A New SpanishDict is Coming....We Want Your Feedback!
Hi Everyone!
We have been working hard on a brand new version of SpanishDict! We have gone through the site from top to bottom and where we saw opportunities to make things better, we did our best to do it.
One of the biggest changes you will see on the new site is a totally overhauled forum. This section of the site will be geared toward getting people answers to their questions as quickly and as easily as possible, while making it more engaging for those much-appreciated members of the forum that often take the time to answer people's questions. We are calling the new system 'SpanishDict Answers'.
Here are some of the shiny new features that you will see?
Voting!
You will be able to vote on the quality of people's questions and answers. See a well thought out question or answer? Vote it up. Questions and answers with more votes will get highlighted more often throughout the site.
Reputation!
If you post good questions and answers, and these posts receive up votes from other members, you will earn reputation points. The more reputation points you earn, the more privileges you will receive. Here is basically how it will work:
- Receive a vote up - Earn 10 points
- Receive a vote down - Lose 2 points
As you earn more points, you will earn more moderator-style privileges. This give more control of SpanishDict to the community, which brings up the next big addition:
Community Wiki!
For members of the site that have enough reputation points, they will be able to edit the questions and answers on the site, like a wiki. You will be able to see all the edits that are made to a post, and improve the post over time. We believe this will allow the community to build outstanding responses to questions. We are even making this feature available on Reference articles for members with a high reputation, so that the SpanishDict community can build the best Spanish reference available anywhere.
We have even more in store for you. But I would love to get your thoughts and feedback on the these items. Please post your ideas to this thread. I attached a few screen shots of what we have in development to give you a sneak peak of the new site.
Hasta Luego,
Chris
60 Answers
I think that the fist "Non-Administrator member" to reach 10,000 posts ought to be granted a full administrator title. That is just a suggestion. SO there now wont be a voting down idea, so okay.
Yes, both of those are good things.
It might be good, though, to have a few more "Ambassadors" or "Asst. Administrators" that are able to remove offensive or spam content when they see it. Heidita and Eddy can't monitor the sight 24/7, and understandably, it sometimes takes them a few hours to notice a problem, especially when one or the other is away for an extended time, on vacation, for example. Any action of these newly capacitated members would be reviewed by the Administrators, of course.
This is really great news and members will be really pleased, I hope, to see that their voices have been listened to. 
Very useful the flagging system , that will be a great help for us to find offensive or spam material fast and act accordingly.
Hi Everyone,
I really appreciate all the thoughtful feedback. It is wonderful to know that we have so many people that are passionate about making SpanishDict a wonderful site for language learning.
I can now give you an update on the issue of voting. We have listened and thought about a lot of the valuable feedback that you have provided and we decided to remove the concept of down voting. Our goal with the voting system is to recognize members that make good contributions while making it easy for those searching the forums to find the best answers. We are going to do this with a thumbs up. So when you see a good response you can pass along kudos and give it an up vote.
We are also going to allow members with enough reputation to flag posts that are spammy, commercial, inaccurate, or require moderator attention. These flagged posts will be brought to the attention of Heidi and Eddy. This will help ensure that we are able to feature that great posts while removing posts that detract from the site.
Thanks again for all the input. We are getting much closer to the launch of revamped site, which has a lot of exciting new features in store. We will post more on the blog soon.
That is a good thing in whic it mentions. I would just like to know when this site update is going to take place and I hope that everything turns out real good!
I'd be very careful about letting some members edit other members' posts, though, but surely Christopher understand the issues involved there too - I'm excited to see what they'll come up with in the end.
Never ever anyone should have the right to edit anyone's post. Delete it perhaps but never change it. It is all right to quote the message and edit it, but leave the original alone.
I agree. I favor what the administrators currently do--edit titles, move threads to the proper forum, close threads, and delete inappropriate posts. If they want to grant these privileges/responsibilities to certain other trusted members, that would be good.
The only situation I can think of in which it would be appropriate to edit an original post (and this would be very rare) would be if a member appears to have inadvertently posted something that is obscene or offensive, like a typo that spells an obscene word. That could be "bleeped" ('''''') or (XXXXXXXX) and the post allowed to remain. Otherwise, as Zoltan says, quoting and editing works fine. In fact, it preserves the original error for later readers to learn from. If correction were done within the original post, how would anyone know what the original question/issue/error was?
How can you have free expression if what one expresses is subject to "editing" without his consent? Even if what someone says is incorrect, he has the right to express it. It can be appropriately addressed by responses within the forum.
Mainly for Christopher, an interesting reading about security or for anyone who passes out root privileges. http://ifwnewsletters.newsletters.infoworld.com/t/5559106/121364206/205162/0/
Well, Christopher, you collected lots of responses, is it too soon for you to chime in? Perhaps you could redirect our conversation or thinking. We have no say about what you are going to do with this site, but you asked for our opinions, and maybe you got more than you bargained for.
Please, correct my sentence structure before I mess up someone trying to learn English.
I think you could correct most English speakers' sentence structure, Zoltán! Even your punctuation is perfect.
Well, Christopher, you collected lots of responses, is it to soon for you to chime in? Perhaps redirect our conversation or thinking. We have no say about what you are going to do with this site, but you asked for our opinion, and maybe you got more than you bargained for.
Please, correct my sentence structure before I mess up someone trying to learn English.
I think that a rating system of posters could be a daunting idea. But I do think that a 'thumbs up' mark on a forum post could be quite advantageous. For people who search the forum for answers to any variety of questions, especially if they do not have a high mastery of either English or Spanish, they might accept one opinion that isn't the best, but, with a 'thumbs up' or 'thumbs down' feature it will help the learners to know which are the "better ways" of saying something.
I'd be very careful about letting some members edit other members' posts, though, but surely Christopher understand the issues involved there too - I'm excited to see what they'll come up with in the end.
What is so terribly wrong with what we have right now? Are we making a change for changing sake? The sites that have this grading/rating system are like us? Are their mission statement same as ours? ((By the way) I hate mission statements!) We may loose lots of members because of this experiment. Would we gain even one member just because our rating system? How about to advertise "Come visit with us, we have a wonderful rating system", Oh, we also offer help with Spanish/English language.
Never ever anyone should have the right to edit anyone's post. Delete it perhaps but never change it. It is all right to quote the message and edit it, but leave the original alone.
How about creating a new ranking beside member, newbie, etc. This is for members like Lazarus, Quentin, James and few more. I purposely left out the well deserving Heidita and Eddy, since they have a higher calling. They could have title like teacher, advisor, pedagogue or something more sensible indicating they are more authoritative on the subject than average users.
If I understand you correctly, Zoltan, you're basically in favor of a reputation system, but you find it imperative that it be inbred, since the admins somehow have ascended from the normal human condition of sometimes making mistakes or having bad hair days.
In my experience the average language learner is both knowledgeable, sensible, fair and with a great interest in doing the constructive thing. In practical terms, the persons you mention would quickly rise in reputation, and we'd also be able to see why some users would vote down on some posts. Sites like "Yahoo answers" prove that nicely. This would be a more democratic way of giving feedback to valuable members, though the results may be largely the same.
I'd be very careful about letting some members edit other members' posts, though, but surely Christopher understand the issues involved there too - I'm excited to see what they'll come up with in the end.
I have known Zoltan since the forum opened and also trust his judgement. Thank you for your kind words what Eddy and I are concerned.
jeje, and everybody knows you are not a vociferous person
Let the church mouse pontificate once more,,,
How about creating a new ranking beside member, newbie, etc. This is for members like Lazarus, Quentin, James and few more. I purposely left out the well deserving Heidita and Eddy, since they have a higher calling. They could have title like teacher, advisor, pedagogue or something more sensible indicating they are more authoritative on the subject than average users. Not that a newbie could be a professor of Spanish language from Madrid, but it has to be proven by contributions.
Well, this is just another rambling from a member from Budapest.
This is my new take on this subject. I have been a member since 12/14/07, and I noticed a lot. I have an opinion of who are the great contributers here, but I would not like make a selection for promotion. On the other hand Heidita and Eddy could propose advancement for certain individuals, first, contacting them whether they are willing to accept a position, and if they are, give them the promotion. That would be pure and honest. I trust our administrators 100%, and I base this on long observations. We should not let some vociferous people (like me for example) promote or demote anyone.
I have known Zoltan since the forum opened and also trust his judgement. Thank you for your kind words what Eddy and I are concerned.
jeje, and everybody knows you are not a vociferous person 
This will be exciting, I just hope the forum does not change too much though...
