Update on the SpanishDict Forum
Hi everyone,
Our aim at SpanishDict is to provide a friendly, educationally-focused atmosphere where people can practice and learn Spanish and English.
Over the past couple months there has been some discord among the moderators on the site. The team of users that have given their time and energy so generously to the site started to fall out of favor with one another and several of our moderators decided to stop participating. It is unfortunate that much of the disagreement was due to feelings of disrespect and personal conflicts. In the personal conflicts, the focus on practicing and learning together seems to have been lost.
We are going to try to start afresh, and refocus on the core of what makes this forum great, which are people coming together to communicate and help one another with language learning. For the time being, members of the internal staff at SpanishDict—Paralee, Stuart, Martha, and myself—are going to work together to moderate the forum. We are also going to develop new guidelines, processes, and criteria for moderators. Over time, we intend to select additional moderators from the community. The atmosphere of learning that we all seek is kept together by good moderating.
We all are looking for a place to practice and learn a new language. This will require each of us to abide by some simple rules. These are now posted here: SpanishDict Forum Rules. These are the rules that the moderators will enforce.
I wanted to say thank you for all the time and energy our moderators have generously provided in the past. In particular, I am grateful for all the work that Heidi has put into the site.
I understand that many of you will be upset by this news. And for all those people that sent in comments—even if we didn’t agree with you—thank you for taking the time to share your opinion.
I can say with confidence that this forum will continue to be a truly great place to practice and learn a new language.
Thanks,
Chris
25 Answers
Having experienced and witnessed nothing but professionalism and the highest standards of fairness and friendliness from the moderators of this website, your statement seems to be a solution in search of a problem.
Our aim at SpanishDict is to provide a friendly, educationally-focused atmosphere where people can practice and learn Spanish and English.
Was this not already the case?
The team of users that have given their time and energy so generously to the site started to fall out of favor with one another and several of our moderators decided to stop participating.
Wouldn't it have been easier (and far less likely to result in an uproar) to replace them with other deserving members of the community, rather than the wholesale revocation of ALL moderator privileges? This statement implies that the moderators who did not stop participating are directly responsible for the loss of those who did.
The atmosphere of learning that we all seek is kept together by good moderating.
Removing your most valuable moderators is not conducive to a good atmosphere of learning, especially when their loss will directly result in the loss of many valuable and productive non-moderator members.
In particular, I am grateful for all the work that Heidi has put into the site.
Why not say thanks with a paycheck and a job offer instead of a swift boot to the rear?
I can say with confidence that this forum will recover and again become a truly great place to practice and learn a new language.
I was not aware that the forum was in decline, nor that it was no longer a great place to practice and learn a new language. I must not be paying enough attention.
Well, Christopher..
It is a misfortune that an administrative decision, like the one you have just stated, has been made to "correct" a language site and a forum of participants when a "correction" was never needed in the first place. The uniqueness of this forum lies in the fact that we have persons like Heidita and Lazarus who have a passion for what they do and are genuinely concerned about the participant's progess in learning. In addition, there has always been a reliable and encouraging support here constantly helping us to reach our goals in language proficiency. We, the current users of this language site, have forged indelible bonds and have shared knowlege and experiences unselfishly due to the spark that Heidita and others have ignited in this warm, learning environment. You are truly making a serious mistake in your attempt "to revamp" this site without acknowledging and collaborating with those who have been here from the beginning and know what they are doing.
Chris - Thanks for this thread.
Let me introduce myself. I am one of your Phrasebook moderators, and have been for 2 years. I do not believe that we have ever had the pleasure of communicating. I am sorry to hear via a thread posted to the entire SD community that I am no longer a moderator.
You are a talented man with a great site here.
I enjoyed spending hours correcting and proofreading thousands of phrases for you.
Sincerely, Mountaingirl.
I am sorry to hear via a thread posted to the entire SD community that I am no longer a moderator.
That sort of sums it up to me. What sort of management is it that cannot even inform people personally of a change in their status?
You really are treating us like mushrooms. I have enough of that from the management at work. I don't need it in my free time.
I can say with confidence that this forum will recover and again become a truly great place to practice and learn a new language.
Well, 
If I have to explain what's funny about that excerpt, you don't know what really happened here...
Recover from what? Who's done the damage so far?
None of you are active on the forum. How do you expect to be able to moderate it? You haven't the faintest idea the amount of work and effort our moderators put in. Heidi is behind a huge number of threads and activities she never puts her name on, and she was the glue that kept everything together.
I understand running a website like this is a lot of work, but we have built a community here under your nose with the platform you made and you have torn it apart by seeing us as user statistics and ignoring individuals.
Youtube and Twitter wait until all reported bugs are gone before releasing new versions of their site, then they release to 20% of the users and pay close attention to the feedback, fixing as they go, before they release it to everyone. This is how they avoid destroying the communities that form on their sites and having their most loyal users leave.
All of this could have been avoided if you had just kept them informed and treated them with respect instead of treating them as blow ins and upstarts who had the cheek to feel a sense of ownership for your site just because they had worked so hard on it.
I'm leaving with them, too many friends are leaving and it would be a betrayal to them to stay, anyway they're the reason I kept coming back. There are other boards for learning Spanish. Good luck seeing people's questions get answered if there's nothing to keep intermediate and advanced learners coming back.
My friendds here can find me on skype! flip.flop.a.dop
I also was, along with Mountaingirl a Phrasebook moderator and a member of Spanishdict for more than 4 years.
My moderator status has also been cancelled. I realized it when I went today to the phrasebook to review and approve some phrases. I hope they find somebody capable to perform this task. It's not an easy one.
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I was thinking on deleting my profile, but I will keep it just as a way to have access to PMs. This way I will be able to to stay in contact with other members.
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I guess you would not be seeing me very often. I have really enjoyed being part of this forum, but I'm afraid it is going to change. I hope I'm wrong, but I don't like the motives I suspect are behind this change.
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Time will tell if I'm mistaken.
(With all due respect...)
Sorry, but I cannot say it enough--
I still think you all are making a mistake here.
You have some very big shoes to fill, and I honestly don't think you guys can do half as good of job as Heidi did... (Sorry!) If I were you, I would be on my knees begging her to moderate the forum again.
I wish I shared your confidence that the site will recover from this........possibly, we will see. But speaking for myself I feel we have been betrayed. This was a great site once.
If the community moderators are gone, this site is going to lose a lot of it's appeal.
I am fairly new here, but I've had a chance to look around. One of the most valuable resources this site has is the knowledgeable, friendly, and helpful community with the desire and ability to police itself. The opportunity to learn from reading actual conversations of articulate people communicating in both Spanish and English is extremely beneficial to a beginner like myself. Couple that with the ability to respectfully join in at will, and receive guidance, correction, and encouragement from people who actually care, and who know what they are talking about, and you have an invaluable learning tool.
Now I haven't been here long enough to form any close friendships or allegiances yet, so my perspective is that of an unbiased user. I'm quite sure I am not the only one who feels that if the quality of this forum begins to degrade as it appears is beginning to happen, I will be looking elsewhere for the type of high quality community experience that brought me here to begin with.
That's just my 2 cents. It will probably never be worth a nickel. But, my recommendation to management is to swallow your pride, and patch things up before things go too far. It might already be too late. I truly hope not.
He has just informed me that the forum will be, from now on, moderated by staff members and that all mod functions by members will be deleted. Howrver, we also know that the position of moderator on this site was offered to Lovely only a couple of days ago (Gary and I know) , so I don't really know...
Christopher, you are amazing for helping create this site, but why this?
Since I joined SpanishDict about 8 months ago, I have always considered user moderation the most attractive thing about SpanishDict. It was nice knowing that someone I could actually relate to, not some behind-the-scenes worker, was helping make the forum I was proud to be a member of a comfortable place for all.
All of the staff here are very talented people, but with all due respect, I've only seen you guys out here when there's been some type of technical problem that needed fixing. I don't see you guys a lot. I hope that changes. I saw Heidi, Eddy, Yeser, Marianne, Mountaingirl...the whole gang out here every time I logged in.
I've told this to Sandy on Skype already, but let me say it again. I was feeling optimistic yesterday. I was thinking "We still have Marianne and Eddy and Mountaingirl, they are great people, too. Maybe someone will be able to fill Heidi's shoes" (haha, what was I thinking, I don't know.)
But this is really upsetting for me. Really upsetting.
There are numerous sites with excellent learning resources, and forums where people will answer technical questions on points of language.
No disrespect to Paralee whose lessons are great, what marked this one out was the excellent friendly forum which did so much more than just answering language questions, it stimulated and encouraged us in our language learning and that was down to the people on the forum, not the layout, the technical niceties or the management, the people.
What was once a five course gourmet meal, is now re-fried spam
MARSHALL PROVERB
Infact I believe that the only chance this place has of improving now, Paralee is with you at the wheel unless Heidi is invited back! 
This place needs people like you,Paralee to manage it who know how to manage people well 
Me cuesta creer que no se pudieran aplicar los cambios en el foro sin causar tanto dolor. Siempre hay varias formas de hacer las cosas, y creo que no habéis elegido precisamente la mejor. No olvidéis que detrás de cada número y de cada nombre de usuario hay una persona con sentimientos. Y un foro sin personas y sin sentimientos es muy difícil de mantener.
