I guess the main point here is considering the feedback at all. Most web services (even the one I’m working for and worked for in the past) is not communicating with their user base at all and then it’s the user who is to blame for not loving the changes.
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They waited to drop this news until mid-February so that anyone who signed up with a New Year’s resolution in the first week of January would be outside of the 30 day refund period. Pretty sneaky business move, Ed.
Feels like they just used our community to get exposure and a high rating and now they’re just dumping us. I’m going to tweak my online and App Store reviews.
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I remember that it was actually really tiring process for Wikimedia staffers too.
And they, together with community had to go good lengths to develop reasonable due process.
Because, most of the time people bothering enough to complain doesn’t represent the average sample of users/content creators. (And they can be vocal and selfreassured that they are in the majority)
That had to be taken into context- together with ability to attract the “satisfied” part if the community into the decision process as well as someone from the staff who is able to represent the views of “developers community “ (yeah the tech staff needed to be represented in the communication too! In kind of having community of their own with all the caveats of tech development - without them actually procrastinating on the chat forums themselves)
Moreover the staff realized them not as average users, but rather representation of high end user/wikipedian/content creators -> which they needed to attract too. So the staffers used argumentation with statistics and their understanding of the needs of the low-end users and communicated them to high-end users - in-order for them to understand the strategic needs of the platform.
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not really, given that the IT-team hiring choices have not been always the best - unless they hired an external consultant, which they probably did.
Anyhow, I do understand their choice (I am also part owner of a tiny company …). I am not saying it is the best decision they could take, as I am not registered in the UK, never looked for investors and not facing Brexit and stuff…
I am hoping that: 1) they do not blatantly lie about “decks” staying alive for a … while?. 2) users scripts will function on decks 3) i can still use some of their official courses if in the mood etc.
Ben and Ed had quite different ideas about memrise and about how to speak with the user base, Ed won probably long time ago.
I am myself at peace with “memrise as we knew it’” dead, unfortunately …
Thanks, Memrise, for being a friend, sometimes indeed a terrible one, along my learning journey.
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I didn’t know. I know who’s Ed and what his background is (admired his memory). Didn’t do my research on cofounders.
Who’s Ben? And have You any idea about his vision?
(if good → I wish for God they make him CEO of Decks division than {and stop that nonsense that Decks would be unprofitable sister})
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Please view the above thread, for lots of ways you can take action, including how you can get their average rating on Google Maps (which many visitors to their office will use) from an average of 3.3 down to very close to 1.0
Ben Whately, COO of memrise, made the first Mandarin courses; if memrise got to be known, is because of Ben with his more or less professionaly made Chinese courses and… of course, Adam, the admin (the sole admin 
) of memrise 7 years ago. Darn, I forgot Mousha, the CEO when Ed forgot to renew the domain and we did not have memrise for a whole week… (Mousha is a cat now retired from her offices)
One can find old videos with Ben making fund raising for memrise, and explaining his fremium concept… Ed considered the whole site idea a mistake - in retrospect - and considered that they need only an app with in-house-made courses.
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@lyndongraffiti @brascooo we are listening to your feedback and can see the frustration around community courses not being on the mobile app anymore with offline mode. We’re discussing this at the moment in the company. We’re also preparing some follow up on why we decided to launch Decks, to make that rationale clearer
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This is a really great idea. I’d done the same.
Oh wait, where is my 10 million euro? 
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I’m not sure if this has been proposed already, but why not make some sort of agreement or petition for Memrise to give Decks to some of our more tech savvy users? That way, Memrise will have its official courses, and the users can modify Decks to have a mobile app. This shouldn’t be much of an issue considering Decks will make next to no money, what Memrise is interested in is the Memrise site, not Decks
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Okay finally you’ve acknowledged points one and two.
PEOPLE WANT AN APP.
PEOPLE WANT TO BE ABLE TO STUDY OFFLINE.
WE ARE WILLING TO PAY FOR COMMUNITY COURSES, why is Decks going to be Free?
Nothing free is guaranteed to stay online.
Either do it properly and launch “Decks” in BETA as an app with offline mode, ALONGSIDE Memrise. Only remove community courses from Memrise, AFTER “Decks” app has been extensively tested and approved by the users and is out of BETA.
Having a properly tested additional apps is a way to potentially increase revenue (a strategy used by Drops for example).
My point is do “Decks” properly. Or don’t do it AT ALL.
Memrise should TODAY send out an email saying the launch of “Decks” has been delayed until further notice due to community feedback.
The next email following that should either be requesting user feedback on new proposals BEFORE anything is launched OR announcing “Decks” has been cancelled entirely.
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. 
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Thanks for responding to this at least - we await with interest.
You are assuming they should give it away for free?
That they do not make money on it is not the issue here. It is competition.
It does more sense for them to either sell it(!!), kill it or have some other business model for it under their roof, but certainly not to give it free way out of their control and let it make them sort of competitor.
If they would give it away - someone would have to buy it from them.
Or we would have the open software model of development- but they would have to have some sort of benefit even minimal one - like good reputation to allow that under their roof.
(I assume the best for them would be to have second and independently paid product with the name Decks on the principles of freemium as was the original memrise model)
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I am also wondering why You insist that Decks should be completely free. Have it working as usual. Two sister products? Why not having two independent streams of income than?
If You are telling us, that You want new home for UCC and to have both of the diverging paths to flourish than this is the only way making any sense.
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I hope you guys include in that follow up how you are planning to support Decks if it’s going to be “free”. Ads? Locking currently accessible content behind a paywall?
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we’re committed to supporting community created courses on Decks forever
I think you cant make statement like this. Forever is strong word even for Memrise being around and not some side website Decks. Also didnt you guys promise before to support community created courses on Memrise forever?
Could you please explain how is it possible for Memrise to support Decks FOR FREE?
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Ads would be a no go on top to this no go …
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I wouldn’t mind adds in the case of PC web experience. (really) However if I imagine that my mobile browser is trying download add with every rendering of mobile Deck website… 
Will there be private courses available in Decks? In Memrise, unlisted courses still can be accessed via a link (even if I don’t share it, all course links can be easily scraped with a web crawler). I want to make courses from materials I purchase, but don’t want to infringe copyright.
Also will there be an API for Decks?