When I first heard the news about Decks, I thought it was a terrible idea. We’re losing our offline access to our created decks through the app. The app was my primary way of studying my own Russian vocabulary and I’m furious that I can’t have offline access to the decks I’ve spent hours creating.
But I’m also disappointed with us as a community because it seems like after a couple days, we are no longer being as vocal about our dislike about this Decks website. I was hoping we would be active to try to get Memrise to reverse this decision. Posting reviews, tweeting, etc. but instead, it seems like we will be taking this lying down.
Farewell to Memrise then. I enjoyed learning with it but it seems like they are staying the course and removing our community decks and we won’t do much about it.
We’ve done all we could, at least that’s what it looks like to me, and absolutely no word from Memrise. Most of us (myself included) are demoralised that they won’t even give us a proper response, so we’ve silently decided to part ways. There’s only so many tweets and reviews we can make before we realise it’s utterly pointless.
As for me, I’m quite enjoying my time without Memrise. It was a nice wake-up call to this dysfunctional mess they created years ago. I encourage people to do the same : find a new SRS-type platform, adapt and stick to it.
I don’t think that is entirely true. I saw in another forum a lot of users located in London are going to the main office to discuss with the CEO about Decks. If I were located in London I might go myself. But for now I am relaying on the London users to tell me any updates.
We’ve done all we could, at least that’s what it looks like to me, and absolutely no word from Memrise. Most of us (myself included) are demoralised that they won’t even give us a proper response, so we’ve silently decided to part ways.
Exactly this.
I’m finishing RTK here, since I’m ~90% done with the course, and at the same time I’m going up the rather steep learning curve for Anki. And I’ve already imported this and other courses to Anki.
@PhillipBennett76 My suggestion is to wait until Decks release. I have a hunch that it’ll be a colossal screw up. There are many more users who will be angry about this decision. Maybe then Memrise management will recognize that this move was nothing, but a big mistake. But if you have any ideas what to do right now, then just tell about it.
@LangAddict Lucky you, man. Unfortunately, I don’t see any appropriate alternative to Memrise (except for “Paper and Pen” app). Some are not bad, but in my opinion they all have flaws.
You’re right, we should at least see how things turn out in the end.
Honestly, if I were to count how many flaws Memrise had even before Decks, we’d be here for a couple hours. I think you should lower your standards a little, we’re talking about an app that helps you learn some words, not a godsend that has everything. I’m more than happy if the app I’m using helps me learn said words, for anything else (listening, grammar, etc…) I have separate sources.
That’s not the only reason. For one thing, on some platforms I had troubles to find advanced courses. That’s the beauty of Memrise - there are many learning people and many courses suited to every fancy.
You are right, but it was so convenient. Yeah, for grammar and listening I have other sources, too.
I am not sure if it is worth it fighting… in the beginning I was so ambitious to find a way to make our voice heard, to change their minds. But they don’t care about us as members obviously. Some business consultants or whoever will have suggested to create decks and that’s it.
I liked the whole idea of memrise, which they are dismissing now. Even if they go back, I would feel better, but still disappointed of the way, they were behaving. And this would be the best case. I didn’t find any alternative for my iPhone in subway or bus yet, so I indeed started to use paper and pencil. It is inconvenient, as I always have to plan and carry it. My feelings associated with Memrise went from “oh i love this wonderful company” to “how could they do this to us”… I don’t have any confidence anymore that they are doing their stuff to actually make people be able to learn languages. Now it seems like one of those hundreds of thousands of companies, which want to make profit. It is okay to think economically but not at the costs of their ideal, their dream…
Of course, there are more ways to protest against this situation, and going to the office in person values much more than posting in the forum. It is not all what we can do…anyway, I don’t want to feel negative anymore, but I do everytime I think of Memrise. I do have lifelong membership so no way to show my opinion with unsubscribing… i guess i will have a look at the app every now and then to see at what price they made all this mess. But… i guess i will resign. Im still reading here regularly, I still comment as you see…
But the Memrise Team doesn’t support the idea of a sharing community. Then I don’t want to make these people do what I want by forcing them, because they only change, if they want it from within and I need people who share this idea. But there is money or success or competition or all …enough for that within their minds. They need to stop this plan and to apologize officially with a video and some gifts to members and some honest nice words. And as this won’t come, I don’t want to put energy into them anymore.
Because Memrise announced a material adverse change to the service you purchased, after you purchased it, you are entitled to demand at least a pro-rata refund of the money you paid them, notwithstanding their 30 day refund policy. Calculating what a pro-rata refund of a “lifetime” agreement would be is where it gets tricky, but a lifetime of seven years is a number that some businesses use for such calculations.
oh really? I didn’t know that, I will check. Thank you for your reply! I was reading their policy and there it was written, that they don’t owe us anything and can change the app as they like to do…
Okay then I might find a way, thank you
Great, Decks is here - but how do I get unofficial courses on mobile? I went to the memrise website to search, but kept getting tossed back to the app, and only official versions are available there.
First off, that they didn’t really inform us that this was happening until a few weeks before that launch tells us they have already invested in Decks. It’s going to happen, and we don’t have any say. All we can do is either live with it or go somewhere else.
Second, on my forums I’m seeing a lot of people already moving their courses over to Anki or Quizlet. That might be part of it–rather than rage here futilely, they are already heading out the door.
I will wait and see what happens. I might be able to live with Decks if it largely functions the same way as the Memrise website does now. But what I fear is it’s going to ad-heavy and as Pro subscriber who’s getting screwed out of the last 3-4 months of my sub (which I got it specifically to use courses offline via the app), that would be too much. Memrise is already never going to get another penny from me, but if they make me watch ads to learn my non-mainstream languages, they can take their Decks and shove it. I am an Anki hater but its user-unfriendliness beats my languages of interest being monetized like that when I have already been a user who has given them money.
Decks hasn’t launched yet. But when it does, it will not have an app at all, so you will have to use a web browser on your mobile device and access the website that way. I don’t think they have announced any news about the Memrise app, but suffice to say, after the Decks migration for community created courses, we can assume the app will only be good for Memrise’s official courses and we won’t be able to access community created course with it any longer. But until then, you can keep using the app.
Yep, it has offline mode, but you have to register first. At least that’s how it works on Android. By the way, its design looks familiar: space rocket and aliens theme.
Another thing you could give a try is The Free Dictionary (https://www.thefreedictionary.com/), which has offline dictionaries and learning mode. The main app is for English (it’s a pretty cool dictionary if you are looking for idioms), but they have few other languages, so you’d better look into it yourself.
