Sorry for the miscommunication here - the intention is 100% to put user created content into the main Memrise product rather than having it separated out in a separate experience as it now is. This is what the new structure is aimed to do. It is not about removing everything user made - quite the opposite. But to do that we need to take a step back - that is what this is: a step back so we can take two steps forward.
1 Like
Hi Ben @BenWhately,
so nice to see you around. I have decided some years ago not to take part in the fora any more - aggressive co-memrisers, every now and then not very nice Memrise staff – but they came and went, Alanh and Hydroptere and others are still here) … but I still feel indebted ( 
) to you as part of that wonderful site that made me learn some Mandarin and Japanese, I cannot hold myself back.
I still do not get it: do you indeed plan to delete soon the user content, the user-made courses ???? i am afraid that even Alanh and Hydroptere will leave then…
I’d like to push forward some tiny requests for customisation. Would it be possible to have some options such as: 1. all typing; 2 no typing at all (for situations when the number of items in need for watering is overwhelming – which happens often to Alanh and Hydroptere and others 
); this because speed review is not a happy solution at all 3. timer ?
The new UI is really disconcerting, big letters, empty spaces splashed on the page – especially in review, and writing new user scripts means so much work….
These being said, I’ll miss my mems….
thanks for listening
7 Likes
BenWhately: Given the sorry history of app updates, missteps, user-hated changes, back-stepping, etc., I simply don’t believe you have the technical or creative competence to achieve the very ambitions user-immersion goals you are dreaming about. It’s going to take a pretty grand success to gloss over betraying your loyal users.
6 Likes
I understand that, though obviously its hard to hear. Nonetheless, I’ve still got to try to deliver the best thing I can. After 11 years building this vision I’m not about to give up. I also genuinely believe we now have the team in place that we’ve ever had, and we now do have what we need in order to deliver on the vision. Part of that ability is the ability to make hard decisions like this one.
That isn’t going to make you trust me. Only time and results can do that.
1 Like
Hi Ben,
Thank you for coming on and engaging with us in person. I, for one, appreciate it.
I also welcome the more detailed explanation of the rationale for the changes being made. On mems, for example, there is a big difference between “we beleive that [mems] no longer fit the Memrise experience that we’re creating, so we’ve made the difficult decision to retire them” [see OP in this thread] and “we still believe in the power of mems and we have every intention of building them back into the experience in future”.
On user-created content, could you clarify your follow-up comments above for me, please? Are you giving us your assurance that our existing user-created courses will survive in your new world - or not?
Whilst dipping in and out of Memrise Beta over recent months, I have preferred to turn it off and use the ‘all-typing’ script on a selective basis because there are some courses where I don’t find multiple-choice or tapping tests helpful. I tried Beta again today on a range of course types and subjects and did not enjoy the experience at all. An option to be able to select the type of testing and whether tests are timed or not would be a step in the right direction.
Thanks for listening.
11 Likes
Hi Alan, it really is wonderful to see you and Hydroptere still such great contributors here.
In the initial thread I think the team were reluctant to give the message that “we are taking a step back and you’ll have to trust that then we’ll take steps forward.” They feared a response such as @ drifterprof quite reasonably gave.
I understand why that was the message, but I think it is more helpful to give the full picture for why we’re doing what we’re doing.
On user created content, I can share the approach we are taking and what we are aiming for. I can’t guarantee that we won’t have to take some back steps on the way to get where we are aiming, but this is what informs our thinking and planning:
- We believe user made content is incredible important. The ability to list out words that you want to learn is a ubiquitous language learning need, and one that Memrise was designed to serve.
- We believe that serving it really well means making it super simple - ideally automatic - for lists to be made from the films you are watching, podcasts you are listening to and conversations you are having.
- We believe that the best possible way to learn words and phrases involves using test types that go beyond word-definition pair drills, and move into tests from context and other tests from rich media involving a range of voices using words in a range of contexts. These tests are only possible in a world where all course can draw from a central database of “target language items”.
Our strategy for building an experience that serves all these beliefs is this:
- We will create the ability to make lists of words within the main Memrise experience. These will look more like current “levels” than like “courses”, in that they will not have subdivisions. But you will be able to make many of them.
- These lists will draw from a central database of words that means that they will all come with video content and multiple rich test types that go beyond word-definition pairs (yes, and in future the plan is for these also have mems). If you want to learn a word that isn’t in the database, then it will be possible to add it, though the exact mechanism is yet to be determined.
- We will then start recreating all the current UGC courses in the new within-Memrise system. We will keep the current UGC in parallel. We will recreate as many courses as are needed (there are literally millions of courses many of which are not used at all. We will not recreate all courses)
- We believe that the new course creation tools within the Memrise experience will be much better both in terms of learning and in terms of ease of creation (eg being able to generate them from text articles, and from videos). Therefore it is our hope that over time usage will move into the main experience and that usage of the legacy will fall. At some point we would stop supporting the legacy UGC courses, once enough people are satisfied with the new experience.
So the short answer is that existing UGC courses will survive for the time being. The ones that are in active usage will then be migrated to the new world. Then once the new world is working well enough for enough people, we plan to retire the old courses. That is not an irrevocable decision - but it is our intention.
1 Like
In short, this feels like the crux of the problem.
I get that maintaining legacy code is hard and that what you’re talking about almost certainly isn’t a trivial effort. It probably comes with considerable expense and what you see as opportunity cost. I’m genuinely sympathetic to those being hard choices.
However, I’d ask you to again look at the feedback here and ask yourself if you’re making the right trade-off here. You might be doing what feels right for you and for your team, and that’s a powerful incentive, but if you look at the level of anger and disappointment in this thread, I think it’s pretty hard to argue that you’re doing right by your users and your paying customers.
I’ll put it this way – the consensus in this thread seems to be that if you asked your users whether they’d rather wait an extra year for a set of features that they’ll really like or they’d rather see their favorite features immediately deprecated in order to maximize the speed of that feature delivery, it seems pretty clear that the current proposal isn’t in alignment.
10 Likes
NOW you are getting me worried.
5 Likes
Hi Ben, I’m sorry, but I don’t get what you are trying to build. Some parts of what you’ve said sounds like utopia.
Free cheese is only in a mousetrap, and you are promising free video lessons and other free learning tools. You have to pay your teachers and developers, have to pay for servers, and so on. Are you rich enough to sponsor millions of people in their language journeys? What is the purpose of building a product without perspective to gain?
Folks around here have their own goals in learning, why do you think they need something universal and that this product you are offering will cover their needs?
The most difficult thing to understand is that instead of tuning up, dedicating your resources to old good Memrise you are building absolutely new product, which is totally ephemeral at the moment. In the last 3-4 years you’ve hardly made any improvements here, were methodically destroying Memrise, and now you will build even more powerful learning website? Sounds doubtful.
This promise of bright new future provided that you’ll suffer a bit I’ve heard somewhere (not from good people). By the way, why did your team lied to us about mems statistics if it’s not the main reason to take them down?
This is so suspicious and dubious, I wouldn’t bet anything on it.
11 Likes
The business model is that the sessions are available for free (you can sign up now if you are learning Spanish to video sessions 3 times a week), but there will be other tiers and features that are paid for. But the core feature set will be free. The gain is in the overall ecosystem that we are building: we believe that this combination of effective learning and immersion is what is actually needed to successfully acquire a new language. That ecosystem will present lots of ways to monetise, but the heart of it should remain free.
I’m afraid I don’t know the details of the incident when you felt lied to, but knowing the people involved I don’t believe it was intentional; but again I recognise as per the above comments that you are unlikely to take my word for that.
I really do appreciate your continued engagement
Why so exactly?
First of all that would annihilate most of the courses for smaller subjects.
And it sounds like something that would drag on until the day we get the annoucement that it’s not feasible to implement adding user content.
3 Likes
See the original post.
Over the years you were limiting access to mems, thus your stats is not very correct.
And then you said:
These statements don’t match.
3 Likes
Everyone learns differently - there is no single best method. One of the most important and powerful aspects about language learning is figuring out how YOU learn+retain stuff most effectively (be it fastest, longest, etc.). You can only achieve this by having flexibility in learning, so in practice this SHOULD BE the core aspect any language learning tool is built around. The things that work for me specifically are mostly present in the current memrise (not Beta), but the Beta is way too cumbersome to use effectively, so I will no longer enjoy it. And once you (or in this case: I) stop enjoying the process in which the learning is done, you (-> I) might as well want to find a different, more comfy/effective, solution.
Or in other words: I, like many others, will be leaving memrise once the Beta is pushed on to us, since it no longer satisfies our needs.
If that is truly how you feel about this, then:
- Remove everything about the Beta. NO ONE likes ANYTHING about it.
- Especially DON’T force it on people, especially the one’s that already paid for your service (in it’s current state!!).
- Improve the existing memrise (and by that, I mean the one before Beta). If the code is too fucked up (as a dev myself, I know how tiresome bad code is to deal with/maintain) then build it anew in parallel, with better code, but keep ALL features that people like(d).
How about, you actually run polls on your user-base to find out which features they like about this site/service that other sites/services don’t offer?
The way you worded everything, it sounds like you want to turn memrise into simply another duolingo/busuu etc.
Even from a business perspective, this has to be a dumb move, as memrise is currently cashing in on people that aren’t satisfied by what the alternatives have to offer (or use it in conjunction). So by making it more akin to the others, and stripping away the stuff that made it stand out, you will not only alienate paying customers, but also reduce/hinder future growth.
終了
16 Likes
Not to mention we can’t type answers anymore…
4 Likes
For smaller languages, or non language subjects? It is correct that non language subjects are not part of the future vision. That is important to note. Language courses (however small) can be migrated if they are used. Non language courses will not fit in the new system.
The second point sounds again like a lack of trust and belief. I do genuinely understand that, but again I don’t think I can do anything except help the team to execute more effectively than in the recent past. This decision is a part of doing that. I hope and believe we will surprise you here.
I actually think those are both true. It is true that most people with access to mems don’t use them. It is also true that creating mems in the new tech will take a great deal of time. I don’t see the contradiction.
If the majority of people who had access to mems were using them then our judgement of the negative impact vs time equation would be different. I hope that helps.
Exactly! I only use Memrise for the typing Classic Reviews. Learning words is pointless so I use a Tampermonkey script that autolearns words for me. The only good thing about Memrise is just the Classic Reviews
7 Likes
I think my description of what we are building has fallen very short - this is very different to what either busuu or Duolingo have.
Perhaps we should have a forum call where I can take you all through the plans for the next year? I’d be more than happy to do that. If anyone would like to join that please do reply and I can find a time 