Hi all,
So as the title says I’ve been away from Memrise for some time and I’ve come back now I’ve got a reliable internet connection again. There have been a number of changes to Memrise, some are good, some are bizarre and inexplicable.
Firstly, the Mem creator used to have an in-built search engine of sorts for selecting images. This made it easy to find a picture, add it, and then add whatever text you wanted. Now it seems you have to search for an image outside of Memrise, save it to your hard drive and then upload it. This is tedious and needlessly time-consuming. It used to be quick and easy to create a Mem and I really can’t see why this feature has been removed - this is clearly a step backwards.
Secondly, the changes to the community are very strange. Having these central forums is fine, but why isn’t there a nice big button on the Memrise homepage to take you to them (i.e. Home, Courses, Groups, Forums)? I didn’t find these forums through Memrise - I actually found them through an unrelated Google search! It took me a while to realise that you could access these forums through the homepage if you scroll all the way to the bottom and find the little button for the forums.
The result is that these forums are inactive. Looking through the topics it’s clear many of them don’t have replies. In the Indian Languages forum where I hang out hardly anything is happening. Threads are created months apart, and few have replies. It’s not that these courses aren’t popular - plenty of people are studying them - but I simply don’t think people realise they exist. Previously, when each course had its own forum attached, there used to be plenty of discussion going on. This new system makes it needlessly difficult to communicate with other learners, which eliminates the community feel of Memrise (which is part of the learning strategy, of course).
I just don’t understand this change at all. Tiny things, like actually being able to create a link from the course description to the forum thread, would help - at present you have to copy and paste A LINK.
This, I feel, is a MAJOR issue. I don’t mind the change so much if the groups feature was a bit more comprehensive. I was a teacher a couple of years ago, and back then the groups feature would have been fantastic, and I’m sure it remains fantastic for educators. It could be a fantastic for everyone if it had a bit more functionality. I should be able to create a group for Hindi learners (or an official Memrise one should be set up for each language), and for everyone learning Hindi to be a part of it.
Thirdly, there needs to be a spring clean. There are hundreds of Hindi courses, many of which are crap and a waste of people’s time. Just get rid of them - nobody is using them (including the original creators) and ultimately they are just clutter. We want the quality courses to be the ones people see and do. For Memrise, this makes business sense as well. I’ve encouraged many people to have a go at Memrise for their learning, and several people have turned around and it’s no good for them and abandoned the platform. When I’ve had a look at the courses they are taking it’s often clear they have enrolled in rubbish ones that simply aren’t helpful.
There are some really good courses as well that hardly anyone is taking because they are lost in a sea of rubbish ones. It would be great to be able promote these ones. I’m currently working on a new course, which is taking a lot of time, but part of me is wondering whether I should bother if it’s just going to get stuck way down at the bottom of the sea of courses for no one to take. This is for a language like Hindi - I dread to think what it’s like with an extremely popular one like French.
The same goes for Mems. I’ve restarted the two courses I’m in charge of just to have a look at how things are, and it’s clear there are hundreds of rubbish Mems. I’m not talking about ones that just don’t work for me, I’m talking about Mems that won’t work for anyone. Say the vocab word to learn is ‘aap’, I’ve got six Mems that consist of ‘aap’ and nothing else. I’ve got some Mems that are downright wrong - sometimes it’s clear a learner has misread the word or is not entirely comfortable with the script and has created a Mem that is actually reinforcing a mistake. Really good Mems often get lost in a sea of poor ones, and this is not good for ensuring quality. There’s a thumbs-up system, but the reality is that few people actually use it.
That’s not to mention Mems that are in poor taste, and occasionally outright sexist/racist/other-ist.
As a course collaborator it would be good to have some executive power over this. Creators and collaborators put a lot effort into their courses, and to see the quality dragged down by things like this is disheartening. Let me delete duplicate Mems or edit ones that are wrong.
Memrise is quickly getting cluttered and this is not conducive to learning. I’m wondering if some kind of community ambassador feature would help. I’d be up for joining a few other enthusiastic people to help curate a selection of high-quality courses in Hindi (and to a lesser extent Tamil) for learners, which could include moderation. This could be as little as pinning the best of the best at the top of the page and adding a little star to them or whatever to get people to take them over the rubbish courses.
I don’t know, but it seems to me Memrise have one of two approaches they can take to building the site:
- Community-led. A community-led platform would give its members greater moderating control over courses. For this to happen members (or even just appointed members) need the appropriate tools. A workable forum would be a start.
- Memrise-led. This involves Memrise staff being active in its moderation across all courses.
The reality is that the community don’t have the necessary powers and tools to do it themselves, and the Memrise staff team is too small so would need to hire more staff.
What’s the solution?
I am a pro member and I remained a pro member even while I wasn’t using Memrise because I do care about the platform and I’ve benefited greatly from it. I am disappointed that the site seems to have gone backwards and I will be cancelling my pro membership if nothing changes within the near future.
Sam