Update on the Question and Answer Section

Question

Hi everyone,

Thank you all for the feedback over the past few days--a number of people have sent in some very helpful suggestions. We are continuing make improvements on the site. Here are a few that you can expect from us immediately:

• High quality answers from native speakers and teachers - Our community has many active native Spanish speakers and our internal team is committed to supporting their efforts. Martha is a native-speaker of Spanish, Paralee has studied and taught Spanish as a certified teacher, and Stuart grew up in Latin America speaking Spanish as his first language. The three of them, combined with the amazing contributions of other members, will work hard to maintain a high-level of quality within the Question and Answer section.

• A tighter focus on language learning - We've heard from many people that they'd like to see a clearer focus on language learning within the Question and Answer section. In the past social and personal messages competed with the language learning questions, making it more difficult to find a correct or accurate response to a language question. We have a simple goal within our community and that is to support language learning. Therefore, every post should be tied back to this shared goal. We'll be removing the "General Discussions" category as that just seems to cause confusion. We'll also be moderating posts to keep things on topic.

• Learning games - Paralee is going to help facilitate a few of the more popular learning games, starting with the Spanish Word of the Day. We welcome additional suggestions and feedback on the games that you would like to see. Paralee will post an update on this in the near future.

Please continue to send in your suggestions through the Feedback tab. We can't implement everything, but we do read and respond to each and every one of them.

Thanks so much!

Chris

Answer 1

In the past I have enjoyed the Word of the Day and also Drop One, Take One.

I have already witnessed how the amazing contributions of a previous bunch of members has been appeciated.

• That's right Spenco, you could thank Lovely lovely for the A-Z idea but she too is gone. - Yeser007 Feb 15, 2012

Answer 2

Looking forward to the Spanish Word of the Day post starting back up.

• Hi Tosh, we'd love your ideas or suggestions for the Spanish Word of the Day or other games. Feel free to shot Paralee or me a PM, or send us your ideas through the Feedback tab. Thanks! - StuartSD Feb 15, 2012
• Algún día voy a ser suficientemente inteligente para ayudar a corregir las frases, pero ahora mismo, no. - Tosh Feb 15, 2012
• Hablas español muy bien. ¡Gracias por tu apoyo y participación! - StuartSD Feb 15, 2012
• Muchísimas gracias, pero expresiones idiomáticas sería muy difícil para mí. - Tosh Feb 15, 2012
• Un hombre tiene que conocar sus limitaciones. :-) - Spenco Feb 15, 2012
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Answer 3

I think the International Cafe, and the Isle of Encouragement threads were an attempt to stop social chat and personal messages on the Q&A learning pages. It would be nice to have something like this back again.

Answer 4

High quality answers from native speakers and teachers

Mmm... some of your "admins" already gave incorrect answers. It doesn't seem to be better...

• It's great that you spotted it, Nikki. I hope you provided a correction. One quick comment. Quotations marks are used, in English, for indicating a direct quote or for signalling that a word doesn't mean what it appears to mean. - babs_irish Feb 16, 2012
• It's unclear to me what their function is in your comment. - babs_irish Feb 16, 2012
• I know what they used for. English is my first language. - NikkiRivera Feb 16, 2012
• It is also quite common to use them when you are mocking something, showing disapproval or disbelief. - NikkiRivera Feb 16, 2012
• Ah, I see. My apologies. I've been gone from SD for about 9 mos. I did notice there was some kind of bruhaha going on but I don't know anything about it and surely didn't mean to step into something that's none of my business. Sorry. - babs_irish Feb 16, 2012
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Answer 5

Can we have a game similar to Mad-libs? It would be so much fun making and reading hilarious paragraphs in Spanish.