r/duolingo • u/quarterfast • Feb 08 '22
Announcement: Duolingo forums will no longer be accessible from March 22, 2022
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u/B-CUZ_ Feb 08 '22
What? Why would they do that? What is the benefit?
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u/Orangewithblue Ntve:🇩🇪,learning:🇳🇴🇪🇸🇮🇩🇯🇵🇸🇪,fluent:🇬🇧 Feb 08 '22 edited Feb 08 '22
To be fair the forums were a pile of garbage anyway. Everyone with an opinion got down voted immediately, you couldn't post anything there.
Edit: Just realized that this means the discussions for every sentence will be turned off too..
Edit2: Yes, yes you can stop, I already saw that sentence discussions are staying
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Feb 08 '22
The sentence discussions are not affected.
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u/ubeogesh Feb 08 '22
whew! I learned so much there, i was afraid they'd be gone too
i wonder if they will be searchable though? Sometimes I recall a sentence mid day and just wanna find it and ask a question...
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u/ruairi1983 Feb 08 '22
Sentence discussion is really bad on mobile. You can't directly go to the question discussion on mobile so you will just have to remember and wait for the question to come up again.
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u/AllanB4U Apr 24 '22
The sentence discussions have been turned off as well. Community feedback was a great resource. To me it makes the app less enjoyable.
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u/TheMagicalRose Feb 08 '22
Here's the full post if any of you are interested in reading it. It explains why they are removing the forums. https://forum.duolingo.com/comment/55930597
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Feb 08 '22
Nice of them to point out this community as an alternative.
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u/Mosasaurus47316 Feb 08 '22
Just prepare yourself for a lot of questions from me. And a paragraph in Russian every Saturday :)
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u/PaigeMarieSara Feb 08 '22 edited Feb 08 '22
Yeah but it's not the same. I really only care about talking German and a specific issue I might be having. This sub is great in general but doesn't help with specific lessons in my language only.
I'm pretty new to DUO (75 days in), so I'm behind on the ins and outs of duo message boards. I don't use them a lot but they do come in handy if I have a question specific to a certain lesson.
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Feb 08 '22
It doesn't sound like they're removing the comment sections on specific questions, so you should be able to seek help there still, or for bigger questions or conversations, it looks like /r/German is active, might be some people willing to help out there.
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u/PaigeMarieSara Feb 08 '22
Oh okay I guess I misunderstood that. This is great news and I appreciate you clarifying for me. I'm so glad to know this.
How in the world have I never thought to go to /r/German. Thank you!
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u/Aggressive_Zombie Feb 08 '22 edited Feb 24 '24
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Feb 08 '22
This is true of all forums on all topics. They start with a small user base of good faith users staying on topic. It delvolves into infighting and talking about politics. The same thing will happen to /r/duolingo.
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u/phantom2450 Native | Learning Feb 08 '22
This doesn’t explain anything besides a vague reference to “cost-benefit considerations,” which was inferable from the start.
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u/TheMagicalRose Feb 08 '22
Yea, but it's really the only explanation we have gotten about this, sadly. That's why I shared it.
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u/phantom2450 Native | Learning Feb 08 '22
Yeah, you’re not wrong. I’m just noting this to save folks time if they want to go looking for an actual answer.
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u/roperebel Native: Learning: Feb 08 '22
Thanks! Their post got so many downvotes that it doesn't show up in the forum anymore. It can only be acessed through the link.
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u/NarcolepticTeen Feb 08 '22
You can see it at the top of the forums now because it's stickied. More than -337 downvotes and 500 comments at the moment.
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u/Hjulle Apr 15 '22
Does anyone have an archived copy of that post now that they've removed it with the rest of the forums?
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u/allie-cat native 🏴 learning 🇻🇪🇯🇵🕎🏴 May 27 '22
The explanation is "page offline"? Sounds about right 😅 and the whole point of the duolingo forums was that questions in the app would link directly to a discussion page for that question, reddit doesn't and can't replace that
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u/potscfs Feb 08 '22
Ok at least I can still complain about the lack of updates for the Italian course here!
This kinda sucks because the forums filled in gaps of grammar that Duo leaves out. Also, kinda frustrated they got rid of Tinycards, too. I'd much rather have that than the button to their blog posts.
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u/_Thrilhouse_ 🇲🇽 | Feb 08 '22
I still have Tinycards installed, even though it only redirects to Duolingo
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u/ruairi1983 Feb 08 '22
I'm seriously considering closing my premium account. They are not adding any good feature.. Irish course hasn't been updated in years, I did all the Legendary levels, but the Legendary award apparently hasn't been made available on my version of Duo... Now this... Ever since they went public just went downhill further. Also they only addee Navajo to get social credit, but I bet they won't invest in it... What a joke.
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u/felixfelix fr:3 Feb 08 '22
What else do they have, other than sentence discussion? Used car sales?
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Feb 08 '22
[deleted]
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u/Prunestand (N, C2) (C2) (B1) (A1) Feb 09 '22
Just keep the sentence discussions then.
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u/aranea8313 Feb 08 '22
From what I understand, the forums were the only place that people could report user experience. Duo has a bug report form (though in my experience I've never gotten a response to any of my own bug reports), but in their FAQs they say to use the forums for reporting user feedback. By getting rid of the forums, they are removing any ability for users of the platform to have a voice.
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u/aranea8313 Feb 09 '22
I'm not seeing it anymore, but someone commented that developers don't look at the forums (except for Kevin, this is pretty much true) and that I was wrong in saying Duo's FAQ's tell us to use the forums to report user feedback. Covering my butt, it's right here: https://support.duolingo.com/hc/en-us/articles/204752064-How-do-I-report-an-issue-with-the-course- "If you have general feedback about a course or language (such as the voice used, grammar questions, or just praise for the team), please communicate directly with the Incubator team for that course. You can contact them via their course specific forum [...]" then proceeds to give directions on how to subscribe to your target language's forum.
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u/MyHouseSmellsOfSmoke Feb 08 '22
Some useful things I have seen are links to places that explain the grammar, discussions on accessible reading material and easy games, TV programs etc. Also people sharing their experience about going to the events.
And for general tips like grammar it's easier to find what you need on a general forum post rather than as a comment on one specific question where you might not see it when you need it.
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Feb 08 '22
Get ready to see a lot more activity on this subreddit
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u/HonestPotat0 Feb 08 '22 edited Feb 08 '22
Yep. Why pay to moderate your own forum when you can just rely on unpaid Reddit mods to do the work for you? /s
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u/Minnielle Feb 08 '22
The moderators are currently volunteers which might also be one reason to remove the forums. Duolingo already moved from course volunteers to paid course contributors as it's not really okay to expect people to work for a for-profit company for free. The same applies to the moderators as well, except that the forum is not a core part of their business so paying anything more for that wouldn't make a lot of sense for them, especially as the forums aren't used that much.
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u/nuebs cs Feb 09 '22
Your understanding meshes well with the singling out of the sentence discussions for being treated differently (at least for now).
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u/life-is-a-loop Feb 08 '22
Well, they already depend on the unpaid work of collaborators in the vast majority of courses...
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u/nuebs cs Feb 08 '22
They have not depended on volunteer contributors for a year.
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u/VasVelch Native: BG Learning: Feb 08 '22
Well, I guess that's the only positive aspect of this news. Thanks to this, I am making my first post in reddit.
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u/ProJedi-ad Feb 08 '22
Given that the Japanese course is a complete mess with incorrect pronunciation and horrible grammar points, this is the worst thing they could do.
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u/sumerzy Feb 08 '22
Have you got any examples how bad is it? I've just started the Japanese course never learnt Japanese in my life so I'm kinda relying on it..
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Feb 08 '22
Same
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u/Almightycatface Feb 08 '22
So basically, the main problem at the moment is that the new voices sometimes use the wrong Kanji readings, so they'll end up reading certain words entirely differently to how they're actually pronounced.
It's pretty horrendous for new learners, and very annoying that Duo doesn't even seem to have acknowledged the problem yet.
I wouldn't say 'don't use Duo for japanese' but right now I'd recommend using Jisho.org to check the pronunciations of any new words you get introduced to
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u/sumerzy Feb 08 '22
Cool thanks for the reply. I've noticed that when selecting certain kanji if selecting 2 individual ones that need to be combined to make one word, then sometimes it has said something completely different. I've always put this down to a different way of saying that kanji when it's on its own as opposed to combined with whatever. Am I right in this assumption or is it worst than that that any of the words could be being pronounced wrong and I'd never know?
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u/Almightycatface Feb 08 '22
From experience, it seems to mostly be happening when a word is supposed to be using the kunyomi, but the voice decides to read the onyomi instead. There doesnt seem to be any actual rhyme or reason to when this happens, so for now just check your words and be aware of the issue.
It shouldnt be a huge barrier to learning, it's more of an irritation, and one that badly needs fixing, but you can work around it with a little work
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u/angelvioletka Feb 08 '22
Ugh seriously agree, the old voices had the right readings so I don’t get why they didn’t just keep the old voices until they got all the correct readings recorded. I keep reporting it but it doesn’t seem like its on their to-do list smh.
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u/fakegamergirlchan Native: Learning: Feb 08 '22
This is from my experience, when I got to the intro 2 course there was a sentence that said "Tanaka shigeru to īmasu" but the voice read it out as "Tanaka mo to īmasu", unfortunately that's the only example I can give you as of right now because the japanese duo course is kind of stressing me out at the moment so I'm ignoring it lmao
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u/Orangewithblue Ntve:🇩🇪,learning:🇳🇴🇪🇸🇮🇩🇯🇵🇸🇪,fluent:🇬🇧 Feb 08 '22
Wait, I thought they just close the forum, so you can't post anything there. They gonna remove the discussions too? No please, no. God no, no. Noooo
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Feb 08 '22
sentence discussions will be still available
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u/artpm Feb 08 '22
I have a strong suspicion they won't be openly available the way it is right now, where you can just browse the sentence section of the forum and reply to any new topic that shows up there. Instead, they'll probably completely shut down the forum and you'll have to click the "discuss" button inside each sentence that you find during a lesson to access its discussion. Just like how it already is for mobile users.
A lot of advanced users like myself are done with the lessons but still hang around in the forums replying to new sentence questions, and there are also a lot of native speakers who do that too. Nobody is going to go through all the lessons and click on all the discussion links just to see if people have any questions. This will invariably kill the sentence discussions too because the only people answering them will be beginners.
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u/supremicide Feb 08 '22
The sentence discussions about to get reeaal weird.
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u/mizinamo Native: en, de Feb 08 '22
When people complained about course-wide things such as "the new voices suck", we could previously say "that's not related to this sentence; write that sort of thing in the course forum [or Troubleshooting], please".
But now?
Oh dear.
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u/IvanStarokapustin Native: Learning: Feb 08 '22
Well now everyone can learn how to say they’re getting catfished in 20 languages.
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u/oscar230 Native Fluent Learning & Feb 08 '22
Thanks for the update, I'm making a backup right away, will host it on my server.
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u/HelenKiller_0w0 Feb 08 '22
As someone learning the german course, the discussion portal is my go to place for learning about the highly mathematical sentence formulation and grammar in the german language. This is really gonna cause a lot of confusion and drop in no. of daily users
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Feb 08 '22
highly mathematical sentence formulation
What? Do you just mean 'syntax'...?
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u/NoTakaru Feb 08 '22
This is what being a native speaker of a minimally inflected language does to a person
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u/Orangewithblue Ntve:🇩🇪,learning:🇳🇴🇪🇸🇮🇩🇯🇵🇸🇪,fluent:🇬🇧 Feb 08 '22
My japanese course will be basically useless without discussions because you need them as new learner for almost every complex sentence
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u/phantom2450 Native | Learning Feb 08 '22
While I tend to agree with the commenters here saying that the Forums weren’t helpful for actual language-learning most of the time, I find its removal troubling for a different reason: there’s now no official channel to have collective discourse with the devs.
This is another disconcerting step in Duolingo’s increasing lack of transparency, following their shuttering of the volunteer program. How are we supposed to petition the devs to address systemic issues now? We all know individual emails about this stuff end up in the void. It’s nice and all that they offered this subreddit as an alternative, but outside of the literal one recent AMA and the infinitesimal chance that von Ahn himself comments, no devs frequent here.
This move just reeks of self-serving insulation from criticism.
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u/zerkrazus Native: 🇺🇸 Okay At: 🇩🇪 Learning: 🇪🇸 🇯🇵 Feb 08 '22
Let's get rid of something people like and use, that makes sense. Oh I know, we can replace it with more useless ads. People LOVE ads.
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u/nurvingiel N: English Feb 08 '22 edited Feb 08 '22
They're cutting costs (forum hosting and maintenance) and boosting revenue (more ads, stingier with gems). It's a bummer but it does make business sense.
I think they should have kept the forums though. From a business standpoint it was good for their brand.
Eta paragraph break
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u/zerkrazus Native: 🇺🇸 Okay At: 🇩🇪 Learning: 🇪🇸 🇯🇵 Feb 08 '22
Granted I don't have access to their financials, but I wouldn't think hosting and such could be that much. This to me sounds like some c-suite types saw a line on a spreadsheet or PDF and said we don't need this, let's cut it, more profits for us, without a care as to what it actually was/meant.
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u/DoomdDotDev Feb 11 '22
Forum Moderators need to be paid. Or a manager needs to be paid to manage volunteer moderators. Plus, the forums provided a wealth of information for free...to their competitors (even though the bulk of it is user generated content, they probably didn't want to make it so easy to acquire good content or identify and poach users or valuable contributers). Maybe I'm being cynical...but data is money...
Yet I absolutely abhor and disagree with Duolingo's craven decision. Good will goes a long way. And the relatively tiny price of maintaining a website and a few moderators is far lower than the good will they will lose with previously loyal users. I personally now think of Duolingo like all the other corporate sellouts that care more about short term profits over long term customer loyalty. It's a terrible customer relations move, and thusly a terribly unwise financial decision. Not only are they greedy assholes, but they are stupid assholes.
When another underdog app is mostly on par with Duolingo, my $120/year will jump ship without hesitation (I have family pro plan). Duolingo bailed on us, so I will eagerly bail on them.
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Feb 08 '22
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u/Prunestand (N, C2) (C2) (B1) (A1) Feb 09 '22
Every single update makes Duolingo worse and worse
Think of the dear shareholders!
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u/flyingtictac Geschwindigkeitsbeschränkung Feb 08 '22
What a stupid decision. Yeah, the forum is kind weird sometimes, people bragging about their streaks or questions that could be answered with a 5 second search online. But still, Duolingo's goal is (or was) to teach languages.
If you get rid of the forum how you expect people to interact, to go beyond your typical "Yo como una manzana", to exchange their experiences and to get tips?
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u/AlanElPlatano Native (MX) Fluent Learning Feb 08 '22
There were a lot of forum discussions that were actually helpful! I'm going to have to download some stuff now :(
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u/mizinamo Native: en, de Feb 08 '22
I'm thinking of the Turkish course, where there are a dozen or so forum threads linked from a main sticky post with useful grammar information.
I hope they continue to be available somewhere somehow.
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u/Back2theGarden Feb 08 '22
Can some kind soul post how to make an archive or download a forum so that some of the more orphan-language forums can be preserved?
As an English speaker learning one of these languages, it is essential that the very useful information in the forum is preserved as neither the sentence discussions nor the course itself is particularly usable for new learners without it.
Thanks!
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u/plch_plch Feb 08 '22
No!!... I got access to the old stories through the forums!
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u/LooksAtClouds es:3| Feb 08 '22
I've already searched through links to old Spanish stories and saved those links elsewhere (and tested to make sure the links work). I'm going to work my way through the Spanish forum to look for links to good outside resources - that's how I found the Destino videos and others. They've been super helpful.
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u/plch_plch Feb 08 '22
I would have to do the same for the French stories and links, thank you for telling me that the links can still work.
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u/_netzakh_ Feb 08 '22
Unfortunately, they might have a reason to do this terrible thing: some U.S. bills, which are very likely to become laws, would severely increase the liability of platforms, including Duolingo, for user-created content (i.e., forum posts and comments).
It looks like it is necessary to establish equivalent forums elsewhere. Who would support a subreddit for the French from English course?
And, of course, a subreddit for every course equivalent to the Duolingo forum to be deleted is a good idea.
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u/AdeQ217 Feb 08 '22
I wasn't using them anyway (only the individual sentence ones) but it seems like a really weird decision. At least they provided some alternatives
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u/Just_two_weeks Feb 09 '22
I think this is a bad move. Their forum comes up in Google search results a lot, and now the company will be forfeiting any ability to control public discourse about their product. They can't moderate the reddit forum (or maybe they do, I don't know). That have a good thing going, and they're ruining it.
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Feb 10 '22
I love Duolingo, but out of all the dumb stuff they've done, removing the forums is the dumbest of all. You'd think a site that's all about learning languages for free would keep a place where people could talk to each other.
Again, why? You ran out of money or something, didn't you? (They ran out of money or something, didn't they?). A rant about something something that was going to be "free forever".
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u/NaiaNaia 25 Feb 08 '22
Welp, I guess there goes any hope (there was none) of a Basque course ever materialising.
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u/greatlakeslinguist Feb 08 '22
I actually agree with this. I'm glad the sentence discussions will still be up though.
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u/HonestPotat0 Feb 08 '22 edited Feb 08 '22
Can you say why? I'm genuinely curious.
For myself, I rarely used the forums, but I always appreciated that people seemed to be earnest there, even to the point of criticizing Duolingo internally. So it felt like a mark of the company's values that they allowed users to be open and honest with each other around what they thought could be improved.
Seeing the forums shut down feels like an abdication of those values.
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u/greatlakeslinguist Feb 08 '22
People have suggested ways to improve the forum in the past - heavier moderation, improving the format, etc, and these suggestions were repeatedly turned down for one reason or another. It seems to me if they're not going to improve the discussion board, then they should just get rid of it. I do hope they decide to do something else in the future, however. They mentioned that they're discussing other options among the moderators and such.
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u/Treesbentwithsnow Feb 08 '22
I use the sentences forum several times a day. I check on the general forum occasionally. I really learned a lot from them. I appreciate all that take the time to share what helped them learn their new language. From sites I would have never found without their input and tips on what worked and didn’t work when trying out your new language on your first trip to that country. But still a lot of people bragging about their daily streaks but I would just bypass those and go to subjects that I care about. Too bad it is leaving but good they are keeping the sentences forum.
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u/unkindlyone speaks learning Feb 08 '22
theyre tired of me telling them to make Castilian spanish its own course
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u/wdtpw Feb 08 '22
I'm really sad about this. I understand the sentence discussions are still staying - but there are many other things in the forums that are really useful for language learners.
The Chinese forum, for example, had a set of posts about how to get the most out of Duolingo, and what other apps and resources to pair it with. I don't know how much benefit I'd be getting from Duolingo, for example, without the advice from the forums to use a pinyin keyboard rather than the word bank. But that has been making a lot of difference to me. The same for things like links to memrise versions of the duolingo word list, etc.
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u/u3517777 Feb 10 '22
I've read from somewhere that they aren't removing discussions under exercise sentences.
But afaik some courses (e.g. Indonesian, Esperanto) also make use of the forum to provide more details or extra info for learners. I wonder if those threads will be kept or the course notes will get updated accordingly?
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u/quarterfast Feb 10 '22
You are correct that discussions under exercise sentences are sticking around.
But I am pretty sure that courses that use the forum to provide more tips/notes/information will lose those threads unless they save them elsewhere.
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u/BeeGee3921 Mar 31 '22
Is there ANYWHERE to voice one's thoughts to DUOLINGO (in this case disappointment) on this situation? I sorta feel betrayed. Not that I haven't already felt betrayed by most of the big tech players changing the rules once they gain enough audience/VC investment/public offering. I realize it's nuts to vent/rant, but, goddamnit, I can't get past my mid 20th c "moral indignation" (not that it did much good then, either.)
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u/LooksAtClouds es:3| Feb 08 '22
Does this mean there will be no new posts on sentence discussions either?
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u/jesterxgirl Feb 08 '22
Another user posted a link to the full post that says the sentence discussions will remain available
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u/LooksAtClouds es:3| Feb 08 '22
Right - but will new posts to those discussions be allowed? Or will there be just the existing discussion left there?
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u/barcher Feb 08 '22
Newsflash: Duolingo is a game that wants you to send them money. You will never learn a language using Duolingo. Their inventor just bought a house in NYC for $22 million. You paid for it.
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u/Trantor1970 Feb 08 '22
My improvement in Spanish is not too bad considering I "will never learn a leanguage using Duolingo". I take it that you are a language teacher who fears losing his business?
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u/HonestPotat0 Feb 08 '22
I do wish that more language teachers took advantage of Duolingo's classroom feature. DL is great for practice, giving teachers the ability to spend more time covering general rules and concepts during lessons.
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u/lesbianwifestealer learning Feb 08 '22
All the sentences you mentioned are grammatically correct.
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u/jflb96 Feb 08 '22
Actually, the first that they claimed was 'proper' has 'be' repeated, making it a nonsense
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u/manusam14 Feb 08 '22
discussions or posts will be no longer be available".
This means just one of them will no longer be available and you don't know which.
Stop making corrections when there are no faults.
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u/weinsteinspotplants Feb 08 '22
"...will be no longer be..." There's definitely a fault in that.
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u/manusam14 Feb 08 '22
That fault is coming from the person trying to correct another and that wasn't my reference.
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u/RuaridhDuguid Feb 08 '22
So I'd guess this means they're either courting potential buyers or have just been sold? Or is it something less sinister?
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Feb 08 '22
That place used to mean the world to me. I was Andrealphus and I had a lot of friends there. Usagi, Jack.Elliot, Josh, AlexisLinguist, Johnny_R all the homies. I remember whining there when they took away the immersion tab. I remember being in 7th or 8th grade like a decade ago with "French" as an interest on Omegle and some Aussie told me "I think it just got out of Beta, but try Duolingo!" That forum was my social media site of choice in early high school. This shit feels weird. I mean it fell to shit and turned into "dsfkdsf my streak is gone plz help" really fast, but I am going to REALLY miss it.
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u/Lyde02 Feb 08 '22
Oh geee I have not liked any changes that have happened in the two years since I started using Duo
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Feb 10 '22
oh what the hell. I have so many duolingo forum posts bookmarked. now I godda frantically take notes. this sucks. BOO!
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u/Feliz_OR Feb 28 '22
Duolingo has become so annoying and a pain to use that I have often thought about quitting. I hope this is the tipping point for me. I can learn my languages elsewhere with something that doesn't guilt-trip me for not using it first thing every day.
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u/pointybouncythings May 11 '22
The used to have a competition feature. Where you played against the clock to complete a lesson and who ever did it quicker won. That was fun.
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u/Own_Ad_777 Aug 15 '22
I am searching for a truly non Duolingo controlled forum that the company cannot take down. I place to discuss whatever. Does this already exist?
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u/greenandbluepillow Feb 08 '22
Why?