Limit on the number of vocabulary items in basic membership?

Open Forum
41

Emma00

Thank you for your comments. We know that we are dealing with human nature, and with a competitive environment on the Internet. We have to provide value. We have to make sure that people understand our site and why it is good for their language learning. We are working on improving the community and we will be introducing more structure and reducing the complexity of the site. Many people who come to the site right now are confused. So that is our first emphasis. We want to make LingQ better, and make it more obvious that it is a wonderful, effective and enjoyable place to learn languages.

Once we have achieved that we will put a lot of effort into promoting more traffic to the site. We, at LingQ, will have to spend money to do this.

I think the 500 word limit is fair, and more flexible for beginning learners, and yet a stronger reason for serious learners, than the present limit on items in the workdesk.

There will still be people who want to participate in our community, take the benefit, and somehow spend their time trying to figure out how to avoid paying. (That is human nature) I think they are a small minority, so we do not worry about them.

At the present time we already give anyone who upgrades a free gift of 500 points as you suggest.

We will be introducing other incentives for people to introduce their friends.

There will be better and better opportunities to earn money from content and tutoring, although these will be limited to people who pay their $10 per month.

42

I’d like to add a comment on the possible limiting of the number of lingQs on the free accounts. As I understand, lingQs are the words that a learner does not know. After doing the flashcards five times (answering with the correct meaning twice each time), the system believes that you know that word. Doesn’t that lingQ then disappear automatically?

One would not want to have to delete lingQs of words one doesn’t know. Then the system would think that we know those words. We want the computer list of known words (and of unknown words) to be accurate.

So if you want to have a limit of 500 lingQ, someone said the free-account user would have to delete some of his lingQs if over the limit. Instead how about sending a reminder to that user to do the flashcards so that the number of lingQs goes down automatically?

I hope I understand the lingQ system correctly and that my question makes sense.

43

Hi Jacki! LingQs do not automatically disappear when they are on status 4-Known. But even if they would, some users have more than 500 LingQs that they are still learning. I, for instance have near to 800 status 1-new words in my English account.
Don’t worry. Your questions make sense. Maybe one of the other members has more answers for you.
Nicole.

44

I have over 20,000 saved LingQs in Russian, 750 in Italian, and hundreds in Portuguese and German. A good percentage of these are status 4, and yet often I run into these and find that I do not know them any more. When I review my words in vocabulary by A-Z , as I sometimes do, I move some words up to status 4 because, as if by magic I now know them (or think I do) and move others down from 4 to 2, because I once knew them, but not having seen them for a while in context, I have forgotten them. Your words do not disappear from your list unless you delete them.

One would normally only delete a word if it was a mistake, or there was no dictionary definition or something. In the new system some people will delete words in order to remain a free user.

Most people will not reach the minimum number of saved words (which is going to be somewhere between 300 and 500). These people may remain free, use the site in other ways, or just leave. Those users that appreciate the powerful advantages of LingQ, as part of learning how to notice how a language works, will probably not want to delete words. We expect a majority of them will become paying members, which is important if LingQ is to become self-supporting.

In the case people in schools in poor countries or neighborhoods, who cannot affort $10 a month, I think that teachers can find ways of working in batches of words, printing them out, and then deleting on some kind of rotating basis. Some individual learners may choose to do this. So there will continue to be a considerable amount of value added for free learners. However, I think most people who like LingQ will join as paying members since there is a great advantage to keeping all of one’s LingQs and regularly revieingw them. It is also very important to see the previously saved words highlighted in new texts etc.

We will be bringing more functions to make the vocabulary section more user friendly, including the ability to filter the lists by status so that the status 4 words can be reviewed in a variety of ways. So I recommend hanging on to these LingQs!

45

My 2 cents worth;

It’s a cop out to say you can’t afford 10 bucks a month. Seriously. Compare this to any language courses online, on CD, or on software, and 10 bucks is nothing.

I’m a free customer at the mo… I haven’t had a reason to upgrade yet. When I do have a reason, I will. For example, if the number of LingQs I could save was limited…

I think that’s an ideal way to separate payers from nonpayers. If someone has saved 500 words, they have obviously spent a lot of time on this site. They are utilising it as a language learning tool, and they like it. So they should be able to pay the measly sum of 10 bucks. (I’m referring to myself here, as well!!)

Like someone else said before, the only qualm I have with paying is the idea of giving my card number to a website. But I think I trust this site enough. It isn’t trying to swindle people out of their money(far from it!!).

I don’t think there is much in the way of competition. This is by far the most powerful tool that I have found… and I did a lot of looking before I started.

An idea(I don’t know if this would too much to ask, but it’s something to think about)… there is a site called Byki… with their flashcards, they have the audio of the word, so you can hear it as you see it. This is a feature that is really cool. That is the reason that my mother hasn’t really gotten into LingQ. She likes to hear the word as well as see it.

But the main issue, I think, that she hasn’t gotten into LingQ, is that she doesn’t fully understand all the features of LingQ. It took me a while to grasp them all- and I still find something new every now and then. And I use the computer a lot… my mother(and most people), not so much.

LingQ is the most feature packed, user friendly website I have ever been to. The best features, in my case, are the goals. They keep me motivated. And the activity scores are great, too(I am a very competitive person!).

I tell everyone about LingQ. But in my culture, people have a very narrow word view, and language learning is seen as being very difficult and unnecessary. And when they do want to learn, they learn how to count to ten, how to say “Hello” and “Goodbye”, get bored, and give up. Ever after they say, “I know a bit of French/Spanish/German”, but they have never even tried a conversation with a native speaker.

Not many people want to seriously learn a language.

But what can I say? I’m only 560 words into my second language. But I’m loving it, and it’s all because of LingQ.

PS. Maybe you could talk to a marketing expert on this whole thing. The key is really to make people realize the potential of this website, recognize its value, get them hooked, then for only a small payment, increase what they can do with LingQ. That’s what is happening with me.

46

I have been a member of LingQ for nearly 4 months now, and have found it highly addictive. In fact I may at some stage have to develop some sort of LingQ patch for when I’m away from a computer and the cravings are getting out of control :slight_smile:

Admittedly I had my doubts at first. Some of these internet language things are populated by people I can only describe as “nutters” (even by my standards) and the idea of spending money to hang out with them seems foolish in the extreme. I don’t spend money lightly.

It took me a month to decide that it was definitely worth $10 a month, and that decision was based on the 50% discount on the cost of points, although the restriction on active assignments was getting very irritating by then, it wasn’t a factor in the decision to upgrade.

It took another month to learn my way around the for-points services (the conversations, the one-on-one tutorials, the written corrections) to want to be a tutor, and a further month to decide to upgrade to Plus. That despite being addicted to the whole lingQing thing. The factor that influenced wanting to commit to paying more per month was the community of very sensible and supportive and not-at-all-nutty people here. I realised there were people who I really wanted to help me learn and I was willing to pay for it.

In summary, then…

  1. it can take people 3 months or so to really get to understand LingQ.

  2. People with an activity count less than, say, 1000 after 3 months don’t like it and probably never will.

  3. If students like the lingQing software but aren’t prepared to pay a dime for it after 3 months, perhaps they would be better served by going and writing their own system.

  4. It’s hanging out with, and aiding the learning of, some great people which makes LingQ worth paying tens of dollars a month for.

Personally I would consider allowing people to stay on a free membership after 3 months only if they have an activity level above a certain threshold and have a positive balance of points in their account (gained maybe from contributing content). That’s saying maybe you needn’t pay, but you need to be bringing something to the LingQ community. Also I would make a mimimum requirement for being a tutor that you should be at least a basic level member. You can easily earn enough from tutoring to pay that $10 a month.

47

Sorry about that massive message. I just realized how long it is…

Boy I can be opinionated!!

48

I was just going to say the same about my message yeawodeva!

Can I just add (I fear I may have been rather blunt) that there are many very good reasons why a person may not be as dedicated a LingQer as the next person, and I don’t wish to disrespect those who simply don’t have that much time and can’t clock up thousands of acivity points a month. But if you joined a language school they would expect a minimum of committment out of you, and could throw you off the course if you didn’t do any work. It’s not unreasonable to suggest that free members, at least, should be doing a certain amount to justify not having their accounts stopped.

49

I came to LingQ in March 2007 - AND after three or four days I knew that is the right place for my learning and I was a paying member with a tutor.

I think when a person want really to learn and want to use a software program it is correct to pay a little fee and a Basic membership should be that worth for.