[Site Feedback] Changes to Course Forums - email from Olivia Zavala

Community-Created Courses Course Creator's Corner
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@OliviaZavala has just emailed this and I thought it might be useful for us to discuss the consequences.

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Hello,

We have some important news that will impact the course or courses you have created. Memrise has been growing loads (yay!) and we found that our Forums needed a good sprucing up.

So, we’ve created a new Community Forum. It’s awesome, it’s easier to navigate and there are lots of cool features to use.

So, how does that affect you? Well, we’re going to be closing the current forum on the 1st July 2016.

This includes the Discussion Forum located in your course (or courses).

If you want to keep receiving reports and feedback about the content you created, here’s what you’ll need to do:

For Language Courses:

Go to http://community.memrise.com/c/language-quarters
Click on the appropriate language sub-category
Create a new Topic with your course’s title and your username i.e. “50 Spanish verbs by Blue345"

Copy the link to the new topic, go back to your course page in memrise.com and add it to your course’s description, informing users that is the place to go if they have feedback for you.

For all other Topics:

Go to http://community.memrise.com/c/community-hub/course-reports
Create a new Topic with your course’s title and your username i.e. “Astronomy 101 by Skywalker"

Copy the link to the new topic, go back to your course page in memrise.com and add it to your course’s description, informing users that is the place to go if they have feedback for you.

We realise it’s an extra task for you, but it’s only needed if you want to provide a feedback space for users of your course.

Remember, forums will be closed on July 1, 2016, make sure to save any info you want to keep from your forums, before then.
Otherwise, you’re still invited to come over to the new Forum and explore!

Thanks for being a part of our Community, and happy learning!

Olivia, Community and Social Media, Memrise

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POST SCRIPT

For people looking for the new Course Forums (in most cases) you need to look for “[Course Forum]”:

You may also need to go to:

http://community.memrise.com/

Then go to the “Community Hub” then the “Subject” area to find the course forum you are after.

Also it is worth doing a search by “Course Name” or “Creator” or “Contributor”.

DW7

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Hi @OliviaZavala , is there a way for us to download and save all current course forum posts?

I have spent some three months doing the EA Geography course by @EasyAcademy to which I am a Contributor.

I have made many recommendations for improvements and clarification but he hasn’t had time to consider my proposals yet, so the changes haven’t been made by either of us.

It would be tragic and soul-destroying if that information is lost, not to mention the chance of amending the course to make it polished.

Any advice (or even saving that information for me and emailing me) would be greatly appreciated.

DW7

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@OliviaZavala Will there be a separate field for us to enter the link to the new forum we have had to set up or will you increase our current small allowance to allow for the extra information?

In all my courses I’ve already used up all the allotted space in giving a good description and I would not wish to edit it and reduce it.

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That’a good idea. Also it’d be very nice but perhaps too much to ask if we could format it like: your feedback here!

See here. Post in that topic with the link to the course and I’d be happy to save the threads for you. Anyone else who would like me to save their threads can also of course post in that thread.

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Thank you @Arete_Hime, I’d be really grateful as I’ve struggled with understanding the method (when it applied to the General discussion Forum).

If I may I’ll PM (aka DM) you so as not to clutter this or the other thread.

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That was the very first thought I had after reading that email.

Each course needs to have a specific slot for a link to its discussion forum, separate from the course description. Closing the old course forums without doing that first would be quite careless.

My second thought, once I realized what was being proposed, was “wait WTF, one topic per course?!?!?!”

This cannot work. We need the ability to create a new category for each course. For language courses, it would of course be a subcategory of the appropriate language.

I have to add: This continues the pattern of memrise not bothering to find out what users or course creators care about, want, or find useful, before they make decisions about how to manage and change the service. They make a decision blindly, probably without considering things that are important to us because they don’t even think of them and don’t bother to ask. Then they just announce their decision (if we’re lucky) or just make the change, without any input. Back when we had a uservoice forum, one of the suggestions I posted that got a 3-digit number of votes was that memrise consult with users when considering big changes; describe what they’re thinking of doing and ask for our input so they could find out about important problems with their plan before they set it in stone. But they never responded to that suggestion, and of course we can’t see or vote on it anymore.

I miss when memrise seemed kind and cared about users. I wonder why memrise management got so mean and anti-user and whether that can ever be changed.

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@OliviaZavala Here’s another request.

As I have over 150 courses I’ve created or am supporting, it would be really nice if the team
a) generated those threads for us and
b) pasted the text and link into the dedicated field I’ve suggested.

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Two thoughts @cos (besides thanks for your support).

  1. I agree wholeheartedly that these new proposed course threads should be tidy under headings. I would suggest the categories already used to categorise courses, so Languages > Italian applies or Natural World > Other or History & Geography > Other or Trivia > Geography (although always wondered why it would be in Trivia!)

[I have previously posted that a revamp of the categories, to take account of the progress since they were first set up, was necessary. This applied to both Geography and Astronomy/ Stars found in two or three places.]

  1. You mention the voting system - that was in use in the feedback forum and MemRise did sometimes post suggestions that they wanted feedback on.
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we all got that mail. I’ll not make 66 links in this forum. I’ll mention
in my profile “contact me via the main forum”, or something…I find
this a very unelegant solution, taking huge amounts of time, for both
user and curator/creator. First you have to get into the main forum,
than to search for the appropriate link, and there might be thousands of links…
how can one find it???

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Good suggestion @Hydroptere.

I already say “please post comments … in the Forum” so perhaps as you have suggested, or to avoid too many threads we suggest they PM (aka DM) us.

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I almost feel I’ve got to look at all the courses I support to see if there are any outstanding issues that I’ve not addressed - not from laziness or lack of time, but because I wanted agreement by a more knowledgeable user or approval by the course creator.

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one can see it already: i am navigating the new forum by looking at “latest”. The task becomes impossible… the latest will always show course links and complaints… like there is no other subject of discussion on memrise…:anguished: Help!

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Please no. A topic is fine.

That would immediately flood the forum with thousands of post. Not a fan.

If I were Overlord of Memrise I would create a new (sub)category: Language courses - Reports and requests besides the already existing Non-language courses - Reports and requests. Or just have a single (sub)category: Courses - Reports and requests

All threads for reports could then go into those one or two (sub)categories and not flood the rest of the forum.

If I were Supreme Leader of Memrise, I would create a different forum altogether for reports, as this forum is really not the place to put them. A more achievable solution would be to create a new category that was standard Muted or something, where reports could go, course creator and contributors could be notified via a group pm. I don’t know. The current solution is going to be messy as all hell.

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Wouldn’t it be nice if somehow the MemRise team could put all threads that were relevant specifically to a course in a course forum so they don’t end up cluttering even a categorised section. :wink:

I agree with you that it would seem like that is the only thing one is posting about and it makes courses seem rubbish (not to mention airing one’s dirty linen in public).

Even my sensible suggestion of PM’ing them has it’s problems as not all Contributors are listed and only one of them may be monitoring the course now.

PS Edit as we have been promised more space, perhaps we could now list active Contributors so users also know who to PM - if we go for that suggestion.

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Hi @DW7

I’m afraid we won’t be providing a way to download the posts in the course forums, nor will we be creating a separate field to add the forum link. We are, however, looking into increasing the character number in the course’s description field so that it accommodates both the description and the link. Using a link shortener will give you even more space in that field too :slight_smile:

The decision of closing down the course forums had already been mentioned before, when I said in a previous post, that we were looking for a better way to manage individual course feedback. Out of all the courses created by users, only a very small number have active Discussion Forums, and since we had already made the move from having several feedback/forum spaces to just having this Community forum, it was natural to try to move the active, individual course forums here, too. It’s a work in progress!

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how do you intend to solve the problem of lacking overview over the user requests? it is still a huge task for both user and curator to search for the latest queries and to post the exact issue, mostly because one does not have a direct link between the learning page and the forums… for most active users, this is rather disheartening…

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Hi @OliviaZavala Many thanks for reading and posting a comprehensive reply.

We are, however, looking into increasing the character number in the course’s description field so that it accommodates both the description and the link.

Many thanks, we hope ‘you’ can increasing our description space - something I suggested/ requested a long time ago (even +10% would be helpful).

PS Edit perhaps we (creators and contributors) could now list active Contributors so users also know who to PM - if we go for that suggestion.

I did know that not many people used the Course Forums - I’ve been trying to encourage that for a long time as I always respond. (PS Edit: However for those who do use the linked or embedded course forum, it is a really useful tool for a user and improving the course.)

Also obviously a lot of posts, once resolved, are no longer relevant and could be deleted (but the creator could not do that, only the originator).

Guess I’ve got a month to make some of the obvious changes I’ve suggested on @EasyAcademy courses I’m supporting or copy the text to a file to deal with it at another time in perhaps your new way.

Will you be following up the suggestion to create top level categories so not all the courses on different subjects get put together?

Cc @MemriseMatty

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I think we could consider creating sub-categories for the major topics that are listed in the Courses page (non-language, of course). However, creating more Language categories will be a priority and these would follow.

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I think a course error report prefix “[…]” is a good idea, but I think I’ll wait until the sub-categories are created before considering if to create course threads and I’ll also wait until the end of June before amending my course descriptions to point to this Forum.

On my own courses I think I may invite PMs (aka DMs) so as to keep this area free.
Does @OliviaZavala have any thoughts on that?

How about a top level for posts that specifically says “Issues concerning specific courses” or something of that nature? That would keep the Forum tidy?

ALSO As course names are rather long, and can change!!! (and can be identical to another course - eg “GCSE Geography”) would it be a good idea to just quote the course number - searches would then be unique.

Sorry I just keep contemplating this. :thinking:

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btw, how do you intend to “teach” new users about posting issues with courses/ about course forums??? is there a new tab in the pipeline - maybe instead of that huge clock, or get rid of that sun/moon :innocent: - on the main dashboard??? how do you point to?

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