very small numbers of points
Peter said: “Which tutors are not after the points (as well as helping others)?”
@peter: there are indeed tutors who are willing to work for free. Hard to believe, but they exist in reality. How long their enthusiasm lasts is another matter. Look at how successful Lang-8 and Rhinospike are today. They are simply leveraging the idea of crowd-sourcing.
Tutoring service of course is different. I think the burn-out rate is too high that as of today, LingQ would not be able to find “new blood” fast enough if they stop paying the tutors. Otherwise, the service can become essentially free.
In fact, I think it may worth a try for the writing correction service. LingQ is talking about encouraging members to write. How about offering the writing service for free and stop paying the correctors. I am sure there will still be volunteers to do corrections. Lang-8 has done this. I don’t see why LingQ cannot.
Another law of “Free economy” - In the land of free, a penny is a fortune.
Try to charge your content for one point. Sooner or later, someone will provide similar content for free. Guess which content the learners will choose?
If I remember correctly, this was exactly what happened when LingQ charged members for the content.
I remember that Irene told me that nobody paid for content when LingQ did this ‘experiment’ 3 or 4 years ago.
@Mark and OscarP: I would have to ask all the podcasters if I could still use their podcasts because I told them that all audio and texts are free on LingQ. I’m sure that they’ll dislike such subtleness to differentiate between text and audio. Text and audio should stay free in my opinion. Personally I think the existing system to let points expire and give the points to the content providers is fine. These podcasts are great. That is the only possibility to offer really advanced content for German learners on LingQ and it cost me a lot of effort to convince the podcasters. The situation is total differently than in English. It is very hard to find German podcasts or other advanced material with audio and transcript on the internet (besides Deutsche Welle and Deutschlandfunk).
What I strongly dislike is that people say it is worth the same if content is taken for example from Librivox, VOA or Elllo (copy&paste content) in comparison to content that is created by hard work.
And long lessons are not the same worth as short lessons.
It isn’t worth the same and I’m feeling not appreciate if people try to tell me this is the same. I respect the way it is but don’t try to tell me it is the same. It isn’t the same! I understand that there are technical difficulties if you would try to change this. I understand that Steve says they are not willing to invest money in changing this. But don’t tell me it is the same!
@edwin
“Please, fellow LingQ-ers. This is the law under the science of Internet economy. Content itself ‘wants’ to be free”
I strongly disagree with this statement. There are no “laws under the science of Internet” that make that true. What you call the economy of “free” is an idealist movement, that’s it. It doesn’t describe how markets work. However, there is another true law, that is the law of supply and demand. In short if there is a lot of supply, the prizes tend to be zero (free), but not always there is excess of supply. For example, Tonny Robbins sells several programs, which are just mp3 files, not for free. In fact they cost hundreds of dollars each one. Why are not there dozens of “Tonny Robbins” offering similar content for free and ruining the Tonny Robbins business?
It’s true that there are a huge amount of free content in Internet for free, but there are also a lot of people who are very succesfull selling content over internet like music, books, audiobooks, and so on. Like I said, If there is a lot of supply (similar in content and quality), then the content will be free or almost free, but if there is a lack of supply, then it won’t probably be free.
Same approach for programming. There are a huge amount of free software on Internet, and lots of programmers that work for free creating interesting and useful pieces of software (that’s called the free software movement). What the hell is LingQ doing by paying its programmers? Is LingQ’s staff crazy? Let programmers come to LingQ and write software for free!! I am sure programmers would line up for dozens willing to work for free for LingQ.
By the way, my position is not wanting to convert LingQ into a paying for content site. My position is tol let the creators of content decide if they want OR NOT charge a simbolic amount of points for original content. That’s it. LingQ will be continue having a huge amount of content for free (content from libribox, …) and I am sure that a lot of people would still continue offering free original content.
"What I strongly dislike is that people say it is worth the same if content is taken for example from Librivox, VOA or Elllo (copy&paste content) in comparison to content that is created by hard work.
And long lessons are not the same worth as short lessons.
It isn’t worth the same and I’m feeling not appreciate if people try to tell me this is the same. I respect the way it is but don’t try to tell me it is the same. It isn’t the same! I "
Of course it’s not the same! But…who can decide how much is the value of your effort? LingQ? the users? God? The best person to decide it is yourself. This is why I defend to let creators to decide if they want or not charge a small amount of points for their work.
@OscarP: Probably I didn’t express myself well. It would be okay for me if people admit it is not the same but it is too difficult or expensive to change it because it would need a lot of programming effort. Bothering me is to say it is the same.
Another idea: Give members the option to support a provider by giving points as a donation. Not as a must, but as a can.
@Oscar: It does not matter if you disagree with this law, it is there. LingQ tested this law a few years ago, and has proven that indeed it exists.
But I think you understand this law, since you understand that “with a lot of supply, the prizes tend to be zero”. For the Internet, supply is infinite.
I thought this universal law is common sense to all of us, but apparently not. Since even the music, book, and audio book industries don’t understand this, why would I think it is a trivial law? (BTW, the music and book industries are in trouble today thanks to the Internet, not sure about audiobook)
Let’s look at LingQ in specific. Steve wonders if the situation has changed from a few years ago. In my opinion, yes it has changed. It has worsen. Those who want to start charging new content will find it much harder than a few years ago, since now there are much more free content in the LingQ library to complete with.
I am also a content provider at LingQ and I receive monthly points. But I consider this as a generous gift from LingQ and not a reward for my effort. I believe if today LingQ decides to stop this, there will still be people providing content. Lots of them! BTW, I wrote in another thread that even if LingQ stops paying people to correct writings, I predict there will still be people doing corrections for free. Imagine at that time, someone jumps out and announces that he is charging 1 point for a correction. (BTW, I am feeling that this is essentially what LingQ is doing, still charging people for something that is free at Lang-8).
One good thing I find if we are to revert to the old charging system is that there will be no complain from the content providers anymore. They will receive what the ‘Internet’ thinks they should.
Don’t get me wrong. I appreciate people spending time and effort to produce all these content. All I want to point out is that it makes no sense to compete with ‘free’.
How much is “free”?
Ultimately, I don’t believe in your free argument edwin. Someone, somewhere in the background, is always paying.
Yes Peter, you’re correct. If I would offer all the tutor services for free I wouldn’t have enough time for my own language learning. So paying for my services is a kind of regulation. I spend my limited time with people who are willing to learn and to invest money into it. And I’m on my own are willing to pay others for the effort. I’m feeling much better if I pay for services instead of using them for free (if they are really helpful).
Generally speaking, a copyright of original contents belongs to the author. The author has discretion about how to distribute his or her contents.
I’ve never tried Lang-8, but I’m curious to know whether:-
-
there is any control over the quality of the corrections?
-
you can choose who corrects you’re writing?
-
you get a nice report back?
Perhaps it’s a question for another thread. 
I think with small amounts like 5 points, timing plays a role. Lessons are like plastic shopping bags. They are easy to find for free, but when you are lined up at the cash register and you need one, chances are you’ll pay 5 or 10 cents for one. This holds true for popular languages much more so than for more exotic ones.
@Vera. I am sure smart people think your lessons are better than the librivox copy/paste stuff. But the fact they are valued the same is not about programming. Provider points, as it stands now, are bonuses, not a reflection of what the lessons are worth on the market, which is next to nothing.
"This holds true for popular languages much more so than for more exotic ones. "
This means more exotic languages could attract higher prices.
Correction:- - you can choose who corrects your writing?
@VeraI
“If I would offer all the tutor services for free I wouldn’t have enough time for my own language learning. So paying for my services is a kind of regulation.”
Sorry but I don’t understand this argument. If you would not get money for tutoring you would do less tutoring and would have more time for your own language learning. Or am I wrong?
@Peter: That’s ok. I did not invent this. Chris Anderson did several case studies in his book ‘Free’. I had my ‘ah-ha’ moment only after reading the first chapter.
(actually, I think the book says “information wants to be free”, this is more general than ‘content’)
In fact, the book talks about how the winning businesses understand the laws of the ‘Free economy’. They offer things for free but make money from somewhere else. For businesses who want to survive on the Internet, this book is a must-read.
Only a few years ago, if somebody says encyclopedias should be free, maps should be free, or even writing correction should be free. This guy would be labelled as ‘crazy’.
What I don’t understand is that I am not really putting up an argument. This was proven at LingQ. This was what had happened at LingQ. This system of charging for content was initially implemented at LingQ a few years ago. Yes, here! At that time, people put up content for 10 points and still didn’t sell well. Remember at that time, there weren’t a lot of free content to compete with. The system was proven not to be successful, and I think they made one of the best decisions of freeing up the content. After all, the content itself ‘wants’ to be free.
If this is something that LingQ can easily re-implement (by uncommenting out some lines of code), let’s try it, and see if this law is true (again).
@hape: No. If I would offer tutoring for free I would have more students. I would have all the students who want to have tutoring service but don’t want to pay for it. If students have to pay for it I’ll have less students and more time for my own studies. Only the keen students will pay. This is what I mean by ‘regulation’. I don’t need the points that I get for tutoring, and I could earn more money by doing other things. I do tutoring to help other students.
If LingQ buys copyrights of contents from the authors or providers, it will have discretion about how to distribute the contents. If there are no such agreements the authors can withdraw contents from the library at any time.