Thanks so much for the info. I’ll go check that discussion.
Actually for me it really is just a matter of principle. Even Google+ and Facebook offers an option to simply download or retreive all your Data. As for “rebuilding” 
way too much work.
I imagine that more than 50% of my current “learners” (aka 500 per day) are not even aware of this upcoming change. grrrr.
Sorry but I think you are being naive in regards to their intentions (I hope I am wrong, but all the evidence suggests otherwise). The CEO’s blog post basically says we’ve heard your feedback and we are going to do what we planned to do anyway. They deliberately removed the ability to add community courses via the app years ago, yet now claim community courses aren’t popular.
Everything points to “Decks” being a website which will be hosted for awhile, until they finally pull the plug due to “lack of demand”.
With regards to a Mobile Website vs. an App I suggest you read:
Offline and mobile app access matters.
75% of Mexico’s internet usage is mobile, as is 71% of China’s and 67% of Spain’s. Remember China’s population of 1.4 billion people are behind the Great Firewall. Huge parts of the world’s population access the internet through mobile. A lot of people don’t have great cellular coverage or can’t afford unlimited data. At the other end of the income spectrum, remember even 5-star hotels and planes often don’t have great wi-fi access.
Recent research shows that 90% of their mobile time is spent in apps, and only 10% browsing the rest of the internet.
How do you think Memrise’s investors would react if the CEO announced they were deleting the main app and moving everyone to a mobile website (which hasn’t even been launched or tested)?
Exactly, Google’s own development tools show Memrise hasn’t optimised for mobile browsing on their main website (let alone the yet to be launched or tested “Decks” website).
https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.memrise.com%2Fhome%2F
It’s disgusting that we are even talking about all this hackery here (how to backup our courses, how to restrict mobile access, etc), when there is a very simple solution: just give us more time. Mid-March is a no way. Memrise announced important changes on a such short notice, but actually should give us time to finish our learning courses. It would be only fair.
In any case, there will be a lot of bugs on the new desktop/mobile sites, and it will take some time to fix them.
There are already new problems I’ve never seen this week (on the website) which reinforces our fear how well DECKS will be maintained when it’s all “free”
I am sorry to hear that! I hope it is just a temporary blip.
This is what Ed Cooke writes in his blog post:
“We wanted to ensure that this content is available forever.”
The use of the past tense “I wantED” makes me a little uneasy, but there is no mistaking the final part. We can only hope that this promise is kept.
From their perspective, I don’t see why they would delay Decks simply so people would “finish their courses”. They just assume that everyone will use Decks so there’s no need to “finish your course” , as all the progress will be transferred to it.
What I don’t get is them saying it’s gonna be “mobile friendly” while also stating that it’s gonna be exactly the same as the Memrise mobile version. That’s a contradiction if I ever saw one.
Where is that said?
In the blog post, it says this: “Decks, meanwhile, will work just as the Memrise website does now”, not that it will be exactly the same as the memrise mobile version.
Have a look here:
Wouldn’t creating a new website mean hiring more people to maintain it if they are serious about it?Otherwise the’ll get the same problem of bug on Decks.
I totally get what you are saying, you need a lot of vocab before you can properly appreciate reading or listening to a foreign language. I learnt my Swedish vocab via community courses on memrise when it was a web-only resource and - like many others - find the app’s testing methods to be far too easy.
I’m sorry, that was poor interpretation on my part. But even so, that gives me the idea that Decks is going to be pretty similar to Memrise. Which, if we go by its mobile version, it’s not that mobile-friendly. This is speculation, but the Decks mobile version will have at least a bug or two which, given their dedication, they will fix them very slowly.
In regards to the Decks website the Memrise management is utterly stupid or totally hypocritical (sorry for being rude). In our times to throw away your app is something ridiculous. It’s just like coming back to the ice age. Take a look around: everybody is staring into smartphones.
So either their statistics is made up (flaw with the restriction in access to the user created courses was pointed out by many here) and they are not telling the truth (hypocrisy scenario). Or they could be telling the truth, but in that case their management team is very poor and it is not inconceivable. Remember the story with Ziggy and imagine how much money and man hours they lost.
For example, they could create their fancy Decks, charge everybody twice and leave the damned app as it is. It’s a business option and the market is scarce, why not even trying it? But read this thread - they preferred to invest in something practically unclaimed, lose subscriptions and a whole bunch of users and offered Decks for free (just so lame and retarded). It’s a possibility there is something seriously screwed up in the Memrise management.
On the other hand, they could consider free users courses as some sort of competition to their paid official courses. In that scenario after a year or two there will be 300 users on Decks and they will have every ground to close it with a clean conscience. 
This is really sad news, since there are not really language learning apps that can compete with the usability of memrise. For me the Pro subscription was always a subscription on COMMUNITY COURSES, since i prepared for HSK tests, learned vocabs related to language books, and so on…
I was hoping for a few years Memrise would even go the other way and allow users adding words directly in the APP. (WHO is using a browser nowadays and who wants to study in front of a computer???) Learning vocab is perfect for the few minutes you are waiting for a train/queue, etc.
Since Memrise didn’t give any further statement and has no intention to stop this insanity, i canceled my subscription now.
Feeling really bad about the end of memrise, because mentioning again, there are no apps that understand gamification like memrise did.
This is like when a band releases a single and makes the b-side available for free. Except the b-side is on cassette and not available in your country.
I keep trying to figure this out from a business point of view but it makes no sense. They’re taking away all the reasons why people were paying in the first place. I wonder if they’re going to monetise their own courses big time somehow, and maybe for legal reasons, or because they can’t guarantee the quality, they are now getting rid of all the content they didn’t create themselves.
The official courses are probably great if you’re just looking for a few sentences because you’re going to Spain for a week, they have that phrase book approach. Some of them have really good audio. (Not all of them, Swedish sounds like it was recorded in a bathroom.) But the main reason why I loved Memrise was that there was content even for rare languages. Want to learn Basque or Frisian or Elder Futhark? It was all right here. I’m disappointed that there are no immediate plans to fill that void by making official courses for more obscure languages. I can go literally anywhere else to learn French and Spanish.
This is like when a band releases a single and makes the b-side available for free. Except the b-side is on cassette and not available in your country.
or Spotify transferring all the indies artists into another streaming website but without the ability to use the offline mode.
… Kevin, why don’t you guys just delay Decks and do it properly then? Also with app support? Why are you rushing through on this 3 week notice, artificial deadline?
It just doesn’t seem like you’re being truthful and open here with this stuff. There are motivations you guys don’t want us to be privy to for some reason.
@MemriseSupport @kevin5284 @tedcooke
After absorbing the news and looking at some features I have 3 more questions please:
Will learning Mems associated with community creator courses also be transferred to Decks?
Will there also be updated stats on the course card listed in our accounts as to how many people have joined the course?
Will there be a new Deck wide search engine for courses?
These points are not evident from the list you provide… Thank you in advance for your reply.
Cat
Alias Flamantrose
I first started using Memberise about 7 years ago. Might have to cancel my Pro membership then and look for other alternatives. There are NO official Catalan courses, only community created courses and I don’t want to use a subpar website, I want to continue to learn Catalan in the app!
Based on overwhelming negative responses so far, I think you are making a HUGE mistake.
You should make a complete 180 on this decision and let community created courses exist in the app alongside the official ones. Hell, I think you should take it one step further and allow us to browse for unofficial courses in the app. I get the idea of wanting to focus on the official courses and wanting to further develop the formula for those courses, but let the unofficial courses exist with their current design as a legacy formula of sorts…
Don’t do this.
EDIT: I just went ahead and cancelled my Pro subscription already. Need to make a stand now.
Decks will be free and will have better courses than memrise. If they create an app for Decks then most memrise users would end up moving to Decks and then who would give money to memrise ???