This is disgustingly disrespectful and unacceptable 😡

[TomErikSmith]

Three months ago today, on the 13th of April, I noticed a bug/issue/change where suddenly I was getting blue words in lessons that had been completed. I very quickly realised that all the hyphenated words in the lessons were now showing up as blue and were being treated as one word, for example “nike-joggesko”. I had previously ignored the word “nike” because it is just a brand name, and I lingqed the relevant word “joggesko” (sneakers). Now this was blue again and was one word. This was the case for all hyphenated words. It also introduced a bunch of bugs that broke lessons for everyone. I even tried linqing or ignoring these new blue words but it would remain blue.

So I came to the forums and reported it here:

Hyphenated words now count as one word? plus some bugs that this has introduced

So I am looking at an older lesson that I have completed fully, and now there are blue words in the lesson. It still says that the lesson has 0 new words but what has happened is that the hyphenated words that I had previously lingqed are now a single word and show up blue, for instance “BMX-sykkel“. I know in this instance I had set the word “BMX“ to “ignore” and then linqed the word “sykkel”. Now its one word in the lesson and blue… I also can now lingq that word, it shows up in my vocab but w…

I immediately got a reply from @zoran saying they will look into it. Great! A bunch of other people started replying saying they were seeing the same, and started reporting even more bugs and issues with this change. Some other different threads were popping up as well reporting this issue in their target languages.

After three days, on the 16th of April Zoran posts in the thread saying that:

@zoran

The issue should now be fixed on all platforms.

This was clearly not true and everyone started replying that there was no change for anyone.
Frustrating.

After a few days of people still reporting the issue, Zoran again commented saying this on April 20th:

@zoran

Hi everyone, just an update here. We will soon release a fix for the mentioned issue. It will be reverted back. Thanks for your patience.

Clearly stating that this will be reverted back with a fix they will release “soon”
Awesome, they know of the issue, and they will fix it, perfect. It’s annoying but they are going to put it back to how it was “revert” the change.

On April 24th Zoran replied saying:

@zoran

@TomErikSmith I hope we will push a fix for this on Monday. Appreciate your patience

They have fixed it, reverted it back, and they will release the “fix” on Monday April 27th

Yay! what a relief.

April 27th came and went with no change and repeated requests for what was going on, were ignored. I have in fact never received another response from Zoran or anyone at lingq about this in my original thread. The last reply there was the one saying it will be released on “Monday” (April 27th).

However Zoran did finally reply this on June 2nd, more than a month later, in a thread started by @JulianiTOgo about the hyphen issue:

@zoran

@TomErikSmith We will keep hyphenated words split. This change will be reverted back in the coming days. I am sorry it’s taking a bit long, but we will push an update soon.

This reply could not be any clearer. They will keep hyphenated words split and they will revert it back in the coming days.

Given what has been said so far, and the fact that we had been ignored for more than a month, and that this issue was originally reported over one and a half months ago, approaching two months at this point, I was getting very frustrated and simply did not believe that they were telling the truth at all anymore. But I still hoped that they were actually going to fix it this time.

On June 14th, nearly two weeks later, Zoran told Juliani this:

@zoran

@JulianiTOgo This is gradually getting sorted out and should be all completely fixed soon.

After a further couple of weeks, with no change, and us feeling very frustrated, and frankly insulted at this point, on June 29th Zoran asks me and Juliani for “examples” of the hyphen issue.

@zoran

@JulianiTOgo Can you please post a few lesson URLs with examples of the hyphenated words issue so we can get to the bottom of this and have it solved? Thanks and thanks for your patience.

@zoran

@TomErikSmith Can you please post a few lesson URLs with examples of the hyphenated words issue so we can get to the bottom of this and have it solved? Thanks and thanks for your patience.

So now, two and a half months later, after they have repeatedly said that they are working to fix the issue, and split hyphenated words again and fix the bugs. They seem to be unaware of this issue and require some examples. Well Ok, so we both send over some examples.

Three days later, what is the response I get? Yes, that’s right. I get told that the hyphened words are meant to be one word…

@zoran

@TomErikSmith I checked these two lessons and I could only see words:
dvd-spiller
t-skjorte

but these are both meant to me one word. Can you find any other examples?

Oh so, apparently we have all just been playing out some elaborate acting scene, in which we have been pretending to complain about an issue and Lingq have been pretending to be “fixing it”.

Zoran did however tell Juliani that he would send their examples to the developers:

@zoran

@JulianiTOgo I forwarded URLs to our developers.

That was on July 3rd…

Today is July 13th. Officially THREE MONTHS from my original post as well as @JulianiTOgo 's post.

@zoran posted this:

@zoran

An update here from our developers. Our final decision is that, for now, we will not split hyphenated into multiple words. Instead, we are focused on delivering a new reader for all platforms.

I am at a loss for words.

Like I say in the title of this thread, this is simply unacceptable, and I request that lingq provide us will a full explanation, apology, and some kind of restitution for all the lies, stress, and time they took from us for a whole three months, and counting. It is unacceptable, disgusting, and disrespectful.

[David12scht]

Even as someone who thinks this is a perfectly fine outcome, I’d have to agree: this is a bizarre series of gaslighting that is simply shameful on the part of LingQ.

[JulianiTOgo]

Well, at this point I must say that I’m just very disappointed. I can see that maybe for many other users the hyphenated word issue is not that big if at all considered a problem. However, I’d like to understand why LingQ apparently considers that it is better to merge hyphenated words than to split them, as it used to be before. For me there are just advantages with the splitting solution. If LingQ sees this differently that’s ok but then they could just say that, because the way it looks there was an update in April where they messed up some things and hence produced the hyphen bug. After months of promising they would fix it they finally noticed that they were not able to do so and preferred to change their mind.

The most important thing at LingQ is how it counts words, so any change of the status quo should be well thought and explained to the users.

[LeifGoodwin]

There are bugs that I reported over three years ago and are still not fixed. They did actually fix them, then soon after they unfixed them, all rather odd. The app is full of bugs, and the marketing is full of false and misleading claims, it is what it is. You have to decide if it is useful. I use it an an assisted reader, and it is of benefit.

[TomErikSmith]

@David12scht

Even as someone who thinks this is a perfectly fine outcome, I’d have to agree: this is a bizarre series of gaslighting that is simply shameful on the part of LingQ.

Thank you, appreciate it.

For anyone who is reading through this, and perhaps thinks that it’s not a big issue, or it doesn’t affect you, all I ask is that you perhaps put this specific bug/issue aside and just look at how it has been handled, and how we have been treated and gaslit about what was happening for these past three months. Or even better, if you can just try and imagine if this was something you did care about, and that did affect you… How would you feel about it?

[leonkwek]

I agree it’s a strange sequence of events that sound frustrating, but one part of your take is factually incorrect: throughout the entire time the LingQ team were definitely making changes and trying to amend the hyphened behavior, I remember a few weeks where there more different variations bugs showing up from day to day.

Which is to say rather than gas lighting or “pretending to fix”, I think it much more likely the devs attempted to fix but failed and noticed they were actually making things worse. I don’t think it makes any sense that Zoran was running some elaborate miss-information campaign, but rather reporting the true decisions that ultimately proved harder to implement.

It’s probably not much comfort or really a good excuse, but remember that LingQ is a relatively small company and the software is over 10 years old: there may be technical reasons why they cannot easily implement the design they would like despite best intentions.

If I was as invested in the customer service as you, I’d honestly find a different product rather than keep banging my head against the wall. Personally I’ve accepted the quirks as part of the package – despite some jank LingQ is still 1000x better than the competition if your goal is to learn languages.

[TomErikSmith]

I respectfully disagree. At no point have they explained any of the things you are suggesting. They have not been open or honest about what is going on at all. We have repeatedly asked for more detailed information, but the only thing that has been communicated is that “it will be fixed”, “it has been fixed”, “it will be reverted back, sorry for the delay”, “we have decided not to fix it.”

I too have accepted a certain level of bugs and issues, however this is a change to the core functionality of the service and the way it functions, and is simply unacceptable. This is something that has never existed in LingQ, it was added/introduced three months ago, they basically immediately said they will reverse it, but have been unable or unwilling to do so it seems. It is insane that they can’t just go back one day in the code to undo a mistake.

If they are refusing to fix it, that is bad… If they are unable to fix it, that is significantly worse, and should worry everyone who uses the service.

I get that for you, it is simply not something you care about, but here is an example from Juliani that perfectly illustrates the complete absurdity of this change:

@JulianiTOgo

Thank you for increasing the new words figure on my lessons by 10-20% with these complete useless hyphen words. This will take me a lot of time and attention in the future, because each time you have to figure out:

• what it means (dictionary entries are very rare)
• What a particular word of the hyphen cluster means
• If it is actually a word
• If you want to ignore the word
• If you want to save the word and then which definition and/or translation do you use.

For advanced users the hyphen issue is a nightmare…

[LeifGoodwin]

@TomErikSmith

Thank you for increasing the new words figure on my lessons by 10-20% with these complete useless hyphen words.

The word count is no more than a very rough guide to your progress, it’s best not to worry too much. You will see that you are making progress when you review a video from six months earlier and realise that you find it much easier to follow.

[LeifGoodwin]

@leonkwek

It’s probably not much comfort or really a good excuse, but remember that LingQ is a relatively small company and the software is over 10 years old: there may be technical reasons why they cannot easily implement the design they would like despite best intentions.

If I was as invested in the customer service as you, I’d honestly find a different product rather than keep banging my head against the wall. Personally I’ve accepted the quirks as part of the package – despite some jank LingQ is still 1000x better than the competition if your goal is to learn languages.

It is possible to reduce the number and severity of bugs using development techniques such as dependency injection and regression testing. However, this would require suitably trained and experienced engineers and managers as well as buy in from the senior management. I’ve worked in small companies led by domain specialists, and frankly I don’t expect to see improvements in LingQ until after Donald Trump has gone full hippy. I agree with your comments.

[JulianiTOgo]

Very correct but it’s not about your known words but the new words. In a non-realistic best case scenario you only see new words that are actually (according to you) new words. So when I upload the transcript of a 50 minute podcast and LingQ shows me 100 new words, at a more advanced stage you could expect that most of these words are actually new to you. Maybe there will be some 10 proper names, and another 10-20 easily understandable inflections of already known words. Now what hyphens do is they take probably known words away and add (in my case) 10-20% new words on top. Each new word, whether you know it, LingQ it or ignore it, takes time and mental space.

[leonkwek]

@TomErikSmith

If they are refusing to fix it, that is bad… If they are unable to fix it, that is significantly worse, and should worry everyone who uses the service.

I think LingQ have decided not to invest any more development effort in fixing the issue and the strategy is instead to focus of building a new reader. The reason I think this is because that is exactly what Zoran said in the message you quoted.

Presumably, the new reader will allow to implement new features more easily with lower risk of unintended side effects.

Ironically, I think LingQ actually DO agree with you as to the significance of the hyphenation: that’s why they moved so quickly to try and change it but ended up breaking things in the process.

[LinVega]

Hyphenated counted as a single word are not the main issue here really. It’s that when their engine get confused on Hyphenated word, their word counter on JS are broke and no one can continute using the reader at all. Technically they should be aware of this during the test phase before they push the code changes. And when the reader doesn’t word, they should revert back to previous version ASAP and this is really easy from the server side. My hyposis is, there are some function they introduced that caused this bug and they don’t want to revert it, most likely a function that want you to pay more!

[TomErikSmith]

There are a lot of "I think"s in there… Wouldn’t it be nice to, I don’t know, just maybe, hear this from them? Just a thought.

Something like:

“Hey, we’re sorry, we have been trying to fix this hyphen issue and and are having a lot of trouble and it seems to be making it worse, so we are instead going to work on a new reader, where it will be easier to fix these type of issues going forward, and with this new release the hyphen issue will be fixed. Again sorry for the inconvenience, but I’m confident it will be fixed when the new reader is released in the next couple of months.” (If this is actually what is happening, which we actually have no idea about, because they are not saying or clarifying anything)

You know, like actually telling us what is going on, clearly and concisely, and not have random other users defending them and telling us what they “think” lingq is “thinking” or “doing”.

But clearly there are some people on here who seem to be weirdly motivated to dismiss our complaints and concerns on this issue and to defend lingq, so to you I wave my white flag…

You are right, we are wrong. This isn’t an annoying bug that is ruining our experience on the platform we pay for. Actually it’s not even a bug.. it’s the greatest feature that has ever been created on any platform in the history of mankind. No one has ever seen a feature so great and powerful for language learning as this! Thank you for your attention to this matter!

[LinVega]

I have to add something here. The youtube import bug ‘no available caption’ is probably lasted for 1 years now and still no fix or even hint on why it happened.

[RyanMJustin]

Plus not to mention the captions are oddly inaccurate, which is a youtube issue, but I’ve noticed the translations have gotten terrible which is a lingq problem which leads to, I’m not sure why its so difficult for lingq to organize the sentences better (which could be why translation is messy, and remove all the [music] and [laughter] mumbo jumbo

[alainravet1]

@TomErikSmith

“Hey, we’re sorry, we have been trying to … Again sorry for the inconvenience, but…” (If this is actually what is happening, which we actually have no idea about, because they are not saying or clarifying anything)

You know, like actually telling us what is going on, clearly and concisely, and not have random other users defending them and telling us what they “think” lingq is “thinking” or “doing”.

Exactly.

A little transparency and explanation can go a long way. That’s why we have real-time arrival time boards at bus stops.

Edit: it’s “time-boards” actually, with a hyphen. https://www.oed.com/dictionary/time-board_n

[LeifGoodwin]

@TomErikSmith

But clearly there are some people on here who seem to be weirdly motivated to dismiss our complaints and concerns on this issue and to defend lingq, so to you I wave my white flag…

I don’t think anyone is defending LingQ. We’ve given you our views, it has been like this for years, take it or leave it. I would go elsewhere if I had discovered a more useful product. I despise the marketing, but that’s beside the point.

[TomErikSmith]

Sorry I wasn’t singling you out, but just a bunch of people now and throughout these last three months have been trying to pick apart whether this is even a problem or not, without just accepting that it clearly is a problem for some, and trying to be a little bit more empathetic.

@LeifGoodwin

I would go elsewhere if I had discovered a more useful product.

I agree, me too. If I knew then what I know now I might have chosen to use one of the open source alternatives and accepted less features and less clean UI, instead of buying a lifetime sub on lingq.

@LeifGoodwin

it has been like this for years, take it or leave it.

I think this is the problem. We should be demanding better, not making excuses for them every time it gets worse, allowing a creeping sense of normality to set in.

[LeifGoodwin]

@TomErikSmith

I think this is the problem. We should be demanding better, not making excuses for them every time it gets worse, allowing a creeping sense of normality to set in.

Good luck with that.

[jt23]

TomErikSmith:

I sympathize, truly I do.

I’m a frequent critic, often impolitely so, of LingQ as an app. It’s the worst software I’ve ever paid money for. Most free software these days is of higher quality.

LingQ offers a beautiful powerful concept, but a terrible design, implementation, and development process. The codebase is rotten, meaning it’s so buggy that adding features or fixing bugs often makes things worse – as we’ve seen with this whole hyphen disaster.

IMO LingQ needs a serious rewrite. But I know that won’t happen. I’m not sure how good the programmers are, but management is so willfully incompetent in all respects that I see management as the main problem.

Management isn’t going to get a clue or fire itself, so this is the way things are and will remain so in LingQville.