There are two humour collections in the Russian library:
– “Tales for adults and children” ÐÑÐ¾ÐµÐºÑ Ð¡ÐиР- Сказки Ð´Ð»Ñ ÐзÑоÑлÑÑ
и ÐеÑей - LingQ Language Library
– “KVN, team of Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia” KBH: СбоÑÐ½Ð°Ñ Ð Ð£ÐÐ - LingQ Language Library
Now they are classified as “Other” or “Entertainment”. I wonder, perhaps it is better to have a “humour” category for them?
Speaking of Russian humor, there’s a great Russian radio station called Юмор FM (Humor FM) that you can listen to online here:
Btw,
I still don’t understand some categories and types.
We have categories:
Beginner I
Beginner II
Business and Economics
Careers
Culture and Religion
Daily Life
Easy Listening
Ecology
Education
Entertainment
Food
Health and Beauty
History
Language
LingQ
Literature
Member Writing
News and Politics
Other
Pronunciation
Science and Technology
Shopping
Sports
Steve’s Book
Steve’s Corner
The LinguistDigest
Travel
and types:
Articles
Audiobooks
Blog and podcasts
Books
Dialogues
For beginners
Interviews
Member writing
News and current events
Other
Radio programs
What difference between types “Audiobooks” and “Books”, “Dialogues” and “Interviews”?
Why there is the “Member Writing” category, if there is the “Member Writing” type? I suppose if some lesson is written by a learner, it is better to categorise it as “type: Member writing, category: Sports/Travel/Daily Life/etc.”
This list kind of evolved. We could try to refine it. Maybe we can discuss it or even work at it on the Wiki. But remember if we change things we will have to change each content item affected. I am open to suggestions.
I suppose deleting some categories/types is not a big problem, as LingQ programmers can write scripts for batch changing categories/types.
I.e. if it is was decided to combine and , the type of all items could be automatically changed to and than could be deleted.
Well, my suggestions
Categories
– split category “Culture and Religion” as I think it is not a very good idea to have religious texts and texts about some traditions or holidays under the same category.
– delete category “Member Writing”
– add category “Humour”
Types
It seems the list of types is Ok… (except Interviews… I think it can be removed)
– Articles: articles from newspapers, magazines (even if they are actually podcasts from some site, like shkolazhizni collection – ШколаÐизни.Ð Ñ - LingQ Language Library )
– Audiobooks: professionally read audiobooks (like the “soundbook studio” collection – http://www.lingq.com/learn/ru/store/34261/ )
– Blog and podcasts: some private blogs and podcasts about daily routine, travel, hobbies and so on.
– Dialogues: dialogues like xxxLingQ Podcasts
– For beginners
– Member writing: recorded writings, submitted by language learners
– News and current events: small articles from VOA and so on
– Radio programs: radio programs and professional podcasts.
I forgot to mention a type
– Books: books read by LingQ members or other amateurs
In German we have the category “Humor” because I added a lot of funny podcasts to the library and there was a need for this category.
But the problem with the categories isn’t easy. More than one year ago I asked Mark to reorganize the categories in the German library. Now, I did some research and I figured out, that the categories differ for the languages! I created a Google document with the categories for Rasana’s List, English, German and French that make the categories comparable: Categories and Types in the Library - Google Tabellen
I think “Culture and religion” is fine because a lot of holidays has cultural and religious roots.
For me it is a problem that categories are always shown in English. I have some learners of German who has no knowledge of English! I think the categories should be shown in the target language as before. We discussed the last problem earlier here:
Here is a working Link to the Google spreadsheet: Categories and Types in the Library - Google Tabellen
I think “Culture and religion” is fine because a lot of holidays has cultural and religious roots.
I am going to create a collection about Bashkir culture, but I don’t want to classify them as “Culture and Religion”, as I am not going to speak neither about Islam, nor about Orthodoxy at these podcasts. And I think it is not logical to have texts of John’s Bible and my collection about culture of Bashkir at one category.
Btw, in the Russian library there is only one item under “Shopping” category: RussianLingQ, #5 Shopping. Mike and Anna are talking about different types of stores in Russia and Canada.
I think it is better to remove this category and move this item to “Daily life”.
Actually, come to think of it, I do not see why we need the same categories in all languages other than Beginner I and II. Those of you who are set up as editors, please rearrange things the way you want.
Maybe we should have a coordinator for each language as Vera suggested.
Vera would you be the coordinator for German
Rasana for Russian
Marianne or Serge for French
Do we have other volunteers?
I noticed quite a few beginners’ lessons with a grammar slant in the Spanish library - could there be a search category for that as well? (They are nearly all at 1. Beginners 1, Level Beg. 1) Q: “Where’s your grammar?” A: “In the living room, watching telly.”
Steve, I can do this, but I cannot create or rename Categories. I can only deal with the existing categories.
There are issues here that I had not focused on. In the future we want to translate the categories into the language of the learner. We will need to standardize. With all the issues we have in front of us now, I suggest we just leave things the way they are. If we get going changing things we will again end up with a hodge podge as we have now. Let’s just think through what our standardized categories, types etc, should be and at some later date we will change things, not now.