Feature Request - Collaboration Mode for LingQ Lessons

Support & Feedback Forum
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If you like this idea, write “Amen” in the comment section to boost visibility to the LingQ staff to make this probably over ambitious feature request (especially considering 5.0 had taken years haha) at least SLIGHTLY less of a pie in the sky idea if it received enough interest. And apparently 5.0 will be more flexible for feature updates.

Summary:
Make a “collaboration mode” (similar to what you can do in Google Docs) where users can read each other’s LingQ lesson (by invitation) and check each other’s LingQs translations and suggest translations which might be more accurate.

Long Version:
It seems to be popular for websites, including LingQ, to have a section of the site devoted to Writing Collaboration/Exchanges. Although personally I think a feature that would be WAY cooler and increase motivation amongst LingQ members is if two or more people could access a LingQ lesson and collaborate on it by personal invitation, by open invitation, or a “team” style where a closed team of people work together on LingQ lessons together. By this I mean, multiple people could make LingQs on the same lesson which would be helpful if, for example, I’m studying a lesson full of deep slang and I could invite other users studying the same language, native speakers of the language on LingQ, or language tutors on LingQ to look at my LingQs and check if my translations/interpretations are correct. Also if I could check the other users chosen translations for any word in the lesson that might not be LingQd would be great. This would expand on what makes LingQ so valuable to me which is “Popular Translations” submitted by the LingQ users and the Community/Forum and marries them together. These translations are sometimes very context specific and don’t always work. And I’m not able to work on LingQ lessons with members, only discuss language learning tips in the forum. It would be way cooler if we could work together on lessons on the interpretation/translation.

This could be expanded in different ways,:

  1. I’m an English tutor and I’m always trying to get my students to sign up for LingQ. Unfortunately they never do because to them they never take the time to figure out how to use it and I can’t waste their lesson time trying to explain it nor do they watch any tutorials about it. So to get around this stubbornness what I do instead is I download a transcript and load it into a Google Spreadsheet and I essentially make them “LingQ” words/phrases in the spreadsheet and then I can collaborate/check on it later with them. But even if they did sign up for LingQ, I can’t look at their lessons and LingQs to discuss words/phrases they don’t understand even after checking dictionaries or popular translations. We could only do this if we do a share screen. So I would actually suggest a teacher mode for this too where even a guest with a free membership could make unlimited LingQs for ONLY individual lessons they are invited to and the teacher (the pro LingQ user) can look through it and check it. I know this could inspire my students to sign up for memberships after getting used to the system and probably desiring the ability to be able to track stats and save their LingQs.

  2. Also I think this could make more of a purpose for the “Follow” feature of the site which seems a little pointless beyond just checking other’s stats. But if to “Follow” someone meant getting access to their LingQ lessons by default and I could read through the same lesson they did and check their LingQ and their translations and even suggest translations I think are more accurate than what they chose I think this could be a great community feature. The “suggestion” mode could be a nuisance and maybe too much so it’s probably best left to what I mentioned previously for invite collaboration or team mode but seeing other people LingQs and/or their chose translation for words/phrases would be very cool.

Beyond the 2 additional ideas for now I’m most interested in people in the LingQ community being able to colloborate with each other on LingQ lessons via invite or a team mode. I think this would really boost community participation and create cool long lasting relationships connected to the site.

5 Likes
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I agree it would be nice to have a team mode. It could even be developed as a 60 day challenge.

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ya a teams 30, 60, 90 challenge would be quite fun actually

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For those people who already clicked “Like” on the feature idea, can you come back and give this post an “Amen” in the comment section to boost visibility? See reason in my edited original post haha.

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Great idea!!

1 Like
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Yup! It’ll probably just die a quick death though once it reaches the second page of the forum haha

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“Make a “collaboration mode” (similar to what you can do in Google Docs) where users can read each other’s LingQ lesson (by invitation) and check each other’s LingQs translations and suggest translations which might be more accurate.”

I think is potentially a great idea if implemented well. One of the first questions that comes to mind is how it would work for private lessons that are copyrighted. If the other users also own the work, then I don’t think there is any problem, but I can see how it might start getting into a legally iffy area that LingQ might want to avoid. If the feature were limited to certain lessons that are publicly available to anyone then legally it’d be fine, even if not ideal in reach.

Another thought is that with popular translations there already is a public collaboration of sorts. Perhaps with your collaboration mode idea some of the anonymity of translations could disappear and you could see which translations others in your collaboration group (or followed group) chose.

2 Likes
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Interesting question, I’m guessing the answer is it doesn’t have any more legal issues than there already are since I just scrolled through the publicly shared lessons and spotted at least two materials that I believed fall under “copy righted” so I don’t believe a collaboration mode would be any more risky than what’s already going on. But also if the only way to collaborate was through private invitation then that would basically remove the issue altogether, and it would just be like how I can share google documents with copywrited material and google never bats an eye.

The popular translations are a feature that I really treasure in LingQ. It’s why I chose to use LingQ over just downloading learning with texts. Popular translations have saved my butt so much time repeatedly. But ya, the problem is, there is always a time where some content uses a word/phrase in a way that I suppose hasn’t been “discovered” by any LingQ user yet and in a collaboration mode, this could be tackled together or if there are like 6 popular translations of a word/phrase we could at least come to a consensus about which is the correct translation of the word/phrase for a particular context.