This is going to be a lot of work, just to open new forums for all my courses, not to mention losing the old posts to the course forums…
So Sad… ;-((((
4 Likes
Okay, maybe I am not quite awake or don’t fully grasp this issue, but it seems to me that if all the course creators create links to their courses there will be a ton of links in the forum (hopefully in individual appropriate categories), but a ton nonetheless. And how will they be sorted ? Using me as an example. I have 13 Mandarin-language courses so far (and 2 new ones not yet public). If I create 13 links in the Mandarin language category, how will they be sorted ? By the report name ? (hopefully). What if that report title is changed in the future, what happens to the link in the forum. Does it change automatically ? Do you need to manually change it ?
My brain may be small at times, but wouldn’t it be much easier to just create links to course creators Memrise names (i.e. @ pdao, @DW7, @benwhatley, etc.) and post them instead of individual course titles. Then users with issues would simply query the course creators name and send a message to them about a specific course.
If one used this approach, there would only be one instance per creator (not 13 for me as in my example). It could easily be sorted/grouped, alphabetically/numerically (since usernames don’t generally change very often, whereas course titles do) and wouldn’t require a lot of work by course creators to post links to various courses. They could simply put a small blurb in each course that says something like “send a message to my address in the course forum under my username”.
Am I missing something here, or is this not a viable solution ?
6 Likes
I put [Reports] at the start of the topic titles, and tagged the topics with ‘reports’. Now I’m thinking there’s perhaps a better tag we could use? How about [Course Reports] or [Course Feedback]? I’ll just change the prefix to [Course Reports] if no one has a better idea.
And a link to the course or the creator’s ‘teaching’ tab in the post would be nice.
1 Like
I’m now thinking [Course Forum] might be better.
3 Likes
Hi @flamantrose,
This is going to be a lot of work, just to open new forums for all my
courses, not to mention losing the old posts to the course forums…
I agree, and this is why I
a) asked if the team could save or preserve the current post - Ans: ‘Not possible’
b) why I suggested we get people to DM us (as it will save the effort of setting up all those threads in the right place - which as I have said before, some courses are in the wrong area) and then posting individual links in courses
c) pointed out that several courses can actually have the same name! and
why others have pointed out that this Forum will be overloaded with threads (and my DM - sorry PM - suggestion will avoid this scenario).
4 Likes
@pdao I agree and yes that is what I have been suggesting.
A much quicker solution for us (I have over 150 courses I’m supporting) and keeps this area ‘professional’.
My only refinement on the above is that either Contributors need to be informed as well (in your suggestion) or listed in the augmented description area, for my idea to work.
As I understand it, PMs can be to more than one person, so a user can PM the creator and known contributors at the same time. (However, I do hope they clarify which course they are referring to!)
I think this is the simplest solution for us Creators, Contributors and Curators/ Custodians (of abandoned courses).
Is there support for that idea?
I find “course forum” to be the most intuitive, since it draws a parallel to the original course forum. It also distinguishes such posts from bug reports.
5 Likes
I concur with this DW7 and the thoughts/description of @pdao . I only have a few courses I’m supporting (passed onto me by the creator who is no longer active in that course); not the 150+ courses you are managing! Otherwise I can see this forum becoming overrun - and people’s eyes will start to glaze over (mine anyway) as they trawl though endlessly.
2 Likes
Just some thoughts:
In effect, the Memrise Team are just moving the old course forums away from the relevant course homepage and into the new Community Forum, so that there aren’t forums scattered throughout the site. There are advantages and disadvantages in doing this and there are some people who don’t like the change and others who have already started loading links to their courses into the new forum. I expect that, as with all the previous changes, we will get used to it and make it work. Clearly, however, those people who have created a large number of public courses face a big task over the next month. The key task to complete before the cut-off date is to identify any content of the old course forums that creators’ want to archive. There has been some discussion of that elsewhere.
It would be good if everyone followed the same conventions when setting up the new categories/threads and the guidelines in Olivia’s email were intended to achieve that. That’s not going to happen, but it should be possible to tidy things up over time and achieve some uniformity. If a clear link is included in the relevant course description area, and the forum thread has the course title and creator’s username, I don’t think it will matter too much that some categories will have long lists of threads in them because we now have a usable search tool in the new forum. It works well. I do think, however, that @Arete_Hime’s suggestion of including “[Course Forum] at the start of the thread title will help. I don’t favour using PMs instead of the forum because only the person who posts the PM and the Course Creator will see them. That could lead to a lot of duplication. Also, an advantage of posting in the forum would be that other course students get to see the issues that are raised and may have good contributions to make/solutions to offer, as was often the case with the old course forums.
On a related point, it would help a lot to have a more accessible link from the website dashboard to the Community Forum than currently exists. It is currently much too clunky and takes much too long to scroll down the Dashboard/homepage to find the existing link to the forum. As I have said before, we also need a direct link back from the forum to the learning site/homepage (as we had in the old website feedback forum). I hope this can be fixed soon. As for the app, I can’t even find the link to the forum (if, indeed, there is one).
2 Likes
I am contemplating just starting one forum for all my courses…
Forum topic “All courses by FlamantRose”…
What else ?
Of course since the link has to be copied and pasted into a new tab, it is not just click and go for leaners.
Furthermore, a user has to think to go and read the course description, (no longer automated with discuss this item in the learning session), I suppose this will be a no mans land for feedback.
Without a dedicated forum profile page accessible for PM, a combined forum topic could be an alternative to the new architecture. Just one forum for all courses (in the same language of course)
If I were new here, I would be very discouraged by this new idea of Forum for All. But whatever… I’m glad I was able to take advantage of the early direct forum feature which worked well for building courses.
4 Likes
why is this topic in the “course creator’s corner”? In fact!? It is mainly about users having the basic option of communicating with the creators/curators… Ok, few people on memrise are only creators of courses, but this is one topic that is burning users 10 times more than it interests creators
1 Like
I think that @DW7 chose to reproduce Olivia’s email in this category because it requests course creators to take the action described if they want to continue receiving user reports and feedback on their courses.
1 Like
I agree with you about this solution being by far the simplest one, mostly because I’d rather read a tidy forum than a totally flooded one. The main problem I can see is for courses whose creator didn’t bother creating a forum account or reaching trust level 1 (currently, 137 users reached that level), the last one being necessary for people to use PM in the first place. There is also the problem of the course creator who just doesn’t have time to correct mistakes as soon as reported. Using PM to report them means that other learners won’t be able to access the discussion about these mistakes.
I also believe that it’s important for users to have a space where they can discuss the course content, either because they want to discuss a specific point (in grammar-oriented courses for example) or because they have doubts about the correct answers. These discussions can happen even without a course creator, but they should be available to everyone. Even though the group PM are also a solution, as @DW7 said, this does not seem to be a good one. I mean, for group PM, a trust level of 2 (achieved by 29 members so far) is required. For all these reasons, I’m not sure that PM are a satisfactory solution either… And still, using one single thread or creating several thread for the very same course might just render it difficult for new users to access the information they are looking for in the languages categories (and by that I mean “general information about a language”).
Actually, I don’t know how we could possibly balance all these requirements as long as the forum is completely cut from the main website. Maybe the future new “report error” feature mentioned by the Memrise team will bring a few solutions, at least by preventing the multiplication of report posts about specific courses? I may have missed a few things about that, but I think someone from the team mentioned that this feature would be brought back in some form after a few changes were made? Well, I guess the first change will be that this will no longer be “forum related”, but this seems to be an important point regarding this general change on the courses forums.
2 Likes
@Onesmy (or anyone reading this) ~ I think what we are seeing with this issue (and a few others of late) is people wanting and hoping to make the Memrise experience the best it can be (at least in the areas where they have input or control). Some are a little more passionate in their postings than others; but bottom-line, I think we all want this product to survive and thrive.
We are all in this together, and that seems to be the common thread. We may not always understand the ground rules (especially when they change), but even if we collectively falter or take a misstep or two, we all want to go forward. If we didn’t care, none of us would spend the time and efforts in this forum like we do. I don’t know how all of this will play out in the short or long term, but like all things Memrise, I guess we will basically just have to wait and see.
Personally, when it comes to software, forums, or even life in general - I am a minimalist. The less clutter, the less confusion, the happier I am. That may or may not always be the Memrise way, and so it seems that no matter which route Memrise takes, someone is not going to be happy. Time will tell whether this new forum concept (and anything else coming down the pike that we aren’t aware of yet) will prove to be a boom or a bust.
For now, I think it is best to just let the dust settle and focus on learning (either for ourselves, or for those who are taking the courses we have created). After all, learning is supposed to be what Memrise is all about ? So lets try not to get too side-tracked on in-house debates about what is or isn’t good; efficient or inefficient, etc. It’s too early in the game for speculation.
Bear in mind that in the grand scheme of things in life, this is just a software program that we have in common. It is not the end all, and it doesn’t define who we are or what we strive to become. Let’s just make the Memrise experience the best we can, and be happy for that. At least that’s always been my approach. I hope this makes sense.
I’ll step off my soap box now…
5 Likes
Yes @alanh is correct:
I think that @DW7 chose to reproduce Olivia’s email in this category because it requests course creators to take the action described if they want to continue receiving user reports and feedback on their courses.
Basically only creators have been informed at this stage (I guess) and need contemplate the implications and take action. Also as we’ve said, not all users use the Course Forums.
However I do agree that nearer the 1st July we may need to create a new thread for users, giving clear instruction on what action they should take.
Thank you all for your contributions to this Forum thread.
I am slowly understanding the issues and what creators think is the best course of action.
I think I will need to study @OliviaZavala’s email again, but I really could do with some help and guidance.
-
When will we get an extra course descriptive allowance?
-
Consensus favours Forum threads for Course issues with “[Course Forum]” at the start of the thread.
-
Is there or is there going to be a top level category called “Course issues” or something similar?
-
Is someone going to create sub-categories as mentioned (eg Language then a sub category for each language AND similar things for the other categories of courses?) to keep it all tidy?
-
What should we do if several courses have the same course title? (I do realise that the creator’s ID will help it - but what about the famous “deleted” member?)
-
I assume if the course creator creates the Forum thread then s/he will be informed of a question raised, but a) how will contributor’s be informed of a posting? b) what if the creator is no longer active or not into this forum?
-
What happens if the course title changes (I guess we edit the thread title)? That’s why I suggested the shorter 5 or 6 digit number might be a better solution.
-
I have often said that an overhaul of categories would be beneficial because if you’ve ever studied something with a Geography or Astronomy theme, you will find them in completely different categories including Trivia (for GCSE courses!)
So yes, I am prepared to have a go, but please can someone tell me when to start and where to create those threads?
Must get on with what MemRise is all about - learning! (Don’t want to end my streaks!)
I like this idea. Not everyone needs to create a forum entry for their course. In addition, courses that actually span multiple course like I’ve been making can be under one forum post. For example, I’m creating an SGJL (suggested guide for Japanese literacy) course which will be 30 courses plus additional course for Japanese dramas. I’ll just create an SGJL post and have all the course links in the top post and there’s a one stop shop for people to discuss any and all courses instead of it being spread out among 30 different forum posts.
Hopefully later there’s be a “Course Forum” sub-forum that way general language discussion can happen in the main thread for that language.
3 Likes
@Charles_Applin35 ~ If I am reading your post correctly, I am anxious to see how and when you do this, as I was hoping to do the same for my courses (since they are basically linked in a couple of series as well). Thanks !
I just did it for my Hiragana and Katakana course here. I’ll also do it like that for the 2k1KO/RTK Kanji, Core 2k/6k vocabulary and Tae Kim grammar courses. Then just have one overall course forum post.
Since I don’t have a large following, I doubt there’ll be a lot of traffic or posts to those forum posts. However, they’ll be there out of sight until they’re needed for someone interested in that specific method. I really, really hope most of the posts are not about bugs and errors. 
Excellent ! Just what I was hoping to see. You gave me an idea of how to do my forum post (since I basically have 3 sets of 4 courses each). I think one post should do it, rather than 12. Thank you for the novel approach ! 
1 Like