The better visibility of course forums and search filters & indicators is also discussed in this thread:
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@Kaspian: Also the level. That is important too. Beginner, intermediate, advanced, from beginner to advanced, whatever. But some way to indicate what kind of course that is.
And to reply to @WildSageâs opinions too: Iâm not totally convinced that you have to be a native speaker to make a good course. You have to be a dedicated learner, preferably on a high enough level, just as you need to be if you are a language teacher. Often someone who has also learnt it as a second language has more insight about what is difficult, what is confusing, what is hard to grasp. And of course as you progress, should you find mistakes in your own course, you fix them.
Have your learnt something which is actually wrong, I think you will find it out soon enough anyway, when you try to use it â and then you will remember for ever, because of the silly mistake you made on it 
And for course creators being afraid of ratings â quite the contrary. Course creators are learners too, and mostly they are dedicated to bringing high quality content to the community. They also want to be able to find the best courses without trying for hours with hits and misses all over the place. I for one am creating a course mostly for myself: I am building the one I would have wanted to use if it existed, and Iâm pretty sure that lots of others are in the same boat.
And yes, I have used lots of user created courses and also official ones, and I have quit lots as well. Sometimes the logic doesnât fit me, sometimes it has just too many mistakes, sometimes it is just not 100% accurate (like Memriseâs own Swedish which has some messy solutions, and using den/det as interchangeable, and mixing adverbs with adjectives sometimes.) But I wouldnât say that the overall quality is so incredibly bad here: you just have to give it time and you need little patience to find the courses with suit you best. But someone, who really wants to learn a language, doesnât shy away from little research, I think.
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I believe the word I used was fluent not native.
As to everything else I stand by my belief that ratings are important. This isnât about 100% accuracy. Itâs about creating good quality courses. If someone was dedicated to creating those they would welcome ratings and review. Not fight them.
Yes, most of us do that. And what some of us are finding is that Memrise has no quality control. Again they are selling a product. They need to give reasons to buy that product. âWe let anyone make a course and donât care if they are any goodâ isnât a particularly appealing sales pitch.
Iâm not sure why so many people here donât value their time enough to choose quality over quantity. Quite frankly I think it is sad.
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From my point of view - as a learner and a course creator -, I donât think that number of learners and rating courses are the best ways to evaluate a course, because number of learners taking specialized and advanced courses is less than learners taking easy courses for sure.
For the time being, I only created advanced arabic courses:
- one course is about arabic proverbs
- another one is about advanced vocabulary taken from a book written in the 11th century.
- another one is a classical poetry course (poetry from the 6th century)
These courses are considered intermediate to advanced even for arabic speakers. So, it is normal to see few people taking these courses. It does not mean that the material is bad, or that the courses are not well done. And I am pretty sure, that one day if these courses are not lost, people who are interested in learning arabic - even if arabic is not their mother tongue - will appreciate them.
Besides, I think that the same thing applies to specialized courses: If I decide to create - someday- courses in medicine for example, I am sure that only few people will take these courses.
Moreover, I donât think that a learner can rely only on an application to learn a language, but it is very helpful and boosting for sure. Using an application has its advantages and drawbacks, so we can not expect perfectness.
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@mila83 - Youâre proving my point for me!
Searching for Memrise courses currently results in a list that is sorted (or mostly sorted) by popularity. This means that courses like yours with only a few learners, are likely to be low on the list, no matter how good they are. If we had a good rating system and Memrise improved the search function, the learners in your courses could mark them as high-quality. Then people looking for high-quality, advanced Arabic courses would see yours at or near the top of the list.
A good rating system and search function would rank a course based on the number of 5 star ratings relative to the total number of learners. That way, a course with ten 5-star ratings and only 20 learners would rank higher than a course with ten 5-star ratings and 500 learners or one with one hundred 5-star ratings and 10,000 learners.
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I have noticed as well, Memrise just redid their Japanese courses, and I couldnât find them on the app when I searched, yet they appeared easily on the website.
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In the app (at least iOS) you need to be sure to select the right language as the one you are speaking, e.g. English (UK) rather that English (US).
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Good suggestion, that mightâve been it. Either way though, it should still show up
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