Still, my question remains: How is one supposed to learn Kanji without mems? Before Heisig invented and published his learning system, which is completely based on mems, it took many frustrating years of study to learn Kanji!
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Indeed. Let’s just hope mems be back asap as promised.
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Maybe the users in your research didn’t interact with mems because of how memrise is set up. I remember in 2018 on the app it actively showed mems together with new words and encouraged you to make your own.
Obviously users wouldn’t interact with it if you hide it away behind some menus. It’s the same as the learning stats. I used them a lot more when they were accessible with one click on on the old dashboard.
Please reconsider.
Also, this is some scary stuff people are talking about. I wouldn’t like to see any of the community courses removed. Why would you do so much to fix what isn’t broken?
From what I’ve seen with the new web experience, it’s everything but intuitive.
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Unfortunately, the script is not something that will be useful on its own. Although I do plan to upload it somewhere, it is written in Wolfram language, so I expect that there wouldn’t be many people who are able to run it. (I tried to write a javascript version first, but failed to do so because of too little experience with it)
Still, I can offer to process any requests (there were none so far, so I don’t think there will be too many of them to simply process all myself) and upload results for everyone to use. All I need are the names of memrise accounts (which, as I understand, may differ from the forum names) to save memes from.
My current plan is to check all-time leaderboards for the courses I use (because prominent mem creators are likely to be among active learners), and archive as much of their mems as I can. (unfortunately, memrise does not allow to directly see the mems, created by other users, that I chose to use in my studies)
This is quite an optimistic interpretation. What he said was
which is quite vague. He didn’t say that it would mean all the courses, and seeing how it was just decided that mems are a thing that people do not use enough and therefore do not need, I would still be pretty much worried for a lot of community courses.
Even the ones that will be migrated might become much less structured or even ripped into many pieces, because on the new platform
He also said that
so I suppose you got the implication correctly.
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I think we would all welcome some further clarification of where the plans now stand, preferably in a separate forum thread as another poster suggested above. Ben said he intended to return to the forum sometime this evening. Hopefully, he’ll bring us that clarity.
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I’d like to highlight some points which I think are important.
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It’s obvious that Memrise and Memworld are designed for different audiences. Memrise is serving for vocabulary learners who are using it as an additional tool in their studies, while Memworld is for those who want to learn new languages in all aspects. Why do you want to meld these audiences into one, when they are different? Memrise users have reasons to do it their way, they could already have a teacher and all materials they need.
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Why you can’t build a separate website for Memworld, since everything says that it will provide different services than Memrise? At the same time you could use specific Memrise and Memworld features to complement each other if there is such need. Why you can’t let Memrise live its own life?
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Why do you think that your learning method is superior and every Memrise user should follow it? You have found out an alternative method youself, but anyways you are behaving like generic model is good for everybody.
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If someone is interested in your vision and product, it’s impossible to judge it in any practical way, because of its non-existence. Why don’t you build it in the first place and show it to those who are interested? At the moment you are offering a pig in a poke and taking away things that users need and paid you for.
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I can not help but notice that this situation is not unique, we’ve already been there before. You are eliminating a feature or offering something that no one asked you about, and then you coming to realisation that you were wrong. Why your team is so neglectful about users learning interests and incapable to hear? There are dozens if not hundreds of things you could do to improve Memrise, but you are as always trying to sell something unwanted.
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Again, @BenWhately, for the love of, please address the typing thing. I don’t know if you’re intentionally skating around it, or if it’s some (hard to imagine, since so many people have commented about it) oversight, but come on. Some of us humble payin’ customer folk are in no position to do zoom calls and whatnot (and aren’t you guys, like, 6 time zones away from the US anyway?), yet still want our questions answered. Will you please return the type-only review option, and if not, why THE HELL not?
Sorry if you did respond and I missed it. This is just a really important feature. Please don’t arbitrarily ax it.
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I understand your worries. Ben’s statements have been quite vague, probably because he hasn’t yet developed a clear vision. But he did say “as many courses as are needed” except “many of which [that] are not used at all”, so I guess I’m not being too optimistic.
Perhaps I was right that Ben had planned to retire non-language courses, but it seems that Ben has backed down by saying that we would discuss a way to manage the left-over non-language courses, just like how he backed down by promising that mems would not be permanently removed under the outcry here (I still believe that the permanent removal of mems was the original plan). The important thing here is that he backed down, which gave me a reason to be optimistic.
Anyway, instead of interpreting Ben’s words as if they were from the Bible, perhaps it’s better to notify him of our worries and wait for his clarifications.
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Okay, it took me three clicks to find out location of Memworld website. What do we have:
- Conversation club (Spanish) - live lessons
- Community - chat on Discord
- YouTube playlist - video compilations (though not located on YouTube)
- Reading tools
- Podcast corner
- Live stream
- Random encounters (looks like another chat)
Four last ingredients are unavailable to view. Design seems to be nice and clean, some parts of Memworld are hosted on 3rd party websites (like Discord conversations, for instance). As it’s been said, it’s another, one of many, language learning platform.
He did say, that there are many courses that are not being used at all. But he didn’t state that they will be the only ones not being transferred. It might have been implied, but another way to interpret this is that he only used the existence of unused courses to justify a consideration leaving some courses behind at all. While implying that the decision on whether a course will be transferred will be made depending on how strongly the memrise team feel the users need this course. And we all know, how skewed that feeling is.
We probably are reading too much into this at this point though. A more clear statement on current plans regarding a fate of community courses and old memrise in general is definitely needed.
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yeah, I agree, just another “let us speak about nothing and learn nothing”… sorry “asking beer in Spanish” site. Like I don*t have plenty of neighbours speaking French or Spanish or Italian or … Vietnamese something (yes I am living in the historic district of a capital city, but I doubt one cannot set Netflix on Spanish or German or Vietnamese unndertitles etc all over the world, or simply watch youtube or something)… chat??? seriously … word lists? anytime an online dictionary with audiofiles, which is like … all of them??
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Hi everyone, thanks for your continued attention here. I’ve put a time in the diary for a community call next Friday 10th December at 4pm UK time. The event link is [here](https://lu.ma/TheFutureOfMemrise )
I will also post this as a new thread so more people can join.
On the call I’ll talk through our intentions over the next year. I will also like to hear any questions that you have. So please come. I will set up a transcript of the call so that we can share that with anyone who is unable to attend the call itself.
I have been answering questions here very specifically about mems - I know that you have many other questions about the beta release, and I will make sure those also get attention.
Best wishes
Bent
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I’m sorry to be vague here. I can be clear about the intention: our focus is on building the complete pedagogic solution that combines Memrise and MemWorld and allows users to make language courses within the main Memrise product. Non language courses are not part of that vision. However not being part of that vision doesn’t mean that we will certainly delete them. That is a decision that has not yet been made; hence the vagueness. I want to be totally clear about our intentions, but I cannot be clear about decisions that are yet to be made. We will do our best to work with you to find a way to keep functionality alive that people find useful.
I hope that helps.
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I feel like an idiot - but can someone please just tell me how to disable audio in the beta version? There used to be this option… I have disabled audio tests in the settings… but can not find a mute/audio disable for when I’m doing rapid test reviews of vocab.
I have the situation now where my iPhone stops playing my podcasts because the ipad takes over control of the AirPods to play out random noises in languages…
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4pm there is 10am here. I will be in the office, unable to join in on a call. Would you please just direct your attention to my question about typed answers? Seems like a straightforward yes/no situation, so I don’t know why I would need to wait a week and then get on a zoom call to get an answer (that a lot of people have been asking for). ?
Not trying to be a princess or anything. Seriously, tons of people have asked, and it’s just not been addressed at all.
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@BenWhately can you please address why typing only reviews are gone now? I can’t believe this is difficult to support…please please please please please please allow for typing only classic reviews…thanks you
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Here and in other threads, all kinds of folks are asking the same question using different words. Typed answers only please, no multiple choice please, turn off multiple choice option please, why can’t I just type my answers anymore, this has been dumbed-down, please answer this simple question directly, why aren’t you answering this simple question directly, do you think we somehow don’t notice that you’re not answering this simple question directly, do you think we’re all 10 years old, etc. 
Will you bring back an option for typed answer reviews only, please? Or at least say if you’re not going to (which would really, really not be good, for what it’s worth, and as so many others have said…so, SO many others).
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One more person who just canceled Pro because without the ability to do typing tests the site is useless to me.
Multiple choice is not learning.
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I’m not joining a Zoom call. How about responding to what people have said here first?
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It needs clarifying. This is what Ben said:
As I see it Memrise content will have built-in plugin for dictionaries and an automatic audio-video editor. Though this feature is interesting in itself, but it may have limited functionality, for example, you won’t be able to make a list out of any movie you like.