Important Update: Upcoming changes to Memrise community-created courses

Welcome to the Forum! Memrise Announcements
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Memrise has massively grown since we first started out in 2010, and many of you have been with us since the beginning. Our website was born as a crowdsourced learning platform, a place where people could create and share flashcard decks to memorise almost anything. As we grew, so did our love and dedication to languages.

A couple of years ago we decided to focus solely on developing Memrise as a language learning product, a focus that was also needed to help our business grow and thrive. To fulfil this purpose, we became fully invested in developing and nurturing our apps, deprioritising development of the crowdsourced learning platform.

This year we've decided to give this side of Memrise its own, well-deserved home, a place where it can thrive with the nurturing help of the community that has kept it alive. This place is Decks, by Memrise. Investing in the creation of this sister website is the best way for us to ensure that we can support community-created courses forever.

In mid-March, all community-created courses will move to Decks. There will be a transition period before we completely separate the two sites, giving everyone enough time to get acquainted with the new environment. The most important thing for you to know, however, is that everything will work almost exactly the same.

Effectively, the creation of this sister website means that two products will exist under the Memrise brand, Memrise and Decks. We know that you will have many questions. To that effect, we’re preparing a more extensive FAQ in this forum that will hopefully answer all of them, but here is an overview that should address some of your biggest concerns:

  • Your login details for Memrise will work for Decks.
  • You’ll be able to learn both on Memrise and Decks. Memrise will exclusively house our official language courses, all other courses will live in Decks.
  • Your learning progress will be migrated to Decks as well. This includes course progress, points, leaderboard positions and streak.
  • Decks will work almost the same way as Memrise. For a full list of features, head here.
  • The way you create courses will be the same as before. However, please note that moving forward, creating courses will only be possible in Decks.
  • Decks will be available as a mobile-friendly website.
  • All community-created courses will be removed from the Memrise app in mid-March.
  • Decks will be free to use.

We’re in the process of informing all course creators and learners of community-created courses about these changes, and we will update this forum when Decks is live and ready for you to try it out. In the meantime, we’ll keep an eye on this thread to answer any questions!

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Not Available in Decks:

Chatbot and Grammarbot
Learn with Locals
Pronunciation
Learning Stats
Grammar
Offline mode
App

http://community.memrise.com/t/what-features-are-available-in-decks/33423

No pronunciation? What does that mean? No audio? :astonished: :angry:

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I feel really uneasy about this idea. First of all, why even split the courses? Will Memrise only allow the official courses now? Also, I assume paid membership will be shared between Memrise and Decks. One of the only good things that Memrise had going was the vast amounts of courses made by the community, and now you’re forcing people to default to one of the two. And of course people will default to Memrise, which in turn will make Decks a dying platform in a couple of years.

But by far my biggest concern is the learning itself. All of my courses are used for self-studying purposes, and I sometimes use the Memrise app to review them. So now I’ll have to disregard the app altogether and use a potentially unstable website? Ok, good luck convincing people to do that.

At least in the short term, this sounds like a terrible idea. I’ll be sure to back up my courses, just in case…

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Hi @duaal, Pronunciation is a mode that’s only available on Memrise language courses, so this doesn’t affect the experience on community courses. Audio will still be available on Decks just like it is today.

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This makes sense, I have to say I was getting very confused by how differently memrise created courses and other courses were working so I think it will be easier to use this way.

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hi @kevin5284,
That is a relieve, because that would definitely be a dealbreaker. Especially since I’ve been working on adding audio to the most popular English course (for English speakers).

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Why no app and no offline mode for Decks? Some people have paid accounts for the sake of offline mode only.

Obviously, you don’t have enough resources to maintain two more apps (iOS and Android) and you are a business and everything, but, gosh, you just saying “beat it” to anyone who has vocabulary in any language higher than A2.

After your latest Android updates I was kinda expecting something more awful to come and now this is it. :frowning:

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@LangAddict We’re making this split because the learning experience for community created courses and our in-house language courses is diverging, and we believe that having them as separate sites will allow each to flourish.

There isn’t paid membership on Decks - it’s a free platform. And you don’t have to default to Decks or Memrise - you can (and we want you to) use both. We’re trying to make that as easy as possible by allowing your Memrise login to work for Decks.

Yes you’ll have to use the Decks website to learn community courses on your mobile phone, but we’re making the site mobile friendly to accommodate this

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The FAQ section (linked above) will be an important source of information for people over the coming weeks. I have a couple of suggestions for additional “Qs”:

Q. Will I still be able to access the official Memrise language courses on the Memrise website as an alternative to the apps? [If I have understood the fourth paragraph of the announcement correctly, the answer to this will be “Yes”]

Q. Will the Memrise Team consider requests from trusted users to be given ‘contributor status’ for those “legacy courses” created by Memrise that are transferred to the new Decks site?

Similarly:

Q. Will the Memrise Team continue to consider requests from trusted users to be given ‘contributor status’ for those “community-created” courses that are transferred to the new Decks site but which subsequently become abandoned by the course creator?

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Hi @Hombre_sin_nombre this was a difficult decision, and yes it’s related to our capacity to develop and maintain more iOS and Android apps.

Although Decks won’t be available offline, we’re working hard to make it mobile friendly so that you can still learn there on your mobile phone.

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Hi @alanh, great suggestions.
We’ll add that first question to the FAQs.
We also support the idea behind 2) and 3). We’ll come back with a proposal on how this could work in the next week or two

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I’m sorry for being skeptical, but this transition sounds a lot like an excuse to eventually get rid of user-created courses altogether. Most people who use Memrise will not even know Decks exists and will be deprived of a good chunk of helpful resources. If this happens, in 2-3 years you will admit Decks was a mistake and will likely shut it down completely.

You say people will not default to one of the two, but that’s just human nature. Only very dedicated users will use both, which are few and far between.

There could be benefits to this transition, but I just fail to see any good coming out of this. Regardless, I wish you guys the best with this and I pray it will not backfire.

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http://community.memrise.com/t/will-i-still-be-able-to-access-official-memrise-courses-on-the-memrise-website-as-an-alternative-to-the-apps/33466

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How many people will know about the Decks website (without an app in a major app store)? How many will migrate to the other platforms after today’s announcement? How many will stay here after all? May I guess that this number will be heavily reduced.

You are saying that Decks is a free platform, therefore there is no reason for Memrise to really develop this project, because you are not a charity. Perhaps I’m a pessimist, but I will be no surprised if you are to shut down Decks after a year or so.

I’m just frustrated because you had a freaking great language app and now it’s almost gone.

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@Hombre_sin_nombre we’re making a big investment to create Decks as a sister site, and we see this as the best way to ensure that we can support community created courses forever.

I realise that isn’t clear in the original post, so we’ll add that in.

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When you say “Some legacy courses created by Memrise will be transferred to Decks”, does that mean that the old language courses (by Memrise), which have been replaced by new ones, will go to the Decks?

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Hi @Milamy yes that’s right, some of the old Memrise language courses will be moved to Decks. You can see the full list here:
https://www.memrise.com/user/Decks/courses/teaching/

We’ll update the FAQs to clarify this

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Very disappointed in this choice. I pay for memrise to use the features of the app for the “community-created” courses, will be no point in renewing subscription now if you are murdering all the courses.

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No, they’ll not be murdered. Think of it like a retirement home, where our courses can die a slow and painful death. Personally, I am this close to cancelling my subscription and moving to another SRS-based platform. I’m still keeping an open mind to the idea until they’ll actually implement it, though my expectations are low.

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