My Only Wish Here
My only wish here is that, someday the new feature added to this forum should be removed.
The most troublesome thing is, when you enter the forum, you cannot see those titles of root articles any more. Instead, the “top topics” jump into your eyes; top topics that are decided by masters, which you may agree on, you may not. You may like it, or you may not. It’s none of your business.
The column of root articles used to be very exciting. When you open the page, you can always find immediately which article has got new responses and which topic is in heat. It may be still exciting, but the excitement has been greatly hampered by the annoyance that bigger half of the page is now covered with what you do not want, and by the inconvenience of having always to pull the slider to seesometimes even a new article.
Is it all right to add such a column so that masters can choose hot topics for us? Quite not necessarily, in my opinion. Hot topics always come up by themselves; they can never be decided upon, and there’s no need to decide. In this forum, once an article becomes a hot topic, it will remain the top of the “root articles” and will get enough responses to list itself among the “history hot topics”. It’s really imprudent to take the limited space repeating something.
With her statement “it provides us with convenience encouraging members to write well-written, discussible articles”, Jenny explains the main purpose of the newly added column that is looming on the top. But as I have argued, all participants as a whole decide whether an article is “discussible”, rather than a certain one person, even though he is the master. And are masters sure they will choose “well-written” articles for us? Judging by Canuck’s way of issuing stars, he won’t at least.
Here please allow me to digress a little, dear friends. Canuck’s stars seem to go always to articles that reveal tender feelings involving things such as, in short, love. He tends to neglect our expectation of him to pick out “well-written” articles for us. He doesn’t seem so aware of how we are striving when learn a foreign language and how we want to make use of every minute, even when we’re reading forum articles. We want to read those well-written ones so that we can learn at the same time. He continues to let his stars mislead some readers, as well as some writers, though his stars have little influence on me. I can click and decide whether I can learn something from an article or not in seconds. But there often come many who cannot. What a pity it is for one to spend much time and effort struggling through all those confusing words and expressions and grammatical errors and assume he’s reading a wonderful article!
Now, let’s come back to the point. It’s of course a good idea to have a certain place where we can put notices or conduct special forum activities. But since the main function is doubtful, I think it’s wasteful to set aside space specifically for notices or special events. They do not often happen after all. If there are any, the few important notices can catch full attention by being re-posted and all activities can be enjoyed within the former framework.
The newly added box, which is at the top and weighs down all others, is also supposed to encourage writers. But I think, with the stars from the master, the number of clicks and responses from readers, and the fact that his article remains active among the history topics, no writer can be more encouraged. Glowie’s “Campus Story” can serve as an example. Ask Glowie if he would be more encouraged if you put his article in the top topics area for a number of days.
In short, the new design is quite unnecessary. It can do nothing more than complicate the page and cause stagnation, as the same article will now remain there for several days. Few people would like to wake up and face the same thing the next day.
What upsets me most may be that, by adding such a column, masters will subject us a bit more to their own will.
Well, what do you think, dear friends?
Charles Chen
