For a long time the discount was good for the one year subscription. I don’t mind supporting Memrise as the developers need food on the table and the cloud bills need to be paid.
if you are changing back:
will be features of decks like “problematic words” have to be paid at memrise?
and is there a possibility, for users on computers, to change the feature: be quick with your reply!
i hate that for so long and you always told me: not possible. anything is possible.
some ppl. need a bit longer to think about the correct answer esp. with difficult languages like finnish.
kiitos.
Probably. Read further up!
If you refer to the timer: yes. You can now turn it of in your learning settings (“Lesson timer”).
More info in this thread:
paying: all courses i study (finnish) are community courses. at least 70% of my courses are made by myself. so i have to pay for own stuff!
and for the lesson timer. i have wrote at least 3 emails to the team and all replies said: not possible.
switched it off for memrise now, checked decks, seems to be not available there, coz timer is the only feature that was not implemented into decks.
I don’t mind going back to Memrise, but I do prefer the design of Decks. The colour scheme and font used in Decks is better than Memrise. Would it be possible to keep the Decks design on the courses when they move to Memrise?
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You continue the rest of your post as if there’s no basis for anything I said, but I’ll just take this first part and give you an actual answer, just in case someone else reads this and really doesn’t know but genuinely wants to know.
I’m not the only person who spent a huge amount of time creating courses on memrise back when they were actively nurturing the community and community-created courses. I literally spent thousands of hours on my courses, over several years. For the fish identification course, I took thousands of photographs myself, identified them and cropped and edited and labelled them, sorted them, etc. For the Hebrew course, I actually paid someone else with my own money to record voice for many of the items, so I could have two different people’s voices for each word or phrase, to help people get a better sense of how to say or hear things.
Then Memrise made their shift to mobile, and at the same time their shift to being only about languages, and focusing on the courses memrise themselves created, instead of a platform for community courses (before this, memrise-official courses were fairly small portion of the whole). At that time, they started first neglecting the community and course creators, and the actively being dismissive and contemptuous of us.
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Bugs stopped being fixed, even if reported widely and for a long time, if those bugs didn’t affect memrise-official courses on the mobile app.
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The mobile app launched without mems, meaning those of us who pre-seeded our courses with good mems (I spent a lot of time on that for some of mine) ended up with an important part of our courses missing for mobile users. And mems were an important part of the community, too - a way multiple courses on the same topic benefited from each other. Yet they kept having no mems on the mobile courses for a long time, and I don’t know if they ever added the ability for mobile users to create mems. They had not when I left memrise (have they now?)
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On the web, courses could have “multimedia levels” where the course creator could put in some explanations, background info, or videos. Some of us used these in ways that were critical to the course. For example, in my Hebrew course I put in some places where there was a “multimedia level” with a youtube video of a song in Hebrew, and the next level was words and phrases from that song - something that would seem very weird and confusing if you didn’t know the song was there. But on mobile, multimedia levels were just plain skipped, without the user even realizing they had missed something. This was another thing that undermined the quality of courses some of us spent a lot of time one.
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For those and other problems, memrise became mostly unresponsive. If they happened to answer people’s complaints about what they were doing, it was usually just to say that they were prioritizing the mobile app and their own language courses, and since these things didn’t affect memrise-official language learning on the mobile app, they basically didn’t matter to memrise.
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All through this time, though, they did make several redesigns and changes to the web UI - often breaking things or making them harder to navigate, or breaking the interface used to edit courses. They kept not giving us any warning, just we’d all arrive one day and see everything different. People would point out what had changed for the worse, but they’d often ignore that. Some of the more obvious bugs, they’d apologize for and eventually fix. A bunch of us kept asking for them to show us previews of major design and UI changes before they launched them, so we could give feedback and help them correct bugs before they got inflicted on all web users. They made some nice vague noises about that idea, but never ever did it - the next change or redesign would again be popped with no warning.
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Through all this time, significant bugs in the actual course editing interface that got in people’s way in maintaining their courses, would be left as is for many months or in some case years. We got frustrated about why they were spending time redesigning the general UI for taking courses, which worked fairly well already, rather than spending that time fixing those bugs. I don’t recall any real answer to that.
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They made several course-breaking changes that undid lots of past work. The biggest one, of course, was when they changed the behavior of commas and parentheses in answers, by surprise. Suddenly, lots and lots and lots of courses (including mine) no longer worked, because course creators had written them to work with the old system. Many courses deliberately put things in parentheses or after commas to make them optional, or allow alternative answers, but now all of a sudden without warning answers that used to be right became wrong, and in many cases, the only “right” answers for memrise to accept were actually incorrect in real life. To fix this would require each course creator to go back through their existing course and edit a lot of items one by one - except that many courses did not have active maintainers at the time, so nobody would fix them and they’d remain broken. A lot of us asked them immediately to reverse the change - in fact, we thought it was a bug at first, and asked them to fix the bug - so a developer at memrise did reverse it, but within a short time he came back to tell us he’d been instructed to reintroduce the change (and thus, once again break a large number of courses), because the memrise-official mobile courses needed it that way. When we asked them to make it optional and allow it to be toggled for each course, to make it easy to fix existing community courses, they completely ignored that. They never even said why they weren’t willing to consider doing that, from what I recall.
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Through these two years, memrise staff were periodically absent from the forums and not answering questions, and when they were present, just gave evasive answers or avoided questions and tried to change the subject. It took quite a while to realize, and get them to sort of admit, that they really just didn’t care about the community courses anymore. But they did eventually admit it, and let us understand that they were taking memrise in a different direction. They wanted it to become a mobile language learning app, and the old idea of a platform for community created courses on a wide variety of topics was no longer what they wanted to develop. So not only did they make an explicit strategy decision to move away from supporting the community, they also avoided being direct with us about it for a long time, a huge sign of disrespect and betrayal.
This is only the highlights, summarizing a period of a couple of years in which it became increasingly clear that memrise did not value or support us. I hope this will help some readers understand my perspective and my skepticism. I’d love to see memrise come back, and I’m hearing some things that hint maybe they want to shift back to community, but I’m also seeing a lot of the same vagueness that we saw back then, when they weren’t willing to directly tell us they didn’t care and didn’t want to support us, but it was the case.
P.S. Ironic that I forgot to even mention memrise shutting down the course forums, which was a huge blow to the community courses. There are probably other big things I forgot to mention.
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@JBorrego, thank you for a longer and more detailed response.
However, I’d like to note this:
This not the first or even second time on this discussion that you or someone else from memrise has said that you are collecting feedback. Yet even though I have directly asked you for more specifics about how you’re doing this and how we can give feedback, you haven’t even tried to answer. You just keep saying “we’re collecting feedback” without giving the slightest hint of where or how anyone can give you feedback that you will consider. I even asked directly if all you mean is that you’re reading what people say in comments on this post, but you didn’t even mention that.
So we’re going back and forth in circles: Memrise says “we’re taking feedback and thinking about it” and I ask “okay, how are you doing that, how do people give feedback” and you just respond again with “we’re taking feedback and thinking about it”.
Do you understand why this is frustrating, and looks evasive, even if you didn’t intend that? Can you please just explain what the feedback channels are, how you’re getting feedback, how people can give you feedback and know what it is they said that you will actually record as feedback and consider? I still have not the slightest idea.
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Just having someone from Memrise asking for feedback is a good sign for me. In most companies you don’t promise something in forums, you are not even allowed to do this as those decisions have to be done on director level or so concerning software releases.
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I can confirm this. I’ve had a chat with Jesús and sent him my feedback with a list of unattended bugs and some other thoughts. I suppose they asked other users, too. Though I still have my concerns about Memrise and feedback in particular.
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So what you’re saying is, their method of collecting feedback is that the pick individual members of the forum and message them privately, one on one? If that’s what they’re doing, I wonder why nobody from memrise seems willing to say that directly here in public? And I wonder if that’s the only way they’re collecting feedback, or one of several?
I also wonder how they’re deciding who to contact, and what questions they’re choosing to ask. Maybe you can at least shed some light on the last part - what did they ask you?
Hi there, listening and difficult word features are free in the deck but not free in Memrise!
Will this affect this feature?
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I can also confirm that Jesus from Memrise got in contact with me. I did speak to him and send him more feedback that came to my mind later. I got a message if I would like to participate and give my feedback to things they are thinking of changing.
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I appreciate your com ments. While I am not a creator of any of the courses, I was very much aware of so many folks who when Decks was being created were so dissatisfied with that development that they were talking about leaving Memrise altogether. I have been concerned that at leafst one of the courses that I have been taking may have been abandoned because of things like missing audio files. I do not know if those folks have left and bid good riddance to Memrise, or if they might be happy to hear about the community created courses migrating back to Memrise. I hope that the leadership of Memrise will consider reaching out to those who have left to be sure that they know about the reintegration of Memrise and invite them back. Thanks.
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Kinda glad to read this. I canceled my pro-subscription when Memrise decided to focus on their language courses (which I think are not good). For some reason, I didn’t use Decks, and stopped developping my own courses. I was thinking that Decks wouldn’t last long, and after the radical changes Memrise did earlier without caring at all about users feedbacks, I had lost all confidence in this company.
It’s a good thing that the community courses are not just deleted. Maybe I’ll come back and pay for a pro-subscription. But I’ll wait some time: too many bad experiences in the last few years (Ziggy, bugs, Decks, contempt for your customers…)
Talking about Ziggy: funny that people now wish Memrise would go back to the space theme, while when the space theme came, people hated it and wanted the garden theme back 
To conclude: it’s quite unbelievable how many wrong turns this company has taken in the last years, despite the community begging them not to do that. Memrise should be happy that nobody created a good alternative in the meantime. Most companies wouldn’t have survived such a succession of bad moves. Of course, taking back the community courses to the main site has with money to do - and many said it when Decks was created: we are HAPPY to pay for the product, and we’re making quality courses for free for you… and now you give it for free, and focus on a market (language learning) that already has tons of good actors?! How could this be economically sane??
I’d really like to see what projections in term of customers and economic growth Memrise had when deciding to focus on language courses, and how it really went. Some people have done a very bad job. Yes, your community knows better what it itself wants and needs than 3 guys sitting and discussing in a room. We tell you what we want and would be happy for you to just do that: we do the job and pay for it: how on earth can you think: we’ll give them something totally different, we will not listen to them, and they’ll certainly stay while many more will come?
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First of all, there’s usual stuff 24 hours a day - reviews in app stores, this forum and social media platforms. As far as I know, they are monitoring them closely. In addition to this from time to time Memrise team conducting surveys and video interviews, for instance, language related. You can find old threads on the forum. In my case I was asked about Android app bugs and suggestions (I’m a pain in the ass when it comes to Android app).
At any moment there’s no shortage in feedback. What is more important, in my view, is what you are doing with it. Also, it’s not that simple with feedback. They had feedback from users before launching Ziggy and Decks, but overwhelming majority of users were against or sceptical about both projects, so Memrise closed them.
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Let me correct you. Community courses never, not for a second, left Memrise - they always remained in the same place and were available in the apps and website. The only difference is that for the last nine months or so you could also have an access to them through the Decks. So actually, there’s no migrating back, no reintegration or amalgamation happening. They just closing the Decks.
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I also noticed this the other day. I typically use Decks, not Memrise, and I rely HEAVILY on the difficult words feature. It would be really nice if it is free in Memrise after the shut down of Decks. I also, like many others, think the interface/theme in Decks is much nicer than Memrise. I really dislike the color scheme in Memrise.
All of that said, I’m glad they will focus on just one app going forward, perhaps more attention is being paid to the feedback and concerns raised.
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I am happy about your decision to close Decks. But I am worried about your real intentions and you and the @MemriseSupport team have not been clear yet. In the past I had a two years subscription (different email). It was about to end when Memrise decided to open Decks which made me really angry and disappointed at you. I even deleted my Memrise account. Then I opened a new one. This one, but now to use Decks only. User made courses are the best. No offend. But now I am worried that you may want to monetize everything. I do not care if I have to pay to use the Difficult Words feature or to see my learning statistics. I believe that in way that’s fair. My only concern is that if you will keep the basic features and all the learning content available for free as in the past?? @MemriseSupport please answer me this question so I can decide whether to continue using Memrise or move to another service. Please do not believe I just want everything for free. I know the importance to pay for what you get, If you keep record of old memberships then I can prove you I bought a two year membership in the past. However, my economic situation is not good right now and I do not want my language learning to be affected because of that, and once my situation gets better, gladly I will support Memrise again by getting a subscription.
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FYI with the current level of features in the free version of Memrise you could do a lot of language studying without issues. I did that for four months while waiting for clarification about the future of Decks and the mobile apps. As that was now messaged (thanks!) I switched back to a paid subscription, mostly as I know it costs money to maintain an engineering team and keep the back-end services running.
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I did that for 9 months. Sadly I have to survive with 2 dollars per day, depending on the exchange rate. Now Memrise prices are too high. I supported Memrise with money in past by purchasing a 2 years membership. But now it’s too expensive. If they decide to monetize the user made courses with about the same prices I am afraid I won’t be able to afford it. In the past it was ok, even with my poor economic situation I could use Memrise for years and as soon as I got a opportunity I got the two years subscription, just to support them. In my case I just need to know what is their next move so I can know what to do. If they decide to monetize them with such high prices, perfect. I understand their reasons but I would have to migrate to something I can afford. If they monetize them with prices I can afford I would stay here even if I have to pay for the user made courses. I am not against them for needing money to maintain an engineering team to keep the back-end services running. That’s perfectly understandable. I was just asking them for info to know what to do next. The only thing I dislike about Memrise is that they start taking action before they have a concrete set of actions and now they are like, we are taking feedback and discussing what to do next. If you have enough economical resources it’s easy to switch back to paid subscription without having to worry what’s their next move, but for someone like me… I have to worry if what I study the next couple of weeks is going to be a waste of time or not, depending on what the Memrise team decide in the end. Because of this, as a feedback to @MemriseSupport, before start announcing big changes like this one, first plan thoroughly everything you’re going to do so when you start making announces everything is ready and your customers will have all the information they need to decide what to do next, specially those who are going to be affected by such changes.
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