Why not? I never suggested that anyone should do anything which violates the laws of the country they live in.
Survey: Expats Prefer Shanghai Over Beijing
For the third time in a row, Shanghai has topped the list of most attractive Chinese cities for expats, according to a survey released today, China Daily reports. Other cities that ranked (in order) were Beijing, Shenzhen, Tianjin, Qingdao, Hangzhou, Guangzhou, Suzhou, Xiamen, and Kunming.
The survey was organized by the International Talent magazine, in cooperation with the China Society for Research on International Professional Personnel Exchange and Development, who recruited nearly 20,000 foreign professionals to take part in the survey between July and December last year.
Participants ranked the cities according to four indexes, which included policies for foreign professionals, working environment, and living environment.
Data for expat populations throughout China is scarce. According to China Briefing, there were 209,000 foreigners living in Shanghai in 2010, compared to 107,000 in Beijing. Data is likely to be much higher (with no official data available past 2012 as of now) as these numbers only include residents officially living here on a residence permit.
For expats worldwide, an HSBC survey last year indicated that China was the most popular destination, with Germany ranking second and Singapore ranking third. The survey included employment packages and experiences with regards to bringing up children.
However, we recently reported that foreigners are starting to leave China more frequently than they are arriving, with double the amount of expatriate families leaving. Chinese Premier Li Keqiang feels the pressure, as he aims to encourage foreign families to stay in China, and promises to provide opportunities for families to show their talents.
And since we're ranking things, let's not forget Beijing's short stint early last month as the world's fourth most romantic city before it dropped to one of the least.
More stories by this author here.
Email: margauxschreurs@truerun.com
Instagram: @s.xuagram
Photo: The Travel Playbook
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Most of my posts are in General, which is a forum for just general chat. As such, all the threads (and posts in those threads) are made up of people chatting about random stuff. I have also posted useful replies in help threads - the only reason I've posted relatively few of those kind of posts because almost no one bothers coming here to ask questions any more. There aren't any genuine questions to respond to.
Just because tomarnstein is intolerant of views that differ from his own does not make me a drag on the forum.
Re: Survey: Expats Prefer Shanghai Over Beijing
Re: Survey: Expats Prefer Shanghai Over Beijing
Re: Survey: Expats Prefer Shanghai Over Beijing
Re: Survey: Expats Prefer Shanghai Over Beijing
sure, we'll take volunteer moderators.
I'd need to see a fairly stellar posting record with little or no flaming and I'd also need a real identity
We still use drupal but it will be phased out in a backend redesign later this year
How would volunteer moderators go about applying?
Re: Survey: Expats Prefer Shanghai Over Beijing
Re: Survey: Expats Prefer Shanghai Over Beijing
Re: Survey: Expats Prefer Shanghai Over Beijing
When it was working best (about 8 years ago), we had between 10 and 20 volunteer moderators who more or less spent a good chunk of their day there. Even then, it was an uphill battle against the trolls.
We began to lose control back in 2008 when we disatrously redesigned the site with a backend powered by Drupal, which has a notoroiously shitty bbs/forum module that robbed the mods of the convenience and power of moderating possible under our previous forum software, phpbb.
Are you still using Drupal? Still inconvenient for volunteer moderators to help out?
... most of our moderators lost interest or moved on.
Would you take volunteer moderators if someone volunteered?
The problem is this: every time I delete something, I get jumped on for being a censor.
Well, honestly, no matter what you do in life, someone somewhere will be mad at you. In my opinion, the Beijinger needs VERY simple and VERY clear guidelines--and then a few moderators with really thick skin... i.e. moderators who don't feel obligated to defend themselves to stupid complaints. There's a saying somewhere about answering a fool...
My two cents... You could boil the guidelines down to something like this:
- If not related to life in Beijing, post is deleted.
- If post uses derogatory, insulting phrases toward another poster, then post is deleted.
- If post uses foul language, then post is deleted.
I grant you... "derogatory, insulting, foul" language is open to interpretation. That's where the thick-skinned moderators come in. Honestly, if you err on the side of censorship in this one area, you'll end up with a forum that could be of actual use to the community.
I'm on several forums related to my career, and the moderator(s) have no qualms about deleting/cutting posts. They never argue; they simply post a statement explaining that a post was deleted for irrelevance/inappropriateness, whatever. The poster whose post was deleted can complain directly to the moderator in private, but if he/she complains publicly on the forum, those posts are deleted. It makes the forum VERY useful, as it keeps everybody focused on the topic under discussion.
I don't really have that kind of time to fight these battles ... and that's on a single post.
I can't be bothered to spend the time it would take to delete something every time it gets posted, so i've adopted the strategy of just not going into the threads that I know are cesspools.
No kidding. Who has the time to do that? If that's the current approach, shut the forums DOWN, man.
Re: Survey: Expats Prefer Shanghai Over Beijing
I like Brtomarts suggestions. It seems to be, there could be someone whose job it is to simply monitor the forums, and delete when necessary (including blocking accounts that don't want to comply). It wouldn't be that hard of a job, and presumably you already have staff working on the site, so it could just be part of their job. It probably only takes five minutes to look throught the posts every couple of hours.
Just seems it wouldn't cost that much to pay someone to do that, and the pay off would certainly be a much more useful, and participatory site.
britomart, this is exactly what we envisioned for the forum, and we've tried to make it civil for a decade, but it's really been an uphill battle.
When it was working best (about 8 years ago), we had between 10 and 20 volunteer moderators who more or less spent a good chunk of their day there. Even then, it was an uphill battle against the trolls.
We began to lose control back in 2008 when we disatrously redesigned the site with a backend powered by Drupal, which has a notoroiously shitty bbs/forum module that robbed the mods of the convenience and power of moderating possible under our previous forum software, phpbb.
Since that time, various social media has funneled away the usefulness of a bbs/forum, and the forum section of the site has been in decline ever since, and most of our moderators lost interest or moved on.
The problem is this: every time I delete something, I get jumped on for being a censor.
Case in point: I spend 1/3 of my day on this single thread, trying to keep it from being an unsubstantiated attack on anm individual http://www.thebeijinger.com/forum/2015/03/11/wow-bar-owner-attacks-customer-knife
I don't really have that kind of time to fight these battles ... and that's on a single post.
I can't be bothered to spend the time it would take to delete something every time it gets posted, so i've adopted the strategy of just not going into the threads that I know are cesspools.
Re: Survey: Expats Prefer Shanghai Over Beijing
britobart,
I don't even understand the point of having a forum to discuss people's personal issues. If people want to do that, there are plenty of social media places for it. I should think this is best as a resource for foreigners to get useful information while living in a foreign country. Why does anyone even need to know what Booby or Ohdjango or similar thinks? Who is that information for?
If its not related to life in Beijing, or information about the city or the country, why does it exist?
Yeah, I've actually never used the forums here on the Beijinger, because of this very issue. There are few to no useful replies to posted questions (and half of the posted questions are either not questions at all or are asking about something unrelated to life here). Asking a legitimate question seems to, at worst, invite insults or, at best, turn into a rabbit trail leading nowhere. I think there are a lot of knowledgeable people out there in this city who COULD give thoughtful, helpful answers, but those kind of people don't frequent a forum that's in such disarray as the Beijnger's.
Hey, Beijinger staff, would it be possible to redefine the forum to be ONLY posts related strictly to life in Beijing ... and have one or ten moderators actively remove posts that are irrelevant? That would mean removing not only the disgusting posts intended to provoke a fight (like dallnewbooby's), but also random vague comments from posters which don't contribute to question under discussion.
It would mean a great deal of work on the moderator's part, at first, but once it was established, your forums would be a real benefit to the expat community here.
Re: Survey: Expats Prefer Shanghai Over Beijing
britobart,
Yes, its hard for me to believe that anyone who even casually looked at the forum couldn't notice what he does.
I don't even understand the point of having a forum to discuss people's personal issues. If people want to do that, there are plenty of social media places for it. I should think this is best as a resource for foreigners to get useful information while living in a foreign country. Why does anyone even need to know what Booby or Ohdjango or similar thinks? Who is that information for?
If its not related to life in Beijing, or information about the city or the country, why does it exist? To get more clicks? To fuel a Chinese-Western aggression? To highlight people's mental illnesses and boredom?
In that regards, I think the Shanghai expat services clearly are ahead of Beijing.
Not all of his posts are that disgusting, but if you glance at his recent posts on the forum, you'll notice that dallnewbooby has been flooding the forum with random topics that are either completely irrelevant to expat life in Beijing or deliberately phrased so as to pick a fight... He seems to have very little of value to contribute, and seems uninterested in an open forum discussion. Here's the ones up on the main page right now; he apparently has created 49 forum topics in the last six months. I know the Beijinger wants to welcome open discussion, but is there any way to slow down guys like this who are not doing anything to benefit the community and are being actively annoying?
http://www.thebeijinger.com/forum/2015/03/09/america-how-difficult-can-one-get-hisher-american-dream
http://www.thebeijinger.com/forum/2015/03/09/why-would-god-create-these-virus-bacterias-disasters-accidents
http://www.thebeijinger.com/forum/2015/03/09/we-china-past-never-had-fight-losing-weight-only-until-laowai-introduce-their-food
Re: Survey: Expats Prefer Shanghai Over Beijing
I wonder who you think it is more insulting to, Steven or Booby?
But really, who can compete with this prose:
"despite men use jj for both peepee and sex, women's pussies smell and flood every day like dead fish rivers
jiz"
I mean, you insult the entire readership of this site, by allowing this to be the entirety of the forum, and then pretend you can't find the offensive material?
I don't read booby's posts. Send me the link to delete it
I wonder who you think it is more insulting to, Steven or Booby?
But really, who can compete with this prose:
"despite men use jj for both peepee and sex, women's pussies smell and flood every day like dead fish rivers
jiz"
I mean, you insult the entire readership of this site, by allowing this to be the entirety of the forum, and then pretend you can't find the offensive material?
Re: Survey: Expats Prefer Shanghai Over Beijing