I know that, with the new update, daily LingQ goals have changed to daily coin goals. This seemed interesting to me as, previously, there was basically nothing to do with your coins so I thought maybe the system was pushing it more. I checked the support and looked up the article for how to earn coins and what to do with them, only to find a line that says “You can use coins to buy things for your avatar. Note: Avatar will be phased out in v5”
What? The things we could buy for our avatar before were really not that interesting but at least it was something. I’ve always wondered why we were given coins but not much to do with them. I really think that LingQ should just hire someone to make a moderately interesting mobile-style game where the premium currency (that mobile apps use to trick people into spending money) is the LingQ coins. Then, all you need is for the game to be slightly interesting and you give people something to do with the coins and maybe even drive more engagement with the site.
I hope this article gets updated soon, especially since coins have such elevated importance in v5. Some issues and questions:
The screenshots are all from v4.
The iOS app does not display the coin value of a word. I like it this way. But it is inconsistent with the web app. And actually I don’t see the purpose of giving extra credit for more common words.
Are coins earned by reading given only when completing a lesson (as implied in that article)? Or since reading is now tracked constantly and automatically, are coins given while working through a lesson?
The article implies that the number of coins earned by first creating a LingQ and then marking it known, should be the same as simply marking a (blue) word known. But in practice I find this not to be the case. I seem to get more coins when I first make a LingQ out of a blue word, and then mark it known. How is this supposed to work?
Check your e-mail, you should get the message for LingQ about your lost streak. Try finding it and clicking on the link in the mail, you might be able to restore your streak still!
That’d be good if it was customizable. Though i’m not sure about the amount of read words, because you need to finish the lesson to be seen as read, right? So what if you’ve read about 90% of the lesson, it won’t be counted as read words.
This has changed in v5. I’m not sure how it works but the system now tracks your reading as you progress through a lesson, not just when you finish it.
Yeah, i just created a new thread about it. I am a little confused about this system, while it seems a pretty good idea, It tracks my progress very different from reality. Sometimes i just want to skim through the page and back, but it counts as read
I never got an email. I think because I wasn’t going to hit my 100 LingQ goal so I set it to 25 or 50 for the one day and it said I had hit my goal. I did this once before and it worked just fine. This time, however, when I woke up in the morning it showed my streak as 0.
You can always email support if you lose your streak due to an issue and we can repair it manually for you if it’s within the next day. You should also see a popup when you visit the site prompting you to repair your streak in addition to the email.
Yes, if you spend time on a page, our system will consider it as being read. But why wouldn’t skimming be considered reading? We are trying to more accurately track the amount of reading you do.
Seems that no coins are given for making a LingQ from a phrase. That’s a shame, because I find I learn a lot from this specific activity. Steve, in his videos, also seems to be a fan of phrases. I think that coins (now the primary tracker for streaks) should be given for LingQing and learning phrases.
