you forgot about community created courses…
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But I didn’t accuse users of necessarily being racist. I said they were oblivious. Are you not familiar with the meaning of that word? The above replies are consistent with that word.
And here’s the thing; nobody gets to vote on what is offensive to somebody else. It isn’t decided democratically. It is quite common for a majority group to not perceive how something might be disrespectful or offensive to a minority group. If it isn’t part of your history, you are quite likely to be unaware in some cases. That doesn’t mean you are bad. It just means you don’t know.
Everyone is oblivious to different things. If I try hard enough I can find offense in anything. If in that mindset I get to decide on the fate of a million mems I am going to see a million offensive mems. That’s not what we want.
Let’s say I find cars or modern consumer goods offensive. Environmental awareness is growing so that’s not such a ridiculous position to take. How should I deal with the mems on this site that feature them then?
Let’s say I am also from a country like Saudi Arabia and find no offense in something you might find racist or sexist. How do you envision us both using the site?
The only way I can think of now to deal with this is to vote on mems. The more upvotes the less likely it is the mem is offensive to a majority of people, the more downvotes the more likely it is.
To ground the discussion, perhaps you can share some mems that you find offensive in some way?
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i find big cars offensive
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I really appreciate that for once Memrise actually listened to pushback against a bad decision, but we still need to bring back auto-ignore and proper course forums.
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nevertheless, i noticed today there was a tick box under the mem which allowed me to not use mem’s, at least for that course
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whaaat? 
yes, really
i pay more attention next time so that i can explain better
i know for sure it doesn’t look as if it is something you can adjust in your profile
or it’s a course-by-course setting, or a card-by-card setting,
or it is a setting which the course creator has to make possible
when i learn new words, i see at the bottom left a tick box for ‘always load mems’ and at the bottom right a link for ‘Go without mem’ on the page where a new word is shown
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i don’t find any setting like you describe, but i use a non paid memrise version
But that is exactly what is described in the thread I linked to. Memrise has had that feature for a long time. You may have just noticed it for the first time, but it is not new.
so, apparently you can only activate it after clicking ‘learn new words’ or ‘start learning’
I’ve thought for a few days about how to respond to this. I’ve decided that this is probably not the place, (nor am I the right facilitator) to hold a sweeping seminar on cultural sensitivity, negative stereotypes, implicit bias, covert racism, and microaggressions. I’ll just say that these are real things, and they have real impact on learning.
As with umpteen happenings in our modern world, many people are only marginally aware of these issues. I’m just saying that they are indeed real issues, and they can and should inform Memrise’s decisions about how (and whether) to support crowd-sourced materials, and how to moderate them.
My point is not to teach everyone cultural awareness (I wish). I am pointing out that voting on mems as a solution to mem moderation can only be a partial solution, because some content may be harmful (or unpleasant) to a minority, or in a way that the majority is unaware of.
I could list actual examples I have seen on Memrise, but choose not to, because sharing casual bigotry is itself harmful.
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@lurajane, we agree that the world can be ugly. We disagree about how to deal with that. My position is that it is harmful to shut yourself off from the (moderately) ugly.
Disregarding that, if we take your position of never wanting to see ugly things as a thing to strive for, voting on mems could still work. One possible solution would be to add a downvote button and the ability to filter out those mems that received 1/2/3/4/5/… downvotes, or that have a high ratio of down to up votes. Then if there was only one other (trusted) user who agreed with you that the mem is unpleasant and voted on it, you would have the ability to filter it out.
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Thanks! I like this function.
As to the censoring debate; in my view it should be quite liberal but it got me thinking; how many of Memrise users are children? Should be taken into account when creating mems.
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I agree that users should be able to make their own mems, but as a teacher and parent of a child who has recently started using Memrise, I am conscious that this does need to be moderated. As suggested, the idea of being able to toggle mems on/off could work, but a more practical solution would be to link accounts as parent/child, thus enabling the parents to decide what the child can/can’t do.
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I have a sugesstion, make a memrise for normal humans who do not get offended, one memrise for always-offended people and one for under 18 and we all will live very happy. tadaaaaaaa
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Edit. Removed…