You know I actually kinda disagree with you there. The comma bug is unacceptable (but nothing in comparison to the current non-score-tracking bug), but for this course (and I don’t understand why there are so many variations of it - I’m actually a regular contributor to the ‘sorted by frequency’ version of this course - #47049 - which we’ve put a lot of work into improving the quality of), I’m actually kinda glad that I’m now forced to start typing in the plural endings, as I’ve quickly learned that there’s quite a lot of words I didn’t properly know the plural for. Anyway, it’s all academic until they actually get their ***ing act together and allow us to actually continue to use the site as intended.
Yes, it is good to learn the plural forms, but for me it is just a nice to have.
After a while you learn to make your own plurals, without having to think much about it. That is, you gain a felling for most of the cases. I still make mistakes but I don’t want to increase my fail rate due to the plurals because that is not the most important for me at present.
In the end we always think we need to learn 5000 words even if we end up not even using 2000. We always need to recognize the words in case we see them, or hear, but if you know the base word you are going to understand that Häuser is the plural of Haus, without having to memorize it. But of course, every person is different.
I created myself a copy of this course in order to improve it and make it better for me.
The fact that I can change whatever I want helps me greatly to learn and to avoid the stupid mistakes I see all the time with the other courses. Of course that this course was also a copy of other course I found on Quizlet therefore I did a copy of a copy 
But in this case I gained a lot of quality (this is just because I’m a perfectionist, not because I want to compete with the other courses).
This new situation is even worse. I always loved Quizlet and I guess I need to go back to basics and leave memrise sort their things out. You know the saying, if you pay peanuts you will get monkeys.
Congrats on your 585 streak!!
I had once also a big streak but only in Memrise, not on a single course. But they don’t keep counting it after one year.
Hi, I’d like to give my thanks to those who created and are maintaining this course. I started it last week and I’ve been pleased by its completeness, the helpful hints when there are various possible translations and the low number of missing vocalisations of the words.
When I started last week, I did not have to type in the plurals, and this has just occurred for me in the last 2-3 days, so I presume the problem reported two weeks ago was fixed and has now come back.
Another small problem, which is probably common to all courses, is that in recent weeks it has become necessary to hit the enter key when completing an answer of the type where you have to select multiple words (or plural endings…), in the desktop browser version (but not in the mobile app). I really like to minimise the number of keystrokes in order to move on quickly and this certainly feels to me like an unnecessary step.
In any case, thanks to Elizabeth and any other contributors!
Just to be clear, on the need to type plurals, this applies also only to the browser version. On the Android app version, plurals are not needed (and the result is accepted automatically the last word is entered), and so it is much quicker to use.
Thanks misxifRM - The ‘must hit return’ problem seems to have been resolved but as you pointed out the strict typing rulle seems to be back. I’m hoping this will be resolved quickly because it’s Memrise-wide and not just confined to our course. Elizabeth
Hello Elizabeth, as I understand from other threads on the forum (in particular the long thread at Has there been a change in the way memrise treats commas?), the problem of “strict typing” will not be fixed - if the answers contain commas.
My understanding is that Memrise has decided to reserve commas for use within complete sentences, and so they cannot be used as a divider. They are saying that semi-colons (";") or ("/") separators have to be used. I see that this course has semi-colons in some case, but that these are not working as well - but this is apparently a short-term problem.
I don’t know what is the implication of having to change all the commas in this 5000-word course. If you can load all the database at once, then you can do a search and replace, but from what I hear it is not so simple to work on the entire list at once.
Please correct me if I have understood this wrong.
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I really find this hard to believe – that they can’t ‘go back’, that previous scripts, programs, whatever haven’t been saved.
I’m sorry but there’s no way I have the time to go through the whole course removing commas (which in any case would render the whole course somewhat dodgy from a grammatical POV - eg der Tag, -e is a common convention in writing down the singular and plural forms in German (or any other language as far as I’m aware.)
I also lack the technical know-how to remove all the commas from the database and in any event it would have to be selective - some need to remain.
I’m sorry not to be more hopeful or positive – It’s just as much a nightmare for me as for everyone else.
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It has become more complicated. In the cases where there are semi-colons, and not commas, if I type a comma it is rejected as an error.
I think that the person who has to answer this is @BenWhately
misxifRM
Well, all the jigsaw pieces drop neatly into place. How sad, something that was really a good community effort gone down the gurgler. I appreciate the need for those at Memrise to make a living but it seems to me the lure of the commercial world (with the prospect of 10s of millions, mostly paying members) proved too tempting. Not enough funds even to keep two separate platforms – the community generated courses and the Memrise generated courses? Shabby is the kindest word that I can find.
I’ll keep the course going as long as possible. Note to other contributors if you’re still around: We can solve the comma problem by adding the root noun, without a plural, or the root strong verb without tenses, to the alternative list in edit mode. I will do this on a fairly ad hoc basis – I just don’t have the time to go at it full bore.
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They are daydreaming about the 10s of millions of users. Check their forums, when the whole site was down, the most popular topic had 4K views (not comments, or users and i myself checked it 10 times), which means the daily users of the web app are no more then a couple of thousands, maximally.
Thank you to the person who is changing the commas to semi-colons. They seem to be working through the course sequentially and I see that they have already got to level 143 (at the time that I write this posting).
Unfortunately, entering plurals is still required (at least on the browser version) even when the separator is a semi-colon. Since I understand that the course is set to NOT strict typing, I guess that this is a bug.
@hung-phan, perhaps you can look at this?
Ok. @misxifRM, can you post the example for that here? I am collecting all the informations, so I can solve the problem faster.
Hello @hung-phan, I have tested this again on this 500 German Words (Top 87%) course: http://www.memrise.com/course/47049/5000-words-top-87-sorted-by-frequency/
It seems that the plural (the part after the semicolon separator) is not required when typing the answer (neither when learning new words or doing a review), but it IS required when making a multiple selection choice.
You can go anywhere on the course to test this, but it is a little easier to test in ‘Learn’ mode, since the exercises cycle through the word ‘tapping’ option as well as the typing options (whereas in ‘Review’ mode, normally only one option is provided, unless you make a mistake). For example, there are a few cases at this level: http://www.memrise.com/course/47049/5000-words-top-87-sorted-by-frequency/43/garden/learn/
@hung-phan, in this level, there are the following examples:
die Aufmerksamkeit; -en
die Lage; -n
das Schicksal; -e
der Punkt; -e
der Witz; -e
der Unfall; -"e
die Kamera; -s
das Taxi; -s
It should be possible to just type (or select from the ‘tapping’ screen where you have to tap multiple words) just the part up to before the semi-colon, for this to be judged as a correct answer. This now seems to working for typing, but not for tapping.
In the example shown in the screenshot, this should be marked as correct if the ‘enter’ key is pressed (or the ‘Check’ arrow selected), but it is judged now as being incorrect.
FYI, @hung-phan, in the example I gave in the screen shot, it is NOT necessary for the semicolon itself to be tapped for the answer to be accepted. I think that this is correct behaviour, since the separator itself is not part of the required answer. (It is ignored if it is tapped, and is shown in white, compared to the correct words which are shown in green, in the screen which confirms the answer.)
@EHurtt Elizabeth, can you please add me to the list of contributors on this course? I will do my best not to break anything!
Thanks, Robert
@dylan.nicholson.548 - thanks, if it is you who has been making the changes from commas to semi-colons.
Thanks @misxifRM,
I know the problem. It is explained in this post.
In the meantime, I can help you gather all the problems for your courses and present to the team. Hope that help. I cannot promise anything else.
Hello @hung-phan, thanks for documenting what happens in the different cases.
When will the tapping interpretation of the semi-colon and slash separators be aligned with the typing interpretation?