At the end of April I wrote this bug report to the memrise team. Unfortunately I didn’t really get any answer. After searching the forums and not really finding anything that sounds exactly like my problem (a few seem to be similar but I could not find anything helpful there either) I want to at least ask, if others experience the same problems or happen to know why the search function got changed or how to use it now, since this problem is really making learning here quite troublesome.
Bug report:
I have been away for about 4 weeks so I don’t know when this change
happend but I noticed that there seems to have been a change in the way
databases can be searched, more precisely in the results a search brings
up. I noticed the change in the course I contribute to (I’m called the
creator, even though I originally wasn’t, but that is a different
matter), the “Top 6000 Japanisch” (German- Japanese). Before this change
when I searched for a word that wasn’t inculded in the course database I
simply didn’t get any results but now I get results even though the
word is still not included. These results seem to contain parts of the
word. (I will attach a screenshot) The same thing happens if I try
searching for words which are included. So, to cut a long story short,
the search results have become extremly imprecise, which makes the whole
search function really not very useful anymore.
(I don’t think it is of any use, but just for the record, I use firefox as my browser on Windows 10)
Thank you for your reply. Ah, yes, I remember reading your entry. Did you find a solution yet? Or can you somehow imagine why the search function got changed that way? Maybe there is a reason for this and I just don’t get it
I think a while ago Memrise changed the way it handled the databases, and migrated the databases, I guess that resulted in a host of interesting and unexpected bugs.
Yes, I read that too. Maybe it would be good, if they informed users what they are doing and why, that would make it easier to differentiate between bugs and features.
But in either case, this has been a while ago and I wonder why there seems to be no improvement…
I’m definitely having this issue too. I noticed it around the end of March, and tried contacting support about it on April 1st. I got a few replies, but it basically amounted to being told that it would get fixed next week, that week coming and going, getting told the same thing, and so on, until they eventually stopped replying.
I wrote about it a bit here, though that was focused on the wiki search. Both problems seemed to show up at the same time though, along with database ordering becoming completely broken. Whenever I put anything into a database now, it gets jumbled around.
The only workaround I’ve found is to try searching for different fields. If you can’t find an entry by searching for the Japanese, for example, try searching for the German. It’s a pain, and about as unintuitive as it gets, but it’s all I’ve come up with so far.
I’d love to see a staff member comment on this. It’s been nearly three months now…
Thanks for your reply. It seems my guess was quite right, concerning the point of time all of this started. The end of March is exactly the time when I started my travel and was not using the database for some time - after my return in the middle of April I noticed those troubles.
And thank you very much for your advice. I have already tried working around it like you said and I suppose you experienced the same things when you were doing so - this method is very time consuming and not precise at all (a lot of times I don’t get results which I know have to be there and I simply don’t have any method to get the database to show me those results) - it really is terribly frustrating.
It really would be great if the memrise team would answer… Even more so if you take into consideration that we are trying to improve courses when working in the database and that some of us are actually paying costumers…
On my end, I’ve been trying to transition over to using the level editor as much as possible. I always worked almost exclusively with the database editor before all this, so I’ve had to completely re-invent how I make and maintain courses, but I just can’t work with the database editor as it is.
It may be a good idea to get a spreadsheet together with the levels marked, if you haven’t already, so you can search for and track down items manually in the level editor instead. You could then make any necessary changes there, instead of hassling with the buggy search in the database editor. I still occasionally have a reason to search for an entry in the database though, and it is indeed very frustrating.
Fingers crossed that it can get resolved eventually…
I hopefully have some good news on this issue. I was able to get a reply from support this week, and it looks like some progress has finally been made on the issues that showed up at the end of March!
I’ve noticed a big change on my end: My databases seem to suddenly be back in order, where they were a scattered mess before, and I’m having much better luck with the searches for both adding items to the database and to search through the database.
Searching by kana still seems to return some results that only partially match what I searched for, but I’m unsure on whether it was behaving like that originally. I think I’m regardless having better luck with that than I was earlier too. I had many cases during the issues where it didn’t even return the item I was looking for in the search, despite it definitely being in the database, and I have yet to notice that now in testing it out.
Anyway, could you please check again when you get a chance to see if the search is behaving any differently on your end?
@TinyCaterpillar ~ this sounds encouraging. Follow-up question though. What do you mean by: “My databases seem to suddenly be back in order, where they were a scattered mess before” ? Are you saying that are back in some kind of logical order again ? (At least I hope so). Thanks.
Before the issues started, I was very meticulous about keeping my databases’ item order the same as how it shows up in the levels. Furthermore, I use two databases in each course that ‘mirror’ each other, having the same entries, but with different alts for testing in different directions.
Once the issues began, the databases’ order seemed to get completely scrambled. None of the entries were where they were supposed to be, and the ‘mirrored’ databases no longer matched up.
Since the fix though, everything seems to be back to the way it was before the issues started. This is only going by what I’ve seen so far, and I haven’t had a chance to look it over too thoroughly yet, but it was nowhere near correct earlier, so I see it as very promising. The ‘mirrored’ databases seem to match up again as well.
@TinyCaterpillar ~ excellent ! That was what I was hoping to hear. I was pretty much the same as you in terms of ordering items in the levels and databases but once they became mixed up, it was pointless to create any new logical-ordered courses, or add new items to existing courses. I will take a look at my databases and hope they too are back to some semblance of their former selves. Thanks for the potentially encouraging news !
Will do. I took a cursory glance at a few courses that were WIP and the databases are definitely somewhat organized again. Not as haphazard as they used to be displayed (even though they were all bulk added in absolute logical order). I am going to create a new logical ordered course that I had waiting in the wings and see if the ordering holds up. I will post the results.
I bulk added 43 logical based entries (chronological date events in history) into a newly created database. When I reviewed the items, all 43 were still in logical order. I then used the create level function in the editor and changed the number of items to something higher than 43 (so all the items would go into one level). I then previewed the level and all 43 items were still in the original order.
I then bulk added another 11 logical order based entries (with earlier chronological dates) directly into a newly created level - rather than into the database so I could test out both ways to add items (but I did use the same database name). When I previewed the items, they were all still in the same logical order. AND, (drum roll please…) the 11 items were in the same logical order in the database as well, directly after the first 43 items from the first created level.
This is the WONDERFUL way things used to be. None of this was even remotely possible since things went squirrly for the past few months. Looks like someone has cleaned up the database issues BIG TIME !
A gazillion thanks to whoever it was. Hopefully others can test this logic out on their respective databases and get similar results. I am one happy camper now as I had 4 chronological courses sitting in various Excel worksheets waiting to upload, but couldn’t because of the database issues. Looks like I can now.
Forgot to mention, I also tested the logic of adding 600 items to a new level, to see if the database was still skipping every 100th item. It is… So that issue is still in need of repair.
I tested out bulk add in one of my databases as well, and it kept the order for me, too. I’ll be testing things a bit more, but it looks like we can hopefully breath easy on this one now.
First of all: I’m sorry for the terribly late reply - we got married this weekend, so we were a little busy
I tried a quick search and it seems to work again, more or less as good as it did before all this mess happend. There are still some strange results when inputing Hiragana for me, especially if a word is not in the database yet. But the whole search function did really get a little bit more useable. That is really GREAT news. I will try a few more searches and will let you know, if something odd turns up. But for the moment this really seems nice.
Yeah, it has gotten back to almost perfect this week Also most of the database functions are back to normal, even the item and record ordering, even if it’s still only 20 items on a page instead of the 100 it used to be.
The only search issue I still experience is that you can still only search the beginnings of a word.
So for example when searching for “perspektiv” I get a hit for 'ett perspektiv" but ‘ett fågelperspektiv’ or ‘ett grodperspektiv’ won’t show up.
Glad to hear it’s working on your end, too. I am still having to sometimes use two or three of the search fields to find what I’m looking for, due to the strange results with kana, but yes, it’s loads better than it was before, and has certainly become usable for me again. (I can import items nearly twice as fast as before, so I’m enjoying that! )
I do wish they’d go back to 100 items per page, since 20 seems way too small to me, but I suspect that was a deliberate change, so I’m not counting on it.
So that issue is still in need of repair.
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