I’m creating a Croatian course and have set it to Mark Typing Strictly because otherwise Memrise with count letters such as c and č or s and š as the same and that is incorrect. I didn’t want to be forced to worry about capitalization while answering quickly though, so I set up Alts with all lowercase. For example, for the sentence “Jedem večeru” (I’m eating supper) I put in the Alt “_jedem večeru”, but when I type “jedem večeru” as an answer it says it is incorrect because I did not capitalize “jedem”. I’m not sure if the _ is causing problems, but it says to use that if you don’t want them showing up on the presentation, and I don’t:
Alternatives are also accepted as correct answers on tests, and are shown when clicking “More” on presentations. If you want to accept something as a correct answer but hide it from presentations, start it with _ e.g. “_cat”.
I’m not sure if I am doing something wrong, but this is very frustrating to me. I spent a lot of time going and adding those Alts so that I can have it mark letters wrongs without having to worry about capitalizing things and such, and it doesn’t seem to have worked at all. Is there anything I can do to fix this, or is that option just completely broken and useless?
I’ve also had it mark things wrong in tapping tests, even though capitalization is included already for those, but I’m not sure exactly what is going on with that. It was working fine before I switched to Strict, but I really need it to be able to tell you that you’re wrong if you use the wrong letter because they have completely different pronunciations and can change the meaning of words!
I got some screenshots of what’s going on with the tapping tests, too. I don’t know how this is related, but it started at the same time that I switched to strict typing and added the Alts, so I’m adding it here:
I think I’m seeing a related problem. For the past couple of days comma separated alternatives in the main answer field are being marked as wrong unless all the alternatives are entered. We’ve seen this issue before and I think it happened after a database migration? Could someone take a look or point me to the proper support forum? Thanks!
The last time I tried to use the web version with strict typing, I was still experiencing errors with correct answers not being accepted, either during testing or during re-entry after an error. This was happening on items that had commas and/or parenthesis.
This should probably be moved to the Web Bugs section of the forum, and I could do it, but I’m tired of doing it, only to have one of the Memrise folks say, “not a bug”, and move it back.
Maybe someone who is so inclined could tag memrisematty, who is supposedly technical support, but he hasn’t responded to any problem reports in the forum in two days, or troubleshooter Joshua who hasn’t posted in the forum in almost a week.
Okay, I think I’ve figured out part of the problem, and I think it must be related to the commas and parenthesis. When using the underscore character with strict typing it actually expects your answer to INCLUDE the underscore, so it no longer works as a special modifier, just like how parenthesis and commas are also having their intended function broken with strict typing. If they say it’s not a bug though, then maybe they’re fine with strict typing breaking these functionalities, but they at least need to explain this better so that people can understand that when they’re told they can use those things that doesn’t apply if strict typing is on. I also hope that in the future they will work on changing this functionality as it’s really limiting at the moment. I was frustrated enough having to go and add a bunch of Alts to get Memrise to work correctly with the language I’m learning without it being supper strict, and now that I have to have all those Alts visible too, and after having had to go through all this to figure out what was going wrong even though I did exactly what they said to do on the site, I am even more frustrated.
Also, I still have not been able to get tapping tests to work even with removing Alts completely. It still shows the first word as incorrect and I have no idea why and I’ve had to resort to just turning it off. This one must actually be a bug, but I don’t know how to tag people. I’ll try and see if I can figure it out, though.
To tag someone, just type the @ symbol in front of their forum name, like this: @xvg11 and you will see their name becomes highlighted. I won’t do it with Joshua or MemriseMatty, because they will most likely ignore it, so why should I bother?
Oh, well that’s obvious enough. I guess I’ll go ahead and do it, won’t hurt to try. Maybe they’ve just been taking some time off for the holidays and stuff has backed up.
I’d like to know if they will edit explanations for special characters to let users know they don’t work with strict typing on, and also if there are any plans to support languages that use special characters without requiring turning on strict typing and breaking this functionality among other things. I’d also like the bug with tapping tests not working with strict typing to be looked into, but at this point I’m thinking maybe I should make a separate post about that in a different forum.
That may be, as it was my first thought too, but I don’t think it’s the explanation, as they’ve both been visiting the forum regularly, just not posting.
where did you get the information from that alts required a leading _ character? I’ve never seen this, and I don’t use it (and I use a lot of alts, for exactly the same reason as you, ie I require strict typing, and thus have to provide reasonable flexibility).
Tapping tests are having all kinds of funny problems at the moment, you should definitely report what you see, just in case someone actually picks it up and does something
I seem to recall having raised this issue over a year ago, before this particular problem drove me off Memrise. I suppose it would go to the “web bugs” in bug control.
Sorry for the late reply, but I see the explanation for using underscores where you add in the alts, if you look at the screenshots I posted you should see it, but like Kaspian said, it’s not required. If you’re asking about the bug and how I figured out that it was now requiring the underscores when according to the explanation it shouldn’t, when it kept telling me my answers were wrong even though I had included them as alts, I tried answering including the underscore and it finally marked it as correct.
Exactly, this issue has been around for ages, years really. The underscore doesn’r work when there are more than one word in the answer, and sometimes it doesn’t even work with a single word. So it’s just better to forget the “secret alternative” thing altogether, and just use them as they are.
And no, it is not working, not even with a single word, and not with two words or several. It is not working at all. I even tried copy-pasting the underscore from the description, in case something was wrong with the _ from my keyboard, but nope.
Do alternatives work when they’re not prefixed with an underscore? Does the course have strict typing turned on? How are you testing that the hidden alternatives don’t work?
I’ve seen and used hidden alternatives in several courses, and I can’t recall ever having had issue with them.
Yes, they do work without the underscore. And they work with the underscore as well, but then they want the underscore typed too Strict typing is on, yes.
Testing is not that difficult, I made a new level on my course and added a few words and checked by reviewing, how they respond when I add the alternative answers with or without the underscore.
Thinking back to the old forums, it’s been a constant issue, it was working for some and not working for some others.
When was the last time you tried?
