Making SD truly welcoming for new comers
If you went to a restaurant in Spain and asked "¿Dónde es el baño? The waiter answered you politely in perfect English, "Excuse me Madam/Sir, first, instead of using "es" you should have used "está" in this question; second, here are the words for bathrooms in Spanish: "Damas" and "Caballeros". Now you can look around and find it yourself."
How would you feel? Would you eat at this restaurant and recommend it to your friends?
Well, this is how we make some new comers feel for their first visit to this wonderful site and community.
It would be great if we can have more people benefiting from this wonderful site -- its contents as well as its community. It would also be wonderful if people feel truly welcomed when they first come to this site. It would be even more wonderful if school kids learning Spanish consider SD as a cool place for them to hangout on-line.
However, I have often seen such feedback to the new comers' first questions: "please use the translator for this type of questions", "please use correct grammar/punctuation in English", or "Is this your homework?"
First of all, not all visitors have English as their native language, the fact they could find this site and participate in Q&A, means their English is already quite good. Better than my Spanish for sure. Perhaps we would have more native Spanish speakers joining this site, if the atmosphere is not so "English proper."
Second, not all "seemingly easy" questions are in fact easy. The translator/dictionary will not solve many beginners' initial confusions.
Third, we all had been kids, some of us have kids, and we are still not patient enough regardless of our age. The fact kids come hear means they want to learn more. Even if they are asking people to do part of their homework, is it really that bad? Perhaps when they get a good score with SD help, they want to become better at Spanish on their own.
I am grateful for the SD team to provide such a valuable platform for me to learn Spanish, and I am grateful for all the help from this community. Since I have been here for a while, and have seen this issue continue on a daily basis, I feel it is my obligation to raise it to the community and SD team to consideration.
Gracias,
PS: for SD team, I do not know this as a fact, but if most of the first time visitors miss the dictionary/translator, maybe some UI change can better direct them to it.
7 Answers
Great post, Jasmine! I have thought about this (and seen the examples of what you speak of) many times, and I would like to chime in with some of my thoughts.
Tone: I have noticed (as you have, clearly) that tone makes a big difference when getting a point across. What I have found on language sites is that it can be very difficult for a non-native speaker to type and correctly use our nuanced figures of speech when trying to be helpful, thus it often comes across (to a native speaker) as "cold" or "rude." We have a lifetime of "beating around the bush" when kindly correcting people that non-natives, regardless of their fluency level, just don't have. And I know exactly what you mean with your first part, but I always try think of the "suggestions" in that manner. I attribute most perceived "harsh" responses to this idea.
However, in regards to your opening example (which is a pretty funny mental image, by the way!) I do think it is imperative that, even first-timers, are corrected as much as possible, if not for their benefit then at least for the benefit of everyone reading. And believe me, I have made (and still make) tons of mistakes and welcome the corrections.
I understand the importance of maintaining great grammar in order for all learners (of both languages) to learn from questions and answers. There is really no excuse for terrible grammar or excessive slang/text slang from a native speaker when asking or answering a question. Sometimes, however, people are "corrected" and scolded when it is clear (to me, as a native English speaker) that it was a simple typo; and that can be a turn-off to potential new users. That's why I like the handy "Edit" function! I will add, however, that most people are very polite and do their best to use a pleasant tone.
-Translator Questions The translator is smack in the middle of the homepage and even a first-time visitor would have to purposefully NOT look at it to miss it! ha.. Not to mention, the Q+A section is much smaller and at the top. It seems like some people confuse this and just write one word as the forum subject (to be translated)... I really don't understand it. Also, with the new redesign, there is a translator at the top on every single page!
Using the forum to ask, for instance, "what's 'dog' in spanish?" is pretty much a waste of Q+A space, and the time of both the person asking and the unfortunate person who has to say either "perro," or "please use the translator."
As you mentioned, there are many words, expressions, or phrases for which the translator is not useful (and indeed many times wrong). These are really the questions that belong in the Q+A section. In these cases, I think it's great that natives of both languages can help answer a great question that will benefit all readers (as a usual lurker, I know that's definitely the case for me!) It might also help if the Forum Search was a bit more noticeable, thus eliminating lots of repeat questions/phrases (like ser/estar, para/por, etc.).
Whew, that was much longer than I anticipated, sorry everyone!
a cool place for them to hangout on-line. ??
You are joking the Rules state that the forum a.k.a Q&A must not be used for chatting.
Plain and simple, I'm not wasting my time in the forum much anymore because in my opinion it hit rock-bottom. F Y I, the reason you're getting an abrupt response is because people with no experience (the staff) kicked out the most amazing moderators in the world without figuring out how to be one themselves. Now they don't know how to treat anyone and probably have their hands too full.
EX: Every time I turn around now, there is like 3 or 4 [C L O S E D] posts. I'm very sorry to say, but I went from trying to be open-minded, understanding, and defending the staff to being straight fed up and thinking, "eeeh, pa'l carajo." 
Y'all are lucky Pesta has graced y'all with his presence. He seems to be the most active veteran, treat him well.
P.S. If i'm not here anymore, you know the staff got sick of me and kicked me out. After reading this reality check, they'll probably discuss it.
We used to have many of these things worked out, but the "new improved" web site removed many of those fixes. We spent months trying to have the language proficiency be a required field in the user profile so we could reply appropriately. The new web site just says English 0 Spanish 0.
Many students will come here to have their homework done for them. As a learning site this is not only cheating, it defeats the whole purpose of the site.
Many people also come here to use the site as a free translation service without any intention of learning Spanish/English. Our previous policy was to point out the translators and dictionary, and, if the passage was short enough, offer a translation for first-timers.
The number of reputation points used to be listed next to the user's name when they posted, making it obvious when someone was new to the site. Most of us made a point of welcoming them. That information is now hidden as an Easter Egg that can only be seen if you know it's there and take the time to hover your mouse over the user's picture.
Many of the "old-timers" who were very active and knew these rules of etiquette are no longer here. The site has regressed considerably recently.
How about making SD truly educational for newcomers? Finding misspellings everywhere, slang, etc., won't do much for the folks whose English and Spanish are weak. These are folks you were so concerned about. If you're so concerned about social niceties, maybe facebook is a better place. I never came here to be patted on the back; only to learn Spanish.
Corrections have never been offered to offend or put down anyone; just to keep the forum materials universally suitable for education of all learners of both languages at any level. Self-monitoring this behavior has been shown to fail every time I've seen it attempted.
Perhaps this old thread
might provide some food for thought?
In my opinion, having the forum renamed as Q&A is very misleading to a newcomer.
Someone might come in and think "I wish to ask how to say 'dog' in Spanish", proceed to the Q&A and type a question, fully expecting it to be like google where the answers to a 'human question' instead of 'keywords' is possible and will pop up.
Then when they click the button to post, it appears as a forum question (as we oldies know it will), they get a rather abrupt message asking them to look in the dictionary / translator. AND before they manage to post in the same thread asking for the location of the dictionary, the thread gets closed.
If I were the newcomer who was none the wiser, I'd go back to my google search and look up another Spanish learning site right away.
