The anniversary celebrations have had me thinking back to the day ten years ago when the forums went live.
I had started the WordReference dictionary website in 1999, but it was a failure at first. The market for online advertising burst soon afterwards, just like everything internet-related, and nobody was interested in online dictionaries. It wasn’t until 2004, five years later, that the site finally had enough visitors and revenue for me to be able to quit my day job and devote myself to improving WordReference.
During those early years, online forums had become popular, and it seemed to me that they might complement the young WordReference dictionaries nicely. Who hasn't looked up an entry in a translation dictionary and still been confused? But on a discussion board, people could ask these questions and receive answers from native speakers, on another continent. The forum discussion thread would then become part of the dictionary, enriching it for other users. That was the basic concept in the beginning, and it remains the organizing principle of the WordReference forums to this day.
I prepared some forum software and tested it carefully with friends and family. We would start with just two languages, English and Spanish, and see if the forum idea was viable. As the platform neared readiness, my technical concerns gave way to a new worry: What if the questions came flooding in with no one but me to answer them? The place would be a ghost town. I extracted promises from my bilingual friends that they would visit the site during the first few days to lend a hand.
What actually happened was remarkable, and totally unexpected. Right from the first days, users who found the site were ready and willing to answer questions. There were lots of people who really wanted to help others, just waiting for somebody to ask something. It was an amazing start.
A few months later, we added some moderators. And shortly after that, we even created some real rules. The WordReference forums have grown incredibly over the last decade, but the spirit of helping others is stronger than ever. WordRefrence is people helping people through their understanding and love of language.
Mike
I had started the WordReference dictionary website in 1999, but it was a failure at first. The market for online advertising burst soon afterwards, just like everything internet-related, and nobody was interested in online dictionaries. It wasn’t until 2004, five years later, that the site finally had enough visitors and revenue for me to be able to quit my day job and devote myself to improving WordReference.
During those early years, online forums had become popular, and it seemed to me that they might complement the young WordReference dictionaries nicely. Who hasn't looked up an entry in a translation dictionary and still been confused? But on a discussion board, people could ask these questions and receive answers from native speakers, on another continent. The forum discussion thread would then become part of the dictionary, enriching it for other users. That was the basic concept in the beginning, and it remains the organizing principle of the WordReference forums to this day.
I prepared some forum software and tested it carefully with friends and family. We would start with just two languages, English and Spanish, and see if the forum idea was viable. As the platform neared readiness, my technical concerns gave way to a new worry: What if the questions came flooding in with no one but me to answer them? The place would be a ghost town. I extracted promises from my bilingual friends that they would visit the site during the first few days to lend a hand.
What actually happened was remarkable, and totally unexpected. Right from the first days, users who found the site were ready and willing to answer questions. There were lots of people who really wanted to help others, just waiting for somebody to ask something. It was an amazing start.
A few months later, we added some moderators. And shortly after that, we even created some real rules. The WordReference forums have grown incredibly over the last decade, but the spirit of helping others is stronger than ever. WordRefrence is people helping people through their understanding and love of language.
Mike