Important Update: Upcoming changes to Memrise community-created courses

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“Since focusing on our own language courses, we’ve grown twenty times over, and a very small proportion of learning on our mobile apps now happens on community-made courses.”

That’s not surprising as if you only use the app, rather than the website, you wouldn’t even know community made courses exist. As it is there’s no functional search for community courses. If you actually promoted community courses for immediate/ advanced learners and those that have completed the Memrise course for their chosen language, you would have MANY MORE MULTI-YEAR LOYAL SUBSCRIBERS. I suggest you call one of your investors and ask them to explain to you why a customer that subscribes for ten years (including price rises) is worth more than one that only wants to use your app for a few months.

My history with Memrise is that I was a subscriber for several years using the Memrise courses for Korean (which was before a number of your competitors launched with far superior beginner courses e.g. LingoDeer). I then started weekly evening classes. I was fully intending to unsubscribe to Memrise as I hadn’t used it for many months, when I remembered the community courses and found a whole series of community made courses (with audio!) to accompany the textbooks we follow in class.

"Why no mobile app for Decks?

The decision to create Decks as a website only is down to resources (though the site will work smoothly on your mobile web-browser)."

This is an assertion, not a statement of fact. If you are so confident in this mobile website, then launch it for six months and allow your loyalest users to compare it to the app experience (keeping the community courses in the Memrise app). Apps exist because mobile browsing is generally a poor experience. It doesn’t take many resources to fork the app which YOUR EXISTING COMMUNITY USERS ARE GENERALLY HAPPY TO PAY FOR. MANY USERS ALSO WANT OFFLINE ACCESS.

"Why no monetisation?

Focusing all our resources in developing the Memrise apps and website will also allow us to maintain Decks as a free website. We won’t actively invest in creating new learning features for it, but we also don’t have plans to make money from our learners on Decks."

Why do you want to lose paying subscribers. I’m happy to pay for online and offline access THROUGH AN APP, to community courses. If the Memrise courses improve, I would be happy to PAY FOR TWO SUBSCRIPTIONS.

Sorry I do not accept the resources argument. Drops has over 30 apps on Google Play. Clone the existing Memrise app and call it “Decks”.

What you are proposing means less revenue and a poorer user experience, with many users abandoning you for other platforms.

LISTEN TO USER FEEDBACK:

EITHER:

PAID “DECKS” APP WITH OFFLINE MODE

OR:

KEEP THINGS HOW THEY ARE.

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612

If Memrise was currently offering something like MoviePass and it seemed too good to be true (and turned out to be) then it would be easier to be more sanguine about the offering changing.

It’s just hard to accept that what was being offered and happily paid for turns out to be so uneconomical and that so few fellow (ex)Pro members were using the app for community course learning (like I was).

So few in fact that it seems there is no conceivable price point that Memrise could run a support team to manage an app.

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Blockquote

Since focusing on our own language courses, we’ve grown twenty times over, and a very small proportion of learning on our mobile apps now happens on community-made courses.

Blockquote

This is one of the key phrases. Community-made courses have not been shown in the app for some years, so now less people use them, and their interests can easily be neglected. You were planning this step from the start, and I was just another idiot to trust you.

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614

Ok, it’s like I thought. Memrise wants to play in a league with others like Rosetta Stone or what ever. To make this happen in an easy way it has to get rid of the community-created content. To much work to deal with them, too. So you push it on a hospice website to die, please not too loud and too much complaining that’s why we promise you its for free and “forever”.

I paid live time membership not long ago and there was not even a hint that you could change the system that radical. So I won’t take your promises or trust them. Just counting the weeks and see at the end how much I paid per month what I was promised to be for ‘life-time’. Next time I’ll be more careful.

No matter what you are so greatful designing or planning, no money any more from me.

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615

If most of the users care more about official courses than community one you wouldn’t 99.9% of people complaining.Official courses are good for introductions to languages but after that people will go to community courses.I’m not buying the argument about community courses causing bugs and even if it’s true the problem will only transfer to Decks which you won’t even support it as much as Memrise. By creating an app for Decks with offline mode you’ll spend more money but you won’t lose money for the cancelled premium account due to this awful changes you are trying to force.I guess it’s time to say goodbye to Memrise.

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"Memrise will afterwards feature just the courses we develop ourselves and the rich learning experiences associated with those."
I’m sorry to say this, but your “rich learning experiences” doesn’t even hold a candle to what the community had to offer. At least acknowledge that the official courses are vastly limited and only teach you the bare-bones of a language, while the community expands on that tenfold.

"Since focusing on our own language courses, we’ve grown twenty times over, and a very small proportion of learning on our mobile apps now happens on community-made courses." .
Of course it does, that’s because you force people to use your courses. In the past, you could find community courses in the app, now you don’t. I wonder why… Also, I feel like this sounds just a tad bit patronising towards the community, like “Oh, your courses were irrelevant anyway.”

"The differences will only accelerate in the future, as we enrich, improve and diversify the language learning experiences in the main Memrise app." newspeak for “We want more money”

"In a sense, we have been maintaining two quite different products in one to the disadvantage of both."
No, you had something going with a community that was willing to add content for free and you blew it. Part of it is incompetence. But separating the two will be even worse because people will not be able to keep up.

"In creating Decks, we wanted first of all to honour our commitment to users who have been with us for a very long time and our respect and appreciation for the community-created genre of Memrise we created together. We wanted to ensure that this is content is available forever."
If you wanted to express your gratitude, this was a terrible way of doing so. Also, nothing lasts forever, no matter how big your company is, and I doubt you’ll be willing to maintain a non-profit website ad infinitum,

"As much as we are growing, we are nonetheless very resource-constrained"
Oh really? So I guess the failed projects like Ziggy, the badge system, and everything you invested some money in was a result of your lack of resources.

"So expect lots of bold innovation from us in the coming months and years. We won’t always get these moves right, of course, but we hope you’ll come to love how Memrise will evolve and we thank for your partnership and custom as we get there. "
And this sums up everything we’ve experienced thus far. Your “bold innovations” have been nothing but terrible decisions. This goes to show how unorganised your company is and how you’re set to destroy yourselves. It pretty much feels like you put all the ideas into one place and randomly choose one of them saying “Ok, let’s try this next!”

This is not how you do business and/or economics, Memrise. I’m not an expert on the subject, but I feel this is one of the best ways to alienate your community entirely by separating the “normies” from the “language geeks” . Definitely the worst stunt you pulled by far.

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617

It’s very strange that they are so stubbornly repeating “it’s free, we don’t need your money”. There’s something wrong here.

What is a reason of a business if it’s not supposed to make money? Are they going to use Decks users as some lab rats? :open_mouth:

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I dont want to be rude but your (Memrise) language courses are really really weak. I could even go so far to say that some of the community courses are better for learning than yours. Also your course provide very basic learning and then its done, dead, no use for your app. I really dont understand how is this better for you and i heard this BS “this will allow us to do more for Memrise” same like Duolingo said their paid subscription just to remove ads will give them more to work with but there has been nothing extra coming from that extra money. This will be the same with Memrise and not to take your history for granted when you removed lots of features and your app is still after very long time not in a great shape.

I cant even imagine how much you need to do to be proper learning app without ANY community courses. If i want to learn german there is just one course divided into 7 and thats it. Thats all. Nothing else nothing more. Why would i use your app with just this?

Anyway seems like you are going trough with this change and you even mention monetising your “FREE and supporting FOREVER” Decks website like 5 minutes after you spammed “FREE” everywhere. This sounds incredibly fishy. I can no longer support you in any way because you are giving a huge slap to people who MADE YOU. Literally this community MADE YOU what you are now! So i will move my courses to Anki and im out. Good luck with your way tho

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Forget about it just like they don’t want to spend money create a Decks app they won’t bother spend money creating an API.

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620

I did leave there respectfully my reply to Mr. Cooke and comment on the decision with wording I dare to reproduce here verbatim:

“Really not happy about that. Dear Mr. Cooke I really respect You for puting Memrise together.

And while understand and wholeheartedly endorse Your mission in producing Your multimedia enriched courses I am beyond saddened for Your view of community driven content as merely legacy content. Something You vow to upkeep (but not to develop even in the slightest) in the future.

I understand that the data You have can be pointing out to inevitable conclusion that it is only the focused content You had created, which is driving Your current growth. (honest congratulation!).

But I’d like You to weigh in few factors:

That the prominence of official courses on app is definitely driving first impressions of Your new users.

And that in recent Years it was also only this part of Memrise which got any spotlight in development of features - while even rather simple features important for the growth of the other part - like filtering of results and user rating of content was deprioritized or even the features were scrapped down like the amazing memes!

What I am trying to say is, You are right that the cohabitation of the two models was detrimental to both. And that is good to keep in mind in any profitability of the future Decks.

Moreover the official courses will always come short in comparison to the UC ones in regard advanced content.

What plans do You have to those Your users who successfully complete Your courses?

Create more advanced ones? How far are You able to go?

Will You be able to create official course for a learner of English as am I? Yes, I still study English with You … and it is the only resource on the planet I find useful at my stage.

I had finished Your official courses of Portuguese in few months - are You content with me (and others) to leave You after they inevitably run out of content You painstakingly prepared for them in given language?

This is not very convincing prospect for new students (proficiency ending somewhere at A2 now … maybe B1 in the future?)

What if You have great resources for students of Portuguese or Turkish language in the beggining of their studies - but they in advance, that the only level they can attain is to barely go shopping or traveling. Isn’t it depressing prospect?

I see more opportunities in creating Desks for You, than even You realize. Those are the higher reaches You can offer future students. The hopes and dreams to achieve mastery! To stay with You not for months ore lower Years but for long Years and even decades and be grateful source of stream of longlasting income to come.

That is - if You will give them (Your future long lasting customers) what we (current long lasting customers) are wishing for gor ourselves. Ability to learn further!

I am willing to pay for access to dedicated app and offline advanced content. (web based online content doesn’t cut it, even though most of time, I am online… When I was on holiday I needed to know for sure I could go offline)”

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This is essentially what I said above.

The way you built and have gradually caused the app’s degradation makes it harder to find community courses on there, in favour of promoting your own material. Deliberately creating the conditions required in order to get the statistics you desire…

Artificially generating the statistics by systematically removing more and more options (when removing one or two failed to prompt the desired result: people favouring official courses over community ones) doesn’t make it real. For a platform that once claimed to be built on the science of learning, it would seem they have learned little themselves about how fact and conjecture work (and how making the data fit the preferred hypothesis really doesn’t work at all). If the facts are false, the data they’re basing their decisions off breaks down; nobody wants to live in a house with custard for foundations, even if you paint it up pretty.

Besdies, 79% of statistics are made up, anyway. And up to including at least 70% of
those are made up on the spot…

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This is the POTENTIAL BILLION DOLLAR OPPORTUNITY, you are missing.

Commercial language courses going only up to intermediate level have existed for decades.

If you combine Machine Learning/ Artificial Intelligence with the Big Data of users of “Decks” going to fluency, you may discover something worth BILLIONS (see DeepMind)

Instead you are throwing away all this data and the loyalest most motivated and advanced language learners on the planet because you don’t want to fork and maintain (not improve) AN EXISTING APP THAT PEOPLE WILL PAY FOR.

MAKE DECKS THE HOME OF INTERMEDIATE/ ADVANCED LEARNERS AND CHARGE FOR IT.

Please call one of your investors and get them to explain this to you.

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I totally agree with your post.

There’s nothing to do on Memrise after you have finished basic courses. For me it took about three-four months to learn seven Spanish courses. But what to do next? I have stayed here for so long because there were very helpful user created courses.

Also, Memrise just can’t cover everything (say, grammar and more advanced vocabulary). There are many more websites, which are really great at it, because it is their speciality and they are not spreading themselves too thin on 20 languages as Memrise doing it.

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624

This clarification is even more unsatisfactory than the announcement itself. I really hoped he will reflect on the frustration of the users, but it’s just the same thing over again. “We measured some stuff and everything will be still fine for you”
With this, there is no real future of memrise. And by the way you could get the resources for a decent Decks-App if you would take Subscriptions and it’s features over to Decks, people would pay for having the same experience.

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625

This is misconception.

I am one of those complaining too. But You have to weigh in, that those happy ones or indifferent ones will not go here to express their gratitude or any other opinion.

We are not representative sample of userbase. There is over 40 million downloads (and potential users) of Memrise

Even so, our voices should not ne disregarded.We represent the future development of all the new users they have now. What will they be paying for after they are finished with the short official courses- will they invest in lifetime subscription? Why should they?

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Since focusing on our own language courses, we’ve grown twenty times over, and a very small proportion of learning on our mobile apps now happens on community-made courses.

Considering that community-made courses cannot be enrolled into directly on the app, unlike the Memrise ones, this is a distorted analysis as there’s no parity in platforming at the point of measure.

The differences will only accelerate in the future, as we enrich, improve and diversify the language learning experiences in the main Memrise app.

So if you’re going carry out major developments on the Memrise app, why not duplicate and rebrand the existing app for Decks. It runs more or less fine for the community-made courses and would only need tweaking for security, bugs and OS upgrades.

I would also be interested to understand Memrise’s vision for your own future language courses:

  • Will you begin supporting the creation of courses in more minor languages?
  • Will the language courses in general be developed further than fitting the requirements of a two-week holiday? Some language learners are interested in growing well beyond level A1-A2
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627

I was hoping there’s be some backtracking after the outcry, but no. We’re wasting our time and energy on a company and product that doesn’t care about us.

The people in these forums who are angriest about this may technically be a minority of Memrise’s userbase, but we are the core segment who power the community, evangelise Memrise to our friends, and crucially pay for the product. I think Memrise will eventually look back on this day as a mistake. I’m not going to waste anymore time on them, and I don’t think anyone else should either.

See you guys: it was good while it lasted.

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See, this here’s an example of a good point you’ve made.

The forum is generally unadvertised (I stumbled upon it by accident some time ago, after having already been using Memrise for months) and many don’t know of it at all. A lot of users are likely app only (meaning they are only afforded the courses easy to search for on the app – which has included community courses less and less of late). Memrise is making money from these general level users, the voiceless majority who probably don’t care about this fiasco.

Basically, the ‘reässuring’ propaganda message recently posted on the blog says “Uh, we don’t need you anymore. Actually, you’re kinda getting in the way. Here’s your BFH, love – don’t let the door hit you on the way out”.

And it’s possible, with so many uncaring users, they’re right about it, too. They don’t need us. Minorities aren’t the ones who are pandered to – they don’t line your pockets. Horrific but true.

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@kevin5284

Dear Memrise,
It seems it is time to break up.
I had a wonderful time using your app/website in various ways.
I started to fall in love with you because of your community-based courses as I could find vocabulary specifically for my textbook I used back then. From that moment on, I started to get addicted to you. Our relationship got closer each time. Though you were not perfect, I loved you. When starting your app, it was the next step to feel always close to you. And when you created your official classes I knew, this will be a lifelong relationship. At that point, i decided to subscribe for lifelong membership. I wanted to be committed to you, and I got so fascinated that I wanted to support you in every possible way, checking your job offers regularly. Memrise, my favorite company. The only app I was motivated to invest in. I knew, I will study with official courses first and as soon as I will have finished them, I will go back to community-based courses to get specific knowledge. We didn’t make it to that point. You made your own decisions without considering me. Checking the statistics at that point, it is not representative at all. Yes, I did use mostly official courses these days, but that is not enough for me on longterm. Maybe we just developed ourselves in different ways, at least you started to change a lot disregarding my emotions. It will be hard for me now, to live without you. There will be something missing every day in subway or bus. I feel betrayed, as you don’t focus on me anymore. I feel betrayed as I invested time and money in you and now you are not the one I fell in love with anymore.
I am angry and disappointed and sad. It will take time. It will get better but you left a scar. I won’t pay that easily anymore for an app, I now have to start looking around for another app to help me. I never wanted to but I started to get to know duolingo better. I don’t like it as I liked you. But I can’t trust you anymore, you are not who you were used to be. I am sorry, that this ends like this.
Adieu

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Thank you for the update. I thought of waiting mid-March, but I really don’t see why I should do it. You obviously don’t care of your paying customers. I just cancelled my PRO subscription right now.

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