The Chinese Grammar Wiki is 1 Year Old

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It's already been over a year since the Chinese Grammar Wikiofficially launched on January 22, 2012. Over the past year our whole team has been had at work iteratively improving the Chinese Grammar Wiki. When it launched, we felt pretty good about having 500 articles on the wiki. We now have over 1200.

What We've Been Working On

When the wiki first launched, we were forthcoming about some of the problems we were aware of. Specifically, we mentioned:Anonymous Editing(Going strong!)We've kept this policy, and growth has continued unabated. The important thing is that we've not only kept high levels of quality, but we've actually raised the level of quality across the board over the past year.Pinyin and Translations(Progress!)While we continue to encourage users to install browser extensions to deal with character issues, we have also added a lot more pinyin to article introductions, and have added English translations for all A1 (beginner) and A2 (elementary) level grammar points. We will consider adding more.Search(Major improvements made!)This was one of the first major technical issues we tackled. Search was greatly improved by summer 2012, and we continue to tweak it to make it better.Many articles unwritten(Fewer unwritten all the time!)There is still plenty to add, but the quantity referred to by this word "many" definitely feels deflated compared to what it is now. The AllSet Learning team has been hard at work, including not only full-time members of our office staff, but also Chinese teachers and some particularly outstanding interns. Great work, everybody!There have been so many improvements over the past year that a good long list is in order:

Key Improvements over the Past Year

  • Increased total article count from 500 to over 1200.

  • Added English translations for all A1 (beginner) and A2 (elementary) level grammar points.

  • Added pinyin to the introductions of many articles.

  • Overhauled search engine for greater accuracy and depth.

  • Added a "grammar box" to the top right of all grammar point pages, featuring level, similar grammar points, and keywords.

  • Added keyword pages (example: 不) and keyword index.

  • Set up disambiguation pages for toneless pinyin (example: "hao").

  • Broke long grammar point lists down into themed sections.

  • Began adding crucial comparison pages, in which two similar grammar points are compared (example: 不 and 没).

  • Began collecting grammar points in earnest for the forthcoming C1 (advanced) list.

What's next?

We've actually got quite a lot still planned. We're aware that there are still holes, and we'll keep working hard to fill them.In the meantime, if you're enjoying using the Chinese Grammar Wiki (or maybe just take comfort in knowing that it's there as a reference), please help us spread the word! Tell your Chinese teacher or your university Chinese department about it. Ask us questions on our new Chinese Grammar Twitter account. Like us on Facebook. Link to us in your Chinese-related blog posts. (We can use all the links we can get.)Thanks everyone, for your support, and Happy Year of the Snake!

generalJohn Pasden11 Comments