New forum

[Anthony]

It's been awhile since my last post but I really like this new setup, straight and to the point. Just go to the designated forum and post away, nice.

[Anonymous]

I agree. Let's congratulate the web-admin!

[Anonymous]

Thanks!

When we split it up into all the sections, we were initially trying to make more sense of the several thousand messages posted and enable people to really use the contributed information as a resource.

We are still a bit worried about it becoming confusing for people to know where to post and easy for contributors to check the most recent messages. Thanks to the good advice of others, we added/adapted the "this weeks' posts" that will hopefully make it easy for contributors to check out what has been going on recently.

How about the number of categories? Do you feel that there are too many, not enough, it's ok as it is???

[franck]

Dear Admin,

What about being automatically warned by email when people add messages to the thread
one is participating?
Like www.tek-tips.com 's forum.

Just an idea.

Have a good day.

[Anonymous]

Personally, I think there are too many different forum categories, but, i'm a slacker. So maybe it's just me!

[franck]

Hello again.


At first sight, the huge amount of categories may look
confusing, but this is partly fixed thanks to the "this weeks' posts"
button.

Still, I would see the "mail alert" like a great enhancement.
Upon your request, you could even receive mail alerts when comments
are added to threads in which you have closer interest.
Thus, you would only have to click on a URL inside the mail in order
to jump to the full thread.
With this feature, even lazy people like me could participate actively
to those forums.

Someone agree?

[Anonymous]

Thanks for pointing that out, Franck. I added the automatic reply function to the forums. Please let us know if you have any other requests.

[franck]

Dear Admin,

Because you said any advice about the forum would be
welcome, I would like to take the opportunity to
submit a special idea to you:

I've noticed that the forum is separated into two main
pieces: a forum in Japanese and another one in English.
What about mixing English and Japanese messages
together?

I've been to the Japanese site, and it looks like english
speaking people almost never interact with Japanese people "the
way it should".

What I'm trying to say is that having a single multilingual forum would
bring the following:
- Japanese could participate more actively to the forum
even if they can't write english.
- Better exchanges could be possible between Japanese people
and foreigners (ex: short term house exchange, translation
services, pen pals, etc etc...).
- Foreigners who have a fair knowledge of Japanese could improve
their skills. And "vice versa".
- More accurate information could be gathered.

Of course this couldn't be done without knowing the reason why
there are only a few Japanese who visit the forum.
I am sure they are many Japanese who would like to go overseas
and who would like to ask plenty of questions to people like us
in their language.

I hope this message won't bother you.
Have a good day!

[Anonymous]

Hi Franck,

Thanks for the comments. On the old site the forums were shared by both the Japanese and the English site; however, with the redesign of the site they have, indeed, been split up. This was not done on an intentional, permanent basis, but on a temporary basis. We are currently in the process of revamping the Japanese site as well, and once complete will reintegrate to at least some extent shared forums.

Thanks again for the feedback!