you’re right, unfortunately; probably the algorithm was changed “to our own good”. I don’t find this new algorithm very learning conducive either…
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‘not very learning conducive’… indeed, to put it mildly. If that’s for our own good, and not just a bug,then Memrise really messed up IMHO
The escape/see answer was still broken for my yesterday, but I’m hoping it’ll work today. Is it still functional for you? Yesterday all that happened was it would skip to the next item for review.
EDIT: Nope, still broken for me. Is this really working for everyone else? - because if so, I need to figure out what’s hindering my browser.
EDIT AGAIN: Okay, I turned off Memrise Forgive Typos, Memrise Catch up Review, and Memrise Wrong answer skip. I don’t know which one was the actual culprit (or if they were merging to do the damage), but now it’s working.
i said “see answer”/(escape). Usually i give the right answer and the click fast to “see answer”… today i was not penalised anymore for doing that… let me check… still working for me… i have my userscript turned on (but mine makes a lean interface, is none of cooljingle’s one)
edit: can someone from the team please confirm or infirm that these 2 items and then other 2 etc is the new learning algoritm? (i personally find this style of learning a rather bad idea…)
Yeah, I got the see answer/escape to finally work by turning off those scripts. Glad that’s been resolved…
Hello all,
Thank you so much for your feedback over the last few weeks. This will hopefully be the last update, so let’s get to it:
- Pressing Escape/“See answer” during a test should no longer be count the answer as wrong
- We’ve tweaked the learning algorithm to introduce words more gradually in sessions.
Thank you again for your patience and Happy Learning!
I think this explains why the planting sessions doesn’t work anymore 
Learning / planting session order is broken! @BeaTrisy
@BeaTrisy, there is still a bug that I just tested for that seems to still be present.
The bug is that currently if you type a correct answer that’s in a column other than the one that is being asking for, a little message pops up saying that you typed a correct answer but for a different column than was asked for, but if you type a correct alternate answer for another column than the one that was asked for, it’s just counted as wrong.
For example:
Prompt: "个"
Correct answer: "a"
Pinyin: “ge4”. Also, “ge5” as an alternate answer.
If one types “ge4”, one gets a nice little message saying that they typed the wrong column. If one types “ge5”, it’s marked as incorrect.
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@BeaTrisy For quite a while now I am experiencing troubles with reviewing from the dashboard. After about 20 phrases reviewed I get a message saying “Ups! I could not load the session” and from there on I can only review items directly in the courses, which is very tedious with 20+ courses learned in a single language. Logging in and out does not help, neither does changing browsers. The next day I can again review about 20 items from the dashboard, then the bug sets in again. I already submitted the bug in a form that I was told sends it directly to your developers and Q&A-team, but never got a reaction.
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@BeaTrisy I’m still not seeing different colors for the question mark graphic in review. Again this is really helpful for review sessions in Chinese. To remind, it used to be that when the response should be in English the question mark would be green, answers in Hanzi purple, answers in Pinyin Yellow, questions from a second course in blue… etc. I had gotten used to this and now find myself making a lot of stupid mistakes. It’s a little frustrating. Are you guys still planning on putting this back in?
Thanks for all your work!
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@BeaTrisy, turning off audio reviewin reviewing, and in learning, does not function anymore
many thanks for your assistance
Hi, @BeaTrisy, @daniel.zohar. Could we please hear back on the color-coded question mark icon issue? It’s still displaying purple on all items for me, which takes away a very helpful way of quickly determining which column I’m being tested on.
I was planning on beginning to work on building my next course today, but I’m unable to even start with this issue floating around. I’ve always been careful to ensure that all of my courses use the same color-coding, and that’s something I need to sort out when I first create the databases, since there was never a way to manually change it later. If it’s a deliberate change, could you please at least let us know?
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Hi @TinyCaterpillar,
I’m afraid we’re not planning to fix this any time soon.
The UI of the learning sessions is going to go through a few iterations in the next few months and it’s not at all guaranteed that icon will even remain.
Is the problem in typing tests? You do have a hint telling you what it is that you need to type, do you not?
Thanks
Daniel
I really hope you don’t remove the colour-coding!!
The only hint in the question text is a word in bold as part of an overall sentence. This means that, when reviewing, you have to go through a two stage thought process (this is for Japanese but applies more generally):
- What is Japanese for [word]?
- Do I have to give the kana or kanji in my answer?
When the icons were colour-coded, my brain would answer (2) automatically. If the icon was blue in the corner of my eye, I knew I needed kanji. If it was green, kana. This skipped needing to make a conscious step and sped up reviewing significantly.
Now, it’s incredibly frustrating to enter the word the wrong way round only to get it wrong because ‘you didn’t read the question properly’. The colour-coding was an extremely effective way of keeping those mistakes to a minimum.
In essence, I don’t see how there is an advantage to removing the colours. There seems to only be a downside.
Thanks for listening to our feedback and I hope this sheds some light on the problem for some of us learners!
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It would be helpful to get the color-coded marks back. Like @TinyCaterpillar and @bobdat have stated, Japanese has three alphabets Memrise tests on, and the colors stream-line review. I’ve gotten plenty of words wrong since this feature was removed because I overzealously typed and hit enter without having the color to remind me which exact alphabet was needed.
Also, so you’re just changing the interface? Or are there going to be more tweaks to the algorithm? Any notes would be appreciated, thanks.
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Thanks for the reply, @daniel.zohar. That is a shame, for reasons that @bobdat and @TheFour-GatedDanzig have already mentioned.
Yes, the problem’s with the typing tests. There is the text underneath the prompt to tell me what to answer with, but the color-coding was much more prominent, and easier to spot out of the corner of my eye while I was typing. As it is now, I need to make a conscious effort to check the small text for every single item during reviews, which slows things down and distracts me from the tests. So for what it’s worth, my vote would definitely be to bring it back in some form or another eventually.
In any case, it’s helpful to hear back on it, so thank you. I guess I have no choice but to simply proceed with building my courses for now. Maybe I could get some help with setting them to the right colors manually later on, if the feature’s ever added back? 
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@daniel.zohar @BeaTrisy
Hey guys, if possible could you comment a bit on the plans for the algorithm and course creation?
In many ways the website seems to be changing more towards the app, which as Ben Whately had mentioned in a post last year, is one of two directions memrise was taking at that time (the app that focuses on the gamified and huge customer count streamed in from the app stores and the website that contained a large amount of “oldschool” users who use memrise as a flashcard function.)
I, among others, use memorize as a very important part in my language study. I customize courses for myself try to contribute on a couple others as well as use other users’ courses. The algorithm that I’ve seen used on the website since I started in 2012 has helped me in a big way in learning vocabulary items.
Could you comment on any planned changes for the algorithm? Some things that have already been adapted from the app (like less punishment for incorrect answers) worry me because they just happen without prior warning. I also think the timetable for the app review was different than the website and when I tried the app before I was not able to retain words as efficiently (but I do think the app is useful for sentence-based courses and its portability).
Hopefully this wouldn’t be the plans, but in the case that the plans are to veer completely away from custom courses and the backlog of user-made courses and instead allow access to only mostly official courses, I do hope you would give a warning far in advance.
Also, if changes to the algorithm, which could hurt learnt word retention, are in the works, knowing ahead of time instead of later would be much appreciated because if it just happens, and then I don’t find out until I realize how poorly some words are sticking a month or two down the road, well that’s no fun and very frustrating.
I’ve mentioned before also, that instead of just pouring changes out, despite how I know simply being able to have a control system to quickly make changes is much easier to manage in handling these kinds of projects, struggling through aspects of a democracy with some of this stuff would be really helpful. I’m sure a lot of users would be willing to be guinea pigs as well for algorithm changes on a private server. A lot of us, having used memrise for years, have a larger experience with memory and memory retention than the general public just from diffusion and necessity. Tapping into that could help out memrise as well.
Thanks for your understanding and hopefully you can give us a better idea of what to expect. That way if certain things will be added/taken away, we can prepare the process of switching over certain things needed to other platforms and using memrise for things its best for. 
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See, this is what infuriates me about customer service here. Both @BeaTrisy and @daniel.zohar have been here after your post, @Wuxian, yet we’ve received no message. For the most part, they treat users like our opinions are worthless and not worth the time responding to.
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