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There’s been a serious update drought recently! I know you’re busy, but surely you can release 1 or 2 lessons a week?
Since the changes with the new version and all there has been like 3 new chapters in like 2 months. So I guess the answer is no. That is what happen when you have too much to do and not enough time/help or priority.
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This reply was modified 13 years ago by
new content > cosmetic changes if you ask me
From what I understand Mark you’re at the more advanced stage of TextFugu and are looking for ‘more’ to do. I could see how frustrating it may seem when you’re looking for more and not seeing anything. I don’t know the whole story of TextFugu, being new and all, but I hope I may be able to give some insight that might give you some ease and understanding. Developing a CMS can bring about unforeseen issues and delays. Unless you run a beta server you can run into errors when you try to modify a live site. Even with a beta site you still run into issues of coding and importing that can take extra time and money to do correctly. Sometimes it’s just not feasible anyway so you’re forced to edit a live site and hope for the best, or at least a recent backup.
CMS sites are a blessing and a curse at the same time. There are different templates that are interconnected and must flow when rendered. One semicolon out of place and you might start throwing errors. Then the real fun begins hunting down what template and were the issue is. There are also the various plugins that you need to worry about. Not all of them will play nice with each other even though on their own they’re fine. Some may not give you any issues until you have a large enough user base with various browser/OS combos to find a kink. If a plugin starts to give you trouble you may need to read through various code, sometimes line by line, to find out if it’s a conflict with another plugin or simply the wrong hook being invoked.
By no means am I trying to downplay your point, I’m only trying to give another perspective. With the upgrade the TextFugu team may be busy behind the scenes trying to ensure that they have a solid foundation to build upon… or… they could be hold up somewhere on a serious StarCraft bender. I dunno, but there may be more to it all.
The thing is that about a moth ago (maybe longer) the 3 seasons were split in to 3 seasons instead. This caused soooooo many bugs, and this change seems unnecessary. As you point out yourself tracking down a bug can be hard, but changing everything up just to make a cosmetic change has done a lot of bad things. In season 5 almost all links to pages withing the seasons are bugged and will bring you to a lesson from season 3 instead of season 5. Files can’t be downloaded from the season lessons menu, and you need to access it through the lesson.
All this is getting fixed, but it seems like a total waste of time to rearrange the seasons. It worked just fine, so I see no reason to change everything up just to cause new bugs to appear. Why would you do that? I think it is everyones interest to get improved & new study material as supposed to getting a new layout. All this time could have been spent on new materials…
Also all the early seasons seems to be getting an update with sentence decks, while as pointed out here http://www.textfugu.com/bb/topic/naru-pdf/ the users of the later seasons are stuck with study material full of bugs, typos and just plain mistakes.
Most of it might be fixed once you get to this stage, but as of now I have just given up reporting bugs because I see them all over. Sometimes audio doesn’t work, mistakes with the Japanese, typos, links not working, lack of updates and so on. Maybe if Koichi started to release a static of how much I have actually donated by reporting mistakes I would want to report them, but the motivation with “donating” doesn’t work when you never see how much they donate(if they donate any).
Fix the later seasons. Stop fixing what already works.
PleaseThe frequency of updates (or claimed lack of) doesn’t really bother me. It’s primarily one person working on the site, designing the Anki decks along with voice clips, moving everything over to the new season format, going through and fixing the many links and then thinking up new lessons is quite a lot to do, especially if Koichi doesn’t work 5 days a week 9 hours a day.
I’m only guessing but they may have received feedback that the old layout was ‘too much’ and this might make it easier for people while giving more room to grow at the same time. I dunno, maybe not, but the bugs are here and working to fix them should now be the priority IMHO. It’s better to have a working site then a site with new content but is full of bugs. I don’t know what the path the team wants to go down but the new content may also be part of the rework design. It may take a bit of time before everything is up to par at the more advanced levels as they work through everything if this is a total makeover. Growing pains hurt and this might be some of them. Coming in after the change I can only see things as they are now.
I don’t know how much help I’d be with the Japanese at the more advanced levels but I have offered to help in any way I can, and that offer will always stand. This is a great resource and I’m sure once things are up to par there’ll be more content at the advanced levels, making it that much better.
I think Mark and Mister have been hardest on the Textfugu team but I don’t think their criticism is unfair.
The fact that this topic keeps coming up is evidence enough that it is a serious issue.
A few technical issues have been pointed out and I, like Mark, have noticed several other problems (broken links etc) that I’ve not bothered to bring up mainly because it’s too tedious a task. We are customers after all, not editors. If the site wants to beta test something to search for mistakes, they should do it for free. The fact is the quality of the site, content aside, has gotten shoddier as the look has gotten fancier. New upgrades bring new issues and new delays on content. If the upgrades are done for pedagogical reasons, that’s understandable, but it seems like we’ve seen quite a few purely aesthetic changes that are wholly unnecessary.
The site seems to be pushing towards a business model that favors getting new customers over keeping old customers satisfied. I’m reminded of the Awesome Express episode of Futurama. It seems as though the site is in over it’s head.
However, it is possible that there is some wonderful, massive Christmas-Spectacular update waiting as a surprise.
With that said, there is a new lesson up since I last checked (Let’s) so the updates are still coming. And, Koichi…Yes, I prefer the tango. Also, keep in mind that the site was never intended (or advertised) as being for intermediate to advanced students. If you’ve outgrown the site, so be it. Move on.Just want to +1 thisiskyle post, this is about exactly what I’d say if I had any talents at expressing myself.
>From what I understand Mark you’re at the more advanced stage of TextFugu and are looking for ‘more’ to do
Oh whoops, I keep confusing Mark with Mark Weber
>I think Mark and Mister have been hardest on the Textfugu team but I don’t think their criticism is unfair.
This was me a long time ago but,
The fact that this topic keeps coming up is evidence enough that it is a serious issue.
If Textfugu leans towards more of a business model, so be it. It’s probably like a “We don’t know what it can be, we don’t even know what it is, but what we do know is that it’s cool.”(←The Social Network).
If this is so, then Textfugu might have to expand. Yay corporate upgrade! Time to become a millionaires!
>Also, keep in mind that the site was never intended (or advertised) as being for intermediate to advanced students.
“officially” it is once you reach JLPT3 that you can call yourself intermediate and this this site is no where near covering the vocab/kanji/grammar for that. That is why I still expect updates(as advertised). Also I don’t see why season 1-3 is getting so much attention when clearly season 5 and 6 are bugged as hell. Why don’t you fix these season instead of wasting time improving what is already working? Take a look at the worksheet i linked to(naru.pdf in season 5) Look through it yourself and see what kind of material season 5-6 has. Even in the English part there are mistakes “what does you want to be?”. And instead of fixing things like this, season 1-3(which works perfectly fine) is getting updates. Why?
Fix what isn’t working.
Stop updating what is working.This topic hasn’t already been discussed 9001 times :P I usually come in and get all aggressive, then Koichi or Hashi come in and try to apologise, and then everyone’s all like “Oh hey, thanks, that’s fine, just sit and not update the site all day, put your feet up and play Starcraft, go ahead” and then the topic dies. Textfugu is never going to be finished; we just have to deal with it. Koichi is never going to get his ass into gear, he’s always going to be fannying about with site and Anki deck designs, and people will always join TF then leave a couple of months later when they get sick of waiting for new content. It’s just the way of the world XD If I hadn’t gotten it so cheaply, I’d be wanting my money back.
If someone was foolish enough to base all their Japanese studying on TextFugu and *only* TextFugu, I’d feel really sorry for them; they may as well just give up XD@Yggbert: You say he doesn’t work 9 hours/5 days, but why not? This is his full-time job.
I wouldn’t say JLPT3 is what allows you to call yourself intermediate as somebody else could come along and take the stance that JLPT3 is easy. I think it’s a really subjective thing.
@Michael Well I am just saying that I don’t know if he does or doesn’t. I would expect things to pick up a bit now that all those decks have been re-done.
Doesn’t change the fact that it is the official measurement for your Japanese proficiency. Notice how I said “officially”
Yeah I saw that, and it’s what I was responding to.
One person can say something is intermediate and another can say it’s not, or they can say it’s actually advanced. It’s a subjective thing. Yes JLPT is the official testing method by the Japanese government but it doesn’t mean you have to take JLPT3 to be considered intermediate or higher, it’s really that simple. One single test never defines your ability.
As a formality some employers will require you to have taken JLPT level X, but if you show up speaking conversational or better Japanese they’re not going to claim you are at a beginner level because you don’t have one qualification, are they? This is my point.
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This reply was modified 13 years ago by
Luke.
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This reply was modified 13 years ago by
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