Disabling the streak messaging and ignoring streak is your best option right now. Adding an option to entirely remove streaks is not something we’re going to provide any time soon. It would require too many interface changes.
Consistency is a hugely important part of language acquisition. Streaks are a way to encourage consistency. And coins are how streaks are measured and are further used to measure overall activity. You can ignore all of it, if you don’t find them useful.
I would encourage you guys to leave a feature request about disabling the streak and encourage others to vote on it: Feature Requests | LingQ
My issue with the coins and streaks is that it does not encourage good learning practices, and there are far too many bugs.
For example, revising is extremely useful. It reinforces vocabulary and grammar, and gives the learner a measure of progress as it should be easier a few weeks or months later. However, whenever I revisit a lesson, I get no new words. So the scoring system punishes me. LingQ thinks I don’t gain new words by revising, which is not the case,
Secondly, if I mark LingQs in a German lesson, I often end up with negative known words. So LingQs just don’t work, for me at least, and I don’t use them.
As for coins, they are weird, sometimes after a few minutes with a German lesson I’ve achieved my quota, sometimes it takes a lot longer.
Lastly, if I watch an imported YouTube film in French, I get zero rewards. I’ve lost a streak several times despite spending one hour listening. To correct this, I have to go to the line view, then manually move through each line, starting at the beginning, until I reach my current location. This is unbelievably tedious. The problem is that watching an imported YouTube video does not advance the current location in the transcript. That also causes countless other issues e.g. switch to another app, then switch back, and the video goes back to the starting location, not the current one,
And you recently broke the line view scrolling. If I repeatedly use a finger to push the page left, so as to move to the next lines, it now scrolls an unpredictable number of lines ahead, sometimes way more than needed. It used to be one finger scroll to advance one line.
I’m using an iPad with the latest iOS if that is significant.
@LeifGoodwin I’ll try to address all of your points.
Bugs - please report when you come across a bug.
Revisiting lessons - This is a good point and something we should somehow build in to the reward system.
“if I mark LingQs in a German lesson, I often end up with negative known words” - Can you elaborate? You mean words were marked known but than you LingQ them, so the lesson nets in a loss of known words? How does that lead to LingQs not working for you?
" sometimes after a few minutes with a German lesson I’ve achieved my quota, sometimes it takes a lot longer." - There is a system for how coins are rewarded: 1 coin for 10 words of reading, 1 coin for 36 seconds of listening, 1 coin x the value of a word for creating a LingQ, 1 coin x the value of a word for increasing the status of a LingQ, 5 coins x the value of a word for moving blue words to known. So if you have a lot of high value words in a lesson or you move a bunch of new words to known, then you will hit your goal faster.
“I’ve lost a streak several times despite spending one hour listening.” - THis should earn you 100 coins. If your goal is set to 200 or 400, then you wouldn’t have reached it. If listening to the video is not earning you coins at a rate of 1 coin every 36 seconds, then that is a bug that needs to be investigated and fixed.
“The problem is that watching an imported YouTube video does not advance the current location in the transcript.” - Right, this is because of the function that advancing in page mode, moves blue words to known. But actually, on iOS, you can tap and hold the text in Karaoke Mode and it will take you to that sentence in sentence mode. Try that out.
“If I repeatedly use a finger to push the page left, so as to move to the next lines, it now scrolls an unpredictable number of lines ahead, sometimes way more than needed.” - Thanks, I’ve created an iOS bug report for this.
I have done, and serious bugs are not fixed, I reported the one below about video mode not updating the current line location ages ago, it’s still present. I guess the staff think it’s not a bug. Perhaps I have to use the app in the approved manner, rather than how I want to use it, who knows. There are other very serious bugs that I have reported such as the current line in video mode not visible, and that’s not been fixed. It can make it unuseable.
There’s not much to say. I go through a German lesson, a 15 minute YouTube video say, and if I mark LingQs, I often end up with a negative word count. So I don’t mark LingQs. I have no knowledge of the internal workings of the app.
In general I find that LingQ seems to massively overestimate how quickly I learn words, maybe I have a poor memory.
I think you misunderstand. If I listen to a 40 minute video (which takes one hour as I look up some words), and do so in line mode i.e. I manually play each line, I get a high number of coins and known words. If instead I listen in video mode, then I get very few coins, and maybe very few known words, I am not sure about that. That is why I lose a streak in video mode. If I want to get the full correct coin count, I have to open the line mode. When I do that, I see that the green line does not extend to my current position in the video. It is where it was when I opened LingQ. Let’s say when I open LingQ I am at line 500 and after watching a video I am at line 1000. In that case I have to move the line mode back to the end of the green line at line 500, then manually swipe left, working through each line until I reach my true current location which is line 1,000. Then everything is kushtie. This in my view is a bug, as in French I have no interest in line mode, except if I want to copy a phrase or check a word. Having to needlessly manually swipe through hundreds of lines is incredibly tedious. LingQ should automatically advance the green line when in video mode.
This also has another consequence which is so serious that I often wonder if it’s worth using LingQ. If I am in video mode, I started LingQ at line 500, I am now watching at line 1,000 and I decide to check a word using an external dictionary. So I task to another app. Then I task back to LingQ, and restart the video, it will automatically move back to the very start of the video. This drives me crazy, it’s a serious and fundamental bug. If I haven’t recorded my last location, it can take me ages to refind it. Yes I have reported this ages ago, yes it’s still there.
Yes I’m aware of that, that’s not the problem. See earlier comments.
My streak was also broken.
I only used Lingq via the mobile app this weekend as I could not use it from my computer. Today I realized that my streak was broken. Can you help me get it back? Also regarding the mobile app issue, is there any action needed on my part to resolve the sync issue?
I’m not sure what you mean by negative word count. Like -3 Known Words Added? It sounds like this happens because you create LingQs from words that were previously marked known.
You earn more coins in page or sentence mode than in karaoke mode, because of coins earned from creating lingqs and marking words known. You can’t do that in karaoke mode, and this don’t earn coins for that. It’s not a bug, just how karaoke mode works. You can make a feature request for changing how karaoke mode works, and if others are interested it will increase the chances we do it.
So you are saying that if you are in karaoke mode and then switch to a different app, but keep the lesson in LingQ open, when you come back to LingQ, the video starts back from the beginning? Or you mean that you close the LingQ app entirely, and then it starts back from the beginning?
Yes, earning -3 known words added when I spend 30 minutes on a lesson. I have no idea why it happens, just that it does, which is why I do not use LingQs.
This has nothing to do with creating LingQs as I don’t use that feature. If this is how it should work, then it’s ridiculous. I would also argue that I learn more by using video mode than line mode. When you enter line mode, you see a green line at the top indicating progress. When I watch a YouTube video for one hour, then switch to line mode, I see that the green line has not been updated. THAT is the issue. Update the green line, and lots of bugs should evaporate.
This has lots of side effects that make video mode (I assume that is what you call karaoke mode) hard to use.
Bug 1. I watch a video for 15 minutes, then switch to line mode and select “Edit line”. I correct a typo in the line, then click on Done. It takes ages to apply the edit, and then moves back to the end of the green line. I then have to spend ages trying to find where I am in the video.
Bug 2. I watch a video for 15 minutes, then switch to the Safari browser to research a word e.g. passerelle. I switch back to LingQ, and the video goes back to the beginning. I then have to spend ages trying to find where I am in the video. I reported this bug months ago, it’s still there. Here is the workaround. Before switching to the Safari browser, I enter line mode. Then when I return to LingQ, I switch back to video mode.
Bug 3. I watch a video for one hour, then close LingQ. I come back the next day and I have lost the streak. That’s madness. Here is the workaround. I watch a video for one hour, then I switch to line mode. I check the current line number, 567 say. I move the current location to the end of the green line, line 20 say. I then manually move to the next line until I have reached line 567. Now my streak is maintained, This is ridiculous. It’s tedious, time consuming and boring. I reported this bug months ago, it’s still there.
Bug 4. I watch a video, and the current line is highlighted in bold in the transcript. Sometimes the current line is not on screen hence it cannot be read. That makes video mode pointless, I’m better off watching the video in YouTube. This can happen on short (10 minute) video and on long videos. I reported this bug months ago, it’s still there. It was driving me nuts last night.
As it stands video mode is almost unuseable. However, I have figured out how to fix the bugs so that it works.
Yes.
It seems to me that LingQ put out new features without adequate testing and user feedback. Perhaps you could do less releases, but with more features and fixes per release, and only release a new version to a select group of users who can test the changes, and provide feedback. As it stands, it looks like developers just integrate changes as and when they feel like it.
Hi Zoran, could you please repair my streak? I’ve lost it a few times recently even though I’ve studied - it appears to be my internet connection as i don’t always have data to register the streak before midnight. Thank you
Hi, I had the same problem yesterday. I reached my target in both Greek and Hungarian, but the system told me that I lost both my streaks. I was offered to buy it back in Greek, which I did, but not in Hungarian.
Therefore I lost my streak in Hungarian
Could you please fix it? Thank you!
Same for me. I lost my Streak of over 500 days, because apparently my progress didn’t syncronize. I usually use the Android app but yesterday I did the lesson in the web browser from my PC.
Hello there, I happen to have the same problem. I lost my English strike despite completing the daily quota. I would appreciate it if you could fix that as well.
This looks like it must be a server issue. Its currently the morning of thursday for me and it says i lost my thursday streak. It shows that i did my effort for wednesday though. Very weird bug. So if someone could repair mine as well that would be swell.
The same thing happened to me today. I repaired my streak for 5000 coins, of course, but I have no idea why it was broken in the first place. The notification I got did not clear things for me, 'cause the amount of coins was reached:
