I’ll refrain from commenting the latest developments regarding the switch to Decks and its implications to community based courses here. Instead I’d like to focus on the fact that it remains very much unclear as to what will happen to Memrise (without Decks) and the Android- and iPhone-apps in the near future. I’d really like to understand what is happening and where we’re heading.
I can’t imagine they could drop the apps altogether - unimaginable nowadays! However, with the downfall of the apps, i. e. their growing list of bugs and nuisances and Memrise’s ignorance to all reports, I can only foresee that they discontinue the current app and come up with something completely new.
The alleged suicide tendencies aside, I suppose the introduction of Decks can only mean that they want to separate something that (they think) doesn’t help them earn money and focus on the things that do instead.
I don’t know what Memrise is doing, but they are screwing things up quite well.
My guess the most logical step for the users is to create an independent website and an app (or apps). But it will take a lot of time and efforts for its creators. Personally I’m ready to support this project if it’s gonna be OK. Though I’d rather stay here.
For us small language people I’m sure Memrise won’t support us. It’ll just be the big languages like Spanish, French, Chinese, etc which are well supported elsewhere.
I don’t really have a lot of use for the official Memrise courses–either they aren’t available for my target languages or they’re below my level. I currently only use user-made courses via the app. So I have no idea what’s in the future for Memrise, aside from the fact that I personally won’t be renewing my Pro sub this year.
As we know from other threads, the offical Memrise courses had a level lock on the mobile apps so e.g IOS users could not progress any further without paying.
It just seems kinda logical to me (well, there are other alternative ways of course) that they are now trying to remove all user-created courses so you can not access them anymore on the app?
The first step was to remove them on the app course list and search function.
The next step which now follows is to totally remove these user-created courses so mobile app users have no “learning workaround” handy.
Next step after the introduction of Decks probably will be, that the offical Memrise 1-7 courses are not free anymore, neither on the mobile app (both IOS and Android), nor on their website.
Would I pay if I had the budget on hand? Maybe.
I really liked Ben’s “Learn Basic Portuguese Brazil” course with 300+ words and first phrases/sentences.
It was a welcome alternative to Duolingo when I hit the limits learning Portuguese as my first language after the first 3-4 months.
But the real joke currently is, I can not really continue the review of PT 1-5 courses (on the web with “all typing” userscript activated) as my break is already too long (several months) and I cannot get back on track with a totally filled backlog queue that easily without “Overdueness” SR feature support, like AnkiSRS supports it, as explained here:
I am reviewing PT7 regularly and PT6 not so often.
I stopped PT1-5 and I had reviewed them some time ago a few times, but not on a daily/weekly basis for the past year.
To get back on track on the offical Memrise courses I first would have to rewrite some userscripts to:
add a SKIP functionality (a button to help which words I exactly want (or need) to focus on the filled backlog queue and 50-100 words per review session)
or move 1+ error repeats of incorrectly answered translations (usually with a 3+ question spacing) to the end of the queue to be able to focus on the rest of the words which I know well and want to clear easily
quickly reduce my full backlog queue (some courses have 300+ or even 600 words)
I liked the “all typing” approach with classic reviews; I need to turn off all this inefficient multiple-choice stuff (well, this is my personal opinion because of the given hints; and I do not want to use the “Speed review” workaround either for a full backlog queue).
So basically for PT (BR) 1-5 I probably either need to get the userscript job done in the next months (but accepting that “Overdueness” support won’t be there) or simply migrate all of my completed courses over to AnkiSRS to be able to jump back on track (self-rating answer buttons, support for cloze deletions and typing, etc.).
Sadly there is no way to export these completed courses into AnkiSRS, fix all the next SR intervals once AND re-import (update) - by keeping the learning data - these words (incl. phrases/sentences) into Memrise to continue the reviewing.
…(…)…
The goal of the Memrise backend developers probably should be to introduce a new (better) API supporting exactly this.
Can this be done?
Or simply add Coojingle’s “Catch up review” code into the main code.
I really liked the Memrise Web UI, I like the classic reviews, over-watering or full typing support with Cooljingle’s “all typing” and “Auto correct” (accents/diacritics) as well as Memrise default “Auto accept” approaches to be able to type longer sentences in classic reviews.
…(…)…
Would I maybe pay for this service and offical courses?
Well, right now I do not have plans to start their offical 1-7 course series for too many languages in parallel.
I once used on an (much) older - but very stable - Android Memrise app the half-planting learning concept to plant the first 10 words from multiple levels all at once without overfilling my PT 6 + PT7 backlog queues.
To benefit from the www.memrise.com website without Ben’s and Jamiebrasil’s user-created courses (which can be found on Decks), I would either have to start all the 7 English-US courses for Portuguese Brazil, or to additionally start the European Portuguese courses which I had not intentially planned for this year.
I am kinda sad that I see the half-planting concept gone for user-created courses because of Decks.
Currently we have no Tampermonkey userscript solution for this for the web and new Decks.
As I started 3+ big user-created Portuguese Brazil courses from BenWhately and Jamiebrasil, I would like to have an option like this from time to time when my backlog already contains 50-100+ words and because of this I can not plant NEW words.
I feel sorry that I see this option gone for user-created courses because of Decks.
Hopefully we find at least some Tampermonkey userscript support for this stuff on Decks.
Finally I have 9 million of points and reached level 14 with the next jump to level 15 in about 3,5 million of points.
I can forget about my next rank with the splitting.
OFFLINE future
Isn’t it ridiculous that AnkiSRS (AnkiDroid or AnkiMobile) has full support for OFFLINE learning on their apps and that they support both mobile apps where the IOS thing is commercial and supported by the (main) lead developer in the AnkiSRS forum?
So basically you would have to export your Memrise courses to AnkiSRS to be able to sync the data from the Windows AnkiSRS application and their server to the mobile apps.
I have no idea if the export addon developer will be able to adjust the code to be compatible with Decks.
Will Decks contain the same API support as the main www.memrise.com website so we can export our completed or ongoing courses by keeping our learning data (word streaks, next SR interval, last reviewed, etc.) or is it a complete re-engineering?
Anyways, the export failed on my older PC system because of SSL certificate errors when I tried to play around with the AnkiSRS addon a while ago.
I rather would like not to have to rely on something like that.
But maybe this is the next logical step as I can tweak all the SR resetting and next intervals in the AnkiSRS advanced settings?!?
Memrise won’t allow me this and over-watering proves, that the standard Memrise SR intervals are not always right for me because my “forgetting curve” has already hit me.