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Post by Camden Ferguson on Apr 19, 2017 3:34:08 GMT
Hello friends, acquaintances, strangers. Today, a tragedy has befallen the language community. If you have not seen or been made privy to this yet, this is official. Duolingo has shut down the Activity streams for good.
Many of us remember the website in its former glory. Immersion, Activity streams, helpful sentence discussions, and uncluttered forums. The alternative we see today is that which has stolen Immersion, one of the greatest language-learning tools I've had available to me, Activity streams, a way to meet new friends and forge new relationships, along with getting specific help about any matter of things, and even as a way to keep your friends motivated as they snacked on skills and worked their way towards capturing that next owl. The forums have turned to a cesspool of spammers and irrelevance. Instead of giving users what we want, more keeps being taken with paltry excuses for replacements given, namely in the largely unused Duolingo Clubs feature and rigid bots that don't allow for fluid conversation. Indeed, a tragedy, and this will never stop being a tragedy. I would like to take a moment to recognize those that we will have lost, and with whom we may never be able to speak again. I have no doubt that many of us have lost contact with several friends with this decision. Duolingo may have just pulled the chain on the guillotine placed above their own necks. But as sad as this may be, it does not have to signify the end of the community.
Through Josephine's amazing initiative and goodwill, we have this amazing place, to work, grow, and talk together. As a community. As friends. We are strong together, and we can accomplish a great many things. Keep working. Keep translating. Keep talking to one another. Because together, we can change the world. Are you ready to change the world?
With great love and caring to all,
~Camden Ferguson
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Post by michaeldi5 on Apr 19, 2017 6:34:24 GMT
According to Von Ahn, we will be able to talk to our Duo friends again "soon".
How soon? Only time will tell. It's blow after blow. First immersion, then activity. What next? discussions? Perhaps soon they'll take away the actual courses and all we'll have are useless lingots to customize avatars. (It's quite the hyperbole, I know.) What I really don't understand is why Duolingo time after time pull these things away with absolutely no warning given to the users. These aren't useless features they're taking. In fact, I'd argue that immersion was the most useful tool of all on Duolingo. I've completed my German tree long ago, I've surpassed what it can teach me, I'm there for immersion, the discussions and to talk to others on the activity feed...
But have no fear! For now we have clubs! Sure, they do absolutely nothing, but it's where Duolingo can dedicate their time and effort to in order to justify taking away useful features! You actually learn from immersion? So what! Join a club and compare XP, something you could do all along, except now it has its own tab in the app!
It would be awesome if Duo were to actually care about what it's users wanted. As I'm writing this, I just received a spam email from Duolingo. Is this what they've become? Duo, you're better than this! I liked Duo because it was different. Free language learning for all! And to be fair, it's still free language learning... unless you buy "Duolingo plus" or get extorted to buy back the streaks that have been unfairly taken away. Duo was an organization of people wanting to make a difference and now it's just business.
This metaphorical "new car" Duo is buying better be worth it, I hope they have insurance because if they keep on this road, they're sure to crash. Sooner or later, it's only going to be the childish spammers who are left. The true language learners will have moved on to a place that actually cares about what the users want and what's important to learning.
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Post by Trofaste on Apr 19, 2017 10:45:05 GMT
According to Von Ahn, we will be able to talk to our Duo friends again "soon". How soon? Only time will tell. It's blow after blow. First immersion, then activity. What next? discussions? Perhaps soon they'll take away the actual courses and all we'll have are useless lingots to customize avatars. (It's quite the hyperbole, I know.) What I really don't understand is why Duolingo time after time pull these things away with absolutely no warning given to the users. These aren't useless features they're taking. In fact, I'd argue that immersion was the most useful tool of all on Duolingo. I've completed my German tree long ago, I've surpassed what it can teach me, I'm there for immersion, the discussions and to talk to others on the activity feed... But have no fear! For now we have clubs! Sure, they do absolutely nothing, but it's where Duolingo can dedicate their time and effort to in order to justify taking away useful features! You actually learn from immersion? So what! Join a club and compare XP, something you could do all along, except now it has its own tab in the app! It would be awesome if Duo were to actually care about what it's users wanted. As I'm writing this, I just received a spam email from Duolingo. Is this what they've become? Duo, you're better than this! I liked Duo because it was different. Free language learning for all! And to be fair, it's still free language learning... unless you buy "Duolingo plus" or get extorted to buy back the streaks that have been unfairly taken away. Duo was an organization of people wanting to make a difference and now it's just business. This metaphorical "new car" Duo is buying better be worth it, I hope they have insurance because if they keep on this road, they're sure to crash. Sooner or later, it's only going to be the childish spammers who are left. The true language learners will have moved on to a place that actually cares about what the users want and what's important to learning. Just a couple points I'd like to make (and I'm not in any way disagreeing with what you said, it is unfortunately far too true). First, this time there was at least intent to give warning, but they had to pull the plug on Activity early (I'm going to assume Luis is telling the truth that it was early because of everything else I know and as yet I have no reason to disbelieve him). But due to their past record of uncommunicativeness it makes a lot of people unhappy that there was no announcement beforehand. If they had communicated in the past, and then explained this time that they had planned to say something but unfortunately due to circumstances had to remove Activity earlier than planned and thus didn't announce it before hand, people would give them a lot more leeway. So I think people are being harsher than necessary on them in this case, but that they rather brought it on themselves by their lack of communication in the past. Second, I'm not sure if that part was serious or not, but I really, really doubt they're removing the discussions any time in the remotely near future. This is the main reason why: Would be pretty pointless to rewrite the forum if they're just going to remove it soon. Further, there is a replacement for Activity on the way: This sounds a lot more promising than just "We have a great new feature on the way!" Oh, it's clubs which are really rather pointless. We're being told specifically that they're adding ways for us to communicate with each other. Obviously we're not being told what it's going to be like so we can't judge how good it will be compared to Activity, but at least we know they're not shutting communication off completely and permanently except for the forums and it's possible the replacement will be better. Because we don't know, we'll have to wait and see, but until we know for sure that the replacement is as pathetic as clubs it would be best for us to take the charitable view that they may have something better in the works and really were forced by circumstances to handle it poorly.
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Post by Camden Ferguson on Apr 19, 2017 11:04:48 GMT
Trofaste But that's the thing. They handled it poorly, just as they keep handling things poorly. The community is important to the longevity of the website and company, and they only keep slighting the community over and over again out of the blue. Was it rumored that Activity was disappearing and soon? Yes. But nobody had any idea why. Hardly any of the moderators even had any idea it was coming. Usagi was concerned, but they didn't even receive any word at all and I'm fairly sure they're one of the top moderators. They have opportunities to handle things better, and they can put logistical resources towards things in a better way than they have been. Clubs are useless. And yes, the bots are being developed (I'm still a tester for these), but the testers were supposed to have more access and leeway to bots than normal and it was supposed to log the new responses my turning the text gray and shaking it. That is not the case. It is still just as rigid before and doesn't appear to allow me to type anything other than "El caballo cafe come pan." No variety. I feel lucky to even be able to put brown modifying horse.
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Post by Trofaste on Apr 19, 2017 11:32:45 GMT
Camden Ferguson I think you missed my point. Yes, they handled it poorly, but this time there was intent to handle it better, and I'm quite certain they would have if circumstances hadn't required them to remove Activity earlier than planned. "Nobody had any idea why" - Obviously not, because people weren't supposed to know yet. There was supposed to be an official announcement sometime this week and they would start *phasing it out* (not removing it completely [see El2theK's comment for a source]). How much information they'd have given we don't know, of course, but they were at least planning to communicate something. "Hardly any of the moderators even had any idea it was coming. Usagi was concerned, but they didn't even receive any word at all and I'm fairly sure they're one of the top moderators." - Judging from the comments by various moderators, most actually did know but some, including Usagi, were accidentally not included in the notification. That sounds like an honest mistake. As for clubs and bots, I haven't really used them, clubs because I looked at them and determined that they're useless, bots because last I heard they were only available on iOS. Like everything else possibly worth having seems to be these days...
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Post by Camden Ferguson on Apr 19, 2017 13:13:22 GMT
Trofaste You're not missing much with the iOS-specific features. "There was intent to handle it better". But this does not mean it would necessarily have been handled better. Perhaps I doubt it due to my growing cynicism as to Duolingo's motives and way of handling things. But I'm not sure they would have handled things better if they had had an opportunity to at all. They certainly didn't handle Immersion well, and their motives for the retiring of it was skewed. They had it as an A/B test, automatically cutting off a lot of people from using the service, slighting the numbers. Of course the number of users using a feature is going to be less if you lock half of the users in a cage. A/B testing, at least in my opinion, should be used only for the placement of potential new features, not restricting of features that others still have. They did the same thing with the activity streams and started taking them from people without word before it was officially shut down. And with something this big and website-altering, the company should have made sure that all relevant parties were informed. Overlooking that, even if it is a mistake, is unacceptable. This affects everybody that is active on the website. Failing to notify all of the moderators is a glaring oversight that should have been addressed immediately. Think not that I am disrespecting you if I seem a bit harsh. My frustration is directed towards Duolingo, not anyone here. =)
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Post by michaeldi5 on Apr 19, 2017 18:13:14 GMT
Hello, Trofaste, thanks for your comment! I'll address a few points to hopefully clear some things up That's what he says at least, and even if we do believe him, what someone intends to do and what someone does are often very different, as is the case here. He's the CEO, he should know better. And if it's replacement is going to be ready so soon, exactly how much warning was he planning on giving us, a few days? a week tops I presume. Perhaps people are being a little too harsh, but I don't think this is the real reason, but rather "the straw that broke the camel's back" so to say. I think many of the learners are unhappy with the direction the site is heading in general. The lack of communication is just one part of the puzzle. Duolingo went from a nice learning environment with awesome tools to a spammer's paradise. No matter on the activity screen, in the forums or discussions of sentences, all you see anymore are trolls and spammers. And as you said, the lack of communication during the removal of immersion has made a lot of users lose trust in Duo. They pulled the rug right out from under our feet. This experience feels the exact same, even if they did intend on warning us, they didn't. You were correct in being unsure their. I was grossly exaggerating. I don't truly believe it will be going anywhere. It was to just to further show my point that useful, helpful features for language learning are being removed. I agree it does sound more promising, and it could, in fact, be great! ... Could. As this whole situation has shown us, things very often do not go according to plan. Who knows how long it will be until we can talk again. This new "better" system may not be here so "soon" after all. Also, Duolingo has shown us that what they see as "better" can be absolutely useless as it was with Clubs. I've seen screenshots of a avatar customizer on one of the apps. That's absolutely unnecessary, this app isn't a dress up game for four-year-olds, it is for learning languages. They use biased "metrics" to make controversial decisions that affect us in great ways. Don't get me wrong, I try to help Duo out as much as I can. I have applied as a contributor, I am a Bots Alpha Tester as well as an Alpha Tester for the new Japanese course. I'd gladly donate to Duolingo and I'm grateful for the free language education it has provided to me. However, I'm losing faith in their strategy going forward.
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Post by zzzzz on Apr 19, 2017 19:03:15 GMT
I feel the need to lighten up the discussion here. Why Duolingo is so glitchy.
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Post by michaeldi5 on Apr 19, 2017 20:02:16 GMT
Why Duolingo is so glitchy. Ich wusste es!!
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Post by Snape on Apr 21, 2017 13:20:22 GMT
Perhaps there is a silver lining behing this tradegy. Now that the activity stream is gone we might get a lot more people joining CT and that is better for this community, as we need a lot more translators here. If I can say one more thing here we are translating 'La Reine Margot' from French to English. Please feel free to join. I know Gaelle has been slogging it out on her own for about a month now.
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Post by Anijo (ThanKwee) on Apr 21, 2017 18:08:35 GMT
Snape,
You are a real optimist. I do enjoy having found this new community. It might take me a while (since I'm a dinosaur) to figure out how it works though.
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Post by stripedkitty on Apr 21, 2017 20:50:03 GMT
Perhaps there is a silver lining behing this tradegy. Now that the activity stream is gone we might get a lot more people joining CT and that is better for this community, as we need a lot more translators here. I admit I joined for that reason- the activity stream was was very helpful to my learning and without it Duo seems like a shell of its former self :[ Snape: If I can say one more thing here we are translating 'La Reine Margot' from French to English. Please feel free to join. I know Gaelle has been slogging it out on her own for about a month now.(Another dinosaur needing to figure out how things work here, incl. multiple quotes!). I would be interested on joining in on La Reine Margot, though I'm going to need a little time to figure out the ropes of how it works- this is a little intimidating to a new-comer- please let me know where to find the translation and I'll give it go
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Post by Trofaste on Apr 21, 2017 21:05:15 GMT
Perhaps there is a silver lining behing this tradegy. Now that the activity stream is gone we might get a lot more people joining CT and that is better for this community, as we need a lot more translators here. I admit I joined for that reason- the activity stream was was very helpful to my learning and without it Duo seems like a shell of its former self :[ Snape : If I can say one more thing here we are translating 'La Reine Margot' from French to English. Please feel free to join. I know Gaelle has been slogging it out on her own for about a month now.(Another dinosaur needing to figure out how things work here, incl. multiple quotes!). I would be interested on joining in on La Reine Margot, though I'm going to need a little time to figure out the ropes of how it works- this is a little intimidating to a new-comer- please let me know where to find the translation and I'll give it go stripedkitty For multiple quotes look in the options at the top of the reply box. The "quote" button should be third from the right. Click that, then copy/paste what you want to quote into the box where it says "insert quote here". Here is La Reine Margot (Home Page --> English --> Translation from French --> Google Docs). To join, you will need to PM the document owner (in this case, gaelle044) and ask her to add you. She'll need you to give her a gmail address. If you need help with anything, feel free to ask.
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Post by stripedkitty on Apr 22, 2017 5:28:20 GMT
Thanks Trofaste- I appreciate that!
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Post by Trofaste on Apr 22, 2017 7:49:31 GMT
You're welcome!
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