forumosa to make it accessible to forumosans.

The advertising site is not forumosa, it even has a different URL for the local community, it’s useful, it’s presented as if it’s part of forumosa to make it accessible to forumosans.

Why should bob’s proposal be any different?

Why shouldn’t ‘askbob.com’ be linked to from forumosa as one of ‘our’ activities?

Why not a language-help URL that directs to a forum at this site that doesn’t have any links to the other fora? Visitors coming in via the chinese URL need never know about the existence of the larger site, but forumosans are free to wander in and out as they see fit.

My avatar is not hosted at forumosa, but forumosa gets it from another place when it needs it. We can pull all sorts of stuff from all sorts of places and call it forumosa if we wish. We can do the reverse. We can have other sites pulling stuff from forumosa. They exist as seperate entities if aproached from one direction, but are part of forumosa if you start from here.

It seems to me that you have a pretty limited vision of how things work, or could work.

[Jefferson]

Don’t try to put this on me Loretta. The majority of posters in this thread are against your idea, for reasons stated perhaps more eloquently than mine.

I realize this site is multi-faceted, and people here can pretty much discuss whatever they want, as far as I’m concerned. (Though I realize, at the end of the day, that when it comes to the direction of the site, both my thoughts and yours are bankrupt, since neither of us are site owners or partners.)

My concern is what I see as your persistent attempt to turn this site into a Frankenstein monster, typically related to the business schemes you hatch at an impressive rate. Discuss these schemes here with others - fine. Try to turn this very site into a vehicle for one of those schemes, when that very scheme threatens to destabilize the site - well, that’s just not so kosher.

In terms of linking to other sites, with external services, that’s also fine. I just don’t see any way this site can avoid cross-pollination when it comes to your current scheme, especially if this site’s staff are involved in the other project.

This isn’t an issue of imagination. It’s one of clarity of purpose and separation of non-compatible interests.

[Toasty]

My concern is that the main reason people are advocating this fundamental change to the Forumosa brand is money. It seems to be the #1 reason behind the schemes. “Capitalize,” “make some money” and so on. Making money is fine. However, this site is successful because of the people it serves so well. Associating this site’s name with English teaching does nothing for the current population of users except potentially degrade the quality of the site and-- possibly-- make a little money for a few people. This site is an expat site. It isn’t an English school. If the site loses its focus or changes too much in the wrong way, its current level of participation and success will be lost.

[Yellow_Cartman]

@Jefferson

There’s plenty of space for 2 or 3 Taiwan based business sites.

Jefferson, you really think so? I think about this a lot. Would you share why you think so rather than being someway/how “connected” through Forumosa.com?

[Jefferson]

@Yellow Cartman

[quote=“Jefferson”]There’s plenty of space for 2 or 3 Taiwan based business sites.

Jefferson, you really think so? I think about this a lot. Would you share why you think so rather than being someway/how “connected” through Forumosa - Taiwan's largest and most active Taiwan-oriented global online community in English

I would like to, YC, but my limited imagination prevents me from conceiving of how this might happen.