Go for it!
Tell the world what you think what will happen to Memrise. Will it grow? Will it die? WHY?
Please no harsh comments or fights please. Respect other people’s opinions!!!
1 Like
it won’t die
it will just change
Nice to know. People think it is DYING. Dun dun dahhhh!!!
I like your light-hearted attitude towards it, but the doom and gloom your witnessing is because some learners feel like the memrise that they relied on is dying and being replaced. To answer your question, I agree with @IchigoSmof that it will just change.
To save people the trouble and give you some perspective on people’s attitudes, i’ll type out some qualms.
When I started on here about 4-5 years ago, if asked, i’m sure the majority of users would of easily handed over 20-30 dollars annually to contribute to the website and its overall goal of being an enjoyable and very effective place to learn. Back then, unless you were in the dregs a bit, memrise was this rare gem and the first to market well spaced repetition learning. It was paired with a simple design of the idea you could plant your memories and water them to flourish. To top it off, to attach the idea of mems and have a system up searchable graphics to easily create and share ways to retain words was awesome. In the background, it seemed that things were being made more glamorous, such as the mountainous/flowery background as time went on but it generally stuck to a theme.
When the premium started, I got the impression that a brainstorm session was had to come up with quick ways of why people should pay for premium, ala speed review, charted learning, badges, streaks, etc. with some being made premium features and some not. Shortly after came a large initiative to film video of native speakers for specific courses. This is where the priority shifted in a big way towards some elusive plans of the company vs. what the previously thought goal of learning was. I mean, a lot of people would have been happy to have a dictionary or place to look at definitions for words in their courses. Surely this could have been incorporated easier than a road trip with video? Besides this, there were other small concerns and ideas that could have made the website extremely polished in what it already was. Mems were also limited and ranking was taken away.
When the app came out, a lot of attention further shifted. For example, creating these forums that most are unaware of and taking the course forums away. The algorithm for the app always seemed off to me and I couldn’t retain words the same so I clung to the website. The garden theme was then abandoned and in the recent months, a large shift in marketing focus was implemented again. As I’ve mentioned before, I think a group or individual was hired that had experience in bringing other products to market, and hence the very universal/child-like themes paired with a space theme. This is only bad subjectively, but I think the intent was to carry on the success of the app in the appstore, and a more game like, clickbaity theme accomplishes that.
I could go on and i’m sure others will, and i’m giving you a perspective on the negative and skimming past positive contributions by devs and their efforts, but the backlash is from people not criticizing them but the general direction things are going which seems to be away from a serious learning device and more towards entertainment. The reason why you’re seeing more doom and gloom recently is that these changes and evolutions are now crossing over to the website where some people were in hiding with fingers crossed that nothing gets broken. For instance my priorities before were 1. Don’t make this so ridiculous that I can’t open it and learn for hours at work 2. Don’t mess with the algorithm 3. Don’t break the general function of the learning/reviewing. All three of these have been walked over as of late.
It’s still a great website with lots of function, but it’s also radically different and has adopted a bit of the corporate hiding behind a preschool front vs. the warm everyone is reachable community of before. Dun dun dahhhhh!!!
8 Likes
Yeah I don’t get the space and garden themes mixed together. Just doesn’t make sense. I use the app to learn, but the website to strengthen (because speed review is free here!) words. Yes I could use the website to learn but its a bit hard on the device I use, and am currently working on.
I use Duolingo. It is improving, with languages, bots and such, but it has a bad reputation because of its accesability to trolls and such. Although that, it is worse than Memrise. It is way less community based, and the forums go out of control all the time. Should I compare them? Well, maybe. But currently, Duolingo is more gameish as there is a virtual currency and such.
I think, If Memrise wants to change something big (any complany really), they should tell their current users and if some of the users have a problem with it, either don’t do it, or make and option.
Here, I will finish. I have nothing else to say, except that Memrise Is a greate place to learn.
1 Like