@BeaTrisy @Joshua @daniel.zohar @MemriseMatty Can any admins please comment on the timer issue? I’m quite frankly shocked that not one single Memrise staff member has commented on any post about this topic (that I could find).
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Now that the new rank icons are out (and users are encouraged to update to the latest versions of the apps to see them), will Memrise please comment on the existence of whether or not there is supposed to be a timer on the iOS app.
It has been 13 days since this question was first brought to light, and there has been zero response. Users have sent screenshots showing the app with a timer in the upper right part of the screen and with displays claiming the app is “still sleeping”, so the concerns from users are real. Is this just an issue for iOS users, or will Android be next ?
Hi @pdao - This was an experiment that we were running on iOS only, which has now finished and shouldn’t be happening anymore. If it’s still happening for you, then could you please click on ‘Contact Us’ on our support site, and it’ll go straight to our bug squashers.
So Memrise just decided to run an experiment on its users without giving them any warning notice, or option to decline participation in your experiment?
Did nobody at Memrise consider the ethics of publishing an “update” that involuntarily reduces some users’ ability to use the app by 96%, while leaving others untouched?
Did nobody at Memrise consider the fact that some users affected by your “experiment” are students, whose teachers require them to use the app for a certain number of minutes per day, such that a requirement to use the app for thirty minutes per night would now require some students eight hours and thirty minutes to complete?
Will Memrise give refunds to all of the users who purchased Pro subscriptions during your “experiment” in an effort to escape from the draconian usage limit?
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Really?! Why no prior notice for those affected by this “experiment” which was restricting their access? Why no response to the concerns expressed in this forum by those affected until now? If @pdao hadn’t pressed, would one of the mods/admins have come forward?
Are we missing the point here somehow?
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In general it is nothing strange with testing different functionality on groups of users without informing them first (a/b testing is pretty standard) but in this case the testing clearly went wrong causing problems for some users and then they did not handle the communication to the affected users in a good way. Perhaps this was in part due to the summer holidays but in that case the testing should not have been done during that period.
That’s true, but what they did here wasn’t just testing “different functionality,” but rather reducing some users’ functionality by 96 percent, without warning!
The typical A/B testing that you are referring to would be doing something like testing five versus six repetitions per item for planting, or scheduling the first review in three hours instead of four, etc.
What they did here was no ordinary A/B test, but was more like playing a nasty trick on some users without telling them that they were doing it.
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As I wrote above, in this case the testing clearly went wrong, my point was just that it is normal to test functionality on different user groups without informing them.
I doubt the intention was to cause such big problems for some users but I don’t know that for sure.
When I started using Memrise in 2012 or so, after you learned some words you were completely blocked from looking at them for 4 hours. This was a feature.
ahem, really? blocked from looking through a course?
(i think the people in here said something else)
Thanks for your answer and joining the thread.
IOS probably is one the favourite “testing / experimenting” plattform?? 
First DuoLingo with all that health/gems stuff - only on IOS - and lot’s of users repeatedly complaining in the discussion forums.
And now the Memrise team is (was) “testing” around themselves…
To get a clue what ppl don’t want (before testing yourself): Just read the DuoLingo discussion forums or create a (visual) poll on your community forum
Does your forum software even support graphic polls?
When will companies finally notice that users hate to be “testing objects” without their knowledge / approval.
This, by the way, includes alpha / beta testing of normal users, without special beta accounts / beta subscriptions.
Does really new stuff first needs to be detail metric-tested (with no opt-out setting option) to piss of new - and more importantly OLD - account users???
BTW: Introducing new app versions without a full history / ChangeLog of all new features and changes + bugfixes - like DuoLingo seems to be doing it for apps - is IMHO a very bad rollout practice, generally spoken from an IT software development side.
Please Memrise, don’t make the same errors.
@lurkmoophy ~ Thank you for the response, and thank you for the apology to the disruption to many users that you forgot to include along with your response.
I will leave it for others to comment on the impact of such an “experiment”, but suffice it to say, that while Memrise seems hellbent on running the gamification of its software to wherever it will take them, please bear in mind that there are users (many users, I suppose) who are actually using your software, not for gaming, points or notches on some kind of a mystical leaderboard, but for genuine, scholastic-based learning (both from a teaching and a student perspective). When you blindly submit “experiments” that teachers/students/learners are not aware of, and cannot opt out of, this impacts their learning ability. Don’t you have a test or beta site to perform “experiments” on, and gather necessary data from ?
I sincerely hope that the lessons learned from this experiment are: 1. Future “experiments” are hosted in a test or beta environment before rolled into a live, production environment; and 2. Whenever “experiments” are conducted in a live, production environment, users are informed of what is going on, either before it occurs (isn’t that the intent of the “Memrise Announcements” forum category) or if that does not happen, that Memrise will respond to user forum requests for information in a more prompt, professional manner (13 days, and numerous requests for information was a bit too much).
That being said, I am happy that the “experiment” has concluded and we can all get back to teaching/learning. Thank you.
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Maybe because we in iOS usually do not have the option to reinstall the older version? Just guessing …