I am interested in getting input on how content sharing is going to work best.
I have been using content created by Mairo in Portuguese. I have enjoyed it and listened to it often. I took it free of charge from the Store. I would gladly pay points for it retroactively. I am sure others would as well.
I wanted to buy audio books in Portuguese and so I found a site which sold audio books (http://www.audiolivro.com/) There I bought audio books. I had to pay for them. They do not give their content away free of charge. It is not fair that I pay audio livro but can use Mairo’s content free.
Irene, Marianne, Anna and Ruth have created phenomenal content in German, French, Russian and Spanish, as others have in Japanese and other languages. Recently I had some interviews from my visit to France. Serge transcribed one. But there are more. Marianne has agreed to transcribe them, but this takes time. It is not fair to rely on the volunteer efforts of our members without some compensation.
Yet I notice that most people will select free content from the Store but avoid the content that has a price tag on it. Should members pay up front, or should we have a system where we pay after using content, if we really like it. I certainly would gladly pay Mairo for his Portuguese content. The problem is that some people would pay and others would not.
Of course all of this will depend on us recruiting lots of learners in all of the languages in the future, but I would be interested in hearing your opinions.
No, your assignment limit will not increase when you share content. Originally, we weren’t going to have an archive and delete button so we wanted to offer a way for members to increase their storage capacity. However, because we decided to allow people to archive and delete assignments, we are no longer going to do this.
I would suggest that lingQ convert shared content into points to the uploader. Maybe you could make a kind of filtering before really giving the points, so you could garantee a minimum quality standard.
I’m thinking in a system similar to a moderated forum, where the message only becomes public after being accepted by the moderators. In this case, the shared content would be moderated.
I’m not sure I would pay for content, since at least in English there is much more content in the internet than I could ever use. Maybe in less common languages a payment system would work, but in English, I don’t know.
A delayed and optional payment could be an interesting scheme. Something semi-automatic, maybe. Like this: you load a paid content to your workdesk, and if you don’t give up it in, say, some hours, your points are decreased by the item price. During evaluation time you could have the audio only in streaming mode, for instance.
Well, these are some ideas I just tossed here, I hope they are useful.
Here is how we are looking at this issue here at LingQ headquarters. I would like some feedback.
We think that we have a new policy that will help our learners focus on their learning better, help our community, and reward those who create content, whether audio or transcript or both.
At present LingQ members can carry points forward into the following month. The result is that our members are doing less because there is no pressure to speak or write this month. A number of members have told us that without the pressure to use their monthly allotment of speaking and writing, they do less, and learn less. We propose to stop allowing learners to carry points forward in the near future.
Where will the points go? They will go into a community content fund. The accumulated points will go towards rewarding people who contribute content.
We will make all content created by LingQ members free to the users up front.
The providers of content will be compensated from the community content fund based on the popularity of the content that they create.
Members will also be able to “tip” directly to the providers of especially good content, or agree to pay someone a specific number of points for doing some specific recording or transcribing for them. The communication can take place here at the forum, which will be improved.
So, what do you think? You “use or lose” your points. Content will be free and the “lost points” will go into a content fund and redistributed. You will also be able to pay points directly to a contributor.
Your idea seems good to me. People do less when there is nothing to really boost them as they are also more inclined to use free contents.
Human have this relation with money. It’s normal and global.
If we know that we’ll lose money if we do not use our points, it’ll be a booster to work more on our language learning.
It is not so unfair to make this change as it was the case with TheLinguist; when we did not use our allowed discussions and did not write a certain amount of words, they were not hold over the next month! Moreover our goal in enrolling at The Linguist and now LingQ is to learn a language, isn’t it?
Concerning the contents, that’s fine to create that community content fund. Free contents are more attractive than the ones which are not.
People who create them get nothing, or very few, for them with the actual system. With the community fund, they might then be able to have a compensation for their work?
I’m working on contents; Nevertheless, with the system of earning points for the creation of contents, I and others who do as well, will never earn a lot. I’m also a learner thus I also understand that free contents are more taken!
Your new idea might be good on both sides. Learners will have access to all contents for free and learners who work on contents will have rewards.
If it works well, it might also encourage more and more members to create contents! That will be good for everyone then.
‘La boucle est bouclée!’
Now, if ever you apply this, it’ll be necessary to know a little more how it’ll work.
Here on the forum, it’ll be nice to have exchange of feeling, ideas about the contents and which kind of contents people would like to have on the store.
I like your idea that rewarding system for content fund and all content are fee to the users up front. I realized that making contents is such a time consuming work! I appreciate to pay to providers of content but, I don’t want to lose my points all on a monthly basis when I choose a basic member ship. I’d rather study own pace and I like the current points expire system.