Dear Freddie,
I think I should fill you in a little about the forum so that you understand and may be able to offer some constructive help with our present and newly arisen problems.
I'm not responsible for the stars. In fact, I'm just a simple member of the forum like you. There are others here, also unpaid volunteers, who have accepted much more responsibility in order to keep the forum running. Three of them are either overworked on their paid jobs now, so they have had to temporarily back off, and one is away from the forum on a trip. The last one is nobly and sacrificially carrying on doing a darn good job. If we didn't have him, I don't know what we would do. Hongen doesn't take any responsibility for the forum beyond keeping the servers going and allowing it to continue, so far as we can see.
In the case of the *** post to which you referred: it is my impression that posts are marked for other things besides good English. Personally, I agree with doing this.
We promise everyone who writes here a safe and friendly place, with no humiliation, or laughing at mistakes. Your frustrated comments were too caustic. I think you probably hurt the writer and scared others. I hope you will offer future thoughts in an encouraging way, so as not to scare timid, new people. Some of our best writers were once new, timid, and not very capable with their English.
We have a full range of English writing abilities ranging from those who are making their first stumbling attempts, to those whose writing is accurate and polished.
We also have a wide range of ages and educational levels. A few of our most able people here are completely self taught. Others are teachers of English at various levels in the Chinese educational system. We have a vast range of people here from engineers, physicians, lawyer, military people, computer programmers and others in that field, accountants, tourism experts, agents of various kinds, businessmen with their own businesses; to school boys and girls, beginning students of English who are about fourteen years old, have never held a job, and as yet still have a small range of life experiences.
There are people here from all over your vast country of China, as well as some of your overseas students and four or five native English speakers.
There are those here who were born and grew up in areas as divergent as your largest cities, and your small, remote country villages.
There is similarly a large difference in income. Some people here communicate from net bars, some from their places of work in thier small spare time, or after working hours, others write from university facilities, and some from their own offices and businesses. Some use the finest equipment available anywhere, because they can afford to have it, and they love and understand electronics.
All of this must be taken into account when considering this four year old forum. It was founded by Canuck when he was still employed by Hongen. If you would like to explore a little of its past, when you have time again, please go into the search function to see the large numbers of high quality posts in the past from people like Dave36china, or Linda, or posts from people who travelled abroad. Among those, Cobra's travels through Europe on a special study tour are particularly interesting and informative.
I think some teachers have recommended the forum to their young students, so recently we have been rather overwhelmed by large numbers of young people who are beginners. As long as they don't post in Chinese they have been accepted. Andy's Comments is for those who still can't post in English or need to ask questions in Chinese.
I've been feeling a little overwhelmed lately, myself, by all the needy newcomers who ask me for help. That's why I've finally laid down a few rules. I'm a busy woman myself, writing from Canada. I see this as a contribution to a great people who are rising to take their rightful place in the world, and possibly as a wise and mighty force for peace. I hope I'm right. In any event, I find the quality of the hearts and personal philosophies of life of people here to be good, so I'm attracted to stay to help out.
You are right. There should be no chat group English here. There should not be interpersonal conversations. We should all talk with each other. Everybody should feel free to take part and reply to any post. Interpersonal conversations can take place by message string and maybe later, by email, but *never* here on the forum. I think personal messages back and forth should be discarded by the forum hosts. They take up the time of the rest of us, and clutter up the forum.
I hope the host will take your complaints and my remarks seriously. I hope there will be discussion here by interested and capable people about how we can bring the forum back to what it was a short while ago. It is slipping away a little lately, due to the things I've mentioned. The more these uninteresting little back and forths proliferate, the more that capable people will decide they can't spend their time and energy wading through them.
Warmly, as ever, Mary writing from Canada
