mems “solution”
for that creator/curatorw who is in the mood for such an extensive work:
- make/add an “images” or for text an “attribute” column
- move the mem to the image/attribute column
heavy work, but… it might function for a while
Ah, makes sense. Well, that’s unfortunate, as I do not have admin permissions on this laptop.
This whole thing is really screwing me over, personally. Thanks for that, Memrise!
One thing that isn’t mentioned here much is that currently, one can create courses for learning any language in any language (keeping it only to languages for now, but the same obviously applies to other areas). Your courses, although you suggest them as top courses also for example for Czech speaking people, for obvious reasons are only in English. If you will revive only heavily used courses, the small ones (i.e. in other languages) will be abandonded. And realistically, I don’t see much how could it work with other languages as well.
Similarly, although your offer of the official languages has grown recently, I doubt that you will offer courses for Swahili or Farsi. That’s another thing that will drive people away.
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Looking at the source code for the page with the memes (…username/mems/created/?page=1), it seems that it can be parsed easily enough. So all the meme data can be downloaded with a script and, maybe, afterwards added using a bulk add (though I doubt it can be appended to already existing words without remaking them as new entries).
Following are the technicalities of the source code for anybody who might be interested:
all the necessary data is contained in a couple of lines after “MEMRISE.MemStream”.
Each meme has two lists storing its data:
The first list stores the text of a meme (field “text”:), link to the uploaded image (“image_original”:), as well as an image with the overlayed text (“image_output_url”:).
The second list stores the words from the front and back of a card (two “value”: fields).
Each of the two lists contains a field “thing_id”: followed by the number of a meme, which can be used for identifying the right lists and stitching data together.
If I have time, I will try to write a script for retrieving all these data, but there are likely people here who can do it much better than me anyway.
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Honestly I don’t use mems, but how is there no longer a big review button at the top which lets me review all of my words which are ready for review?
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Anki, but depending on the language it may not have as many courses. I loved that Memrise always already had a course for whatever textbook I was starting as someone else had already created it… Seems like maybe that will change soon…
Check out this thread: “Alternatives to Memrise?” Among other things, it includes instructions on how to convert Memrise decks to Memorion from none other than the creator of Memorion, prompted by the perceived “upcoming problems with Memrise” – all of that from 2016 no less. Both sad and ironic.
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Since Memrise has announced that it will soon no longer be possible to opt-out of the new “experience”, I would like to raise attention to several outstanding issues that need to be addressed before the new testing interface is well-suited to replace the old learning sessions.
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The new interface no longer has a link to edit the question, if the user is the creator of the course. There are many times course creators might spot issues in the middle of a test and want to make changes.
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The “Keyboard shortcuts” and “Mute audio” buttons are also gone.
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There is no longer any way to review a word after solving a question correctly. In the old interface, users could do this by pressing the Esc key. The user may want to review a question for many different reasons: wanting to listen to the audio or look at spelling, reviewing Mems, making edits if they are the creator (as mentioned above), or simply reviewing for reviewing’s sake.
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In the new interface, skipping audio only works for some types of questions. In particular, the user cannot skip audio after a typing question. In the old interface, users had the option to skip audio being played at the end of a question by pressing the Enter key; this function was very responsive, allowing a skilled user to flow through questions quickly. The inconsistency is frustrating and leads to a feeling of unresponsiveness as well as instances where the user is trying to skip the audio pressing Enter, but delayed input bleeds into the next prompt where it is counted as a skip (“I don’t know”).
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When using number keys in tapping tests, pressing the number of a word that has been added to the user’s answer now un-adds that word, but this was unnecessary since un-adding words is already done by the Backspace key. This can lead to instances where the user attempting a tapping test accidentally presses the wrong number and un-adds a word in the middle of the sentence, forcing them to start over.
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Audio media (that plays after answering questions) will occasionally cut off early. This was true a while back - not sure if this has been fixed yet.
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In the middle of audio playing after correctly answering a tapping test, the user is still able to alter the answer. For a while, this undid the state of having answered the question correctly, forcing the user to re-do the answer in order to re-trigger it being counted as correct. However, this has now been fixed. Still, I don’t see why it is still possible to change the completed answer.
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Most importantly, there was nothing particularly objectionable about the old interface, and the new interface only seems to remove many features without appearing to add much.
Please consider addressing these shortcomings before the new interface is rolled out as the permanent replacement, as it should enhance the experience for all users. Or, please let us keep using the old interface.
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Thank you for explaining your decision more fully. I still strongly disagree with it, but I understand your reasoning more.
That being said, I don’t want all of those features. I use Memrise for SRS memorization of vocabulary, and to harness the power of the hive mind and benefit from mems that others have contributed. I can get conversation and immersion from other sources.
Please listen to your users. We don’t want these changes.
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I literally have a tab open with the Lifetime sub ready to go. Nope, back over to Anki I suppose.
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I have liked the present Classic layout and will be very sad to see that go.
Sadly (as reported elsewhere) many of the features I depend on are missing on the newer versions:
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I am shocked to read that there will be no more mems from 2022. As the name “memrise” tells the mems are the heart of this language-learning-tool. Creating mems or looking for the right mem is an important part of learning difficult words.
Maybe pictures need to much storage capacity? But text mems need only a small amount of kilobytes.
Very disappointing.
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Yes, but they are not limited to that. Which is the fundamental problem with your perception in this regard (as with many others, BTW). Many (MANY) people use the mems to simply store additional information or a translation into their native language (tons of users learn from English because that is all there is on a particular subject).
Taking away mems makes learning more complicated (or even impossible) for those users.
And there is other usage scenarios for mems which others have already written about.
So you have a vision. That’s great. You sacrifice Memrise to achieve that vision. That’s not so great. And it is completely unnecessary, too. Why wouldn’t you create whatever vision you have in mind first and make it market-ready (as in alpha/beta) and then decide what steps to take (like discontinuing the old product or allowing it to exist under a different name due to the new product taking over the name)?
What you’re doing feels like open-heart surgery without anesthesia. Or like behaving like a bull in a china shop. Or like continuously attempted self-laceration.
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Reading comments here I’m even more convinced that you are wrong about your audience and don’t understand how and why people are using Memrise (and I was wrong about money interests, too, have to admit). When you tried to make Decks users were saying the same thing: you’ll build one of many rosetta stones, but you’ll lose your unique flashcards website. There are dozens of examples, when you’ve been taking a feature down not having a clue why people are using it (you still don’t have), and people were fighting against almost every change. This obsession with all-round learning tool is a cause of our troubles.
Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against your dream and ambition to build a super learning tech tool, but it’s unlikely that core audience of Memrise needs it and will like it. I really wish you could find a way to leave old Memrise as it is or was and build your Memworld on a separate website. It’s possible you’ll completely ruin Memrise and fail with Memworld.
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To be fair, there have been some good changes. I can name two: the “learn with locals” videos and the “grammar lessons” in official courses.
BUT THE IDEA TO RETIRE MEMS IS BEYOND TERRIBLE.
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Hello Dear Memrise-Team,
maybe the cause of the low usage of Mems nowadays is, that the individually selected ones, when given a wrong answer, don’t automatically show up with the corrected answers anymore… Before I used to learn a lot with Mems, now they are only half as good due to the problem mentioned above;
Yet I think, that Mems are an extremely helpful tool to make connections with the vocabulary and remember even very difficult ones. The possibility to create ones own Mems encouraged me to think about difficult vocabulary and come up with good mnemonics.
Maybe before eradicating this essential and also characteristic part of Memrise, you could first try to adjust it a little bit to the better which it used to be.
It would really be a great loss for this wonderful Memrise experience, please reconsider your decision.
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in the soaring rage - sometimes paired with rather very arrogant remarks - two noteworthy replies went under , those of @andy_kuma respectively @qncn. Clear summaries of the whole situation…
It was very clear a long time ago that mems are doomed … The incremental loss of lots of tiny but very usefull features related to customisation (UI, typing-no typing, etc) and the looming disappearance of user content are pressing issues for quite a number of users… Could we have longer the standard UI, and not have this beta shoved down our throats, please?
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And the last thing I wanna talk about is the logic that Ben using, I believe it is a straw man.
While you want to introduce something new, it doesn’t equal you need to eliminate the old one. I strongly belive they can be exist at the same time as the beta stage is. I never take the point why the new system must replace the old one?! You can simply launch the Beta as Memrise 2.0 and keep the legacy alive, right?
I prefer Memrise against Anki is because the live community and the user-created mems. It is much more effeicent to learn a language with material and experience developed by the others. And that‘s why I paid for the subscription.
Last but not the least, I understanding what Ben need is a cash cow for the development teams, but Memrise is a user-based community. Deleting the community created content, especially for years of works and volunteeary contribution by the USERS, is far beyond what you should be.
If keeping the Mems is a problem in cost. You can increase the subscription price, launch a crowd-funding / public funding campaign, or transfer the library to a open source community. But not simply deleting those great materials created by the ppls quietly!!!
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Let’s be practical. I think we should come up with a way to effectively archive mems on a public assessible platform, just in case of the unfortunate event of their permanent removal.
I can’t code. It’d be great if someone could help.
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