I wonder why the titles of privately studied lessons cannot be showed, of course without a link to the lesson, to keep it private.
I find it would be useful to display them, so that other learners of that language could discover new language learning sources, and I don’t think it would be harmful or illegal to display the title only. Maybe you could change the phrase into “is studying a PRIVATE lesson”, to make it clear it’s not a lesson shared on LingQ.
When I import lessons, I click the ‘don’t show on the LingQ website’ box. I don’t think it would show up there at all, even in that form. I wonder if this is for when someone does this or just any privately imported lesson.
As far as I know, the ‘don’t show on the Linguist website’ box is used for lessons you do share publicly on LingQ but don’t want to be accessible on the Linguist website. The lessons showed on the Linguist website are accessible via Google search.
Privately imported lessons are not accessible from outside LingQ and I don’t think you need to tick that box.
Ah, ok. Thanks for that. I’ve just been doing it anyway to be sure I’m not sharing things I shouldn’t be. 
That’s an interesting suggestion Michele. We’ll add it to our list.
Hm, I would prefer if private lessons are not shown and keep secret.
Yeah, I’d prefer the same as Veral. If somebody wants to share the title, they should have the option to do so, but I think it should be default to not show it.
Which is probably why we didn’t show it in the first place… The idea of deciding to share your content source is an interesting one… perhaps at the time you are importing so you can share the source webpage.
I wonder why you want to keep your sources secret. Are you either ashamed or jealous of them? Do you study anything illegal?
I would like the sources to be displayed by default, as I wrote, with an option to hide them.
haha those who would have privacy destroyed always say “What do you have to hide?” tsk tsk mikebond 
Private is private!!
If I like to share my private lessons I can do it! and I do it with my friends!
If I found some interesting pages, I always tell it to my friends or in the forum.
But private is private!
@mark
please tell my if you change the use of private lessons!
@mikebond
If you are really interested in the private lessons from others users, why you do not ask them directly???
are you really so shy and curious???
j;-)
Don’t worry. Any sharing of imported lesson sources will be strictly opt-in.
I wonder why you want to keep your sources secret. Are you either ashamed or jealous of them? Do you study anything illegal?
Yes, I do.
For example in my previous LingQ life I imported pirate subtitles of Japanese doramas (downloaded pirately) to learn them on LingQ.
I am not able to buy a Japanese dorama here in Russia — they just don’t sell it. I can’t order a DVD from Japan too, as Japan and Russia are in different regions and Japanese DVDs are not shown on DVD-players sold in Russia. Yes, I can find a way to watch a Japanese DVD, but this will be a violation of copyrights again. Thus, there is no legal way to watch Japanese doramas here in Russia at all!
Ok about the opt-in, then. However, if we cannot see what the other members are studying, could you just remove all the “is studying a private lesson” announcements? If there are a lot of them, the public lessons one may want to discover disappear from the Activities page or the member’s My activity list. I hope you get my point.
I think you could implement a window similar to the one for writing submissions: “Would you like the title of this private lesson to be visible?” or something like that.
Rasana, that’s not what I meant by “illegal”. I doubt that displaying just the titles of those lessons would take you to a Japanese prison.
I must say, I don’t even look at that page other than seeing I’ve got the most activity for Dutch and Latin, and most lingqs for Dutch and second for Latin (I’m working on it…) hahaha
Makacenko, I’m sure you’re not the only one who reads those… 
@Imyirtseshem: I agree the Activities page is a bit useless for most Beta languages, given the low number of lessons shared in the Library and thus the high amount of private lessons.
@all the people with big concerns: let me reformulate my suggestion as follows.
- A new case should be added to the “Share” settings (on the members’ profile pages), called “Share the titles of private lessons”, so that it be clear that the content is not shared in any case. There could also be the option to share it on Facebook and Twitter, always with the title only and no link to the lesson. Like all the other Share settings, members can decide whether to tick this case or not.
- If a member doesn’t want to publish the titles of their lessons, I suggest that no announcement is made, i.e. no “(member) is studying an imported lesson” message. It doesn’t bother me, but as I said, a lot of these messages in a row hide the titles of public lessons which would be a lot more useful to other members. I don’t care if Steve, Vera or Jolanda are studying 100 private lessons, since it doesn’t help me in any way. I would prefer to see what public lessons they use and, optionally, the titles of their private lessons, so that I can look for those sources as well.
- In the Import template, there could be an additional case, called “Keep this private lesson hidden” or similar. This way, even members who have chosen to share the titles of their private lessons as a general rule, can choose to hide the titles of specific lessons (in cases like the one Rasana mentioned).
I don’t know how easy it would be to implement these few steps, but it seems to me that they would improve the Activities page and the activity list on the members’ profile while letting privacy-concerned people keep their sources secret.
Some examples:
- Makacenko uses sources that are accessible worldwide. Letting us know he’s reading an interesting article about physics or a speech by President Obama would be much more useful than telling us he’s studying an imported lesson.
- I am reading some Polish short stories from a book I bought, called “Fifteen Modern Polish Short Stories”. The short story I’m reading now is “Radość” by Michał Choromański. Other Polish learners may find it interesting to buy that book and read those stories as well. If they just read “is studying an imported lesson”, they may never find this book. Personally, from time to time I feel discouraged because there aren’t enough lessons in the Polish library. If I could read what lessons/sources the other Polish learners are using, I may use them as well.
I hope my suggestion is clear and well motivated now.