Hi,
In a different post many people were discussing the wide range of abilities here on this sub and how many members feel excluded due to them not feeling up to the same standard as the more advanced users or annoyed at so many basic questions.
There are many casual learners on here alongside those who have more time or choose to be more disciplined with their learning, and it would be nice to have an easy way to find people who are at the same level as you (or wish to help those out at your level) if you wanted to.
So I propose “Level Flairs” 😊
Maybe you could have
**Basic/Lower Intermediate/Intermediate/ Higher/ Fluent/Unsure** or **Below N5/N5/N4 etc** …or the like…
This way everyone feels like they can post or find posts relevant to them if they want to, and this sub wouldn’t be so daunting or annoying to everyone here.
Anyway it’s just an idea 🤷🏼♀️
I hope this reaches the mods ears (I don’t know another way to do that) and any input or other ideas would be greatly appreciated 😊
5 comments
I think this is a great idea and I hope the mods see it!
While there is a potential that this could improve the quality of discussion in some ways, I also think there’s potential for various problems and feel obligated to enumerate some of them:
1. Posters unable to properly self-assess whether a post is beginner/intermediate/advanced and posting with the wrong flair.
2. Generally more experienced students of Japanese are best qualified to answer questions. If more advanced students start ignoring questions tagged “beginner”, beginners may not get answers from the people best qualified to help them.
3. I think many people already have a desire to somewhat overstate their ability level in Japanese and this may cause overuse/misuse of the advanced or intermediate categories.
4. Trolls may deliberately target beginners and give them bad advice or harass them.
All of this being as it may, I can certainly understand a desire to make things more accessible in practical ways for beginners like having conventions for requesting answers that don’t contain kanji/have furigana or use romaji.
Grammar and vocab grading is much harder,.because one person’s “beginner level” could quite easily be someone else’s “intermediate level- and vice l versa. But use of conventions in the writing system are very nicely delineated and of practical value
The feeling of exclusion among those users is on them, not the subreddit. This place isn’t daunting, it’s just populous, which brings to light the worst in beginners (lack of independence, ability to self study, skill with search engines, etc). Beginners tend to get frustrated about and lay blame on things other than themselves, and user flairs (?) don’t solve that problem. You just gotta let those people pass through.
I think it’s a good idea too!
I thought about something like this and can’t decide if it will be good or bad.
Overall I think it might have more potential for abuse than anything.
But like I said, I do consider it sometimes. Would it be good? We already have a “native speakers” flair, would a “N1” flair be good? It would tell you, this person at least knows *something*.
JLPT isn’t everything though, a lot of people are critical of it. I bet there are really helpful people here who don’t even have N1, and those who have N1 but because they are good at “test taking strategy” rather than Japanese.
Also just because someone has N1 doesn’t mean they are helpful or even good at explaining things. They might be neither of those.
So yeah IDK. It’s a tough one.