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motivation poll

沈唯達   January 16th, 2010 2:06p.m.

You forgot: Learning is its own best motivation...

Laurent B. Mattiussi   January 16th, 2010 2:24p.m.

And perhaps these more: absurdity of Chinese language, lack of logic, oddity, fifty million meanings for a single sound… a taste of poetry? Oh ! I was forgetting: difficulty.

Byzanti   January 16th, 2010 2:39p.m.

New features that make my learning easier :p.

Chloe   January 16th, 2010 2:49p.m.

What would make it really motivating for me to practice is the ability to unlock badges like on Foursquare.

SicVita   January 16th, 2010 3:11p.m.

1+ months of Skritter for free!

Or how about a sweet headband with the Skritter logo on it? One we can wear while tearin' up characters.

Chloe   January 16th, 2010 9:26p.m.

Skritter toasters! guitars! water coolers!... oh wait, that's Hello Kitty, but why not!

mcfarljw   January 16th, 2010 9:56p.m.

I agree with Chloe, the badges wouldn't cost you any money and would be motivational. I have my own goals to meet as far as learning, but tracking them on Skritter would be nice.

george   January 17th, 2010 12:30a.m.

Heh, good ideas guys. SicVita, esp nice suggestion. I'm thinking a little Paulie Bleeker in Juno style. Badges would be a good way to keep our costs low while we build out all those sweet features to come. If you have any other ideas or specific reactions, I would be really interested to hear them!

george   January 17th, 2010 12:33a.m.

Oh yeah, forgot to mention 沈唯達, I guess I just assumed that "the love of learning" was already figured into the equation (and I wanted to keep the length of the poll question down). Skritterers in general seem to already be lifelong die hard learners!

west4east   January 17th, 2010 1:34a.m.

What motivates me personally, is a chance on a life in China, and understanding everything. Like Da Shan (大山)...

sonorier   January 17th, 2010 3:11a.m.

yes! virtual badges!

@ loupdessteppes:
lack of logic? whaaaaaaaaaaat???? chinese is 100 times more logical than all the european languages i know.

and yes the most motivational for me is the speed at which i started to learn in the skritter age.

Nicki   January 17th, 2010 7:13a.m.

badges, free skritter time, rankings :o)

葛修远   January 17th, 2010 10:29a.m.

badges would be cool. if anyone is familiar with the 'achievements' system used on many games, particularly valve ones like Team Fortress 2, that would be pretty cool. so there could be obvious badges like 100, 500, 1000 characters, HSK1 etc. but also quirky things, maybe around different themes? or like "3 hours in one day" badge. a lot of variety would be cool. i'd prefer a set of 'official' badges to ones i create myself.

stelingo   January 18th, 2010 5:50p.m.

Nicki, what does your avatar mean?

skdbhunt   January 18th, 2010 8:53p.m.

Seeing my graph of known characters going up.

Nicki   January 18th, 2010 10:18p.m.

It's a kind of noodles, biang biang mian. It's the most complicated character in Chinese, but you can't actually type it. Here's some information:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biang_biang_noodles

I just think it's incredibly cool. But I can't write it.

葛修远   January 19th, 2010 9:50a.m.

awww I wish we could enter that on Skritter to study

Xerxes314   January 19th, 2010 5:30p.m.

Actually, there's a more complicated character that has three copies of that character over three 龍. It means "the sound made by throwing several bowls of a certain kind of noodles over a flock of flying dragons".

stelingo   January 19th, 2010 6:37p.m.

I wonder what percentage of native speakers can write it. A possible design for a future skritter badge, perhaps?

Nicki   January 19th, 2010 7:44p.m.

Can we see a picture of that, Xerxes?

葛修远   January 21st, 2010 3:04p.m.
葛修远   January 21st, 2010 3:05p.m.

sorry, copied the link wrong somehow. it should be:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/71/Zhé.svg

Xerxes314   January 21st, 2010 4:04p.m.

It's right here on the Internet, which means it must be real:

http://clebschgordan.fileave.com/awesomestcharacter-small.png

sonorier   January 22nd, 2010 1:42a.m.

@aeriph: that link takes me to a character with four 龙 (traditional ones).

None of my chinese friends believe this biang2 thing is a real character, think I am shitting them, haha.

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