Unwanted changes to vocabulary definitions

I encountered one example today that I must have lingqed early on. It appears that the definition was taken directly from the top of the list of Popular Meanings. Is it possible that my original definitions have been lost or ‘forgotten’ during the upgrade and the software is simply inserting the top ranked definition from the list of popular meanings?

Since I came across this problem regularly, I avoid the shared definition altogether! I always type my own definition, even if what I want is in the existing definitions. This does not prevent change, as someone else can use the definition and change it. The problem seems to be a basic problem in Lingq as my definition should be my own, unchangeable by others. Nobody but me should be able to change my definition!

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I had our team look into this example above. This was their response.

I have checked that case from Potomacker for word megkérdezhetem and I clearly see that this user created “can I ask” as a hint, then “I can/may ask” and now it’s “I can fully ask def”. Basically these are the only available hints for that word and all were created by that user.

I assume you didn’t do this deliberately so we’re trying to understand how these additional meanings could have been created by you. Can you recall what other actions you have taken with your LingQs or in review or anywhere for that word or other words you are having this issue with?

Is the working assumption that I also first created two additional definitions along with the last one that I formatted according to my own conventions in order to help me study this word? I assure you that I don’t waste my time this way. I’ve been under the impression that the hints are often derived from the popup dictionaries, usually, Google, which explains their inadequate formatting and brevity

All we see is that all 3 of those meanings are identified as having been created by you. Our assumption is that you aren’t deliberately creating them. Therefore, we’re trying to understand what you are doing that might somehow be causing this to happen. Typically, a bug like this involves some series of actions that is unexpected. Once we can duplicate and recreate the issue, it is normally easy to fix.
We have tried doing a range of things but haven’t been able to recreate any of this.
How often does this happen? Is it still happening for recently created LingQs? Can you describe your usual usage pattern? Which app or browser? How you create LingQs step by step? Any way for us to recreate the issue.

I’m assuming you’re confused because each user should be able to make a maximum of 1 definition per word/phrase?

A couple of days ago while reading French or Spanish I was writing up a LingQ definition and noticed that after I changed it, my old definition stayed on the list of popular meanings and my new one was the saved meaning but different from the other one. I don’t remember which one it was but it stood out to me immediately because I’m pretty sure I’ve never had one saved definition and another one that’s also mine but different, in popular meanings.

@Gigusek - That was happening but should be fixed now. But, still wouldn’t explain the issue above.

I have no way of knowing how to gauge frequency. I expect, depending on the number of recent lingqs, to find one problem per session on average that needs to be reedited. There is no date stamp as to when a lingq was created. I can say that it does seem that older lingqs, before an upgrade, contain more definitions with problems.
I can say that with verbs, the hints are never adequate. Occasionally I accept hints for nouns or adjectives, but I also amend them after referring to a dictionary. I typically use Mozilla Firefox to interact with the lingq website, although I use Chrome to browse for content and to import
Here is an example from this evening’s session that I have come across several times similarly that I would never have created. I often see parentheses inserted into definitions in ways that serve no purpose.

In this example, the definition is simply: onto the same dog. The -ra suffix is an enclitic which functions as a postposition. I might add an additional preposition, at times, for clarity but not in front of the main one. There is also no need to put onto inside parentheses since it is evident in the phrase. I, nevertheless, see this format come up in my review sessions often enough to suggest that it is some sort of default setting, but one inserted by somebody without a basic understanding of Hungarian. In other definitions parentheses are also needlessly added around his/her/its when defining a possessed noun.

@Mark - Just want to mention I am also still seeing these definitions not created by me. In case a fix has been implemented, would it have impacted older incorrect definitions?

just to give one example, yesterday I saw the word 過程 in japanese. Normally the reading I would select would be Hiragana reading + definition. I rarely do it in a different way. 過程 is a common word and has a lot of definitions to choose from. Typically I would choose a definition like “かてい process; course; mechanism”
Out of all the good and comprehensive definitions to choose from, the definition I had selected was apparently just “process” .

Now on a one off it could be possible I’m mistaken and was just lazy in this case (and somehow clicked the first definition that popped up regardless of meaning), but I still encounter an example like this every 2000 words or so. I mean the definitions are there. Why would I select the worst definition out of the list…

edit: I sometimes get the feeling it’s choosing a google translate option over my own definition.

edit 2: adding another (鍛えて)I just encountered

adding also douri . these two were just in the next 1500 words I was reading. Don’t know if that helps…

@Potomacker - Is it possible that you would have clicked on this definition with parentheses initially and then edited it the way you liked it from there?

@azarya - I have to say, I immediately remove all Hiragana readings and any other markings when I choose a definition. Maybe those are my edits! :stuck_out_tongue: I have also had the readings appear in my meanings on occasion and always seem surprised to see them. May be the same issue. Thanks for the feedback. I think there is something strange happening as Potomacker is also seeing strange things. Unfortunately, it only seems to happen occasionally. We will keep trying to figure this out. What browser or platform do you usually use when creating LingQs?

@mark I alternate using lingq on my computer (chrome browser) and the Lingq application on Ipad. For french far more on Ipad. For Japanese, probably 50/50 split.

How occasional it is I am not sure. I read 2k words yesterday and I think I had 3 or 4 instances where I encountered this.

Hi, it is possible I’m experiencing something similar, although I could be imagining things.
In Chinese Simplified, I regularly see saved meanings containing Pinyin or symbols (“·”) that delimit individual meanings, other than my preferred “/” or “;”.
Since Chinese Simplified is a popular language on LingQ it has many user hints, so my process is to choose a meaning that appears reasonable from the existing ones, then I edit this meaning and remove the romanization or visual clutter like “noun”, “verb” etc.
But somehow every lessons I open seems to contain saved meanings with Pinyin, so I typically edit those again but their number doesn’t seem to decrease. Also most of my known words seem to have adopted a variety of styles. Of course it is possible I saved those without editing. I certainly can’t prove that those were changed :slight_smile:
What is interesting is that I do not see this issue in Chinese Traditional, two differences I notice: 1 there are very few users and consequently few user hints (most are mine I assume), so I copy the meaning from an online-dictionary into the empty meaning field. I never edit existing meanings and mine don’t seem to change. 2 Normally I use the iPad app for Traditional and the web browser for Simplified (I only started to use the web for reading after the LingQ 5 (beta) became available in January, before that it would have been the app as well).

@Mark, Hi.
In my case, I checked and it works. The fact that you can choose one of the common translations of the words and then add other meanings of your own, what you added will remain saved. What bothers me, however, is that in the common translations it still appears for some words, translations from another language than the one I wanted.

I think they are translations from Slavic languages

@Lawrencen - Those translations in other languages have been made by users who have the wrong dictionary language selected. It is not that easy for us to identify and remove these. If you see them, please click the Report button on web and you can just change the language right there. On iOS you can simply swipe left on a meaning to change its language flag.

One thing we can all do is to go into our Vocabulary section and sort your LingQs by Creation Date. Then, scroll through and try and find hints with issues. If all the words with issues are older, that suggests the issue is hopefully in the past. If it is still happening for recently created LingQs, we need to continue to try and figure out what is going on. I don’t see this happening in my recent LingQs.

I am having the same problem.

Tonight, I went back to a course I had created some time ago and noticed some of my definitions had been changed and my tags missing!

It would be great if developers could come up with a way to lock definitions.

We think we have made some recent changes that may help. We are still unable to make this happen deliberately now. If we can all watch for it in new lessons for new LingQs we create, we can hopefully figure out if the issue is resolved or still an issue.