App for Decks in the works?

There won’t be any app. Reason being that there is no need to do that. Decks will not bring any revenue to the company because it’s only user-created so making an app will probably result in more losses. Meanwhile the Memrise app will be pushed down people’s throats along with some nice subscription plan for the “official” courses.

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If there is no app for Decks, then I’m stuck, I only have a kindle at home and I don’t use the website and all my courses are community based. What a terrible decision Memrise.

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Consider Deck as a renamed trash bin. They couldn’t easily delete the community courses (it is good that they understood at least this), so they just moved it there.

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LangAddict, that plan can never succeed in the crowded Rosetta Stone / DuoLinguo market. There’s a dozen companies offering that service, with stronger market power. It’s the long-standing customers like me who drive steady profit, albeit at a slow rate. And I’m leaving due to the loss of the app.

I suspect that Memrise had grand ambitions for its company and hired too many employees too fast, forgetting that it was the simplicity of the platform and wide user base that made it valuable. Now, with profits stagnating, it has realized that it will either need to expand into new markets, or painfully downsize. So it’s trying this high-risk gamble to expand, focusing on its newest users. Alas, for technical reasons, it cannot make the change without destroying its existing, paid user base–advanced learners who have no use for French 101 courses. And the new users are the ones that will find it easiest to change services.

If there are Memrise employees reading this, I’d frankly recommend that you spend some time revising your resumes:’-(

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Could you please link to the source.

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@Serafim_Chayka

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Absolute nonsense about cost to maintain 2 apps. They could readily use the existing memrise app code and stick a new logo on it to create a decks app within a day.

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Interesting, how much does it cost to provide basic support for the app… Donations from users would probably cover all the expenses… Considering how passionate the user base is. A lot of people already seems to pay for subscription just to support developers…

Please don’t do this. Using an app is far more easier and better then using a web page. Please at least make an app for DECKS!

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On the other hand I would prefer for memrise to publish public REST API instead so that community could develop and maintain opensource app for decks.

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And the crazy thing is, the “oficial” courses is not that good.
I like the memrise interface, but from my experience, “JLPT N4 Vocab” is better than the official japanese, because almost every word you open, you have a few MEMs with them, but on official course, they remove other users mems, so you doesn’t get any context or usage of the words.

Unfortunately it will not work - to use it offline you will need the SRS algorithm (memrise’s know-how) to be implemented in the application. Or constant re-syncing and continuous re-computation of the “next cards” on the server, that means support and processor resources.

Only for memrise to shutdown Decks and its app a year later. Sorry, but I doubt that many people will donate unless the application and server will be made open-sourced, that will not happen ever.

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Are you sure there is an algorithm embedded inside the memrise mobile app? I would say that all SRS computation is happening on servers and it would stay so in community developed app. Same goes for website - it just pushes answers/requests for next back and forth to the server. Mobile app (as website) is just an interface to rest api exposed by memrise servers (undocumented unfortunately). About offline mode - I suppose you download whole course, with precomputed words to be displayed based on previous sync to the servers - am I wrong?

Or - are you saying that there is possibility to use memrise in total offline mode (download course, never ever sync progress with servers) with SRS algo? What happens wheny you eventually decide to sync it? Do SRS parameters get sent and updated on the server to match what is inside mobile app? To much of a hassle IMO, but who knows…

Yes, possibly you are correct and there is no algorithm in the app.

The application syncs constantly the progress with the server: if you are offline, then it pushes collected data back to server when the connection is available, and (regularly!) retrieves lists of cards to repeat or learn.

Anyway, it looks rather unlikely, since the only option for them to monetize Decks in this model is ads. And ads and API just don’t work together.

In one of the FAQs about Decks, it says the Memrise app and site will still work. If so, what does Decks really mean for users?

The Memrise site and app will contain only official courses. All community ones will be moved to Decks.

Is there any way to tell which courses are official and which are community just by looking at them?

@rebeccamerrick yes if the course author is ‘Memrise’ then that’s an official course. These are the official ones

https://www.memrise.com/user/Memrise/courses/teaching/

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So after moving community courses the only thing that will be on Memrise are those few language courses? What?