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

Community-Created Courses Course Creator's Corner
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84

We should not be having to do any of this. I don’t have the time to jump through their hoops. This is one big mistake from the memrise team that will be the death of memrise. I cannot believe that they cannot see this for themselves.

We have to create the links ourselves? In the meagre space that we currently have for course descriptions?

We have to save content from our course forums if we don’t want to lose it?! Who has time for that?

Memrise is a system that depends on community input for the quality of their content. They are doing their best to monetize Memrise without real thought for the people who contribute the real value to their product. Memrise would be nothing without the contributors giving up their time for free. We do not even get a complimentary premium membership and yet we still give up our precious time to make their product better.

All they have to do is provide a decent user interface for a decent user experience and that is not what is happening right now.

Does nobody else see the inherent faults in what is happening here?

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Speaking as a course creator, an amazing amount of users read neither the course description nor the multimedia pages. There are also, quite frankly, a lot of really computer-illiterate users who maybe don’t even understand how to copy and paste (so links that don’t automatically turn clickable, are useless to them). And of course, a whole ton of users have no idea the forums even exist.

Just thought I’d throw that out there. (EDIT: I also never received the Email.)

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IMHO - most course creators, including myself, never received an email and will be blind-sided at the end of the month.

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I’ve started a thread to cover all my courses [Course Forum] Leggi’s BULGARIAN courses. здравейте! and I was going to post a link in each of my course descriptions, but it just appears as text and eats up my already inadequate character count.

If only the link was clickable in my course description!

Or even better a separate space to add a link, then surely Memrise could only allow links to these forums to be included?

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Hi Leggi,

We agree and that is what we have been asking for above.

We have been promised extra space so many of us can’t do anything until that has appeared

I think we are all going for “[Course Forum]” to be used as a prefix to your title. (You should be able to add it in retrospectively - let us know if you have trouble - it depends on your editing rights.)

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A topic is absolutely horrible. It would mean a single one-dimensional never-ending discussion thread for the course, where all issues are reported on the same thread, all questions asked there. It would be a horrible jumbled mess.

Instead, what I and probably many other course owners will do is ask people to post a brand new topic for each question or problem report - but without a category for each course, that means lots of courses’ posts will be jumbled together in the same category. All the French courses in the same category, for example. Still messy and frustrating, but as long as people put the course title in the title of their posts, it’d be less terrible than sticking to a single post per course.

But it would of course still suck. Each course needs its own category to make this reasonable and manageable over time.

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Memrise could also take this opportunity to fix the ever-growing problem of mobile users (a larger and larger share of our learners over time) not even knowing about the course forums. They run into problems or have questions, and we can’t help them because they don’t know where to say anything! Memrise should create a link from each course to its own dedicated discussion forum (be it a category here on this site, or something else), and make that link prominently visible on all three platforms - web, iOS, and Android.

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Hi all, @eriinnye has added this great post script to her [Course Forum] thread.

PS: If somebody is wondering why I am doing this, click here to find out.

Where the “click here” link takes the person to this area (thread discussion).

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Unless I am misunderstanding you, your suggestion strikes me as vastly more “jumbled and messy” than @Arete_Hime’s.

If each course is linked to a specific topic, you can easily connect the topic to a course via a single link, and people can navigate between the two as needed. Course creators can easily find new responses by enabling notifications, so there is no need to actively search for updates.

If each course is linked to a scattered mess of topics throughout the forums, it will make it difficult for users to find what has already been reported, and force course creators to constantly search for topics relevant to their courses. It also places a greater burden on users to learn how to navigate and use the forums, instead of just placing a response in an established location.

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@cos
"Instead, what I and probably many other course owners will do is ask
people to post a brand new topic for each question or problem report -
but without a category for each course, that means lots of courses’
posts will be jumbled together in the same category. All the French
courses in the same category, for example."

and @kuah

I was struggling to get my head around this.

I wondered “Where will they “post a brand new topic for each question”?” (Answer, hopefully in the appropriate category).

At present we not only have one unique Forum per course but each error is a single thread within that course allowing others to comment on a single issue and the creator or a contributor can let everyone know what action s/he has taken.

If I create one thread here for a “[Course Forum] Course A” then all issues to do with that course will indeed be mixed up and two or three different issues could be reported at the same time. Confusing!

What would seem better to me - (and you may be suggesting this) - is that within that thread, a user could create a sub-topic or thread (ie like folders within folders or the old tree structure). But I see no way of doing this.

I could also create a thread for all my “Geography” courses (say 15) but then the confusion will only get greater!

I think I am now understanding what you (@cos) are suggesting, that we do not create a Forum thread for all our courses but we just tell users to create the thread themselves in the appropriate category, making sure they say which course it is and include our names in it, so we get notified.

This would certainly avoid the issues I’ve listed above but this Forum will become crowded.

But then again the search facility may help.

Finally would it not be a good idea if @OliviaZavala created a category for “[Course Forums issues]” for each of the subject categories, which would then keep course issues on new threads in that sub area and all the other discussions would be more in the ‘open’.

Please can the @memrise team (& @joshua et al) step into this forum and help us out?

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I was just planning on having one thread for all my courses. The top of the thread will say “Make it clear which course and level you have a problem with”. If the thread gets 500 pages long over the next x years that Memrise is alive, it’s not like it matters! It’s easier for me as well to just have one link to pass around, I can even put the link in my profile then.

The users don’t have to see which things were already fixed or who already reported the same thing; if I haven’t yet fixed it, then them posting about it for the nth time will just kick me in gear.

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No, not a mess of topics throughout the forums. A category. Which means a bunch of posts all in one place, that can be accessed all through one link. Each post has its own title, and its own discussion thread. That’s what we need, a category for each course. Or, some other mechanism where each course can get its own forum, like they have now.

One post (aka “topic” as they’re called here) for each course would be completely untenable. It’s not even slightly remotely acceptable, by a long shot. It would mean one long endless thread of comments for years, with everything lost in there. You report a problem with a particular word; then someone else asks a question about the langauge; then someone else reports a problem with a different word; then someone else makes a suggestion for adding a new level; then someone else asks about other courses to take; then the course creator comes in and tries to see what’s up and fixes one of the problems and comments about it… and so on and on. Things get lost. Nobody can tell which problems have already been dealt with and which are still open. Nobody can find answers to questions other people asked. Everyone gets endless notifications about stuff they don’t care about just because they reported on problem. It’s utterly ridiculous.

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That is just not going to happen. Memrise is not going to create a category for each course for us. And we can’t create categories. My proposed solution is then more feasible: a different forum altogether for reports, or categories exclusively for reports.

Within the constraints we have apparently been given, just putting a prefix [Course Forum] is best. If after a while the topic becomes too long, start a (part 2).

No, only if you are mentioned @cos or quoted (I think) you get a notification, and the topic starter always gets a notification. And maybe if you bookmark the topic, I haven’t tried that.

And I second @kuah’s and @risgrynsgrot last posts. A single topic is just so much better.

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How are people going to find answers to questions other people have asked if you scatter the threads through the forum? If it’s all in a single topic, the new forum software allows you to search the topic. If you search the topic, you know the search result will be relevant to the course. And the topic starter will get a notification when someone replies, and can give a notification to the reporter by mentioning them @cos.

If we have a category for every course starting a new topic for every separate issue makes sense, but we don’t, so it doesn’t.

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I like this idea, but what should I do as I have courses in about 10 different categories?

Shall I just put one in every category or some top level?

Perhaps “Learning Central” where learners are more likely to want to go to or “Course Creator’s Corner” but I think this is intended for Course Creators and not for learners posting issues.

After all in one way it doesn’t matter where it is as long as I give the link.

But if one is looking for a suitable place to post they might actually go there and find me.

So one thread would also help to simply things and keep the forum tidy.

So thanks @risgrynsgrot for this tip:

The top of the thread will say "Make it clear which course and level you have a problem with."

Next question:

Yes, I could create one thread for all MY courses (and include those which have been genuinely abandoned) but what about those courses I’m supporting but in practice am the only active member supporting it?

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@DW7 ~ hope all is well with you. Like @risgrynsgrot stated, I too am going to just put all my courses into one thread (I have 13 of them, and possibly a 14th soon). I was going to group them by type (since they are sort of like a series). I think it will be cleaner for me, and hopefully easier for any user who desires to comment on any of them since they can see the names of all of them in one glance (and it also won’t flood the forum with extraneous course listings). Just one and done !

Unlike you, I basically only have 2 categories (Mandarin-Traditional, and History) so this concept works for me. I can just put my forum in the Chinese category (even though it has a History course that I am curator on). I am just waiting to see if Memrise allocates additional space in the course description field before I post my links and my thread. If they don’t, I will do this on June 30th.

I wish you luck with whatever means you try. You have a lot of (good !) courses to handle. Hopefully something will click for you.

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For what it’s worth, this is the listing data that my forum page will include, once I actually create it. If new courses are created (or existing ones re-named) in the future, I can simply append the info.

I haven’t received many comments or questions on my courses in the years I have been on Memrise, and I don’t expect to receive many postings in the future, so this works for me - and hopefully the users as well.

Courses.png467×553 10 KB

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Thinking about it, all my “Italian” courses I’m supporting could go into a single thread in the Italian sub-category of Languages, but sadly “Astronomy” can be in two or three different categories and the same is true of “Geography”. So perhaps they will be two separate categories in the “Learning Central” area.

I have long campaigned for some rethink of the categories (and have pointed out the issues and offered suggestions) and then a mass migration of courses, but this has been ‘overlooked’.

I too am waiting and have decided to contact @OliviaZavala by email and ask her i) for an update about when we can expect the increased allowance in the description field and ii) what plans they have to publicise the new Forum and the proposed changes.

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Well, I made my course forum thread now. I just put it in the Japanese category despite that it’s for all my courses (including Faroese, Greenlandic etc), because my Japanese ones are the most popular. Then I put a link to the thread in my user profile and in a multimedia level at the beginning of my most popular course. Instead of listing all the courses I’ve made, I felt too lazy and just linked to the general “courses made” page.

A thought I had — a lot of people don’t trust shortened URLs because they’re afraid of viruses, so I put the full link and just erased the https:// part along with the numbers after the thread title, to save a little more space.

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Yes, a point I made above about viruses, and a good solution to shorten the link.

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