Visitors to France

[Anju]

How about a separate thread for Visitors to France?

We could copy all the topics related to coming to France- especially I wanted to put up some links for a phrase booklet, RER maps, and such links for people who are coming for a short time, and possible staying in a hotel, and dont need the comprehensive info for people staying here?

Suggestions, people???
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ANJU

[sabine]

I think it's a very good idea, will make things easier if all those informations are gathered somewhere

[Anju]

Yes Sabine, I agree. There should be a shortcut for links to first time visitors to France and one for useful links, in the latter, there could be subthreads like housing, online stuff, TV, phone or whatever.

At present I get a lot of mails/ scraps with FAQ's from people who come to this site but don't have time to (or maybe don't bother to) search with keywords or go through the threads and I think they get intimidated by the huge number of posts, sifting through which can be daunting from a newbie's point of view.

It would be good to have some sidebars with shortcuts to stuff people always ask.

Do put in more suggestions as to what you think.

People, do join in and write what are the things people frequently want to know.

Sourav, Ashwini bhaiya, what do you think?
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ANJU

[ashwani.singla@yahoo.fr]

Bravo !

Really a great idea.

Ashwani
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http://sixsigmamanagement.blogspot.com/

[Anju]

Thanks Ashwani Bhaiya.

I was just going through the forum 2 days back, and edited a few things and wrote a few posts.

Dear friends, it would be a shame that after putting in so much efforts for so many months, if the forum should not be successful.
Really, when I see from a newcomer's point of view, without any sidebar shortcuts, the forum looks like a maze!

I think the layout somehow is not very interactive. We all need to come up with suggestions and Sourav can decide what is applicable and do-able and what is not.

The key is not interacting in real life (perhaps many will differ from me) - this is an online forum, and there will be people from different cities, but there should be healthy and active online participation and interaction.

At present, as I see it, the main traffic is from the newcomers who come here, ask for information, and then they never return to write a single post or interact with anyone!

And a few good old soldiers plod on, trying to keep the forum alive.

Suggestions, people????

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ANJU

[padmaramani]

Hai Anju,
thats a good start. I have lots of friends in india who wants to come to france, but they are little bit scared of coming here, because of the language barrier and mainly food. I will be very thankful if we were able to locate some desi tour arrangement .



padma

[subodh]

yes that is a good idea.I am a new comer and faced same problems
subodh

[SwatiSG]

As a newbie, I can vouch for the fact that the forum is definitely very interesting with lots of information on different topics which is really useful for someone who is new here, like me.

As far as having a sub-forum targeted at visitors or first time arrivals to France is concerned, I completely agree that a separate sub-section would be great. As of now, questions which can be brought under this section is scattered everywhere and a lot of people seem to be posting their questions in random threads where they probably feel it has better chances of being seen or answered, I am not sure which.

Also, like you point out, this is first and foremost a online forum and interaction starts here first. Still, we can't deny the fact that the forum is used most often to meet others and once people have made their acquaintances, the purpose of this site for them is gone.

I think one has to admit that the forum has been designed primarily to help out Indians in France. In that regard, it is definitely successful but to make it more active and a site that people visit regularly, I think we need to have more discussions on topics close to our heart. I can see that Sourav had often made postings on current events..some of them like the Bombay attacks had a lot of postings while there were others which had no responses. I guess more such postings should be encouraged. What I am trying to say is, lets not just give out information...let us also "interact" online.

[Anju]

Well said Swati! You have expressed the issue very well.

Well then everyone seems to be pro the idea of new-visitors-thread. I guess Sourav can answer to that, as to how we can create a new thread, that is eye catching and highly visible, and copy all the relevant stuff to that thread as well...

People, suggestions about side bars? Nowadays, most pc 's are wide screen, and most websites are in the wide format too, so side bars wont be that bad. 2 side bars would be very good for creating short cuts to many things.

Any suggestions for what can be accommodated in the side bars?

I hope people will put in more suggestions. And more discussions. Every person has a different skill, and people bring new things to a forum, whether online or real life. Some people discuss or debate well, some write well, some are good at other literary things, some at socializing, some have specific knowledge about official, technical or food matters, and so on! I hope people will contribute whatever they are good at!

Thanks everybody for joining in the discussion.
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ANJU

[sabine]

Well, maybe we could start by browsing through the different posts in different categories to pick up the ones that should appear in this new subforum. We could simply mention the name of the threads and put a link to it here, so it's easy to find back and we can move it when the new sub is up and running. What do you say people?

[Anju]

Yes, Sabine, that seems to a practical and easy way to start off.

But it will need Sourav to create a subforum, and to create a method of copying threads (duplicate it sort of?) or we can just copy paste text matter.
I am ready to sneak out a few minutes now and then and volunteer for this copying business!

People? Please write in a list of threads?!

Sourav, what do you say?
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ANJU

[sabine]

no need to copy and paste, as Moderators we just need access and can moves threads