I have a question about the points. Why do they expire after 90 days? My money doesnt expire after a certain time, so why do points? I dont get that.
Thanks for help!
rmichel,
Money does not expire, but services that you pay for with money, may expire if those are the conditions put on them. If you sign up for a language course at a school you pay whether you attend class or not. If you join a fitness club with monthly fees, you pay whether you work out or not. We used to charge a fixed amount per month which entitled the learner to a certain number of online discussions and words of writing correction. Most of our members did little or nothing and just paid us every month. Some people mostly spoke or mostly wrote. We felt that this was not unfair, although a good deal for us.
We changed to the point system to provide more flexibility. We found that people tended to hoard their points, as a result our discussions were much less active than before. We decided that, given human nature, we need to put some limitation on the validity of the points and chose 90 days as being fair for any serious learner. We assume that only a serious learner will buy points.
The points that expire will be distributed to people who record content for LingQ or provide other services for the community.
Thanks for asking and I hope you can understand why we do this.
I meant to say, in the last sentence of paragraph one
“We felt that this was not fair, although a good deal for us.”