Forums

General Amazing Points on Leader Board

Many of the people racking up these high daily and weekly scores seem to be using the site to learn and with some success - look at the their profiles and the high wordcounts, often gained from a few big courses, seem to confirm that. But I'm sure that these guys are spending a fair bit of time on the site, much more than 5 minutes a day.

A very few, and one user in particular, seem to put gaining points way ahead of learning. There are a few courses in the maths section which are probably intended for kids learning their tables, but which can be used repetitively to gain points steadily while learning nothing. One course in particular is essentially the 1-times table with a couple of jokes thrown in. If you see that on someone's profile, you have to wonder.

Ultimately points are of no consequence, it's the benefit you gain from learning that counts. If you can only spend a few minutes a day here, then ignore the points altogether. If you can spend longer, then climbing one of the leaderboards can be good motivation for some of us. I don't know how long you've been learning here but you seem to have acquired a good number of words, and your point score would have put you in the top 100 about six months ago. So any sense of shame would be inappropriate!

As memrise keeps telling you, "You're doing great!"

.....or as Ian Fletcher (the Head of Deliverance in the brilliantly written "Twenty Twelve") would say, "so, that's all good".

Sorry but, having read the "Terrible English" thread above, I couldn't resist it. :)

Like, totally. Kind of want Ben to say "not a problem" now! ;)

I began to learn "English for russians" may be 1 week ago. I began to study from 1st level of course, but it was too simple for me, that s why I finished that programme for beginners for 3 days. It consists of 547 words. Now I do another programme, but it also not so good, bcs consists very strange words, for example - vibrissa:) Or uxoricide:))) Now I dont need these words. I think I use this site not right:))) May be anyone can give me good advice for using the site?:)

@KotyaPo: I agree that 'uxoricide' and 'vibrissa' are very odd words to include - both very technicsl, and from different subjects! Maybe the creator of that course was having a little joke when he or she included those words.

But most of the other words in that list are OK - I think they would be useful to you.

There may be a better course for you - maybe another Russian speaker will see this post and be able to help.

I hope the points are made more meaningful one day, as they really are motivating. Gamification is the point... motivation, learning, is the point. Meaningless points undermines the whole project. It's all well and good for so many people to say they don't care about points, but, well, that's not the idea here...

@revans. Informative comment, thank you. Maybe I'll start learning my tables again, :D

You can still just treat point locally - with your friends - instead of globally

There is no reason to compare yourself too much with people who came here long before you and/or have a lot more free time to spend here. Or those who create and use point generator courses (that is sooo stupid in my opinion).

What I consider to be amazing motivation is moving just a few steps up every now and then. And longer term challenges like "Now I am between 1200 and 1300 on the leaderboard and I'd like to be in the first 1000 at the end of next month."

Some people dislike the leaderboard in general but there is no requirement to ever have a look on it. But there are several ways for us, with the competitive child inside our souls still alive, to use it.

In future, I would like to see one more thing (I might put in on the feature suggestion but the staff has got a lot of more important things on plate I believe). Counter of days you have spent at least a few moments on memrise without break. Since one of the memrise tips is to learn smaller chunks and more often, such a thing would be a nice addition. And to fit in the memrise style, it could be a plant or a tree at the side of your dashboard, which would grow a bit higher and more beautiful every day you visit memrise. If you break the chain and leave out a day, you start again from a seed.

@fronika - " Given that Memrise also suggests that the best way to learn is in 10 minutes sessions, I'm a bit confused." - I guess do this... 1. do a 10 minute session 2. wait x number of minutes 3. repeat steps 1 & 2

What I really wish is a way to spend those points. You know - something like, get this special memrise screensaver for 500k points, get the old version of score keeping for 1 million points, remove the quote screen for 25k points, etc...

@jenniferhunter: Excellent idea! Any new facility can be removed and the old facility restored in return for surrendering your points. Now that would be really good motivation for spending yet more time here. I like it. (Might be a little technically difficult but memrise might find it worth it to avoid the howls of protest every time they change the colour schemes and rearrange the screen furniture)

"remove the quote screen for 25k points" - wow, seriously? Id rather suggest "attach quote screen whenever possible" The quotes are so great! they make me laugh, think, smile all the time :)

Wow, I have no idea how i made the font bold __

@kareth - I think some people don't care for the quote screen. You feel differently. I'd actually prefer movie quotes as well as the quotes we have currently. Maybe throw in a little Shakespeare while they're at it. I'm sure you could think of a couple of features you would be willing to add/remove for a couple of points. After all - you can't take them (the points) with you when you're dead. kinda morbid but it does put things into perspective :)

One of the problems with the quotes is the small stock of quotes being used. Which results in a lot of repetition. Another is the failure to reference the quote. If it's interesting I'd like to read the work it came from, not have to read everything the author wrote. O K Google usually helps, but I think if you quote it you should cite it. Unless it's an oft repeated gag, etc.

perhaps there should be a thread to collect ideas for new quotes from the users? there are so many good quotes about learning, languages and knowledge in general by so many famous people but staff surely has a lot of more important things to do than to search for them, so we could do it instead :-)

perhaps there should be a thread to collect ideas for new quotes from the users? there are so many good quotes about learning, languages and knowledge in general by so many famous people but staff surely has a lot of more important things to do than to search for them, so we could do it instead :-)

@Fronica'I'm shamed by the huge daily/weekly points some people on here manage to accumulate. I think I spend too much time on Memrise as it is and can't imagine how I can up my points to such amazing levels. Given that Memrise also suggests that the best way to learn is in 10 minutes sessions, I'm a bit confused. by Fronika '

Depends on your topic - when I started learning Chinese I accumulated points at a snail's pace. Then I started revising French and Spanish and began learning Portuguese.This is (for me ) easy material ; I accumulated big scores and zoomed up the rankings. Like life Memorise is not totally fair As in most things 10 minutes is a good length to concentrate, but we can do lots of 10 minutes in a day.It does get a bit addictive and obsessive though , and I have limited my Memrise time significantly

As tonyyyy said - 10 minutes of studying English (my mother tongue) would provide a lot more points for me than studying 10 minutes of Japanese (my target language). So even that is an inaccurate measure of comparison to other people.

On this account I gain countless points a day because I am studying 150-200 words/day throughout the day.

Memrise states 10 minutes is a fine amount to study and will have you progress throughout a year. However it doesn't say 10 minutes a day is an ideal amount of time.

Studies show that 45~ minutes is the longest one should study on average. After that the brain kind of "gives out" and stops caring for new information. Take a break and come back later. That is why I do 30:30 (30 study:30 rest) and I do that throughout the day. All 16 hours of it that I'm awake.

Takes discipline to stop - maybe a timer is needed? I have been at the computer too long and made 2 typos in that last sentence and have computer-aching shoulders, so definitely a timer! I didn't score too many points today but listened to some Portuguese and put some words from that into a list here . Much better use of time for me right now (my listening skills are quite a way behind my Memrise-list skills). Now for a break!!

It would be nice if the system suggested you a successful path. A tool designed by learning experts should probably want to make the best learning outcome the most likely, and suggestions or even restrictions would probably be a part of that. At the least, people who want to do something weird and potentially wasteful or harmful should be warned before doing so...

The issue with that is everyone is unique. :P

Is there anyone whose unique trait is that they are not unique?

''A tool designed by learning experts should probably want to make the best learning outcome the most likely, and suggestions or even restrictions would probably be a part of that. At the least, people who want to do something weird and potentially wasteful or harmful should be warned before doing so...''ThatHorse

Maybe a suggestion to have a break that pops up after an hour of activity?

I thought the points I was looking at were only for the particular course (i.e. french)which I was doing. Now am I to understand that the points reported may have been acquired from more than one course, including maybe some irrelevant ones solely undertaken to get easy points. If that is the case then the points I am comparing myself with really are meaningless.

@griffin1: Not meaningless, but certainly not straightforward. I did a bit of browsing around profiles a couple of weeks back, and that persuaded me that only a few people were using the 'cheat' courses, and, for example, only one of them was in the top 100. So I'm pretty sure most of the people you compare yourself with will be using the site 'honestly'. Of course any English (or other European language) speaker learning Chinese or Japanese (etc) will have a harder time earning points thsn you or me (I'm only doing European languages), but if you look at what your cohort or mempals are learning, you can compare like with like. If you look at the daily or weekly (etc) leaderboard you'll get a mixed bunch of learners, but again you can match yourself against people learning similar or the same languages or courses. One day memrise will do language-based or course-based leaderboards, and that will be interesting, but a lot of us get some motivation from 'competing' against others. The points work well enough for this.

Anyway the points are just a side-issue, vaguely interesting and occasionally motivational. The objective is to learn something new for ones self over a period, not to score points, especially against anonymous people out there in cyber-space.

Couple of thoughts. How about a points log in your profile, shows when your sessions were, which course/words they were, how long they were. Moderators could go in an cancel the points on anything that looks bogus, and everyone can see how many minutes people spend and which course, pretty easily.

2nd, I try to fill my friends list with legit people studying similarly to me, so I can push myself to compete with them. Works well for the time being.