In one of yesterday�s posts, Missfrancisca made some nice and useful suggestions, the first of which was clearly debatable. That suggestion which aimed to treat the problem of wss stealing and members� laziness stated that �There should be a minimum of contributions per member, let�s say a month, every three months, six or a year,� the thing which didn�t please many great members of this wonderful website.
Well, I just want to say that I agree with everybody, either with Missfrancisca, or with Manonski, nejar, isabelle, Olindalima, Seema, GIOVANNI, mena, Fabiola, Anna, SueThom, Apodo and Naranjas despite the fact that they have different views.
On one hand, I completely support the view that the term �contribution� should be flexible rather than restricting it to uploading wss. We can never force members to upload wss on a regular basis since many of them may be much busy at times or just sick or maybe running out of creativity. You know that when we mention the word creativity, we automatically refer to gift and talent. So imagine that you force a gifted writer to write you a certain book. What would be the result? Of course another commercial book would be added to the list of low quality books that no one would like to have. That�s why we need to tackle this topic a little more wisely.
Indeed, as many of my colleagues stated previously, helping the other members on the forum either by posting useful links, sharing some useful advice or explaining some language elements may sometimes be much more valuable than uploading wss. Our website is not just for sharing wss because that�s not always what teachers look for in Eslprintables. Many times teachers come to the website especially to ask for help with grammar, one of the four skills or with any other element of the English language. Those teachers usually leave happy and contented since there are always some active members who fully respond to their questions. In addition to sharing wss, we do share experience, knowledge and ideas, the things which take much of our time and effort for the sake of making the website a better place and the life of teachers easier and more professional.
On the other hand, I think that when Missfrancisca made her suggestion, she was mainly referring to those passive invisible Machiavellians who once worked hard just to get 30 points to become premium members so as to benefit from the site�s free downloads and then they stopped doing so and disappeared from contributing or sharing all at once although they may be benefiting from the free downloads on a daily basis. Don�t you think that it�s this kind of opportunists who may misappropriate our wss and use them in their blogs without caring about our feelings? Do Machiavellians care for the others? They had a cunning intention since the beginning, so what would hinder them from being more cunning? That�s why I think that it�s not fair to give this type of people a golden opportunity to benefit from the wss in the website without making any contribution of any kind (after getting the 30 points of course), be it uploading wss, helping the others on the forum or even sharing some useful ideas.
Well, We don�t have a testing machine to test the hearts of the members here to see if they have any bad intentions, but also we should be clever enough not to give those who are not good our wss and other services on a golden plate. That�s why I relatively share Missfrancisca�s view stated in her first suggestion.
In addition to this, I think that moderately putting that suggestion into effect will allow us to know / get rid of those �members� who are totally passive. If, for example, you consider the number of registered people at present and compare it with the printables, you�ll find that the difference is certainly big: �Today, 1-6-2009, we are 183913 registered users and we have 167158 printables.� This means that there are few active members on the site compared to the number of registered users. We already said that some members may be active in the forum although they may not upload as many wss as the others, but what about those with 0 point accounts or a little more and who have been so for months or even more? Some of them may even have signed up to the website once and then stopped signing in. Don�t you think that their accounts take space in the website? How would you know whether they are active or passive in the absence of any useful rule?
That�s why I think we should resort to Missfrancisca�s idea on condition that we apply it moderately to satisfy the majority of great teachers on the website. So, I think that a middle-way solution to this problem may be to set the minimum uploads per user to, for example, one, two or three printables per six months or year. I don�t think this will affect our creativity and therefore force us to value quantity over quality as I don�t expect any teacher to be busy, sick or run out of creativity for about 360 days or more. Therefore, the requirement of producing one, two or three printables per six months or year (this is up to Victor to decide) would be a good reason for some very passive/cunning members to change their negative attitude and start sharing their work which would receive accurate moderation (I hope) to avoid the production of any useless or low quality printables.
What do you think of this suggestion?
I think many of you will agree with this suggestion while others may disagree with it. They are more than welcome, but then they should help us with a better suggestion to tackle that problem since we are all here for the benefit of all the good teachers and this wonderful website alike.
P.S. I�ve posted this topic on a new thread bcz there seems to be a problem with the old one.
Sorry for the length of my post and have a good day / night
Abdelhadi
