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. 
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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
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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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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@kevin5284 Hey Memrise, with no app support or offline mode, this seems to remove the incentive for advanced learners to keep their premium subscription.
Personally I’ve been a premium subscriber for 3 years, and solely create my own courses as the official courses only cover beginner and lower intermediate content. I’d love to keep supporting the site, but will there be any benefit to a premium subscription for users like me?
I understand that you wish to separate the courses, but perhaps you could still allow existing premium users to continue to use their courses in the app?
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Kevin, thank you for your time and answering questions. I suppose it’s not the most pleasant thing on Earth.
But frankly speaking I don’t believe you, there is no logic. This new website not by a long shot is a sister site, for me it’s more like a “bastard brother site”. Why to seperate them in the first place?
You can not convince me (at least for now) that learning via mobile website is gonna be more comfortable than via actual app, however buggy and clumsy it is.
Memrise is quite big IT company, you have investments in millions of euro and you can not afford to have yourself an app, but you are building a website for the user created courses? Give me a break, it’s 21 century. Sooner or later every business will have an app. Take a look at Google Play and its skanky apps. If you are a big business and you don’t have an app then your business is lame.
I know you had some sort of brainstorm and discussed this topic all over, you had in mind some business calculations, etc. But you are killing a thing that was (is) very dear for such a language freak like me and I’m wondering if anybody in your office feeling the same. Learning new words with your app was very fun and great joy.
I’ve spent some time of the evening looking for a new place to live, that is to say. But all these other apps and websites are suck, pardon my French. I just don’t know what to do with it.
Yeah, I have paid account too, which honestly I don’t need because practically I’m not using courses by Memrise. Mostly I’ve bought it out of respect for your company.
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Will Decks finally add the ability to submit corrections for errors in a course, and/or override parts of the course with our own edits?
I still don’t see the logic in splitting the site to begin with.
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I purchased the Memrise Pro so I could use the app off-line for a ‘local’ African language, because I live in a country town in Ghana and internet is unreliable.
If Decks is not available off-line, and community languages aren’t available on Memrise, it sounds like I will have no reason to continue Memrise Pro. Am I right?
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I don’t understand why Memrise insists on being Duolingo. You are not Duolingo. What set Memrise apart was its user created courses and the ability to learn at an advanced level or to learn something highly specific. Now that you are taking that away from the offline app, there is no point in paying for your subscription. Just sent my refund request. Enjoy becoming like every other average language learning app and then slowly disappearing into obscurity.
Peace.
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I am a longstanding pro subscriber, and have invested hundreds of hours creating courses on your website, and thousands of hours learning on my tablet. I am now fluent in Mandarin and Korean, partially due to your (existing) service. And I am utterly devastated by this change.
If my courses will not be available on the app, I will be unable to use your service at all. There is no such thing as a mobile-friendly website for flashcards. It’s an app, or it’s nothing.
If this change goes forward, I will cancel my subscription and migrate to another service.
May I suggest an alternative? Leave the existing Memrise site and app as-is. You don’t even have to continue development. If you have an ingenious business model you want to pursue, create a new site for that. And all the best to you.
Alienating your existing customers while starting a new business model is pretty poor business strategy…
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