A while back we decided to add a Sunday lesson, giving our listeners 6 days of new lessons every week, plus the Saturday show. This move was greeted with moderate rejoicing, then it was back to business as usual.
Over the past few months, we’ve looked carefully at how this has impacted things. The advantage is obvious: more new content for the listeners. This new content, however, comes at a cost. The cost is the time and resources it takes to create an extra lesson every week.
Recently we’ve been putting much more effort into the podcasts, developing storylines, creating special series, adding great sound effects, incorporating TPR, etc. A lot of the effort we put into them the users don’t see; none of you know how many times our sound guy David redid the sound effects for Mysterious Visitor until the effect was just right, or that we also recorded the old lady’s voice with multiple actors, choosing the best one. The part of Chen Zong in The Cocktail Party was recorded with three different voice actors to ensure the right feel. In Lovers’ Spat the actress who did Chen Li’s voice underwent quite a bit of coaching to make herself sound even remotely angry.
This extra effort results in higher quality and more interesting, engaging podcasts, but it’s using up a lot of the team’s time. We have quite a few projects we want to do (the rest of the Pinyin Guide, the full Grammar Guide, etc.), but we need the time to do them. We decided one of the best ways to find that time was to cut the Sunday podcast, which was a bit hard to manage anyway, since none of us come into work on Sundays.
So this Sunday’s podcast is the last Sunday podcast you’ll be seeing for a while, and we’ll also be reducing the number of weekly podcasts on the ZH (advanced) site to two. Remember that by going back to 5 podcasts per week on the main site you are not getting less, you’re just getting the value through different channels. Before long we’ll also have some great new resources to show for it.
Thanks for understanding.
Thanks for explaining, knowing why makes a big difference.
You’re right, we can’t have any idea how much work goes into the lessons. The more work you put into them, the more you succeed, the more they sound like a quick use of the microphone over coffee break and that’s it.
The fact that they do sound so simple to produce is a credit to the whole team.
ONE - thing you forgot to mention. Did Cpodsters pulldown the show on Sundays at at higher, lower, same rate as the weekday shows? Or did we all just get around to it on Monday or Tuesday? I’m not sure how iTunes provides stats on this, but certainly it’s simple tracking for the direct mp3 downloads. This is important because it shows regard for Cpoder schedules.
Who knows, was it that people had more time on Sundays to listen to the show? Is a break on Thursday better instead? Must we be tied to the old ancient Roman 5-day business calendar?
All the other stuff, well said. I personally have had a hard time keeping up as well. Appreciate the explanation, it’s part of what’s so special about Cpod.
BTW, Chen Li’s voice — scared me quite well, she sounded that kind of upset that haunts a guy years and years later. Just when you least expect it, say over dinner and a innocuous comment about the coffee, she brings it up again — that time you were so rude to her while shopping…..开玩笑
Ken - I guess we are all aware that new features always come with a price tag and while it is quite easy for us (”the big brain”) to throw in a new idea it is something totally different to implement it. I guess this is why you also closed the zh.blog and the teachers’ network recently?
Focus on Premium content?
I think it is a good idea to focus more on the content for premium subscribers - instead of e.g. playing around with (free) Video. The problem of your service is that at its core it is still podcasts and that is where 80% of the value sits. But the podcasts are all free lunch.
Levels?
This leads to the next question: Which levels will be affected?
At the current rhythm you have 4 low-level, 2 intermediate and 3 advanced lessons in one week, with the intermediate listeners obviously sitting at the end of the food chain. Does that reflect the structure of your (paying) audience?
Have you ever thought about producing podcasts only for paying subscribers?
Whoah there, Henning, you’ve weakened your argument by fudging to inflate it. There’s no such thing as “low level”, you’re adding newbie and elementary together because they’re so far below you that you see no difference. Try sitting on newbie level for six months unable to make the jump to elementary, and re-create your figures from there, then you’ll come up with two newbie lessons and seven advanced levels per week, with the newbies severely short changed. Or do the same trick from the advanced perspective, similar figures, opposite meaning.
Actually, there’s hardly any podcasts for newbies or for advanced, it’s all going into the middle lessons! No, mate, I used to teach a course about how to lie with statistics, so you can’t fudge figures on me like that
The real figures say enough without the massage.
Everyone who can only make use of one level needs at least three lessons a week, because that’s all the Chinese they’ll be getting. That applies to newbie level and no other. However there are so many good lessons at newbie level now that three newbie lessons isn’t necessary, two is plenty. Everyone else can pick and choose from several levels as well as the archive, and the advanced students have access to the whole lot. See, none of us can get what we need without taking resources from others, that’s the tricky part.
Now, for what I really think
Let’s leave it to the team to make those decisions, they know who we are, what we need, and what will keep them in business (important to us all), and how to put all those factors together so that we all benefit. And they’re willing and free to change it from time to time without our prior consent. We can always bitch later if we don’t like how it works out.
Hihi, nice one on those numbers…;)
Although I stubbornly stick to my conclusion. Just take the sums: So far there are 138 Newbie lessons alone compared to a sum 88 Intermediate and Upper Intermediate Lessons (it is fair to add those numbers because there are some natural trenches before and after those two levels). If this reflects the actual quotas of premium customers that is fine, of course.
But my question is actually a quite different one: Which investment would lead to the highest profit? For what reasons do customers really choose premium? I personally switched this summer because I was hungry for additional exercises and for getting a better grip on the Advanced shows (well and there was that “need-to-keep-them-alive”-argument, but I would not count with that one). However with “premium lessons” I would have started premium the very first week I encountered ChinesePod.
I understand your arguments. For my particular point of view I’ll use Sundays for revising the previuos podcasts. Besides, taking the chance of other students comments, I’m a premiun subscriber (I dont know yet how the new ‘guided’ looks like) and I think we should have more advantages than lowers levels subscribers, I mean the difference in functionalities and facilities should have a bigger gap than currently has.
GONE’ - Okay, I love Cpod but the disappearing act stuff does irk me. Lately I have been on the site less, but stuff just goes and disappears.
THE CHINESE CBLOG
There’s a great blog post on measure words in the advanced blog, plus there’s other bits that I like to go back to for reference. Is the blog gone for good? Is it just being updated? Is it just punishment for me not going over and reading it in a while?
THE TEACHER NETWORK
I was chatting to a Chinese person the other day and referred them to the Cpod Teacher tab….it’s gone now. It’s just being upgraded?
THE ENGLISHPOD SITE
At some point there was a switch to a business focus only. No wonder my friend came back to me and said she wasn’t interested in just learning business Chinese. I was like huh?
UPDATES
24/7 beta is a wonderful service model, but professionalism also includes a fair amount of stability and notification. You can’t really tell in what creative and dependent ways your customers are using bits and pieces of the site. And making stuff disappear suddenly isn’t endearing.
If things must change, how about a prominant ‘Updates’ Tab along with My Studies, Lesson Archive, etc. I think the older methods, the podcast update (pre Sat Show), the blog update don’t work well. It’s crazy having to learn about changes via my random wandering thru comments, blog posts, the Forum, etc.
Wasn’t it only a short time ago that the conversation was about increasing the number of podcasts so that people could stay at their own level and not need to be ’sitting in’ on other levels. Now there are cutbacks and the service is being reduced because production costs are spiralling and the use of real actors is prohibitively expensive, even in China. Today’s podcast seemd very straightforward, not much theatrics, just the guy and girl(actor?) reading 30 seconds of dialogue, and you guys breaking it down which as always is pricless.
It is a pity that Chinesepod is now effectively closed at the weekends for learning - it is open for some entertainment, strong word of the week and the side commentary that is the blog but apart from that it is fairly static.
It is unfortunate that when the main technology here is ‘recorded audio’ that a simple podcast can’t be teed-up for Sunday without impacting on important and restorative leisure time.
sorry, unfortunate typo there, should read “priceless” - and not an attack on Ken’s manliness!
Ken
The more time I spend using all the improvements in the Premium Section I find studying more on 2 or 3 lessons per week plus cherry picking on a super upper lesson enough.
Not surprisingly like today( I was using my CPod study time) on reviewing lessons frome earlier in the week and writing some of the words. It is only now late Sunday that I listened to the Sunday Newbie Lesson.
So for me even higher quality lessons from CPOD (is it possible you already have great lessons?) means I just have to match it with even more studying as well.
Living in Taiwan my days are the same as yours but having been back in the States a few times recently, the time shift in the lessons does seem strange. The Saturday Show becomes a Sunday morning listen for me as an example.
So I wonder how the shift affects others around the world?
Mike in Jubei
Actually this was John’s post, not mine - John you must remember to sign your posts!
It’s interesting how this has been perceived. There’s no cutback in the service, as such. This works just as it would in pretty much any organization: John’s department gets a budget, some HR resources, etc. Once that’s set, it’s up to him to figure out how he is going to maximize them. He does that on the basis of (a) his own judgement, and (b) the feedback from users. I think this is exactly what he has done here.
So the point is that John beleives he can make better use of existing resources by allocating them in a different way. If we were to keep extening the budget and resources indefinitely I think things could easily get out of hand. Nothing focuses the mind like a little fiscal discipline! Let’s see what he comes up with.
I woudl also say that things do change around here - John was indeed talking about doing more podcasts a few weeks ago. However, we’re moving at internet speed here. Things do change pretty quickly and you guys are invovled with these decisions, even though you may not always realize it.
Ken Carroll
I just wanted to express my disappointment in the cutback. Not the cutback of the Sunday episodes, but the cutback of the advanced level podcasts. It seems that CPOD is phasing out the advanced learner. Originally I enjoyed listening to the cPod podcasts but could never justify subscribing, after all i only listened to one or maybe two podcasts a week. Needless to say I was overjoyed when Chinesepod released the advanced level show and website. I decided it was just what my chinese study needed and promptly bought a year’s subscription. I’ve been thoroughly enjoying the advanced lessons ever since. I’ve seen dramatic progress in my listening and reading ability (which works its way into speaking too.) Three lessons a week seemed like a good number, two just seems like too few. I understand why chinesepod wants to cater more toward beginner-lower intermediate students, but I still think it can be a valuable resource for upper intermediate-advanced students as well. Good material that bridges the gap between real world media and intermediate lesson material is hard to find. Not to mention a show hosted by two native Chinese provides more of a feel of how Chinese is used to communicate and interact between native speakers.
Anyway I just hope that Cpod doesn’t do away with the advanced shows before my subscription is up.
I’ve met John, and he’s a really smart guy, so I trust him to optimize what’s best going forward with inputs from the subscriber base. When he tweeks, he tweeks for a reason.
I reject entirely the suggestion above that CPod is closed for learning on weekends. There’s dozens and dozens and dozens of lessons in the archives, plus all the review materials. If one has 100% completion, comprehension, and understanding of 100% of the archives, then that person is way beyond getting significant value from ChinesePod in the first place.
A 17% drop in production rate may look bad but as John is at the helm on this one and it is not just a simple business decision, I am sure it’s for the best. Only you guys know the rate of consumption to make the decision wisely.
The archive seems a little like yesterdays newspapers compared to the freshness of today’s podcast. Don’t get me wrong, there is heaps of learning to be had from the archives and I am looking forward to visiting them all but the recent ones are more evolved and even have the Connie touch.
Ma Ding, by your reasoning, Ken % Co. could close the factory gates and head off to Sanya for a month or two of, ahem, team building while we are all done catching up with the archives 100%. Don’t be giving Ken ideas!
Thanks for updating us on the planned changes to the schedule. I would rather have the quality podcasts than quantity any day.
By the way..you may want to consider phasing out the Newbie lessons entirely, since most folks now have progressed to the Elementary level…and you do have hundreds of Newbie lessons already in the archives to satisfy new subscribers coming on board.
>>we’ll also be reducing the number of weekly podcasts on the ZH (advanced) site to two.
I tried to love the zh.casts but just couldn’t make heads or tails of what they were saying; so finally gave up even listening. It seems that an English translation would not have offended the advanced learners too much, would it?– while making it much more accessible to lower levels. There was one lesson in particular I listened to with determination to make sense of it– what great mysteries and insights were they discussing– and to my disappointment finally realized it was about the stock market.
Maybe it’s laziness, but if I know the English, I listen to the advanced Chinese lessons with greater interest. Is that a good thing, at lower levels, or just a crutch? It’s all above my head anyway, so why would it hurt if I knew in English what they were saying in Chinese?
Honestly, Ken, I’m surprised you kept it going as long as you did. You deliver a tremendous service here, and one less lesson a week is understandable considering the new layers you’ve been adding to the existing podcasts.
Take a day off, for Pete’s sake.
The advanced chinesepod is excellent, and considering it is free, two lessons a week is still very good, with the supurb quality and effort that goes into it.
However, i’d hate to see them cut althogether. There really is no better place to learn advanced chinese with emphasis on actual happenings in China today, the podcasts are so authentic and relevant, brilliant!
Keep up the super work!
Guys–I’m grateful for the reduced pace. I was getting a little overwhelmed since I also take Chinese classes during the week and have homework from them too.
I’m too old to assume that you always have my welfare at heart. But I’m old enough to know that if you aren’t successful in this business, you’ll take your hard work and great ideas somewhere else. Since the podcasts are free, I find it rather childish of people to complain if they get only five instead of six or seven lessons a week.
OTOH, if you give up Sunday and then, say, cancel the Saturday show, then you have a whole weekend with nothing to draw people to your site. GTiven that you have a whole bunch of users who never check in here or on the forum–they just take their downloads and go on their ways–I think that would make me uncomfortable. You know you have us, that we few confirmed posters will come back no mattr what, but you need more and more people coming back and back.
Sandra,
‘I’m too old to assume that you always have my welfare at heart.’
Believe me, we do always keep your welfare at heart! This is the essence of how we want to run this business. It’s the key to any success we might aspire to. In fact, given the nature of this product we’d be crazy not to keep the needs of our learners as a priority. The closer we are to meeting your needs, the more likely you are to become a customer and spread the word. This is why I love this kind of product: we can live up to our ideals and be practical at the same time. So keep telling us what you want and we’ll keep trying to offer it.
Ken Carroll
I can’t keep up anyway
It won’t effect me at all. Besides, better, more entertaining, podcasts are better than more podcasts.
OK, let me explain a bit more.
The decision to drop the Sunday show was a business decision based on resources. Yes, it was a business decision, but don’t think of it in terms of “they only want money and don’t care about the learner’s needs,” think of it as, “if ChinesePod doesn’t succeed as a business it will disappear, and then I’ll have nothing.”
In an ideal world, I’d be able to oversee the creation of many, many more intermediate to advanced podcasts. But as a business, we have to pay attention to the market, and we have to manage our resources wisely.
Don’t worry; the advanced podcasts are not going away. I don’t think business would ever necessitate that we cut them completely, but if it did, I would definitely fight it all the way. Two a week is still pretty good, though.
Lantian,
Good point about the scheduling, but there’s a very good reason that we publish when we’re here in the office. It’s an imperfect world, and things go wrong all the time. It’s good to be right here when they do. And that means Mon-Fri.
We dropped the ZH blog for the same reason: too many resources going into it for little to no return. We have the traffic stats. Hardly anyone read it. Even you admit you didn’t read it often. I know that doesn’t mean it’s totally not worth doing, but it does mean that it’s what we have to cut when we have limited resources.
Henning,
Yes, the number of podcasts put out for each level is definitely a function of our (paying and non-paying) user base.
AuntySue,
One of the new projects we’ll be working on is the complete Pinyin Guide, which will be designed specifically for newbies. Newbies never get shortchanged.
Jeff L,
We are NOT “phasing out the advanced learner.” 放心吧. Hopefully in the near future we’ll have the additional resources to offer more advanced material.
Ma Ding,
Thanks for the support! Yeah, you’re right; ChinesePod is definitely “open for business” on Sundays, even if there’s no new podcast. I think it would be great if our users used Sundays to tackle on old lesson from the archive.
Clever Dick,
No, there are still a ton of Newbie listeners (paying and non-paying). Most of them don’t comment, though.
If someone goes through each lesson relatively thoroughly, podcast, lesson plan, vocab, practice, review, etc., a few a week at most is enough. Probably one or two a week at our level is what most of us (with full time jobs, families and other commitments) could reasonably handle.
This might come across as whining, but from a customer perspective, it would be a lot easier to swallow the reduction in advanced lessons if you guys would articulate EXACTLY what’s going to be improved with the remaining 2/week. I totally agree with Jeff L.: you guys should be commended for putting out a very unique product that caters to advanced students. All the same, I was promised three lessons a week when I signed up. Now that’s it been cut, we deserve a better explanation than this blog post. Either that or you just want us to listen to Princess Remy or another Chinese-language pod.
Advanced Site.
John, first of all thanks for your explanations.
Regarding the Advanced Shows I can understand why those listeners are particularly angry - a lot more angry than the rest of us. None of your innovations are showing in the Advanced shows yet, these listeners kind of “pay the price” for more professional Newbie & Intermediate shows without seeing any benefit on their side.
But I beliefe the real problem lies deeper: You isolated the Advanced listeners by shoveling them to their own site and by cutting away all English translations - I assume that drove away most of the Intermediates (except the very hungry ones). The zh.site is now disjoint from the rest and the user base is cut in two parts, also.
The zh.shows are neither showing on the Lesson Archive on the Regular Sites nor are they properly linked with the tools (half of my Chinesepods Flashcards are coming with an empty “backside” because they have no translation - this renders them virutally unusable). All the connection that is left is that one tiny little red link up on the top of the “regular” page.
I guess some reintegration going alongside with additional English translations these shows would become once again accessible for “Upper Intermediates” and help “bridge the gap” to Advanced - and in consequence the download numbers would rise, also. I agree that it is not advisable for that level to have English in the shows, in the comments, or in the PDFs or transcripts right below the Chinese text. But have some translations somewhere. Right now I still need to look up tons of words and phrases that I tediously copy-paste to my Dictionary, which often does not help me either (which eventually leads to stealing valuable language-partner-time).
So now that you reduced the number of lessons and closed the zh.blog anyway (too bad, just stumbled upon it two weeks ago and started to like it), why not grab that opportunity and reintegrate the Advanced lessons with this site. Home to mother. And also offer some translations for those of us trying to climb up there.
Henning brings up some good points about the isolation of the zh.site. While i personally don’t have strong feelings about adding english translations, the reason i bought my subscription to Chinesepod was to use the zh.site to its full potential. Sure i listen to the upper intermediate lessons too, but any new vocab in them i can usually gain by just listening. I don’t need to read any transcripts. The advanced lessons on the other hand are fantastic because they present many words and phrases I don’t know in a context that helps me pick them up relatively easily. I find that a combination of listening to the podcasts and reading the transcripts has done wonders for my progress. Now i can’t help but feel a little cheated. You say it’s a “business” decision but for a business that is so focused on customer feedback how can it be a wise one? It’s like a magazine publisher promises you 12 issues a year, but after you subscribe they cut it down to 8. I hope that there will be something that benefits advanced learners added in the near future to compensate for this.
Jeff,
Whilst I support John’s decision (because it will benefit the majority of our listeners), I sympathize with your frustration as you subscribed specifically for the advanced lessons. I think the best I can do in the circumstances is offer to adjust your subscription - please feel free to contact me personally (steve.f.williams @ gmail.com) if you’d like to do this, or if you want to communicate directly.
ZH - I don’t get why the advanced blog can’t be left there, even if it’s not updated going further. There were GOOD posts, comments, etc., there. I didn’t get a chance to copy-paste them into my own archive! I just figured it would be there…
It’s gonna cost what .05 cents per MB of HD space. I can spring for that cup of hard-drive mocha soy latte grande no whip. When I click on the zh blog comments most recent blog comments, I get the dreaded 404. That’s just bad web site management.
Regarding the schedule, just so my personal view is clear, I was just curious if stats for iTunes, and MP3 downloads for Sunday shows were on Sundays or other days. It’s a nice statistic to consider in terms of customer service.
I noticed in your reply that you mentioned stats for the zh. blog which seems to concur with my experience on that site, but I was less convinced about the Sunday show, since I myself did pull it down on Sundays. Evidence-based medicine is something I’m familiar with, so I thought a little evidence-based Web’bing was in order.
And about the in-the-office. I guess I really should pay a visit to the factory. Nothing like seeing how things are done on the shop floor to get grounded in reality. With that said:
…I do find it curious that a publication of an mp3 file, text summary, etc., can’t be done remotely or pre-auto scheduled. I did a lot of support work before, and I’d say — systems have problems, but one should work on the assumption that your processes work, not that they fail. Having to have people come in on a Sunday to fix a problem is proper punishment for not having planned things well. (LOL, minus the quirky uncontrollable China internet, but pizza can be proper salve for that situation).
Lastly, please take away a bit of the ’snap and ‘edginess in my comment, I’ve been having a challenging ‘China day. Chinesepod rocks.
PS. I thought of something about how Chinesepod works. To be truthful I am a terrible undisciplined wants-the-easy-way kind of student. As a ‘learning site’ or tool, one of the things that Chinesepod does is keep me engaged with Chinese,even if it’s only the daily summary that Aric does and is the first thing I read. But day in day out, you all are there for me. This may be the most important component of my learning experience.
IT’S NOT USED, JUST PRE-LISTENED - Is there a way to ‘recycle’ some of the old content? Maybe a frame/section on the Cpod site that is like “flashback” to a month ago. A ‘do you remember’ this podcast. If it’s only to get me talking about some of that podcast’s content with other Cpoder’s, it would help me further consolidate and do more each day. I don’t mean anything like a remix of the podcast, just a putting it ‘in my face’ again, on a daily or some other schedule.
Well, it probably isn’t all bad. The guys can plan weekends away and can get more into seeing different parts of China, arguably for our benefit, instead of stuck in the cocoon that is the factory even if it is just ‘on call’. People begin to resent having their weekends impacted on and are more content if they can get a good break and return bright eyed and bushy tailed on Monday. Look how cheery Aric is this morning reacting to some criticism for his show and video -that’s cause he probably had a great weekend completely removed from the reality of 9-5 and has lots of gossip for next Saturday. Happy workers are more productive workers and are less likely to quit.
Think of the disgruntled reactions if we were dealing with John quitting this morning instead of dropping a podcast or two. The budget may not stretch for his desired salary increase but cutting his workload may be keep him on board. Unfortunate that it is a cost pushed onto the unsuspecting subcribers.
I don’t mind losing a lesson on Sunday. It gives me a chance to work through the other 10 years worth of study material that I have.
Bazza, I fully agree with you. Let’s be serious, we can find a lot to study if we want to. Ed, you are right about the happy workers. And I also prefer to have quality in spite of quantity…
Take your weekends, enjoy them… Life is short, unfortunately!!
It’s true that there’s enough on this site to keep me busy for a good year’s worth of week-ends, but that’s neither here nor there (the same goes for anyone with material at their current or slightly above level).
And while I do love the new sound-effects, find them entertaining, but unlike other posters, if I had a choice to make, I’d rather get more contents that form.
I don’t really mind which day things will get cut, I constantly mix new with old anyway (1 lesson of the day, 3 lessons of the past). But I’d want to know which lesson is going to be cut : we have two 高级 and one 媒体 (media), does that mean we’ll get one of each? My preference would then be to drop the 媒体, keeping the emphasis on dialogues and spoken Mandarin. For more advanced type reports, I think there may be other available sources.
I agree with Henning that you may want to reconsider some level of integratation with the rest of the site or English complements to those lessons (e.g voc translation). I’m perfectly happy with the whole show transcript only in Chinese, getting used to reading definitions in Chinese is good, I still lookup words, that in itself has value but sometimes I don’t find a good translation (e.g. today’s 量贩店 liang4fan4dian4).
The point about English is it’s probably has a lot to do with the zh.blog being discontinued. It’s obvious to me that there are also far less comments to zh.lessons than on the English side. This is probably a combination of less people at that level, people less comfortable posting in Chinese, people in learning situations less comfortable posting (maybe coming from non anglo-saxon cultures?) or simply that advanced learners couldn’t be bothered.
The bottom line is, there’s a lot less incentive to get there and that may be the start of a vicious cycle.
John. Let me make clear that I did not want to come across all negative. I support your decisions and accept some experimentation including occasional cut-backs. I see those sound effects as brightly visible indicators for the growing quality of the shows - the top of the iceberg that swims on a deep socket of carefully crafted and professionally edited content - visibly designed across the narrow borders of single podcasts. This is what sets you apart.
Actually, I am really looking forward to your “full grammar guide” (?) as I just today noticed once again that I am in dire need of such a tool. And yes, I am willing to pay for it with the Sunday shows for a while - no problem (day does not matter for me). I also know you have extremly interesting new services in preparation that enter previously unexplored terriory.
However this is a turning point that I regard to be both interesting and revealing. It is the first time we are not asked to add additional ideas or discuss marginal changes but are indeed confronted with tough choices affecting the core of the service - a surgery on the beating heart. Risky stuff with possibly unwanted side-effects both from a business and from a technical perspective (404 pages??). I think this discussion shows how careful changes need to be designed and announced - under equal consideration of all groups of paying customers.
I personally would plead for a holistic service that does not split the different groups apart but leverages the knowledge exchange all the way from Newbie to Media (in the Forums you already find this, just look at what Bazza and theABC are doing there!). This is why you should not cut at one level over-proportionally - if you build Intermediate tools let the Intermediates bleed, not the already weakened zh-listeners. This is also why I suggested the reunification of zh and regular alongside some English for zh (see above). Actually I think your biggest confirmation will be your first “Medias” that you exclusivly nurtured from their very first helpless “Newbie”-day on.
There is only one relevant split I see: Those who pay and those who don’t. Don’t feed those stingy cuckoos only because they open their beak oh so wide. If you have enough honestly paying customers you can at one day churn out more high-quality lessons and program new tools at the same time.
I support the decision totally. If you’re really that bored on Sunday, just review an older podcast, unless you have all 400 memorized already. If so, try going for a walk.
Dropping the ZH Blog altogether is a little sad. I did read it often, and as Lantian said, it’s not like it took an enormous amount of system resources. Shuttering the blog and turning off comments would leave it as a resource, continue to draw search engine traffic, and cost pennies or less a day (particularly if, as you say, nobody reads it — bandwidth is more expensive than disk space by a fair margin).
I really hope that the 媒体 stays as part of the Advanced offerings. At that level, they’re a lot more useful than the canned dialogues.
Let me make this clear one last time: the reduction in podcasts is for the purpose of adding all new content to the website, not just for a few extra sound effects on some of the podcasts.
Tim D,
As I wrote in the blog post, “the rest of the Pinyin Guide, the full Grammar Guide.” Those are the two big ones, although there might be a few other smaller projects here and there.
Henning,
Thanks for all the feedback. We really do take it to heart, and we are already working on ways to solve the problem of the “isolated” ZH site.
For what it is worth, I am willing to pay for the right number of lessons at my level. (right now that is 1 intermediate and one upper intermediate per week) I’ve caught up with the archive. So, my next foray would probably be the ZH site (re-integrated would be nicer).
Other than transcripts, I don’t use the other lesson materials. Maybe, I should, but turning incomprehensible sounds into a dialog that I understand is the rush that I keep coming back for.
Mark
The consensus is to reintegrate zh with the main site, but that is only the consensus of the intermediate and advanced students who post here, and I can see how that would appeal to them. Unless it was done with extraordinary care, we risk putting off the brand new starters who, I guess, are our future prosperity.
To keep this place running, business-wise, we have to succeed at three things:
1. Get them in
2. Make them stay
3. Get them telling others
We seem to do pretty well at keeping people here and making them talk, but if we don’t do really well at number 1, it doesn’t matter how good 2 and 3 are.
If interest in learning Chinese is growing, most of the people who will want to start learning over the next year or two have never learned a word of Chinese in their lives. They wouldn’t know how to use a Chinese dictionary even if they had one, and their computers display the pages as a lot of squiggles where there should be Chinese characters, but it makes no difference, the characters are equally impenetrable.
Once they get in and start, as newbies they are referred to by a label imposed by someone without explanation, in a language, a script, and a font that they cannot decipher. Doesn’t matter, it’s not in the dictionary, and that might be a good thing because it’s probably a put-down anyway. When they put the lessons onto an mp3 player, they see a whole lot of squiggles instead of Chinese, but again it doesn’t matter does it, they would have no way of deciphering the characters in the title even if they could display them. Remember these people are, by definition, totally naive. The fundamental need to identify their absolute beginner lessons is not made easy for them, and doesn’t become much easier over time.
The first time I came to the site, wanting to start learning Chinese, I had a good look around and went away, concluding that it was only for people who already knew some. It was recommended again later, so I took a second, longer look, and again concluded it wasn’t a comfortable place for someone as extremely ignorant as myself, it seemed to assume some experience, for the most part. The third time someone insisted I take a look, I actually found something identified as being for newbies, but there were people crapping Chinese characters all over the supposed newbie lesson discussion so I knew I didn’t belong. Well I can be a persistent bitch when there’s an argument to be won, so to make my point I downloaded an mp3 to complete my exhaustive proof that the site was inappropriate and useless… and ten seconds after Aric’s great intro finished I was hooked, totally. It could have been Norwegian or Sanskrit and I’d still be here, they’re just great lessons. But I wonder how many naive first time visitors are as persistent, or as sensitive, as I was?
Total newbies must see it, first glance and first browse, as a place where they fit in right away, and where they won’t be embarrassed by their ignorance. They must see a newbie lesson they can listen to on the very first page, and not feel like the only beginner here. They must not be bombarded with Chinese characters presented as if they’re expected to be able to read, or even see, them. And if you call someone a label, please make sure they all know what it means and can recognise it easily.
If the zh lessons are re-integrated, do it carefully, and not just on the advice of people who can already read that stuff, or on mine for that matter. ChinesePod is good enough to appeal to people who didn’t even think they wanted to learn Chinese. The site has to refelect that value to beginners, or they’ll go away before they can find out. If they don’t feel among their own kind they’ll simply hit the back button and forget it. If that happened, there wouldn’t be funds to support any of us.
There could be an argument for re-integrating zh and putting newbie and elementary on their own site, where there’s less spooky stuff and more sense of ownership, and then later they can “graduate” to the intermediate and advanced site (after months of furtive peeks in there). I think that idea has problems too.
While providing an attractive entry point and more comfortable learning environment for the lessons themselves, if it’s too separate it splits the community socially, yet it still wouldn’t stop advanced level comments appearing in someone’s first ever lesson.
The zh site, on the other hand, was targeted at a different international audience. The users of that site have the knowledge and ability to cope with any of the other levels, so they’re not going to feel isolated and unable to access the other lessons. The split there makes sense to me. Integration makes sense too, for other reasons. Just make sure that totally naive new starters always see this as a site for naive new starters. Find one, hand them a mouse, and watch.
If there’s going to be days without lessons, they should be on the weekend, according to the POLA (principle of least astonishment).
I love the sound effects, especially the cigarette lighter one, and they really improve the podcasts. Not so much, though, that I’d be disappointed if they stopped. It’s extra cream on the cake.
John,
I just want to reiterate that “the rest of the Pinyin Guide, the full Grammar Guide” will be of some use to advanced learners but are really oriented to the lower levels. From an advanced learner’s perspective things are being taken away with nothing added (unless, of course, there is some big project planned for the future.)
I won’t complain anymore…..
Sounds right. I have in person lessons on Sunday anyway. And as I’ve been going over the older CPod lessons I notice the improvement in quality with more recent lessons
Greg T-K
Alright, Jeff, I’ll shut up, too (after this post, of course!). I still think this was handled really, really poorly. But at the end of the day, I guess we have to rally around Chinesepod since the product has so much promise and the business is obviously still in its infancy. I hope the advanced lessons don’t take more of a hit (which is exactly what’s happening), but cest la vie. Two lessons is better than no lessons and I don’t want to see Chinesepod fail. Here’s hoping for improved customer relations in the future, guys. Fool me once…
Cutting as much as 33% of advanced podcasts is really a sad news (17% cutbacks — the same percentage as less advanced lessons — would have been more acceptable), but “the full Grammar Guide” is something I look very much forward to as an intermediate-level learner. It will also save John the trouble of having to answer similar questions (e.g. the difference of zai and zhe) over and over again. Hopefully after completion of the two Guides, the Chinesepod team will provide advanced-level learners with some more challenging materials, if they don’t want to lose their customers.
PLUS - So what’s keeping us from Two on Tuesdays, Wacky Wednesdays or Three on Thursdays?
I think it would be fun to have alt-podcasts which can showcase different formats, pedagogies, fun stuff, etc. A key to this is that you ‘push’ this too me, ie. via a podcast, rather than me having to go look for stuff.