ルリドラゴン ・ Ruri Dragon 🐲 Week 2

[TobiasW]

Okay, so… sorry this took so long, but let’s get to the topic of having a grammar sheet and/or a summary post.

Since it’s been forever, here are the main points from the last thread about it:

@Akashelia

I vote for having a grammar sheet!
As far as I remember, the bad experience you had with it @Gorbit99 is that it is too much work and usually done by one person?
But for example, in the sentence page 10 “寝てたもん”, I looked up もん, found a grammar point on Bunpro , I feel like it would be nice to have a sheet to put it in for others?

@Akashelia

I would be happy if it was just one tab in the vocab sheet, and if I’ve looked up something, I can put it there.
I am not expecting it to be 100% filled, and I am not going to look into every sentence for grammar points and put them in myself. For example から is something I’m familiar with so I probably won’t notice it, but if someone meets it for the first time they probably will, and can put it in the sheet when they look it up / after someone explains it to them

As far as I can tell a grammer sheet has never been used successfully, but then again it is quite a new idea, and I can see how it might be useful:

• You can use it to have an overview over important grammar points - maybe even before you start reading the chapter, just like some people like to pre-learn vocabulary, and then being able to recognize the grammar points when they come up.
• Maybe sometimes people don’t need a full-on answer (that they have to search for first), but a simple “page 24, volitional, here’s a link” is enough for them to figure it out by themselves.

Maybe there’s even other points that I’m missing?

Going from there, here’s what I think a grammar sheet should (not) be:

• It’s not a replacement for asking questions. (That would make it too complicated.)
• It’s not a single person’s responsibility. (That would be overwhelming.)
• It’s easy to fill in. (So people actually do it.)

Going from there, my suggestion would be:

• A single Google Sheets table for all chapters.
• Three columns:
  • Page
  • A short representation of the grammar point (e.g. “volitional” or “から”)
  • One or more links for the grammar point (e.g. Bunpro, Maggie Sensei, YouTube videos).
• Nothing gets repeated.
• Crowd-sourced, like vocab sheets are usually done.
• It’s only done ahead of time if people are willing to do it ahead of time.

For anything more complicated, I think questions in the thread are the tool of choice.

A grammar sheet like that sounds good to me. Low effort, possibly useful, and if nothing else a nice experiment for future book clubs.

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@Belthazar

I kinda feel like if we were going to do a grammar sheet, it’d probably be simpler to write up a summary of the answers to questions people have had in this thread, rather than attempt to predict ahead of time what grammar points are going to trip people up.

@MrGeneric

Or else we could just make it a Google doc, actually. Might be better so that it’s just a single document across the entire club instead of having to do a separate post in each thread.

But then, I’m torn. A document is more easily accessible in terms of being a single link, but having it in the forums makes it more immediately searchable, which is useful.

Now, a summary wiki/document has a completely different function in my opinion: It’s tries to provide an easier experience navigating the thread. While I agree with the underlying sentiment, I can’t see how it would work well:

• What’s in it?
  • If it’s just links to parts of the thread:
    • Not a ton of work.
    • …but still work, so parts will be missing.
    • Essentially just a replacement for the already existing search function.
  • If it’s fully copied answered:
    • A lot of work.
    • …will definitely be missing parts of the discussion that people forgot to add.
    • Essentially just a replacement for the already existing thread.
  • If it’s summaries:
    • Useful, but the most work.
    • People filling it in will have to decide which answers are the most important.
    • People reading it will be missing out on the discussion.
• Whose responsibility is it?
  • If it’s one person: It’ll lag behind the thread, and that person will likely burn out soon.
  • If it’s each person who answers: It feels unreasonable for me to get people who are already spending a lot of time answering questions to also require them to do more busywork. If it was required, it might even make people think twice about answering at all.
  • If it’s crowd-sourced: It will probably be pretty incomplete since it’s harder to check what is missing (you’ll have to compare posts in the thread with the wiki all the time).

It feels to me like it’s better to use the search function and just read the actual answers/discussions in the thread.

Maybe I’m seeing this to negatively though. If people really want it, we can discuss what will go into it and make such a wiki!

@MaraVos

I like the idea of it being in the first post, if that’s not too much work!

If you mean “first post after the opening post”: Yeah, if we’re gonna have a wiki, I also think that’s the way to do it.

(I wouldn’t want to put it in the opening post though.)

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Does anybody have opinions on either of these topics? Do you think my opinions/ideas sound good, do you have suggestions, are there things you disagree with or that would you do differently?

I’d suggest talking a bit about it to get a feel about what people think, then maybe make a poll, and then implement either/both/none of those.