This year, I’ve earned 2376 points from shared lessons but 3500 from corrected texts and 2625 from hosted conversations (I’ve also participated in 10 conversations - one in English since I just had to use some points before they disappeared). I’ve lost points every month. Since I’m not one of those major contributors, I only earn a couple of hundred points now and then, and that makes it even more annoying losing them. I wouldn’t care as much if I earned several thousands of points each month.
In June alone I earned 335 points but lost 2747…
I’m better off paying twice the number of points for a conversation when I want to rather than spending $10 each month to get a 50% discount IF my own schedule permits…
Jeff, then you have earned roughly 6,000 points from tutoring in the past 6 months, or 1,000 points per month or so. That equates to two 15 minute conversations per month, assuming you do not submit any writing for correction.
I agree that if you do not think you will be using the services of a tutor, it does not make sense to tutor, unless you feel you can earn enough points to cash in.
We do have quite a few tutors who are busy enough to cash in.
I wish I were busy enough to cash in more often and have some remaining points to join some conversations! Sadly, though, I’m Italian and not English or American, so the only way I have to get more points is to share more lessons, which I have started doing.
We all would like to see the site busier, with more members learning, not only English but many languages. We are working and investing in trying to increase membership. Things can only get better.
Guys, I think there is a very simple solution to this problem: I have a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet with which I calculate when my points will expire. I enter the date I received x points in a cell, and on the cell beside it I enter the formula:
[cell with date you received the points on] + 90
This way, I have never lost any points. Not even one. Here is an example of the sort of spreadsheet I use (data have been modified to protect confidentiality)
Friedemann, printing LingQ money would only lead to runaway inflation in LingQ-land, resulting in the points becoming almost worthless. The language learning community may be a little more altruistic than the rest of the world, but surely not to the extent where members would provide services at zero cost.
Perhaps a better solution would be for LingQ to move over to a fully-fledged market economy, replacing the ageing system of price controls that they currently have in place. Then, the LingQ “service providers” would be able to price their services according to the competition and level of demand.
In fact we have enabled the selling of content. Note that you should only sell content which you have created, and not third party content, since that would probably violate the terms under which you are able to share such content.
We will soon be offering content from professional publishers for sale. However, any existing content creator can also set a price for his content. It remains to be seen how our community reacts and how it will all work out.
hape and myself can’t be the only ones who don’t like the fact that the points we earn from tutoring/shared content can’t be “saved”. It’s not that I don’t WANT to use the tutoring services, but rather the fact that I CAN’T use it satisfactory. I don’t want to spend the points under pressure, like people spend all their salary because of inflation (“Who knows what this money will be worth tomorrow?)”.
+9275 P. = Shared Lessons Awards
+1000 P. = Bonus
+4037 P. = Corrections & Conversations as a Tutor
-5636 P. = Corrections as a student
-1500 P. = Conversations as a student
-7176 P. = Points expiration
The reasons that I lost over 7000 points are several:
– Tutors offer conversations at unsuitable times of the day. (Chinese, French)
– I didn’t like the tutor (poor reports, etc.)
– No tutors available at all (e.g. Chinese).
– No possibility to change the points into cash or use them as member fee.
In summary the whole system is not attractive at all (for me). It’s in fact a two-class system: tutors who earn > 10000 points can change them easily into cash, and the rest has to find a way to spend them, but cannot easily.
To get the 9275 + 4037 points, I worked many hours. But I lost about 50% of the compensation because I simply could not spend the points. So I finished offering services in May, and I removed all the content that I uploaded from the library. My primary interest is anyway MY language learning, not the creation of content for other students.
jeff and hape you’re indeed not alone, I agree with you completely.
You come to a point where you have to decide if you want to stress and struggle to get to 10,000 points in 3 months, and risk losing lots of points, so all your work ends up going to the drain, ending up working for free. Or you just offer a few hours of tutoring to pay for tutoring services in the languages you’re studying.
So I decided the latter, I don’t offer corrections anymore (just when old students ask me to) and I’ve reduced the hours I offer for conversations (3 hours/week now) (planing to reduce them even more).
If tutoring points didn’t expire or at least expired in 6 months I would offer more hours of conversations but that’s how things are and I tried to adapt. Jolly good!.
I completely agree with Berta about extending the expiring period (for example to 6 months). People would have more time to try to get 10.000 points or simply to choose the way to use the points. Besides, the best of all is that people couldn’t keep points forever in their accounts (as far as I know the current policy of expiring points pursues exactly that).
I don’t see your argument about inflation. As long as the number of points required for a certain service (tutoring, writing correction etc.) is fixed, there is no price inflation. We simply pay ourselves with services which have a certain value in points. Of course the number of points would increase with increasing use of LingQ but that would only reflect the growing number of activities and users.
To everyone:
I’ll ask my question again: How many people do we think are in it for the money? I personally think most of us are here because of our passion for laguages. If we want to make money there are far better ways to do it.
Friedemann, it should be up to the user to decide if he/she is at LingQ for the money, for the passion of learning languages, for getting a lot of points and use them to have writings corrected or tutoring or whatever. In my view LingQ should be flexible enough to fit all this different kinds of users.
A final thought: For western people, a bunch of bucks could not be a lot of money, but unfortunately for people of certain countries, the money you make for being a tutor for a few conversations per month could be more than an average salary in their country.
it seems to me that some people including respected Lingq veterans are not too happy with the point scheme as it is today. If points are cashable, in order to make it a zero sum game, points need to be confiscated. You cannot have it both ways. Again, I suspect that there would be no exodus of tutors if points were to be made uncashable, but of course I have no proof of it.
As I said earlier, there is a very simple way to know when your points will expire. Just use this spreadsheet. Electronic spreadsheets always surprise me, they can be used in a wide range of activities.
The one way I make sure of using points is by regularly booking speaking sessions or by submitting writing - which in the case of some languages apparently is not easy. As Steve has written elsewhere, that is much more the issue to be addressed. How can we as tutors or contributors offer what we as students need, what more can LingQ do ease occasional shortcomings? How to attract and keep tutors of ‘rare’ languages? Could there be a dispensation based on the number of active students? What a nightmare!
I am not here for the money, to answer Friedemann’s earlier question, I simply love learning, tutoring and writing. Actually, I ‘pay’ to put my French contribution into the library. Serge corrects the texts and Marianne records them for me. I wouldn’t want her to do that for free. Last year I exchanged points for membership, something which was nice
I still, however, buy points when I find I am running low just as I have been bitten by the writing bug:
I agree with Oscar’s point, the cash value of points may have quite a different impact in some countries.
I also agree, however, that LingQ’s business is their business. By using LingQ, we necessarily agree to buy their services as they stand at any one time.
I agree with Oscar’s concern on poorer countries. But I think it would be difficult to write code to differentiate between countries. And of course people could claim they come from, say, Bangladesh and ask for discounts
@SanneT: “Last year I exchanged points for membership”
It seems you are a very distinguished LingQ customer. Never heard or read that this is possible
If you are on vacation / a journey, or you are sick, or you are very busy at home or work, then 3 months are much too short to find an opportunity to spend points.
There are people that have more things to do than spending 10+ hours per day listening, reading, writing, speaking, tutoring, creating content, translating the LingQ site (what I also did for free a few times), …, …
As Steve (and others) said: Over and OUT - I will become a “free” member when my paying membership ends.
to hape: “@SanneT: “Last year I exchanged points for membership”
It seems you are a very distinguished LingQ customer. Never heard or read that this is possible :-(”
That’s not a VIP thing hape, this has been said in the forum a couple of times I believe. You have to pay for at least 6 months of your lingq membership, that is 6,000 points.
I too exchanged points for 1 year of membership in January, when there was this offer that you payed for 10 months but you got 1 year (100$=10,000 points).
Sadly, though, I’m Italian and not English or American, so the only way I have to get more points is to share more lessons, which I have started doing.