I don’t use the web version of Memrise, preferring to use the Android app. Just to give an example, in just a few weeks I’ve been presented with:
Several mems written in a language that is NOT the course’s native language. I don’t know what they mean and some are even in a different alphabet. These are useless to me and, I would dare say, most people. [EDIT: after reading through the replies I got, it looks like mems are public, meaning that the solution to this would be to make them private by default and only make them public if the user wishes to. I suspect people may be creating mems without knowing they are public. Some might be personal!]
A mem simply containing the word “f***” (I censored it here but in the mem it was not). Very amusing, I’m sure, but it’s not helping anyone. I’m almost sure this would be reported quickly, but I still see it after a week, so maybe not enough people are on web Memrise, the version that lets you do it. Or maybe there’s some cache at work. There are some other nonsensical mems too.
Several badly formatted / ALL CAPS / hard to read / full of typos mems.
Some users might also find it offensive to be shown mems from a user named HerrHitler, particularly on an English/German course. But I simply find it weird and a little distasteful, so I’m not even contesting that one.
This is a long standing issue, so why can’t I report or vote (up or down) user mems on Android? Would be even better to be able to suggest changes, but I assume that it would be significantly harder to implement.
mems are for EVERYONE, so just because certain mems may not help YOU, that doesn’t mean that someone else isn’t benefiting from them.
There are lots of people from all over the world learning - to cite a couple of common examples -
German and Swedish due to the refugee crisis and they may speak languages that are not common enough for there to be courses in existence that include these more unusual languages.
I have been learning Swedish using - primarily - the four-part "8,000+ Most Common Swedish Words course. There are mems on this course in Russian, Hebrew, Chinese, a language that might be from Eritrea as well as others which I recognize, such as Dutch, Italian, French and many more besides. They don’t bother me in the slightest! And why should they?
If someone is choosing to learn Swedish via a Swedish/English course, who am I to say that they are “not allowed” to write mems in their native language?
I really don’t understand why these mems are so problematic for some people. It seems to be a rather colonialist and intolerant attitude.
That said, offensive mems (racist, sexist etc) should be removed and it is a shame that there is not a “report” or “flag” button for these.
I find it offensive if my mems would be rated down just because some people won’t understand them. I study English based course and English courses based on Spanish because there are no official courses translated into Estonian. Of course I write my mems in Estonian
Thank you for your replies. I think you raise good points, but I would like to disagree a bit.
Maybe I’m not understanding something. Courses are made in one (let’s call it “base”) language and let you learn another (lets call it “target”) language, right? If the target language is not available in your own language, you have use a base language that you’re familiar with, if that is at all possible (that’s the sad part; sometimes you don’t have a chance to learn because no language you know is available as base). English is not my native language (that’s European Portuguese), but I choose it because I can use it well enough and there’s no Portuguese in most language “pairs”.
Now, I cannot see more than the first mem on the mobile app. There’s no way to see other mems. Maybe that’s the main problem, actually! But if people are creating mems for a course that is based in English – the language that they supposedly understand and chose to use – why would they write the mems in other languages? Most people won’t understand, rendering the mems useless (again, I can only see one for each lesson in the mobile app).
I might be missing something in the way Memrise works. Sure, I agree that refugees, for example, should be able to learn the language used in their new country, but 1% of the mems in an English-based course being in their actual native language hardly helps, don’t you think? Meanwhile, all people that use English will see mems that they don’t understand.
Hey, maybe this is just me, or I’m really missing something. Maybe I’m being intolerant but I just don’t think this is helping anyone in the end. Don’t mean to offend or be rude to anyone. Sorry if it seems that way. I respect other languages as much as I respect mine, and I would have the same opinion if I saw Portuguese in an English-based course.
The main point is still that the mobile app needs some improvements in this regard.
you need to swipe to see the other 6 mems because you are limited to only 7 mems on Android. You can easily create your own text-mem while studying with the app
Are mems always public? That would clearly explain this whole situation. Is that it? I thought they would be personal until you said otherwise, hence why I thought it unhelpful that people were submitting them in other languages. I apologize for the confusion!
But if this is so, isn’t it a bit strange and even anti-privacy on Memrise’s part? People could be writing really personal things on those mems, without being aware that everyone can see them. Or am I, again, failing to see something?
I just created one to test it and then found out that I couldn’t delete it from the mobile app (did so from the web). As for the 6 mems, I actually can always only see one. It even displays 1/1 in the bottom left corner. Swiping lets me create my own, but nothing else. Something is wrong in my case, then. [EDIT: just realized that some lessons might simply not have more than 1 mem recorded by users. I now feel a bit dumb. Indeed, the first lessons have more than one, including empty mems and all the problems mentioned in my first post, of course…]
You can’t on iOS either. I’ve noticed that there are a lot of mems that are just dots. If we could, say, flag them or vote if they are good/bad, and make mems, then I’d be happy. The single dot mems need to go. They waste space and I’m sure that dots don’t help people learn!
