hello hello, I have edited this… No longer relevant anymore.
I mean, look at all these Memrise official courses that I’m learning
Sadly that’s what they think of us. People who only study from their fancy, albeit limited, course for one week to go to France next month. The thought of people learning out of sheer joy and passion, or to get a steady job, doesn’t even cross their minds.
Hey, the author of the Japanese and French courses (on your screenshot) is going to delete them?
Am I right?
The author is me, though I’m on the fence about deleting them. I just wrote “will be deleted soon” to not confuse them with the official courses in the screenshot.
Though I have a policy to keep my courses private. Reason being that they are based off of my own experience with learning the languages and the content I consumed, so it will not make too much sense to others. Also, I encourage making your own course instead of learning from others, reason being the experience thing I talked about.
I could make the courses public if anyone wants, but that would defeat the purpose of my policy. Also, I had to delete the kanji levels from the Japanese courses, so everything is just kana right now.
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I think, we need to talk about that.
The target audience
Years ago, I proclaimed here that their courses are not bad as many of You said. I complimented them on doing their job.
But they are very limited in scope to whom they are useful!
I will not beat dead horse about them being for beginners only. That is obvious.
There are other aspects as well - for example they have all the attitude to teach to be able to chat in basic situations in foreign country.
Is that what You expect EVERYONE is learning languages for?
Or the huge majority?
I need learning third langs to be able to understand written and videotaped content on the internet.
Another preposition is that people starting the courses are new at language learning. True for some. Even many.
-> when I was new at learning lang, I would be grateful for such thorough immersion. (But Duolingo was much better than your official courses in that immersion - still I abandoned them for You! btw English is my second lang, learned 15 years ago) Yet - all the Memrise courses are from English to the target lang -> so except people from US and UK (and the like) all the rest of us has to be already fluent in english while learning his third language here right?
Generally speaking I need to focus on rapid absorption of vocabulary only. With the experience of previous lang learned to this extent Portuguese, Italian and other grammars are flowing to my head much more easily by just reading the texts in the lang I learn. (I wasn’t “gifted” that way, I also had to go the hard way 15 years ago)
The only foreign language which I need for chatting and speaking up actively is English (coincidenctally Memrise user created courses - of very advanced english vocabulary are the best tool in existence in the world to polish high end english !! - And actually the only one tool I know about, which is still helpful to me at this stage)
Thanks to learning courses like “the 5000 most frequent words in portuguese” for 15 months I can now read Brazilian articles about investing in Cryptocurrencies or about elections there with ease.
That, while: I never had been in Brazil, Portugal or any other pt speaking country (albeit I plan it) and never have spoken to anyone in pt yet. Thanks MEMRISE!
Keep that up!
I am willing to pay for that.
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To add more to it - unlike the Duolingo or official Memrise C, which are to be completed and abandoned -> I expect to review my knowledge of vocabulary in repetition manner my whole life (but I expect the spaced repetition to go beyond 6 months for that to be feasible). And pay for it!!..
Let me get this clear… The Memrise app will be dead or not? Will I be able to continue use Memrise’s courses on the app (and enjoy my full PRO subscription)? Is it just the community courses that will migrate to Decks website?
The community courses only. The official Memrise courses will be still available on the app of course (and I predict that probably they might even be improved in some manner)
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I was just thinking that it would be good to wait for a little while, because we all are very emotional at the moment. As you can see, there are many negative reviews and however small, but there’s still a chance that Memrise will change their minds.
Also, some users are learning via PC and they will stay on Decks, so they will be frustrated if they can not find deleted courses. Even if it’s your own private courses, maybe you should think about it twice.
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I will likely not delete them. Even if most of my time I’m studying on my PC, I’ll still not come back to Memrise anytime soon. For me, this was the final nail in the coffin, and a clear indicative that I have to move, get used to Anki and grow as a language learner and editor. From what I’ve seen the past 2 days, Anki is way better at organising and compartmentalising decks/courses.
Don’t think this will be the last “improvement” that Memrise is gonna make. Sooner or later, there will be something worse than Decks and just like today, there will be massive uproar.
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Ah, now there’s some logical sense on it for me… Maybe they’ve took this decision to split the courses because the server capacity or something alike that might been affecting the company’s budget. Or maybe it’s just to ease the organization on the site and make it clear as possible in a matter that also will be best for a separate improviment on both Memrise’s or Decks’s courses.
If it will be like this, I don’t see big problems on this migration… Maybe in the beginning will need some time to adapt on it, but if this is for the sake of the company’s survivelance, I am not that disappointed as I was yesterday.
And think about it: It’s very probably that they use ‘Decks’ plataform as a beta for courses that will be in Memrise’s app when they’re already done.
For example… I really enjoyed the finnish courses, but they were all created by the community. Maybe they could do as Duolingo does before a course become as official.
I have tried Anki for Android, but ugh… it’s ugly. No offense, but its design is pretty outdated. I don’t understand how to use it. 
(I’ve downloaded a course and installed, but that’s all) And all these addons for PC… Perhaps it’s more for the geek type of a student.
I can see why you wouldn’t like it. It definitely takes you back to the early 2000’s 
Luckily, the add-ons are very easy to install and you can make it way more clean using them. It just requires patience…a whole lot of patience. It could take me up to a week before I fully sort everything out, reviews included (which are all over the place now).
It really is. It has good functionality and can be tailored to suit user… but only if you know what you’re doing going into it. What is really needed is something with that functionality and Memrise’s previous user friendliness.
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Actually that is why I like the duality of web/app
with app being streamlined and with web interface allowing deeper settings for those who actively seek it.
That means there should exist well balanced default state (in time repetion, points, whatever) and only few apparent choices on the app (with some additional possibilities even there - maybe also accessible through web, but You shouldnt try to start to play with those too early … well I have learned some 18 thousand words here and I still am not sure about benefits of changes of some of the more fundamental parameters - say timing).
I believe, that timing and basic parameters - that is what Memrise got really well. Most probably - that is the scientific background they talk about. (so I’d feel bad to just copy the know how…but I cannot unlearn the knowledge of those parameters 
)
You’ll find the spaced repetition way of learning has been widespread for a long time and Memrise is no original progenitor of it; there’s even a name for the learning algorithm they use, which itself is backed up by scientific research, and there are other algorithms preferred by other sites also. Flashcard sites are also relatively common. You wouldn’t be stealing anything, being my point (except perhaps (ex)Pro members, lol).
As said, PM with your thoughts about how a site like Memrise should work, what functions it should have and how you would personally go about perhaps implementing these. I cant get together a full list without corroborators. I have some but I would like as many varied opinions as possible.
You could even innovate, the staggered learning algorithm in Memrise is not that special.
Ah, yes. But a bit beyond my personal expertise – it sounds mathy (and me no math). I actually do believe the algorithm could be improved on, perhaps by allowing users to in some manner rate how hard they find a word or phrase to recall and adjusting the way its presented accordingly (I suppose this is a feature on Memrise Pro? I never did get around to paying, so unsure if that’s the purpose of the ‘difficult words’ function), or at the basest level even just which words were apparently recalled the most and least quickly (with similarly altered presentation responses from this).
To start with, the learning algorithm should be adaptive and learn along the way the learning curve and patterns of individual learners based on a neural network or something similar. Or brute machine learning. That could be done across all courses, custom content or the ones provided by Memrise. They don’t need to restrict it to Memrise only courses – actually if that’s a requirement then their model is flawed.
Duly noted. Agree with this. Definitely beyond my personal capabilities but will keep it in mind to ask those who know : )