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I like people who love my ideas …. :-)

Thanks for your opinion babceo, always appreciated!

Hi, I studied French for two years, by the way. In my MannersAndCareer Community I’m not teaching a language but want to make sure that people learn general rules and customs and get familiar with certain abbreviations, such as ‘RSVP’. An English person should know what he/she is expected to do if he/she gets an invitation with such a note and in this case he/she is expected to let the host know whether s/he accepts the invitation or not. I’m not a native English speaker but I know that your version of “Respond if you please” doesn’t make any sense to me…...

What else could it be …. “POSHMONKEY” of course !!!

Thanks for your interesting question, Heather. Well, if the smell of the wine does not invite you in for a sip it is most likely spoiled. Here are the most common things that make a wine taste terrible.

“Corked” Wines

These are wines that have come in contact with wild fungus that produces a chemical named TCA. Depending on how long the wine has been in contact with the fungus, the aroma can be only faintly noticeable to striking. If you detect any mustiness, like your basement or wet cardboard, you have a corked wine. On the fainter side of the spectrum you may notice a wine you regularly drink is missing much of the aroma of fruit or berries, and that the nose is generally lifeless. Since upwards of 5% of wines using real corks can be infected, do not hesitate to send a wine back that does not seem right.

Cooked Wines

Improper storage, especially exposure to excessive heat, can quickly destroy a wine. This is quite often a problem in restaurants where storage space is limited and done near the kitchen, and is more prevalent during summer months when distributors may allow wine to get heated during delivery. The first thing you may notice about these wines is the cork appears to protrude over the lip of the bottle. Or the capsule (or the foil) looks like it is bulging. When the sommelier hands you the cork, don’t sniff it, rather look for signs that wine has escaped around the sides of the cork, another good sign of cooking. This break in the sealing can also lead to another issue addressed later, oxidation.

While cooked wine is great if you have just ordered Coq Au Vin, it is not acceptable in your glass. These wines will present themselves as dull with no aroma of fruit, berries, or other esters left at all. They will even taste as though they have been on the stove, with flavors resembling a stew, and body that is very thin and lifeless.

Oxidation

While a small amount of oxidation may be desirable in aging wines for a long time to aid in tannin breakdowns, too much will ruin a bottle. Natural cork may let very small amount of air interact with the wine in the bottle over years, but a poor sealing cork will let so much air in the wine will be left tasting like cheap sherry. If you have spotted a break in the seal of the cork, oxidation is more likely to have occurred. Oxygen is a highly reactive element and quickly changes the components of the wine. In addition to the sherry like flavors, be alert for a noticeably brown color of the wine when viewed.

Sediment

Wines that have been stored for a long time, many years like Bordeaux, will often produce a lot of sediment in the bottom of the bottle. When serving these aged wines it is imperative that decanting be done properly, and that the bottles be handled gently to avoid rousing the sediment. Once the sediment has been stirred, the only way to make the wine drinkable is to let it sit for a long time again. Often longer than you have for dinner that night. If you see a preponderance of silt, and the wine tastes excessively dry and chalky when tasted you will need to sent back. Hopefully this expensive lesson will teach the server to decant properly before serving next time.

While there are a few other potential faults that can be found in a wine, the general rule is if the wine is not enjoyable or does not seem right, send it back. Any good restaurateur will realize that spoiled wine is a fact of life and will gladly open a new bottle without question.

Hope it helps …..

I like the new outlook and I’m happy to see one of my communities mentioned …. :-) Well done, guys!!!!

Maybe there should be an archive section on Learnhub for old, inactive communities. This would provide the community leaders an additional service for them to go back and revive a community if they choose to do so later on, in their own time.

Hi, my name is Karin and you are more than welcome to look up my profile. Poshmonkey is my username. This is just a discussion board. It gives the member a chance to voice their opinions regarding different things. After all, we are all investing our time and effort in Learnhub. After having thought about this particular discussion topic I’ve come to a conclusion that it would not be wise to delete the community because the wealth of information that that community holds could come in handy for people who join Learnhub later on. Therefore it would be like destroying a valuable book ….

Well, maybe they should really just be focused on the price, rather than being a review. Even though there might be a difference in quality…..

That’s interesting, I didn’t know that…. Thanks a lot Malgosia. It’s good to know that someone is reading my stuff…. Well, I agree fully with you in terms of the difficulty in comparing various services and price changes might also occur more often than for a product I guess …..

I’m always really enjoying my time working on my communities on Learnhub.

What I particularly appreciate is the great feedback that I got so far from lessons, quizzes, tips etc. It feels wonderful knowing that you can help other people or that you can make a difference somehow in other peoples’ lives. First, I thought of running one community. In the meantime I created four of them, and ideas for further ones are already in my mind.

I like it how easy it is to connect with other people from all around the world. Furthermore, you get familiar with a lot of people, and it feels almost like a family even though we all know each other just through the internet ….

I highly appreciate it when members tell me their stories and experiences. For me invaluable and particularly enriching.

It’s always a teaching-learning experience. You teach and in return you have still (fortunately) so much to learn too.

I strongly believe in Learnhub’s success for the future and would recommend everyone to become a community Leader in a particular field. It is a truly enriching, funny, informative, interesting, engaging experience, which could also be added on a CV.

Furthermore, since currently I’m a full-time mum it is an excellent way for me to proof to a future employer what I did during my maternity break (besides looking after my lovely 11-month-old daughter and making manners and career podcasts).

My tips are as follows, if you want to get to the Top 20 Authorities:

• Choose a topic you are passionate about, so that you keep yourself motivated to do research, to write, discuss, etc. Should members for example ask for advice, it wouldn’t be difficult for you to help if you are competent in that sector (but you don’t need to be an expert….)

• Try to find a niche, not necessarily a topic where there are already similar ones in this forum.

• Try to do something every day (or at least as often as possible).

• Set yourself a goal by what time you want to be in the Top 20 and work towards it.

• Have a look at the Authority list and try to find out where the priorities lie in terms of point allocation and have a look at it every day so that you see how you are doing.

• Don’t forget to invite people to your community. Don’t just relax, hope and wait. Don’t get depressed if it might be difficult at the beginning. Tell them in your profile why they should join your community, then it might be easier to convince them. In my MannersAndCareer community for example I mention 5 reasons. So, think in terms of BENEFIT you would offer your members …..

• Try to think about good topics for discussions and debates. One tip could be for example to look in the news/current affairs section.

• Don’t forget quizzes/tests, members love doing them.

• Once you are quite well settled and you know how everything is working, try to enlarge your number of lead communities.

• Try to deliver new interesting material on a regular basis to keep your community alive.

• Appreciate other people’s work.

• Try to establish good relationships with all your members and non-members. Don’t forget what goes around, comes around.

• Don’t cheat! If you are rating your own stuff, it doesn’t really increase your credibility. In the end, people can see it ….

Hope it helps and hope we get many more suggestions so that we can create a lesson with all of them!!!

Thanks for your additional tip, which I also mentioned in the 30 Tips on Meeting Etiquette. Maybe I should have presented the office/cubicle etiquette tips with the meeting etiquette tips and presented it in one lesson, rather than separating it. Thanks anyway.

Well, this is my strategy, my Top 10 Tips for a successful community. Usually I wouldn’t share it so easily, but if it helps some of you (those who are struggling in getting members for their communities) then it makes me happy.

• Welcoming every new member in a community or course with a personal email.
• Be helpful and quick in giving advice.
• Thank every member that rates you with a thumbs up.
• Be interested in your members. If you come across something that you think might interest one of your members don’t hesitate to help him/her.
• Be thankful for any kind of feedback you get.
• Creating useful, great content that helps people to save money and time. So that they don’t have to do lots of additional research.
• Create interesting, engaging and not too short quizzes.
• Think of interesting topics in discussions and debates. Add your comments to other members’ comments as often as possible. Particularly when you get praised for something.
• Think of a good, eye-catching name for your community, so that people sign up quickly.
• Invite people to your community, don’t just wait and hope they would join. Unless you have a community such as GMAT preparation, etc. in which I guess the community leader wouldn’t have to lift a finger in order to attract new members.

Well, I joined almost three months ago and I must say that a lot of things changed. I would say that there is no day without Learnhub anymore …..

- I stopped watching TV almost entirely. - Even my passion for Bollywood movies is suffering a bit from it. Here I need to catch up quite a bit again. - I find very very little time to surf other websites as I was used to do in the past. - I don’t find any time for reading business books anymore, which is also one of my passions. - Often during the day I think of what I’m going to work on in the evening again to enrich my communities (and here Saturdays and Sundays are no exception). So, it feels a bit like a Learnhub…aholic :-) Once you are logged in, time flies and you are stuck … I seldom go to sleep before midnight.

To be honest, I’ve only seen two movies with him (out of the 63 I’ve seen so far). Maybe I should watch more then I could tell you ….

By the way, in my community “MannersAndCareer” there is a lesson on the same topic. Maybe you find some additional tips too.

First of all, thanks Ryan for enrolling in my Disability Etiquette course. I agree with your comment above. It would be much better to go up to a person to talk to them rather than staring at them and making wrong assumptions. It’s just that often people don’t know how to behave in these kind of situations. Sometimes it also depends on the personality of the disabled person, not everyone would feel comfortable being asked about it or being asked over and over again.

I’m glad to hear that …. take care, Ryan.

From my experience I can say that in Italy it was through word-of-mouth referrals. It’s not always what you know that counts but WHO you know….. In London (UK) – surprisingly – it was easier for me by sending speculative CVs rather than applying based on a job ad in the newspaper or in the internet. It might be a bit hard work at the beginning to get people interested in your application even though they don’t have any vacancies, but if you can tell them how you can add value to the company’s success you might have great chances of getting a job. And by the way, there is no competition…. So, for me it might be a bit different then for other people. But let’s see what you think…...