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| Author |
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| 25 new of 143 responses total. |
mdw
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response 33 of 143:
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Sep 24 22:54 UTC 1998 |
Go for it. If these are people who have never used computer
conferencing, then you'll need to think about ways to get people
participating. That means you'll want to try to pay a fair amount of
individual attention on each person. Some simple things you can do are
to ask each person to post a response "somewhere"--that could be a
response that describes the person, or if you can come up with a few
reasonably silly be perhaps interesting items, something to that. ("my
favorite restaurant"? "My most scary client experience?" "the silliest
sentence I ever saw translated?") Another thing you need to do is to
see that is a reasonable amount of interesting activity in the
conference. Some of this you can do yourself, by posting items and
participating yourself. But one thing you also want to do is to get
*other* people to post items, and so what you might do is to pick people
you think are especially interesting and literate, and get them to post
some interesting items, using gentle prodding ("say, remember the story
you told me about X? Can you enter that?")
You may also want to take a bit of time to explain some basic guidelines
on conferencing ahead of time, such as long responses (like this one)
over 25 lines don't go over as well as 5-20 line responses, and it's
important to be *much* more respectful of other people's opinions online
than in person (because you're missing many of the ftf cues and feedback
you'get in person that says this isn't necessarily a serious attack.)
You don't want to overdo this, because you could scare people off.
You'll also want to watch for signs of people overdoing stuff online,
and try to catch people before it gets bad enough to drive other people
away.
Some things you'll need to keep in mind are: if you take members of the
"average" population at large, the percentage of people who will
actually *be* interested in computer conferencing is surprisingly
small--*maybe* 1-2% at most. A lot of people don't like to read, an
even greater percentage don't like to write, and even among people who
like to do both, it takes a certain type of personality to enjoy
participating. The people who take to it may not be the people you
expect as well - someone who has great ftf skills may not be interested
in "wasting" their time online, while someone else who had always been
quiet and withdrawn in person, may blossom or even turn into a lion.
There's usually a certain minimum critical mass of actively
participating people before things will take off on their own. Usually,
this is about 20-25 people. Less than that, and things tend to die
down, and people wander off.
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keesan
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response 34 of 143:
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Sep 25 00:19 UTC 1998 |
Thanks for all the ideas, Marcus. In this case, computer literacy is not a
problem, as these people all spend most of their day typing on the computer,
and a fair amount of time sending email. Second, most of us have never met
each other in person. I have met two other Slavic translators and had phone
conversations with perhaps ten others. I expect that it will be a real treat
for all of us who work alone at home to have other virtual people to talk with
about problems in our translations. I know that when I call someone to ask
for a bit of help we end up talking about unrelated things for a half hour.
Anyway, I expect more than 2% of members will participate, assuming that our
group does decide to use grex. (I have not yet heard back from the
administrator). My main concern was that grex might not want a specialized
conference, much of which other grexers would not understand. I am very
pleased at the responses. If the administrator agrees, I will post info on
grex in the next newsletter and/or email a few people before that.
The diy conference seems to be doing okay with only about 10 people
in it, and there has not been any unpleasantness of any sort. The only
possible problem is that most of the conversation takes place in one item.
More later, when something starts happening.
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remmers
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response 35 of 143:
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Sep 25 10:33 UTC 1998 |
You needn't be concerned that "Grex might not want a specialized
conference." In my opinion, the more diverse groups that Grex can serve
via conferences in their specialities, the better. Like Marcus, I think
you should go for it.
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mta
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response 36 of 143:
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Sep 25 22:45 UTC 1998 |
Sindi, as far as I'm concerned serving groups liek your are part of the reason
Grex was created in the first place. No everone cares about any specific
conference and that why we have several of them. ;)
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keesan
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response 37 of 143:
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Sep 25 23:24 UTC 1998 |
I emailed the administrator again, and teh asst. admin, and the two newsletter
editors for input, and hope to hear from them soon. If this works, may try
something similar for the amateur fruit growers, and maybe Seed Savers, both
of which have infrequent newsletters in print form. It is much more helpful
to get your answers in less than three months.
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valerie
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response 38 of 143:
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Sep 27 15:48 UTC 1998 |
This response has been erased.
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cmcgee
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response 39 of 143:
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Sep 27 16:02 UTC 1998 |
Leave it to us aging hippies to start one when we need one *grin*. I think
almost all "senior" issues are well served in the current conferences. And
I, for one, would prefer to discuss medical, housing, mobility, and other
issues with all sorts of people, not just age-peers. Most "senior" issues
are really society/government/etc issues that must be solved by the whole
community, not just seniors talking amongst themselves.
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rcurl
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response 40 of 143:
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Sep 27 18:21 UTC 1998 |
I agree. I don't want to limit my conferences to other old fogies...all
they want to do is talk about the good old days.... :)
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devnull
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response 41 of 143:
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Sep 28 00:23 UTC 1998 |
Perhaps it would be better to have a translation conference, rather than
a conference about translation of a certain language. It would certainly
be possible, then, to create an item about a specific language. I would
be very surprised if it turns out that there will be so much activity that
the translation conference will need to be furthur split. Also, by making
the topic much more general, I suspect that a lot more people will participate.
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valerie
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response 42 of 143:
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Sep 28 01:54 UTC 1998 |
This response has been erased.
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aruba
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response 43 of 143:
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Sep 28 14:54 UTC 1998 |
(Nor was it the idea that only seniors could use the senior citizen
conference, I'm sure.)
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lilmo
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response 44 of 143:
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Sep 29 00:20 UTC 1998 |
It would even be a good place for those approaching senior-hood to get an idea
of what to expect, and for seniors to show that that they've still "got it",
and dispel stereotypes.
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rcurl
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response 45 of 143:
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Sep 29 04:23 UTC 1998 |
I don't know what a "senior" is, so perhaps it would be better as an *aging*
cf. We all do that. Aging is probably given more thought as it proceeds so
I suspect the discussions would concern aging past (say) 30, than before.
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keesan
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response 46 of 143:
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Sep 29 19:16 UTC 1998 |
There are 300 Slavic translators in our organization of 6000. I would be
happy to call the conference translation and have 30 or 40 items, for each
language, but would prefer to start just with Slavic people since they are
asking for a conference.
Jim does not think we need a seniors conference, just items in other
conferences, such as dwellings.
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keesan
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response 47 of 143:
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Oct 9 23:21 UTC 1998 |
Two people expressed a interest, one wanted me to bring up grex at the annual
convention this November, but I am not going. I suggested he try to telnet
to grex and look around, and I may start an item in the language conference
to discuss a translation conference. I just got two emailed answers to some
questions that I mailed in a copule of months ago to our monthly journal, a
bit too late to be useful (two months too late). I offered to set up accounts
for people if they could not manage on their own. May publish a short
paragraph in the next monthly publication (for all translators) and quarterly
(Slavic only) and they can email me for particulars.
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mta
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response 48 of 143:
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Oct 10 12:04 UTC 1998 |
Sindi, I don't think your colleagues necessarily need to telnet in. The
Backtalk interface is pretty self explanatory...
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davel
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response 49 of 143:
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Oct 10 17:47 UTC 1998 |
They'd need to telnet in & run newuser, wouldn't they? That is, if they don't
want to see everything as new every time, I mean. (If I'm wrong, well, I
don't use backtalk, I'm afraid.)
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scg
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response 50 of 143:
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Oct 10 18:33 UTC 1998 |
There's also a web based newuser.
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keesan
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response 51 of 143:
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Oct 11 00:47 UTC 1998 |
Problem is I don't know how to use backtalk and I do know what to do if I
telnet. We could set up newuser accounts for them. WHen I looked at the
website there was something about downloading 140K on backtalk, did I
misunderstand something?
I got more feedback, someone wondered why we don't just all use
Compuserve's FLEFO (foreign language forum), since we would have to subscribe
to grex otherwise. I explained that grex is free and Compuserve is not.
Planning to put a couple paragraphs in the next newsletter.
I should try backtalk again when I have free time, November?
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valerie
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response 52 of 143:
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Oct 11 14:54 UTC 1998 |
This response has been erased.
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keesan
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response 53 of 143:
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Oct 11 16:33 UTC 1998 |
I apparently should not have clicked on Backtalk but on Go to the conferences.
I just figured it out, and then sent off an email to 14 Slavic translators
and one person who runs the terminology Q and A column in the general
newsletter, giving brief instructions on how to get there, and asking them
to enter comments in Language item 96. And to pass along the info.
It looks rather easy to set up a new account in Backtalk, not as complex as
if you dial in or telnet. If this works out, is it okay to attempt to link
a conference somehow to the translators' association webpage? (Or to a fruit
growers' webpage?) Or at least list grex's homepage there?
I am waiting for the ideas to come pouring in from other translators....
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keesan
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response 54 of 143:
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Oct 12 14:43 UTC 1998 |
One response from a translator who thinks a bbs is too much trouble,
he belongs to a mailing list of translators. Can someone explain to
me what the difference is between them? So I can explain to him.
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remmers
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response 55 of 143:
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Oct 12 16:36 UTC 1998 |
If he is on a mailing list and has an opinion about how bbs's compare to
mailing lists, it soundls like he already knows what the difference is.
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rcurl
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response 56 of 143:
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Oct 12 17:19 UTC 1998 |
But, for you, a mailinglist is an account with incoming mail forwarded
to everyone that wants to be on the list. There is server software,
called 'majordomo' by which participants can join, quite, change parameters,
etc, without human intervention. Grex is a bbs, where messages are posted
and particpants come to read the messages. There are many more mailinglists
than bbs's, but they are all for single topics (plus drift....), while bbses
host many topics simultaneously.
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remmers
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response 57 of 143:
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Oct 12 18:15 UTC 1998 |
An advantage of a mailing list for a lot of people is that if they
already know how to manage email, they don't have to learn anything
new. To use a bbs, they have to get an account on the bbs, log in
with a username and password every time they want to use it, and
learn how to operate whatever software the bbs runs. This may be
the kind of thing your correspondent had in mind when he said that
a bbs seemed too complicated.
An advantage of Grex-style conferencing over mailing lists is that
the software organizes discussions by a conference/item/response
structure, which makes it easier to maintain separate discussion
threads and to look things up later.
(By the way, "majordomo" is a particular mailing list software
package. There are others, "listserv" being the best known and
most elaborate.)
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