I agree with everything Steve wrote, and I am sure that almost 1% of new users of LingQ will also agree with him.
Based on what are you so sure, Colin? I am equally sure that most new users are quite happy to get an instant Hint and not have to wait for a dictionary window to open.
To make it clear: I’m not against the instant Hints. But I’m angry that my hints got deleted by one of the hint editors!
For myself I would prefer to get instantly the dictionary of my choice opened (like in the ‘old’ LingQ) instead of having to click on “Open dictionary” but this is not a major problem. It is more a problem of comfort. I understand that you want to made it easy for beginners. A problem is maybe that some of the new users don’t know that the dictionary feature exists! I had to explain it to someone recently.
I understand Vera. As I said in my first comment, I was not aware of this Hint editing situation and want to find out more on Monday. I also find that there are aspects of how the dictionary functions, and how the Tagging functions, that are not ideal, not to speak of the need to fix up the vocabulary page. We will get there.
Please keep providing feed back. Unfortunately we cannot respond as quickly as we would like since we have a long list of things that need to be addressed, a list that does not get shorter. However, the feedback is key. Please don’t stop giving us the feedback.
Wouldn’t it make more sense to just remove hints from the suggestion window (but not delete them) when they’ve been flagged by multiple users? That or mark/highlight it in someway so that users know it might be incorrect? Instead of deleting the hint, wouldn’t it be better to just make it obvious to the user that is still using the hint that it has been flagged? Maybe change the hint window to red or something when a LingQ with a flagged hint is selected. Just some thoughts.
I believe that the most of black. flags are put very subjectively.
I often find that the meanings with ‘flags’ are more interesting and detailed.
But the most people nowadays would like to have very simple meanings, they just don’t like ‘too complicate’ explanations, and that’s why they set ‘black flags’ for them.
I think Vera’s problem is easily fixed by making it such that when hints are deleted, they are not deleted from the accounts of the people who have already saved them. Instead, they are just not shown to other users when they come across the words for the first time.
@ Steve
Of course I exaggerate when I say ‘almost 1%’. Of course most new users want to get an instant hint instead of waiting for the dictionary. It was having to look up words in the dictionary every time while using Learning With Texts that convinced me to try LingQ again. I would never be able to read books on here if I was having to use the dictionary for every new word. However, that was not my point.
It looks like Imani ( Login - LingQ ) has again a lot of trouble with deleted user hints. When I saw her post (only accidentally on the Exchange - still annoying with its small right panel - still waiting for a separate page like to old friends page!!! But this is another issue), I had a look at the hint editor after a long break. Nothing has changed. What I recognize is:
- a lot of hints are only marked as wrong because people found other LingQs ‘better’
Solution: If I see this I sometimes write a note to the person who has flagged wrong.
Better solution: LingQ would make more clear (especially for new users) that they only should flag WRONG hints.
Better solution: LingQ would count which Users has flagged wrongly, and make them aware of this too. I think it is not my job.
- a lot of German hints are marked as ‘English’ but they are often Polish, Czech, Russian, Latvian, Lithuanian or Italian.
Solution: If users have chosen a dictionary language that differs from their native language, they should get a special advice that they should choose the correct language flag for their LingQs.
Annoying solution for me: I look each of these LingQs up in Google translate. I has to open Google translate in a separate window. I have to copy and paste the wrong hint. I hope that Google translate gives me an idea for the correct language (which is not always the case). I have to tick the hint, set the correct language and move the hint to the correct language. I have to unflag the hint. Can you guess, how much work this is? I wish a more supportive solution from LingQ would exist that opens Google translate with one click and gives back the language or something like this.
Annoying solution for the creator of the wrong LingQ: I simply mark these LingQs as wrong and delete them. This is very fast done. The solution above takes me about a minute. This solution takes me 2 seconds only.
- It is still not possible to unflag a single hint. I can only unflag a LingQ. If a LingQ has a correct hint in a language that I know and another hint in a language that I don’t know I have no choice to unflag the first one.
Solution: A better interface!
- Some of the hint editors delete hints that are correct.
Solution: Only trustworthy people should have editor access. How to get trustworthy people to work on the hints (lots of work, now reward)? At least it should be counted how much LingQs they have corrected!
Solution: Do trainings for the hint editors!
I guess hint editors who deleted Imani’s and my hints in the past have simply no idea about what they are doing. Or they are very annoying people who like to distract other people. But I would prefer the first guess 
Personally, I would rather see wrong language hints deleted instead of moved to the correct language. Is it really worth the effort of moving hints to the right language? Looking at the activity scoreboard, clearly hundreds of thousands of hints are saved every month, corresponding probably to tens of thousands of new hints being made every month. Are individual hints really worth so much? Is all this effort to correct a few hundred hints a month really worth it? You must spend more time moving the hints to the correct language than the native speakers of that language would need to look up the word and make their own hints.
That being said, I don’t think hints should be deleted if they are going to be removed from the account of the person who made them. Assuming that get fixed, then I would love to see a much more gung ho approach to deleting hints.
@Colin: “I don’t think hints should be deleted if they are going to be removed from the account of the person who made them”
At the moment they are deleted form the person’s account if I delete it in the hint editor. That is the problem. I guess it is difficult for LingQ to distinguish between public and private LingQ because of the database layout. But this is a guess only.
Here’s what Administrator Alex wrote on April 21, 2014: "@Imani - I’m really sorry to hear about this. I will personally look into this and see what can be done to improve this process and ensure accurate/correct hints are all kept intact.”
It has been two weeks and still no news, no further update. Two weeks and I still encounter this message —>Incorrect hint removed. Please choose a new hint.
Well, the message occupying the deleted hints, “Incorrect hint removed. Please choose a new hint” is even the WRONG HINT. Oh, the absurdity!
Whoever is deleting hints should at least put in the standard dictionary definition for the hint instead of “Incorrect hint removed. Please choose a new hint” I guess this would be too much work for an already overworked interface.
I copy and paste definitions from Word Reference for all of my hints—is this dictionary wrong? The only way my hints are inaccurate or incorrect or both is if Word Reference is inaccurate, or incorrect, or both.
Yesterday was a real let down for me. For all the so called improvements on this site, there are so many new disappointments.
—>Incorrect hint removed. Please choose a new hint.Incorrect hint removed.
—>Incorrect hint removed. Please choose a new hint.Incorrect hint removed.
—>Incorrect hint removed. Please choose a new hint.Incorrect hint removed.
Over and over again to the point of nausea!!
I am at my wits end! There is something wrong with the way the LingQ team is handling this. Why leave it up to members to have control over the Hint Editor? Especially as someone (or two, or three) is apparently ignorant of the process. As Vera has suggested, 'Why not train them?’ If you cannot take the time to do this, then why not do the work yourselves. You handle the Hint Editor until you arrive at a viable solution. You have several wonderful suggestions for improvement on this thread. Why not take them into account? And if you cannot, they why not you, LingQ.com do the work? Why don’t you handle the tedious process?
How difficult is it to remedy this problem? How long will it take? This annoyance is over seven (7) months old.
I have not been involved in this discussion so far. For what it is worth, I am not at all bothered by wrong hints, or hints in the wrong language. I just add my hint and carry on. I would rather see the occasional wrong hint, than have my hints deleted. In the real world we encountered all kinds of errors, incorrect usage, etc. We just move on. However, having saved a hint, I would not like it to be erased, that is an invasion of my space.
However, this whole wrong hint editing process was in response to frequent complaints from a small number of users. There are so many things that need to be done, for example improving the speed of the site and the speed of LingQing, or the library, or simplifying the site for newbies, I think we should not spend too much time on getting perfection in user hints.
Maybe there is something I don’t understand here.
@Imani - Right now it is us handling the Hint Editor. Probably what I will do is remove access to the Hint Editor for the members who we gave access to, just to be sure. Though I’m fairly certain at this point that it is just us at LingQ visiting this page.
Since your complaints two weeks ago, we adjusted our approach here to prevent new hints from being removed. Unfortunately, there isn’t a way to fix the issue of hints that were already deleted, as these have been removed from the system. There isn’t an undo button here. That being said, I can assure you that no more hints will be removed from your LingQs, so once you’ve corrected the hints that you mention above, you will no longer see this message.
Alex,
Thank you very much for resolving this issue! Thank you.
I feel like all user suggestions to LingQ get filtered into something like this…
Incorrect LingQ user hint removed. Please choose a new hint. Incorrect hint removed.
@spatterson - I’m sorry to hear you feel that way. I recall a few comments from you over the past week or so to this regard. We love feedback from our members, and we regularly take this feedback into consideration when further developing the site. However, we don’t want to create a culture where our members automatically expect that their suggestions or requests will be implemented. In fact, we’ve been trying to move away from this as we grow larger. One of the problems we had a LingQ was that we wanted to please all our members and had a difficult time saying no to requests for new features. As a result, LingQ was becoming bloated, difficult to maintain, and core pages and functions were getting neglected due to a lack of resources. Effectively, we were spreading ourselves too thin.
As we move forward, we’re determined to refocus on the parts of the site that we consider core to who we are, and this means a more rigorous process involved when deciding where to spend our time and what features to build/improve. This doesn’t mean that we aren’t listening to our users. Instead, it means that in addition to listening to our users, we’re also being more disciplined about what we direct our focus to and what we spend our time on.
Fundamental changes like this don’t necessarily reap results overnight, as the dust takes some time to settle, but I feel now that we’re on the right track.
I see.
I don’t see. There has been too much dust for too long.
Your explanation sounds more like an insincere “It’s me, not you” breakup bit, Alex. Where are these people who get everything they ask for? I don’t see them. I got ninety-nine suggestions but ain’t heard back on one. What DID we get? We got more updates PUSHED on us that nobody asked for.
I’ll just go to my lesson page. At least I can enjoy the scenic background while my example sentences load… Today (maybe a slow day?) it seems that the page is a little quicker. Still often takes three seconds to move to the next word after pushing x. I remember the day(s?) when I couldn’t hit k or x fast enough. Wistful. Probably should have gone all out while it lasted. What’s more core than a fully functional lesson page? Maybe halfway decent hints?
If you can’t fix it, somebody else will. [Edited in light of improvements.] Probably not, but somebody.
Yes kcb. I had an incredibly long, detailed, and angry response. In the end, it was easier just to tell LingQ to cancel my membership.
I’ll vote for new features with my wallet… so to speak. Peace out folks.
Took me 6 times to get the captcha correct
@kcb - I completely understand your frustration. To be honest, we would love to have all the items on our todo lists completed and crossed off, as it would allow us to do so much more. However, at the end of the day we really only do have so much time, and deciding where to spend that time is one of the toughest decisions. We get comments on virtually every single aspect of the site, including the Library, the Lesson page, the forum, the Help section, the Exchange, the Vocabulary page, the Avatar, the Speak functionality + reports, the Import Lesson page, the mobile apps and more. We don’t have the luxury of dozens of developers to work on these different pages to meet the requests of our members (or even of ourselves). Spend a half a day fiddling with the Captcha to prevent forum spam? That’s half a day less to optimize the Library. Three hours working on a new API method for the mobile apps? Three hours fewer to devote to fixing translation issues. A whole day on resolving intermittent server issues? Looks like the Lesson page is going to be pushed back another day. That’s kind of how it goes when you have a small team.
The Lesson page is extremely important to us, but it is also an inherently complex page to work on due to the sheer amount of code that is present in the back end. Right now we are actively working on the Lesson page, and hope to have some updates to the minimized view ready soon. These updates, unfortunately, require significant restructuring of the code which is a very complicated process. When core functions need to be rewritten, it goes from being a quick UI change to an often long and drawn out project to separate certain functions, move core resources around, etc.
We are determined to continue to improve the Lesson page, both in usability and in performance. We have several ideas that we will look at implementing that should help address the periodic slowness that happens on the Lesson page.
There definitely are things that we do that members don’t ask for, such as the redesign of the site. I don’t feel this time was wasted, as we have had many comments from members saying they love the new site. In fact, if we were to go back to the old site, I imagine a lot of people would complain (see the Lesson page circa 2013: Dropbox - Error - Simplify your life).
We don’t just come up with random ideas that nobody has thought of and spend a month to build and implement them, as this would be a waste of our time and a distraction from other more important things. The ones that make it to production are the ones that we sincerely believe will improve the site in some way for our members. Not all of them do, granted, but a lot of them have shown to have very positive impacts when we look at the number of people using the site and the engagement of our members.
While it is tough to really give a time frame for when these Lesson page improvements will be ready to go (we’re still in the early stages of testing), I’m positive that the new update will be well received and will allow us to streamline our approach to allow us to tackle other Lesson page issues that are on our list.
@spatterson - I’m sorry to hear this, though I completely understand your position. I hope you do rejoin us again some time in the future!