Thanks for that information @alanh, I see several people have already started threads for MemRise courses with ‘issues’, in line with your comments.
[the MemRise team] feel it may be best if learners who need to report mistakes or make comments/ suggestions first check under the relevant language heading whether there is an existing topic for that course. If not, they (the learner) can create a new topic for that course themselves.
Will the MemRise team see them or should ‘we’ add an @ somebody’s name on the MemRise team?
We wouldn’t know who, specifically, to name as we don’t know who created each course, and I expect that Lien and Joshua would soon get bogged down if they were always named as the ‘go to’ guys for everything.
For example, when the Memrise A1 Spanish course first appeared, one of the Team regularly answered forum questions but, after a while, that person disappeared and it became a bit of a free for all. Some posts got good quality replies from other learners and some didn’t. I asked about that at the time and was told it was a ‘resource’ problem which they hoped would be resolved downstream. I’m guessing that remains the position.
Search the relevant category in the “Language Quarters” area to see if there is already a topic for the course in question (or to see if a similar comment/question to mine has already been raised by another learner under a different topic).
If there is already a topic for that course, I would post there and then wait to see what response I get (if any).
If there is not one, I would start a “[Course Forum]” topic for the course in question and post my comment/question in it…and then wait and see what response I get (if any).
If I didn’t get a response (after a reasonable period of time), I would probably add a post inviting Lien or Joshua (using their “@” username) to ask whichever of their colleagues was the creator of the course in question to respond to my original post.
Does that seem like a plan?
Of course, while these things are happening, it’s possible that other learners will have joined the discussion - as happened in the old-style course forums.
@alanh, well, it does look like a plan… there is nothing more one can do
but, well, it is not like in the old forums. Because the old course fora used to be accessible from the learning/reviewing page. There was a direct link.
We’ll make it work, though, won’t we? Just like all the other changes over the years. I’m already finding my way around quite quickly. I expect you are, too.
For me, the biggest loss is no longer having the “report” button which let us go straight from an individual item page to the course forum. Now, if only we could get that back somehow. Oh well…
I think some of the issues which some people are currently upset about are due to the fact that the new forum is a commercial ‘off the shelf’ platform and
Memrise has limited scope (or the staff resources) to change its features/tools. If you have some spare time, it’s worth a look around the Discourse website and its sandbox. There are examples there of other websites which currently use the Discourse forum.
well, this is exactly what i’ve said “from the learnig/reviewing page. There was a direct link” - that link is a tremendous loss…
I don’t know really anymore what staff resources memrise has, they deleted those short presentations of the team members, wonder why? I’ve counted just now the people in the team photo - 22? http://www.memrise.com/team/
yes, @alanh, we’re among the “old” ones, we know “our memrise” inside out… however, I’m not sure if the good will and energy of some of us will help this time. I do hope so…
Thanks for this link [quote=“Hydroptere, post:47, topic:109”]
I’ve counted just now the people in the team photo - 22? http://www.memrise.com/team/
[/quote]
That’s very bad idea to wipe user’s data. I’m talking about data, that was stored in course’s forums. Memrise just threw it away. That’s very rude. I can’t believe that Memrise could do it. Incredible.
A lot of us understand and share your frustration about this but, to be fair to Memrise, this change wasn’t carried out without notice or explanation.
There has been a lot of discussion in this new forum since early May about the implications of the decision and the best way of dealing with the consequences. In addition, a small number of dedicated learners (in particular, @Arete_Hime and @TinyCaterpillar) spent a lot of time locating and archiving important content from the old forums so that it wouldn’t be lost. People had the opportunity to help with that task, if they visited the new forum.
Here is a selection of those discussions:
Whether we agree or disagree with Memrise’ decision about this, the following extract from the site’s Terms of Use is relevant:
“By using the site, you acknowledge that Memrise may monitor or pre-screen User Content, and that Memrise retains the right (though not the obligation) to refuse, reject, move, remove, edit, combine or recombine any Content that is available via the Site or Service without warning and at our sole discretion and for any reason. You are solely responsible at your sole cost and expense for creating backup copies and replacing any User Content you post or store on the Site or provide to the Company. Be aware that other users may be able to edit your content, and that we make no guarantees that we will retain an accurate copy of any content that you upload to the site.”
Translation: What can I say to make this person go away the quickest without ourselves actually having to do anything, and that still sounds somewhat plausible. I know, they’ve been talking about how this forum is cluttered, let’s use that.
The real reason I think is that they think the courses are already good enough and don’t want to waste time entertaining corrections from users.
Sure, let a random user instead of Memrise staff get notifications about new posts in the topic. I’m sure that is the best possible solution.
Just be honest: We don’t have the time. We won’t look at your corrections.
My view is simply that, if they create courses and publicise them, they should take ownership of them and deal with all comments/suggestions, as we do for the courses that we create. I argued for this in the old course forum for A1 Spanish.
[Afterthought: As you may already have realised, though, you will not find the content from the old forums. Memrise has removed that. See my post 4 posts above this one.]
Hello, I’m from Colombia, I think that the best way to learn is practicing, so who want to talk? My ID Memrise is Phriasitch_Pascal90, my facebook Bitto Corleone
I’m new to the New Forums. I didn’t use the old forum much. I didn’t find the old layout really worked well for conversations. So far this looks like an improvement.
I didn’t find the old layout really worked well for conversations.
Yes this Forum is great for open communication on specific topics and also provides PMs, but the general feeling is that the old embedded Course Forums were good for reporting issues with courses that both the course Creator and Contributors saw and could address.
I’m new here as well, and also didn’t use the old forums much. This forum is really confusing at first, fortunately I have a friend from Duolingo on here who I asked for advice (after I figured out how). The title of this post describes me rather well still, though.
By the way, @WildSage are you by chance the same WildSage as on Duolingo? The name sounds rather familiar.
Just ask if you are not sure about how things work. There are lots of people who will be happy to help.
It’s best to just start by looking around the different categories and reading some of the posts. The forum has different ‘trust levels’ which open up to you after you have been around for a few days and have read a few topics. These give you access to diferent tools like private messaging, tagging, etc. Take a look at “Badges” under the 3 bars icon in the top right corner and click on the individual badges to see the definitions, scroll down to see the ‘trust levels’.
Like most things, the more you use it, the more it starts to make sense.
