This is a (rough) translation of a post I put into the "About the website" forum; anyone who is interested should feel free to translate the message and post it into forums of other languages.

---

Recently, I suggested to one of my students, who was progressing very rapidly in her studies, that she should practice her Esperanto by reading and participating in lernu forums. She came back to me a short time later and said that she tried reading the forums, but found them difficult to understand. She included a block of text as an example; it was difficult even for me to understand, due to the grammatical errors and chaotic structure. I ended up sending her to the discussions found under the articles at Libera Folio, which are generally written in high-level Esperanto with good grammar. She found those much easier to understand. Of course, it's easier to understand good grammar than it is to understand a text full of mistakes.

The lernu forums are for everyone -- both for learners and for experienced speakers. For learners, however, it could sometimes be useful to read forum posting written in good Esperanto.

In the new lernu, to be released next year, do you think it would be a good idea to include a forum section only for experienced speakers? Everyone could read it, but only those who had passed a certain level of language exam could post in it. It would be a separate forum section, like "Viewpoints" or "About the website" in the current forums. The remainder of the forums, except for that one section, would be open to users of any language level.

What do you think? Is that a bad idea? Is it too elitist and discriminatory, and therefore offensive? Or would it be a good incentive to study the language to a point where you could post in that forum, and beginners could read the postings in that forum, knowing that the grammar in it will always be more or less correct?

Do you have other for achieving a similar goal (a forum section with reliably good grammar, to help learners)?

For those who are beginners, have you had difficulty understanding posts in the forums here, and do you think that grammatical errors contributed to your difficulties?

I have no problem with the idea of a forum where only the more advanced could post (even though I would be excluded) as long as the rest of us can read it.

My worry would be that it would remove the input of the more experienced Esperantists from the other forums. Perhaps the moderators would have to be prepared to take more on.

In my time at Lernu many people have been helpful, informative and kind and, if withdrawn, that would be missed.

I actually found my first post the other day and remember being surprised at the number of helpful replies I received. I only joined Lernu to use the resources (hence the horrible & hastily chosen user name) but the warmth and kindness of the community has encouraged me to stick around.

@Erinja - thanks for the link to Libera Folio, another site I never knew existed. Please could the Lernu team also consider having more links to good external Esperanto content. Perhaps you could posts a request for suitable links & then have someone vet them & add them.

Erinja, I think that it's a great idea.

Although I understand how the idea might come across as intimidating to a new esperantist, I feel that this sort of section would also give motivated beginners and intermediary esperantists practical examples of how the language is used daily to discuss just about anything. Furthermore, seeing experienced esperantists at work would allow the readers to learn from different and contemporary writing styles.

Personally, since I am very keen on self-improvement in all areas of my life, including my ability to communicate, I would use that section of the forum as a benchmark to improve my esperanto level and to try my hand at the exams as a way to prove to myself that I am qualified enough to participate in those forums.

In fewer words, I think that your idea is worth considering and discussing although there will always be someone who will dislike it, regardless of how innovative it is.

Maybe an "across the forum search"- request of users language level would be fine. I.e. at one thread 10 experienced users take part. Then this thread would be higher ranked at the search result as an thread with solely 3 experienced users. Of course an similar forum search request could be possible to find forum thread which are occupied by beginners.

In my view a forum for users with a good command of the language is not a bad idea, but it might be good to have alternative ways of qualifying for entry besides the website's examinations. For example other respected examinations like ILEI or KER. Or evidence of letters or articles published in printed Esperanto magazines generally regarded as being of high quality. Or submitting a few sample messages to a teamano who decided that they were of a suitable level.

Miland:In my view a forum for users with a good command of the language is not a bad idea, but it might be good to have alternative ways of qualifying for entry besides the website's examinations.

In short, yes, that will certainly be possible, exactly as you describe. We will ensure that it's possible for administrators to manually change someone's indicated language level, without that person having taken one of our exams.

For the people who said in the poll that it's a bad idea, I'd like to hear your comments as well. Do you think that language level isn't a problem on the site, or do you have any ideas about ways that learners read discussions that they know, with reasonable certainty, are written in good Esperanto?

I not sure exactly what I think about this proposal Erinja.

As an experienced user I have no problem in simply ignoring posts that are written in poor Esperanto - or, if the topic interests me responding to what the poster might be saying.

But I see the point in having discussions in model Esperanto for a beginner to read.

I think I agree with Miland that some care needs to taken in the matter of deciding who might be able to post in such a forum, if implemented.

One would not wish to discourage a contribution from a casual vistor to Lernu.net, who happens to be experienced in the language.

Imagining myself as such a visitor, I find myself thinking that I simply would not bother to post, if I found that I was expected to take some exam first.

It might be enough just to label a new forum as 'Advanced Users - Spertuloj'. After all, if you own some woods and put up a notice saying 'Private Woods' most people would stay out.

Or you could implement a button 'Text unclear', which people could click on to warn beginners not to bother too much with trying to understand some particular post - such a button could be useful in the English language forum too.

What I do think would be excellent, is if you could find some way of converting the enormous number of 'reads', that one sometimes see in the statistics, into a commensurate level of posting.

I'm a newbie, but I voted yes. There's probably a better idea out there, but I can't come up with one at the moment.

Also, it's good to know that not all the Esperanto I will encounter here is top-rate. I'm not advanced enough to tell which is which yet. I will consider myself warned.

I'm against it.

Yes, poorly written Esperanto can be annoying for beginners.

On the other hand, poorly written Esperanto is part of the internet. Get used to it early on, because you're going to see a whole heck of a lot more of it going forward.

I don't seem to remember ungrammatical and/or misspelled posts as being an onerous stumbling block for me when I started. If I couldn't figure something out, I skipped it or asked questions about it. I didn't just sit there spinning my wheels, muttering "does not compute, does not compute, does not compute".

If there were such an advanced section in the Lernu Forum, and I didn't make the cut (for whatever reason), I doubt that I would ever visit the section. And since, to a certain degree, how I use Lernu is by habit, if there's a section that I don't habitually visit, it's likely I will continue to not visit it even after I've gotten permission to post there.

If we do create such a section, my prediction is that it will get used a bunch at first (because it's new), less so as time passes (since the other sections will be getting more traffic and are therefore likely more timely and interesting), and at some point will be something that we might as well just get rid of because no one posts there anymore. I say we nip that in the bud, and start by simply not creating it.