I don’t understand the mentality of people who have enjoyed a service, free of charge, that was created at considerable expense and effort by others, and then rather than expressing gratitude, complain when the nature of these free services is changed, reduced in some ways, and enlarged in others.
Our greatest obligation to ourselves and our members is to make sure that LingQ is sustainable. I feel no particular obligation towards those who use the site without contributing. No one uses LingQ that does not possess a computer. People who own computers can usually afford $10 per month.
Some people are able to pay for their membership by offering services, tutoring, providing content, etc…
@skyblueteapot - Are you still having that problem on the Vocabulary page? It seems fine for me. What interface language are you viewing the site in? Which browser?
Spatterson, you seem to be proud of thinking only of yourself. Maybe there are other important things for you to learn besides languages. And as for the “reward for own effort” argument, I can state that in many situations of my life I’ve spent my time and effort with things from which I didn’t profit at all, but on the other hand allowed me to be useful to people. And I don’t mind that. And Spatterson, please remember that not everyone in the world goes to Starbucks to buy fancy coffee, or whatever. And Not everyone in the world uses dollars, either. For some, it IS expensive to pay $10 every month. Also, now the premium is only the former Basic, and to really have access to the content of the site, we must use Plus.
Ohh. Wow. Really hurting my feelings there. So lash out at people who say that you should pay if you like LingQ… but you don’t lash out at the member who openly admits pirating competitive products? Wow. Hey whatever. I’m a free speech person. Then again, I’m also a die-hard capitalist. More paying members means more features and a better experience for all. I don’t think that’s thinking of myself. LingQ has to pay their staff with something. Maybe they should pay them with Bits of String?? (Family Guy reference the non-Americans out there. It’s funny).
As for your “reward for your own effort”… I have plenty of open source contributions out in the world. Some software is free, some is not. LingQ is the only website I’ve ever paid for.
And like Steve said, if you own a computer, chances are you have $10 a month. In American dollars thats 4 coffees… or 2 beers at a bar. A medium pizza (maybe 2 mediums from Pizza Hut). 1/10th of your cable, internet, cellphone bill. 1.25 hours of work at minimum wage.
Finally, there are definitely more important things to me than learning a language. I really don’t even want to learn German but I’m in a German speaking country so… I learn German.
You know, maybe LingQ should make a free version… and every time you make a new LingQ you see a 50 second video commerical. You’d probably raise hell about that too. Please, keep it coming. This is childs play
@ian-kury - I’ve already expressed LingQ’s position on the membership discussion but I just want to point out that your statement below is not the case.
"now the premium is only the former Basic, and to really have access to the content of the site, we must use Plus."
Free is still called Free, the former Basic ($10/mo) is now Premium with unlimited access to all functionality, Premium Plus is Premium “plus” 3000 points of tutoring each month.
Thanks for clarifying, Mark.
But anyway, my point is just that the new Free doesn’t allow us to use the same functionalities as the old Free. It’s good to know that with the $10/mo option we have unlimited access, though. I had misunderstood that part.
The old FREE and new FREE were/are not “usable” for real language learning. They are solely for trying out the system.
If you take language learning really seriously, you need a BASIC (now PREMIUM) account.
With 100 (now 20) LingQs you are not able to learn a language the “LingQ way”.
At least you should let the vocabulary section work for the members that don’t pay.And I was telling others about this wonderful site ( it was).I don’t understand how can people be so greedy . Do you really believe that anyone can afford to pay your fee every month ? You should be ashamed of yourselves considering that you live in a country like Canada where there are so many other ways in which one can earn money and you want to squeeze us that are not so fortunate. One of the beauties of being connected to the Internet is that everything ( or almost everything) should be free of charge .
@MADARA, sounds like you should move to Canada. Canada is quite possibly my favorite country… I had my first legal beer in Vancouver… 10 years ago now.
Congratulations, you have taken an area of study, beauty, and grace and defiled it for your want of capital. If you truly needed the funds, you would raise the price for your premium accounts and every once in a while have a donation drive such that you could pay your employees. Instead, you have practically eliminated the free option for users who perhaps don’t have the means to add an extra bill to their lives. From now on, I will actively use traditional courses and ‘Learning with Texts’ to learn. I will not only stop using this site, which I once found to be a good recourse, but I will actively advise friends and fellow language learners to abstain from using it themselves. You have allowed for capitalism to defile your love for languages. If you truly wanted people to learn, you would not impose these impediments.
Very well said jmike129 . How come Facebook isn’t charging anything ? Why don’t they advertise like they do and earn money if that’s the real motive why they’ve created this site.
@MADARA - Facebook does charge its customers. But you and I are not Facebook’s customers, those who advertise to and collect data from Facebook’s users are Facebook’s customers. To be honest, I’m not sure I understand why you are so upset… you can actually increase your total LingQ count to 500 LingQs now. Also, with the new “Exchange” section, it should be easier to earn points. You are Romanian, correct? Since Romanian is the newest language on the site, there are hardly any lessons in the Romanian library. If you create some lessons, you can earn points every time a user takes one of those lessons.
Yes but besides Facebook there are lots of sites that post advertisements and I am sure that they receive some reward for that.Anyway I was wondering how can I create Romanian lessons for lingq ?