I understand that there are new limitations with the hope of encouraging more members to become paying members. Maybe it will work, I don’t know. I have lots of sites and programs I use to study, so I can’t afford to pay for all of them. I’m glad that some places feel language-learning should be available for anyone and everyone.
Here is my problem:
1.) You’ve now required that free members can not have more than 100 linqs. I get it.
2.) But you ALSO remove our possibility to batch delete our links - so you want me to one-by-one delete up to 200 linqs?
This is a punishment… You could easily inform us that we have one week use the batch-delete option to remove those 200 linqs, and THEN take the option away. Instead, I log on one day to find that I must one-by-one delete my 200 linqs.
It would be easier for me create a whole new profile and start from scratch, which I may have to consider now, because frankly it would take less time, especially given my current internet connection. But I have to ask myself if, since I am not a paying member, my opinions or feelings really don’t matter. I don’t mean for that to sound aggressive, but this is what it looks like or feeling like for someone who’s not feeling confident enough in the system yet to begin paying for it.
Word count is important when you are submitting things to be checked. Japanese isn’t Chinese.
At 2.5 cents US a word, it would not be a big deal to 99% people if the word count is even 50 words off, which has never come close to happening in my experience.
For me paying 3.33 cents a word is expensive. I’m not a complete beginner in English, so it’s not interesting for me to write simple texts made up of 50 words or less. For me, the most convenient number of words in writing is 150-250. And I think I don’t make as many mistakes as complete beginner. I don’t say I don’t make them at all, but however, 15 years of studying English at school and university gave me a little more than nothing. In the case of a complete beginner 50 words = 50 mistakes (roughly , and in the case of intermediate-level student 200 words = 15 mistakes or less. A tutor does less job, but a learner must pay more points for that. Is that fair?
My hourly salary here in Russia is about $6, but everything is very expensive in Moscow, so I don’t want to pay a fair amount of money for writings which don’t require much correction. I have decided to submit writings for correction when I really have a problem and I cannot cope with it by myself, without real tutor. If my salary increases, I will submit more writings. If my pay to my corrector would be proportional to number of words which require correction, not to number of words read by him, I agree to submit more writings and to write them more quickly confidently and bravely. But now I try to submit as less writings as possible. A grammar book cost me about $8 at the second-hand bookshop. I read it sometimes, and try to correct my writings without outside assistance.
I have decided to pay about $20/month for my LingQ learning ($10 for subscription and $10 for points from time to time). If the cost of basic membership increases up to $25, I’ll refuse to submit writings. If it increases even more, I’ll switch to free podcasts. I’m already familiar with language learning methodology, so I think I’ll survive.
JT001 said exactly what I was thinking - why limit it to 100 lingq’s, and then make it even harder to delete them? If you are concerned that things are taking up too much space, this is counterproductive. Also, given that I have been working in this industry for a long time, I can tell you this: the business model of making things very difficult for a person and annoying them in order to get them to give you money is generally not one that is profitable for a company.
And the silly thing is, absent the tutoring, if I just want to be able to upload documents and link to and save words I don’t know, I can write that functionality in Java in a weekend. I could write my own lingq for personal use easily, and make one more fully featured and more performant. It hasn’t been worth it to me yet, but I don’t think I feel like hand-deleting 200 linqs either.
And sure, it’s “only” $10/mo, but $120/yr starts looking like real money to me. I can buy lots of books for $120. Someone in Asia can probably do more with $120 in a year than I can. As some point a website with limited functionality and without features being continually added is going to have to go to the ad model and/or is going to have to add mobile phone functionality as spanishpod/chinesepod has done. As it stands it’s not worth $10/mo. It might be worth $5/mo. Interestingly, there’s a Google toolbar button that I can use to highlight and translate individual words easily, which is free. Faster than lingq, too.
Sure, noone’s obligated to care what a nonpaying member thinks and like the above posters I’ll use the service until it ceases to be useful. I had recommended the site to people before though, so that counts for something even if I hadn’t been paying.
Hi Dmitry,
6 dollars an hour is not much by Canadian standards. Here you pay about 30 U$ a month for high speed internet and about 350 U$ for a cheap, but perfectly good computer. What do you pay in Russia?
Also, have you actually been overcharged for writing before? If so, by how much?
cnicklas, you are missing a major point, the lingqing is integrated across texts through highlighting. IS that also easy to write in java, or done with the Google toolbar? Also, do you think it is easy for everyone to write such a program? How much would charge if someone commissioned you to do it? How much are server costs?
Also it is120$ a YEAR! Don’t you have any miscellaneous nnon-essential expenses that would work out to more than that?
Personally, based on past experience, I feel that 98% those complaining about this batch delete thing do not really want ot pay for anything and would just continue to be free members even if the batch delete were returned. I think LingQ are justified in making it harder to use the system for free.
The main problem is food and transport. Moscow has a lot of public transportation and traffic problems. I need almost an hour and a half to get from home to my work. I can’t work more because I’m tired. If I learn a lot, I can expect to be promoted in a year or two. If my salary reaches $12-$15/hour, I would be able to lease an apartment not too far from my company, and my life will be much easier. If a person wants to grow professionally and socially, to read new, interesting materials concerning his profession and hobbies, and wants to communicate with educated, intelligent and competent people, Russian may not be enough. Many of the Russian books I was recommended while studying at the university are out-of-date. Many of our ‘domestic’ methods of education and management are inefficient. That’s why I learn English. With English I can read the Internet and educate myself for free (OK, 25 USD/month for the internet connection), then go to my work and make more money. I have some good technical books and articles already, but I need to improve my English to read them acceptably fast and understand everything.
I haven’t ever been overcharged for writing. LingQ charges 3.33 cents a word from the learner and returns 2.5 cents a word to his tutor. I meant I’d like a discount for a large writing if it contains not more than N mistakes per M words (N and M are set by administrators).
“I meant I’d like a discount for a large writing if it contains not more than N mistakes per M words (N and M are set by administrators).”
When you go for a check up at the dentist, and he finds no cavities, you’d still better pay for pre-agreed price for the check up. See the following link for an extensive discussion on this.
Maybe LingQ can offer “perfection insurance” for these cases
If my tutor could read my corrected writing aloud (including tutor comments and suggestions, but not including grammar notes in the table) and send an mp3 file to me, I consider 3.33 (and maybe more) cents a word to be a good price for writing of any length. If I send 240 words ($6 for tutor), I think that’s not an hour of work (especially for person who is native speaker of the language and familiar with touch-typing). And also it’s more in line with LingQ methods. And if you ask me to pay more money (4 or 4.5 cents a word), I think in this case I’ll agree and admit it, because I’ll get lesson by native speaker on a subject that is chosen by ME and is interesting for ME, and I can repeat it unlimited number of times in my mp3 player. That’s great! At present time I can only print my corrected writing and read it many times. That’s OK too, but… has not so much special in it, I think. I’ll explain what I mean. I can hire a teacher from Moscow to correct my writings. It will be the same or less cost for a large number of words. But in that case I for sure can’t have my materials read with native speaker’s pronunciation. A Russian-speaking teacher often has a noticeable accent in English!
@JT001 - It is fine to say "I’m glad that some places feel language-learning should be available for anyone and everyone. ", however, any service you are using is not free. Somebody is paying for it. It may be the taxpayer in the case of the BBC and Babbel or it may be venture capitalists in the case of LiveMocha. We don’t have those resources behind us and we don’t feel like subsidizing “anyone and everyone”. We have changed the limits and the batch delete feature in order to make the paid membership more attractive and encourage people to upgrade. We feel LingQ is worth paying for. We have put a lot of time and money into developing it and we hope these changes will result in a sustainable model for the site… The one option you didn’t mention for your current difficulties on LingQ is to upgrade.
@Dmitry - As dooo points out, we have discussed this issue before. Unfortunately, some kind of scaled correction system is just too difficult to implement, explain and administer but we do expect that our tutors will give more advanced advice to more advanced writers. I suggest you try a few different tutors to find one who will give you the type of help you need.
@cnicklas - If you can write LingQ in a weekend, I invite you to go ahead. We’re a little slower than you and it’s taken us years. We feel LingQ is worth paying for. If you don’t feel that way, that is your prerogative.
Prices ultimately are market driven. People will pay what they are willing to pay. I know that as a tutor, I am not willing to work based on the number of mistakes. I also think it would skew the tutoring because often the line between what is and is not a mistake is not clear
Recording the corrected writing and even the discussion report is a service that some of our tutors do provide. If a tutor is set up to do this they should mention it in their bio.
I also think that the corrected writing, recorded by a native speaker, can also be added to our library ,if the member wants. These content items are often very good lower intermediate content, and bring the community closer. We would like one day to make it easier to do all of this within the system.
LingQ is an integrated learning environment. It is not just creating LingQs, nor just any other part of the system. It is the whole, including the community. It takes the effort of a number of people to put it together and to continue to develop it. We do not have funding from the EC or Canadian government. We have chosen to try to cover our costs with monthly memberships. It is up to each learner to decide if they feel there is value in LingQ or not.
@ Dmitry - Regarding “expensive correction”, somebody once suggested (in the other thread, perhaps?) that it might cheaper to go through the text with a tutor on Skype. The tutor could skim through the text in no-time and give live feedback (plus a report).
<<Someone in Asia can probably do more with $120 in a year than I can.>>
I can only guess that cnicklas hasn’t been in Asia before or it’s been a long long time since his last visit…
Incidentally, I had some French lessons by a personal tutor more than 10 years ago. It was something between US$40-50 per hour. Taking inflation into consideration, the US$120 annual fee of LingQ would hardly be enough to pay for more than a couple of hours now.
All of us learn in different ways and so it’s not all that surprising that someone might not find it useful. However, why make disparaging remarks about LingQ just because you don’t find it useful or not willing to pay? For those of us who find LingQ useful, we are seriously concerned about the long term survival of LingQ. It’s plain for all to see that Steve and Mark are hardly laughing all the way to the bank. They are doing their best to make sure that the site is around come next year, and the year after that, and the year after that too. Anyone with common sense will support what they are doing.
Certainly, a person can choose to stay or go. Being a free user, I never would have thought to complain about any lacking features of the service before. I don’t expect that I will again. I didn’t mind having the sound files removed from my uploaded items, because I can see the argument that space is at a premium. I don’t particularly mind the 100 lingq limit. I don’t mind that the site is missing features that I would have added, because everyone has different ideas of what is important. I do mind the batch-delete removal but I don’t see any reason for me to go further into that
As for what the Google toolbar can do, the Google dictionary would allow me to star words and look through them later. But maintaining the list of words would not be difficult, especially since currently things like plurals and verb conjugations are not recognized, just identical words. The problem of implementing this never occurred to me until I found myself slowly deleting about twenty words and wondering whether I had better things to do. The smartest thing would probably be, as a poster said before, to just delete the account and start over. Maybe I’ll just do that and avoid antagonizing people further; I know that criticizing any aspect of someone’s project is like telling a woman she has an ugly baby. It just aggravates a person that something used to work and doesn’t any more.
Mark - no disrespect intended. For an individual user, who finds certain parts of the site more useful for their own personal needs/learning style, they could put together enough to make it usable to themselves, one person, without the worries about making a system that caters to a large group of users. They could do this rather quickly. If they need to replicate the entire site and make it usable by a large number of people, and worry about server storage, obviously that is a different task and takes more time - but I really wasn’t using the site to its full potential by any means, just using it as a way to read articles and look up words easily. It was a very useful tool for that until the upgrade.
Mark - I wasn’t arguing as to whether or not this service should be paid for. That’s up to the owners and the powers behind it. My sole problem was that by both limiting the linqs and removing the batch-delete, you were essentially punishing those who have used your system and not decided to upgrade, despite the fact that there was never any requirement to upgrade, and therefore no grounds for ‘punishment.’ I’m confident that there will come a day when there are no free memberships at all. It’s someone’s product to do with it what they will. Of course you need to pay for it, and requiring memberships is one way. As for whether I should upgrade - I did mention this in my post. I use several different methods for studying, so I have to keep a budget. Myself, I feel what I am actually using LingQ for doesn’t require all the whiz-bangs that come with paid membership. My only issue was the removal of batch-delete without prior notice before the 100-linq-limit, and why would I pay ten dollars just for that, when I can delete my account and start over?
, and in the case of intermediate-level student 200 words = 15 mistakes or less. A tutor does less job, but a learner must pay more points for that. Is that fair?