Lucas, you are right that I “don’t know nothing” about you, and it is good to hear that you are providing help to others. At the same time, I would like to suggest that using terms like “they need to be watched, like a kid, hold their hands and help them with every single step” does not communicate a very respectful view of those who may be having difficulty, when the problem is with the site, not people’s immaturity.
I am guessing that English is not your first language, and I understand how the use of particular terms and phrases can unintentionally convey the wrong idea. In this case, that combination of words conveys that others who are commenting on the difficulties they experience using LingQ are children, which I don’t think you meant to say. Assuming this to be the case, your phrase would be better expressed as “beyond videos or simple words, in most cases step by step assistance is needed to help new users better understand how to use the site”. I hope this explanation of the subtle connotation that comes with your phrasing can help you to provide your continuing assistance to others in a way that is not fraught with unintentional negative trigger words and phrases. And I wish you the best, as well.
I am not really worried about the LingQ Team, although everyone needs a few pats on the back once in a while. It is those that are offering comment that should be of most concern, because their feedback needs to be encouraged, not denigrated, if LingQ is to improve.
I would be the last one to suggest we need “commentary police”. So, that being the case, one has to accept comments on the comments! I am always for civil conversation because I believe it is far more effective - witness what is now happening in the US when the opposite occurs. Yikes!
Thank goodness for quotation marks, otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to get away with nonstandard usage. Isn’t the English language so beautifully accommodating? It would be a pity to forget its fluidity.
Maybe the reason why it is not the most user-friendly is also because it is very complex and useful. Once you get the hang of it, it is superior to other softwares or books like Rosetta Stone. It’s lack of simplicity is actually a good thing, in my opinion.
I hate it that whenever I casually browse through lessons, they automatically get added to the My Lessons list, even if I have zero intention of using them. Am I missing something? Is there a “real” My Lessons section that I have yet to discover? Is there a way to neatly manage your training materials?
The actual text analysis/reader portion I have no gripes with.
While I agree that people sometimes refuse to learn, the criticisms of certain interface solutions are well-founded. Sure, despite the fact that the Reader part may seem confusing at first, any reasonable amount of effort makes one realize how well done this section really is. However, the overall site navigation and “framework” has serious issues. One that immediately comes to mind is the fact that all the lessons that I browse through with no intention of actually adopting as my study materials still end up in the My Lessons section. This results in major cluttering. I still can’t find any semblance of “Add to Favorites” or similar functionality. Or, for instance, the Playlist: you can only add the actual audio recordings to it, and there’s no way to access the reading materials by using the playlist: no visible links to the corresponding lessons or anything like that.
And general interface design needs refinement. Even this reply box that I’m using right this second is limited to two lines, offering no obvious options of scaling it up.
I’m not clear what you mean by browsing lessons. If you open the lesson to look at it, it is considered taken and added to My Lessons. There is a control in the bottom right corner of all lesson tiles which lets you “Add to My Lessons”. This essentially works like a Favourite or Star control. If you click it, that lesson is added to My Lessons. However, if you look at the list in My Lessons, you will see this icon is blue for all those lessons. Click it to remove those lessons from My Lessons.
I agree that the reply box is a problem. This must be a recent bug as I don’t recall it being a problem in the past. Browsers do change their behaviour so I assume Chrome has made a change recently.
As for Playlists, they are there to help manage your listening. To access your lessons, you can see your last 4 lessons at the top of the Learn - Home page or you can click “View All” to see all your lessons.
“If you open the lesson to look at it, it is considered taken” — that’s precisely the problem. I just don’t see any sound rationale behind this. I look through tons of lessons, and a lot of them I don’t want to see ever again. That’s like browsing through random sites only to find out later that your browser has been adding all of them to favorites automatically — doesn’t make sense. And obviously, I have to open a lesson first to see if I want to add it to my lessons to begin with.
Also, I couldn’t find the control you mentioned, in the bottom right of a lesson tile, but that’s beside the point, since I would always open a lesson first anyway.
My suggestion: First, make the Add to My Lessons button more visible on the Library screen. Secondly, ensure that whenever someone opens a lesson from the Library, the system won’t add this lesson to My Lessons. Instead, create a visible enough button (on/off switch) in the Reading screen that the user would have to press in order to add the lesson to My Lessons. Also, that way, upon exhausting a lesson of any further use, the user would be able to remove said lesson from My Lessons without even exiting the Reading screen: by pressing the “Favorites” or “Star” button again to deactivate it. When I found a lesson I liked, it was my first instinct to look through the entire Reader interface (lesson info tab, etc), desperately trying to find the Add to Favorites button — but to no avail
To be honest, the lessons are free. If you open one to start it, we assume you have taken it. I don’t find that so strange and you are the first person ever, that I can recall, who has complained about this. I understand that you assumed it would work differently, but, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t make sense for it to work the way it does.
There is no harm in adding lessons to your lessons. If you don’t study them, they will just slowly disappear as new lessons replace them. If they do bother you, or you want to only see lessons you like in My Lessons, simply click the blue Saved icon and they will be removed. You will see it in My Lessons, in the bottom right corner of the lesson tile beside the level indicator. Or, are you in the mobile app? If so, that could explain the issue. That button is not in the mobile app yet. We are working on adding it but for now you can only remove lessons in the web app.
Well, I know how to delete a lesson from My Lesson (however, the cog button is in the bottom left corner; there’s nothing in the right corner http://i.imgur.com/Hqw7qMp.png), but it just takes a while to delete them, considering I now have 3 pages in My Lessons, with 80% of the lessons I don’t need, and 20% of the ones I liked now randomly scattered within those 3 pages So yeah, I could delete them one by one, or just look for the ones I liked and open them, so they would end up in the top of the list. Those are the solutions, but I find them clunky, and the suggestion I posted above would add a new solution that’s way more elegant, in my opinion.
Still, loving the LingQ; just offering some constructive criticism.
Ahh…I see the issue. You are using the Classic navigation. You will only find the new control on the new page Login - LingQ. You can find it by going to Learn - Home and clicking on See All beside Recent Lessons. I think you’ll find it a lot quicker.
Ah yeah, I completely missed the new interface, because I kept looking for My Lessons in the main (top) menu, and could only find it under Classic heh (I think it would have made more sense to add the option under Learn, to bypass the Home screen entirely).
I still stand by my previous point, as the new library interface doesn’t change much as far as my issue is concerned.
