How can we make the forum MORE welcoming?

When I originally joined the forum, I assumed that it would just be a support forum for questions about the Welsh language. I was almost surprised at the amount of personal support and conversation going on, often between people who haven’t spoken in ‘real life’. (Of course a large number of them had, I later discovered, with local meet ups and Skype - but many people, especially new members, don’t know who knows who in real life.)

I have to say with all the nostalgia about the old forum, when I joined it 3 ½ years ago I didn’t feel any particular invitation to what seemed like rather a closed club. I was fascinated by it and posted the odd question, but mostly lurked for a very long time.

I have found it fascinating how different people express themselves and the kind of things that sometimes end up being shared. I can see that it could be quite an attractive environment if you were feeling a little isolated or frustrated in ‘real life’. But as the comments we read in the forum are only the tip of the iceberg, and anyone may reply to any aspect, we never really get the full picture. Misunderstandings can so easily arise just from something like jumping into a thread half way through, as we saw recently.

(I’ve often Skyped with someone for the first time and thought ‘Aha, so that’s who they are!’ - as no doubt they were about me too!)

Personally I’ve had quite a tough few years, with mega stress about my husband’s job, various health issues, and trying to do the best by the children. Learning Welsh has been an amazing release and anchor for me personally during that time. I sometimes think I may not have engaged with it quite so intensely if I’d been feeling happier and more balanced in other respects. And I think there are some others around here who could echo that. Not always the best state of mind for considered forum communication.

Instinctively I’ve always been extremely wary about getting too drawn into forum life on a personal level. I’ve enjoyed the discussions very much, but would feel uneasy about posting anything too personal or not directly relevant to language learning. (Although it’s amazing how much can be!) (Wonder if I’ll regret this…)

Of course it’s absolutely essential to have a forum to support the course - and particularly to support early stage members and facilitate Skype partnerships and meet ups. And it’s something really special that Aran and the others are so present and manage to engage with absolutely everyone who joins.

Then there has to be something in it for the more established members to hang around and welcome new members and help them out. (Although that happens automatically to a large extent - I had lots of questions answered here while I was doing the lessons, so it was very satisfying when I reached the level of being able to answer other people’s questions and give back a little bit.)

The forum is the life blood of the learning community, but it’s also a constantly evolving beast in itself. An open web forum will always be messy and risky to an extent. We can have guidelines, but considering the range of people active here, and probably the range of reasons for hanging around here, it’s not something you can ever be in control of.

I wonder if what I’m trying to say is that maybe I have never been completely sure of the exact brief and purpose of the forum, beyond ‘being nice’. I wonder if that could be formulated in more detail, if we are going to have guidelines at all?

Yikes, I have been rambling, sorry! Hope it’s of some interest…

I have lurked on many forums related to hobbies and such, but this is the only one I’ve ever posted on. This is definitely because of the safe and friendly feel of the forum. If I hadn’t felt comfortable enough to post early on in my learning, I’m sure I wouldn’t be a Welsh speaker now. I don’t live in Wales, I don’t know anyone who speaks Welsh, and without the ability to ask questions on the forum, I would not have continued learning. The forum as a learning support system has been really important for me. It’s also become my Welsh community, too, the only one I have. So from my own perspective, making sure this is a friendly and welcoming place is really important - how many potential Welsh speakers wouldn’t actually learn the language without it?

Because people were very kind and encouraging to me when I was starting out (and still are!), I think one of the things that makes this community “wonderful and welcoming” is that people continue to do the same. I’m happy to make sure new people get a Croeso message if I happen to be one of the first to see their post, and I try to answer questions when I can, because I am grateful to the people who did that for me. Many others do the same, and I think we all need to be aware that this is important. I think it’s hard to downplay the importance of feeling welcomed and included into a new community.

I wasn’t here when the old forum was in use, but I have gone there, particularly to read the posts in the “Asking Questions” threads. As I’ve gone through the lessons, I’ve found answers to many of my questions there. (I use the search function on this forum, but it doesn’t feel quite as useful, somehow.) I like the way that was set up, and while it seems that a conscious choice was made not to be that structured on this forum, I wonder if that part of the previous set-up is more beginner-friendly. A person could see that others have questions. too, and they might be more likely to feel like it’s okay to ask their own questions. And it’s a bit separate from all the other discussions that might seem overwhelming to a beginnner. Well, mostly - we all know how threads can wander off into other territory

@netmouse’s post resonated with me - she expressed many of the same things I might have . I think the purpose of the forum is primarily a place for people to share their learning and love of the Welsh language. It’s natural that some people have other more personal discussions, and that’s fine, as long it is respectful, doesn’t take over the forum, and is moderated the way it has been so it doesn’t get out of hand.

So, not sure that this has helped much with making the forum more welcoming, but it’s been good to think about why it needs to be the kind of place it is!

That is a much better way of saying what I was trying to explain!

Ah, Yes. I hadn’t thought of it before, but I can understand that if the existing welcoming top folder was to be restricted to “Language Questions”, with “General” being a further 2nd folder, and then the debating stuff lower down again, that might possibly serve the purpose mentioned above?

From a security point of view, I don’t think it’s a good idea to use actual names and photographs on the internet. Incidentally, the same applies to using a full name in an email address.

I also think it would be a good idea to split the forum broadly into two areas.

The first to concern Cymraeg: help with lessons; pronunciation; structures; grammar (if you must); Skyping, etc.

The second to be concerning Cymru related matters: rugby; things to see and do; recipes, and so on.

I find the Cymraeg posts very interesting and instructive. Some of the non-Cymraeg posts interest me, but, frankly, a lot do not, especially the non-Cymru related ones.

I’m sure a lot of people won’t agree with me, but I welcome that.

We’d all do well to remember the golden rules - 'wara teg and don’t argue with the referee.

To be honest, I didn’t read all posts. Too many of them to go through (sorry, my eyes suffer lately with too big load of work at my job where I’m staring onto the screen for (almost) full 8 hours) as I firstly didn’t even intend to enter into discussion because of as one who moaned most of the time at the beginning of comming here until just (let’s say) recently I didn’t feel I’m allowed (or better said I didn’t grant the permition to myself) to post in this thread because of I might have nothing wise and useful to say.

But, reading some of the first posts and gathering some of my feelings and memories form before I came to this forum (well to the old one first for that matter), made me feel I have to put a slight insert of my own in here.

First of all: don’t get me wrong, but I believe political debate is better being avoided (as it was until recently). It might be many of you are feeling that debate about Welsh language can’t go without political debate. Yes, it’s true in a way and slight discussion about policy regarding language, schools and such stuff really is unavoidable but can be lead just nicely I believe. All other political discussion (along with Brexit stuff I believe) I feel strongly it doesn’t quite belong here. The first reason is that even if the categories/topics of such discussion would be separated, they can quickly get sparkled with hard words or even insults and when sparkles spread there’s big possibility of staring fire and flaming. Don’t forget every forum has private messages which moderators don’t control and one can quickly get feeling of not being welcome bacause of flaming through private messages as well as through the threads. And after that, you know all very well that it’s hard to “renew” or “heal” everything. Private messages can’t be disabled either. Those make us community too.

And the second reason is we’re comming from allover the world and not all are equally acknowledged into all political situations and what might be jsut some “light” conversation about the matters to one person, for the other might mean different, more “hard” thing. Not all understand things equally (for example I’m not too acknowledged into English humor and quite many times I don’t get (understand) the joke provided especially if it’s written one) especilally as there’s no tone, just picture (as we in my country say). So, I would say avoiding policy as much as possible would be one of such things. We’ve got very well along in the past, why now would be different. There still are social media such as Facebook, Twitter or (even) Clecs where we can express our views a bit less restricted (what of course doesn’t mean we are allosed to be offensive there though.)

With real names on the forum this doesn’t mean you should give name and surname as a forum name especially for the people like me. I didn’t see even one Tatjana on here so why not putting my name on? It’s a name which doesn’t neccessarily disclose who of all that many Tatjana’s of this World I really am, where (exactly) I live etc. Actually there’s no fear if you write your name down. Those who’d potentially like to get your data will surely use more profined methods then your name and surely elswhere then on such friendly forum. Well, there are many people with the same name, it’s true, but a number or first initial of surname or something like that is probably just enough. We would at least know that John is really John, that Anna is really Anna (as we do for both of those brilliant people I have in mind) and that’s perfectlly enough for one to feel welcomed I believe. I agree with @AnthonyCusack that being too persistent in this surely isn’t good either. And besides: when you are signing to SSiW for the first time you have that option to change your name before you click the button “submit” (or what it is actually nowdays) so you’re not obliged to put name and surname as your username at all.

As far as concerns actual pictures. It might depend of how “brave” one person is. I for example might appear too brave to many of you but on the other hand: if you present yourself with not your picture but something else and you publish stuff on the social media (like pictures on FB, tweets about where you are and what you’re doing) then the actual profile picture can’t do any more harm than this. You have privacy settings on social media, yes, but do they really fully work? (not to scare you though but anyway).

Also as @aran once already pointed out and has written the rules about this also, I love the topic Be’ dach chi’n gwneud (I’m not sure I’ve spelled this righth though) where we can write totally in Cymraeg (although I don’t do anything what would be worthy of publishing here so I don’t post there lately), but this, along with Poet’s corner and maybe one or two more topics I agree there shouldn’t be entire posts in Cymraeg no matter we’re all learning the language. From my experience before I came on here … I was afraid to even peer into the forum because I thought all what’s allowed is Cymraeg and if one newcomer feels the same and after they finally gather the courage to “enter” the forum only to see the first thing they encounter is the whole posts in Cymraeg, could scare them away feeling they don’t know enough Cymraeg to stay and post. Fortunatelly this didn’t hapen with me (or unfortunately maybe ) but it might happen to someone less confident and more shy for sure. So I second that if you have a real desperate desire to reply entirely in Cymraeg, the translation into English should be given. Google Translate doesn’t translate all that good, believe me (you know that already though).

For the good old forum: At first I’ve missed it too, because this now is based on totally new software which works (as far as I can see it) more on the basis of instant messaging rather then phpBB software and this for it looks much more different. But there I think is no way (at last not without too much effort) the forum would look like the old one. I still run one forum based on phpBB old software (which sadly felt into more or less deep slumber unfortunately) and, to be honest nowdays when I look at it it feels rather too oldfashioned to me … If you are searching for something specific, there’s always that “magnifying glass” icon at the top right of the blue (or whatever color you have) bar, which opens the search bar. Putting a bit more specific words into it gives you quite good results what on old forum(s) usually worked quite badly. There are many ways to find things and many things to do on this forum to get stuff done faster and that’s why I’ve made all those instructions about how to do some things on this forum in Really useful ‘How to’ stuff and other great posts. I wanted this forum to be equally user friendly to all not just us more “techy” people. The instructions should be a bit updated, I know, but they’re still as usful as before.

And at the end: if people stay as friendly as they already are, then there’s not much more to be done. The real people are the community of this forum not the software and hardware. We’re people who are different, from different parts of the world with different habits but yet one common love, love for the language fo Gods - Cymraeg so let’s stay like so.

Sorry for (not too friendly in terms of lenght) long post.

Hwyl!
Tatjana

I agree, @hectorgrey. This might be a good idea. Then, if anyone doesn’t want to delve into that fractious subject, they can just avoid it.

I also agree with you that this has been a phenomenally emotional year for pretty much the world. I notice myself much more stressed than usual; and I’m sure I’m not the only one. It may very well be that, once things calm down politically (which may not happen for a while, but will eventually) it may be reflected in people’s actions. In the meantime, we’re all going to have to be just that little bit more careful about the tone of what we say.

Although I completely get what you’re going for here, @ianblandford , I’m afraid I can see an issue with this. Because I agree with you in my own case, I have used my own name; however, there may be some people on here for whom this might not be the best choice. I’m thinking particularly of our more vulnerable members (for instance, some of our fairly young).

Being in IT professionally, I just can’t help thinking constantly about security implications.

Me, too, @Richmountart. I’m really NOT a huge fan of crawling through forums; but I popped onto this one some time ago to see if I could find the answer to a question, and I’ve been here ever since. LOVE the people here and how helpful they can be!

I don’t have a lot of time to be able to contribute to the forum, or to read long threads upon it. But as far as welcoming goes - if I had a question about the language, or needed some encouragement for my hit and miss attempts to become a natural welsh speaker, then this is the place I would come. I would always be able to rely on support from fellow learners and speakers here (whatever their political or religious leanings… )

I would always be able to rely on support from fellow learners and speakers here (whatever their political or religious leanings…

I totally agree @robscully. My point is that I don’t need or want to know what “their political or religious leanings are” .

On your point here, I’d like to emphasise that this post is for everyone! Personally I see this thread as embodying Aran and Iestyn’s repeated mantra about mistakes. It’s is not a place to be scared of mistakes but a chance to make them in peace and comfort

Everyone in there will make mistakes, just as we all make slips in English on this forum. So please don’t feel you can’t write in that post. I’m directing this at everyone Tatjana, not just you

Yes, but some of us used a pseudonym until the new forum came in and our pseudonym was replaced with our real name without any choice being involved.

Hmmm … If I remember correctly, I was on the old forum too, but I wasn’t automatically trnsferred on here though. I had to choose username and PW separately for the forum and for the site and the name also if I still remember well.

For all: there was oldold forum based on phpBB, then there was old forum (I’m not quite sure on what based that one but I know it looked a bit different) and then there was new forum which was some time ago updated with new version of software aswell. I believe it depends on which of them you’ve signed first.

And, to be honest, I requested of changing my name also because I misslooked that part where you can put in another username before submiting the signin form so it was rather silly NameSurnamePseudonim thingy.

And besides … I just have written my thoughts not to “demand” from anyone to do as I say (hope I am not missunderstood (as I was numerous times before)).

Well, @AnthonyCusack I didn’t want to point out things about mistakes but just that one who has practically zero knowledge of the language yet and sees only Welsh posts might be scarred off, not because one would do mistakes but because they can’t understand a thing (yet). This was my issue too. I could guess/googletranslate/searching for words to be able to understand one or two sentences or expressions but surely not the whole post as such so I rather didn’t try to enter at all. That’s the point I wanted to make here.

It’s also not the thing that I don’t post in “Be’ dach chi’n gwneud” topic because I might make a mistake. I finally have learnt to mostly ignore them or notice them and go further. But I simply have nothing interesting to tell so why burden this forum with my uninteresting posts … (oh, boy, they’re always too long anyway ).

I know this, don’t worry. I understand you perfectly. (at least one thing I really understand these days. )

Personally, I quite like the extra stuff (Posts written in the Welsh language, opinions, etymology, grammar, learning progress, pictures whatever) as being complementary / secondary to the main forum on lesson questions. I’m totally ok on politics, religion, even cats as it keeps me off Facebook. However, I fully appreciate that the extra stuff may need to tucked away into a separate “discussion lounge/members unleashed” section and that participants we will need to be sensitive.

Completely agree that the Welsh only posts should be additions and not te bulk of the forum

Sorry about that, Raymond - it certainly wasn’t deliberate from our side of things - sounds like a hiccup in terms of which field the forum used for your username. But I can change it for you if you like…

Having tried but not altogether succeeded in ploughing through all the posts on this thread. I have one or two comments which I hope will be taken in a constructive manner, because there may be something which could be construed as a criticism. I’ll come to that in a while.

First of all we need to get back to the basic question of what the forum is for. There may have been a guiding principle when it was set up and I would imagine it was that the forum should help and encourage learners and to answer their questions as they work their way through the three levels and to enable more experienced speakers to offer help and advice.

To do this it does need to be welcoming, simple to navigate and overall, true to its purpose. So, and here I come to my first point of , not exactly criticism, but of observation. If I had come onto the forum in my early days of learning and had seen often fairly long posts, some of them in Welsh, I would perhaps have been put off, thinking it to be rather elitist. So, first suggestion, how about banning all posts in Welsh (Counter-intuitive I know but important) I know this has been the intention but I have seen a few in the recent past

Secondly, having, as I said failed to work my way all through this thread, I haven’t seen a great deal of useful guidance as to how the forum should evolve but very many over long posts.So, as an aid to niceness and reduce the tedium, how about limiting each post to say five hundred characters, and each thread to twenty five posts? Should anything useful come out of any particular thread which needs further discussion it could go into a new thread.
I believe that such a format would mean that more people would be inclined to read more thoroughly the threads that interest them than perhaps they do now.
Sorry that’s a lot more than five hundred characters, so you see my point?

I understand your point about limiting posts. However, that could cause a few things: people being put off asking, because a post has closed but they don’t feel the question is answered. They could start a new post but that’s more intimidating. Secondly, it looses some of the community development. Yes the primary reason for this Forum is to help people learning. Part of that goes hand in hand with community development. People feel more connected to the language if they feel they have friends and an emotional attachment. This is enhanced by the forum. If you feel part of the community here you’re more likely to ask for help. Otherwise this would simply be an FAQ page.

Some of this is mentioned above, so consider this a vote for/against

• A political discussion section will likely lead to more discussion that needs to be actively moderated

• Real names and user pictures make a forum feel less anonymous, and hence more welcoming

• For people with security concerns, at least pick a human name. It just feels nicer to say Hi Bill, rather than Hi bumblingbadger55

• I would like a little more structure e.g. the lesson specific topics that used to exist

• There is good stuff that happens at the moment when it comes to welcoming people - there are often “welcome to the forum” messages posted by a number of users. Perhaps recognise and reward that behaviour to encourage other users to get involved in a similar way.