Description of your request or bug report: I think a language learning category would be useful for discussion relating to language learning methods or just languages in general, and/or a general category for topics not directly related to Natively but which could apply to more than one language.
As Natively currently only offers Japanese and Korean, I don’t think it would make a huge difference at the moment, but it might be useful as more languages are added and the userbase grows. I think it could help foster the Natively community, especially for new languages that don’t have that many users (and by extension not much language-specific forum content).
Should language logs go here or in the appropriate sub categories? I’d probable vote the latter, unless they’re truly multilingual. We should probably add tags for logs in both Korean & Japanese & Language Learning
Do we think that everyone should be automatically opted in to this category? I’d say yes for now, but, as we get bigger, I think I’ll probably limit both of those to only your language category… really want to foster independent language communities.
Should it display on your Natively dashboard feed? Again, yes for now, will revisit later.
General chat - i’m a bit hesitant tbh. While off topic threads are fun, fun can also spiral into lots of moderation. I’d prefer to be a bit more ‘boring’ and stick to language learning for now
I kind of think a general log of language learning adventures and misadventures doesn’t need to be kept to one language part of the forum. To me documenting general progress and milestones is a more ‘general’ topic that isn’t so tightly coupled to which language you’re learning. Back when I used reddit I enjoyed seeing people’s update on their Spanish/German/Thai/etc progress even though I’m not planning to learn any of those languages.
Yeah I could see it working both ways. I just don’t want it taking too much content away from the individual language category as I do think there’s something special about having smaller communities dedicated to particular languages.
But certainly see the appeal of a consolidated spot for logs
I will admit that it’s actually refreshing having no off topic section after the WaniKani forums. While the WaniKani forums are nice, it can also be chaotic.
Yes please do. I’m constantly marking learning log topics on WaniKani as read. Being able to just mute a single tag to avoid them all would be amazing.
I agree with the others that I don’t think it’s a good idea to have those… I haven’t seen a need for that kind of thing either.
What does “multilingual” mean in this context? I started learning Korean using a blog written in Japanese. Does that count as multilingual? Or is the fact that there’s only one language being learned here making it monolingual?
After more thought, I think I’ll just leave this up to the users. If you want to put your log in the general learning category with potential feedback from other language users go ahead! If you just want to put it in your language category with feedback from your own language community, that’s fine too.
Rather than formally recommending one or the other, just let the people choose.
Edit: Duly noted on the general chat, happy that you all feel similarly. To be frank, I may never open it up outside language learning topics / experiences / activities. There are plenty of other places to free chat, keeping this place a bit more focused does feel nice.
I don’t have strong feelings either way regarding where language logs belong - it makes sense for them to be included in the category of the language that’s being learned, but as @cat says, they are often of interest to those studying other languages since they often touch on topics related to language learning in general. Tags would be nice, though.
Although I suggested it, I actually agree with everyone about “chat” - even though most forums seem to have a section like that, I usually avoid them.
