Lingora's native speaker community - A new and improved version

[ed101langs]

I didn't sign up (yet?), and only read the FAQ so far. The idea of Lingora seems to be interesting. However, I'll also add a few more questions and suggestions here:

Q: How secure is payment?
A: We use the highest methods of payment security. Please take a look at this document for more detailed information.

There is no document linked so far.

The headline "Lessons" might be better called "Podcast lessons" as far as I understood it, because you can buy Skype or face-to-face lessons in the shop, but in the FAQ it says lessons would be for free.

And now for the part that makes me rather sceptical:

Q: Are all my chats private?
A: No. When you go to the main page (by clicking the chat now button) you will see that all chats are made public. This is for the benefit of all the site’s members. For example: you might be learning English and struggling to grasp the meaning of a certain phrase and when to use it. If you view a chat where someone else who is also learning English asks the same question to a native English speaker in the chat panel, you can view the chat and learn from it!

Q: Can I make a chat private if I want to?
A: No. Lingora's aim is not to be a private messaging platform.

Is there any function for private messaging? What if I would like to exchange an emailaddress or skype name?
Personally I don't want a chat or maybe even every conversation I had with a stranger or someone else to be read by literally anyone even years later. Example sentences may often touch peoples personal lives, as they just have to learn to talk about themselves. So could I at least delete a chat, if I don't want it to be read anymore?
The idea that you can find some chat with similar mistakes might be nice, but I also don't know how well it will work to actually find those.

Hello Tilia,

Thanks so much to you too for taking the time to visit the Lingora homepage

Let me address your points:

Q: How secure is payment?
A: We use the highest methods of payment security. Please take a look at this document for more detailed information.
There is no document linked so far.

Good spot As mentioned in a previous post, the launch of this new version was rushed and was not reviewed as thoroughly as it should have been. We'll soon be adding the document about our payment security. But as you've highlighted (whilst we're working on it) it seems misleading to say it's there and then have no link to it.

The headline "Lessons" might be better called "Podcast lessons" as far as I understood it, because you can buy Skype or face-to-face lessons in the shop, but in the FAQ it says lessons would be for free.

Excellent suggestion. We completely agree with you. The "podcast lessons" are indeed free for all the site's members. If member's want one-to-one tuition with a qualified tutor, they do have to pay for these types of lessons. We'll be including this change into the next revision of the site.

Is there any function for private messaging? What if I would like to exchange an emailaddress or skype name?
Personally I don't want a chat or maybe even every conversation I had with a stranger or someone else to be read by literally anyone even years later. Example sentences may often touch peoples personal lives, as they just have to learn to talk about themselves. So could I at least delete a chat, if I don't want it to be read anymore?
The idea that you can find some chat with similar mistakes might be nice, but I also don't know how well it will work to actually find those.

We completely see where you're coming from. Chats on Lingora only last 6 months, so they would not be read by people years later. If you did want a chat to be deleted, you could contact the site's administrators (myself and the others) and ask for the chat to be removed.

We do like the idea of member's viewing and learning from chats (from others who might be learning the same language as them and making the same mistakes), but like you say it is not always easy to find those. Going forward, we'll be building an email notification system to tackle this. For example, I'm an intermediate French learner. If another intermediate French learner (like myself) engages with a native speaker in the chat section and receives feedback from that native speaker, I'll be receiving an email to prompt me to login to my Lingora account and view that chat, so I can (potentially) learn from it. What do you think of that idea?

With regards to having a private messaging function, this is something we are considering. We see exactly where you're coming from. For example. I also would not be comfortable sharing my phone number, Skype ID etc with the whole community. We would be interested to learn what other people think about this.

Thanks once again for your excellent feedback

[ed101langs]

not sure, if you are still following the discussion or I should post this bit of feedback through email.

A huge question: Do the natives, who have commented on my audio, get a notification, if I answer to the comment?

A practical example. I am interested in getting rid of the remaining mistakes in my French pronunciation. I am very good but too far from perfection to my taste. The native in question gave feedback, and the new grid allowed them to sort it in different categories. In two, I got the perfect note. In two, I got some reserves. For example, there have been 3-4 errors (the green option). What were they? I asked in the comments, but I am not sure, whether I am likely to get any answer, as the native may never know my question, if they get no notification.

Hello again Cavesa

In answer to your question, yes the native speakers who have commented on an audio do indeed get an email notification if you answer the comment. We do need to test this though.

Some email clients (like Yandex mail) seem to be blocking notifications. So again, this is something we need to look into.

[zenmonkey]

Nice to see someone doing this, we might be competitors one day. But if you do it really well, no one will need to enter the space

Overall, your site needs some UI/UX work, some initial random comments:

• lists (logging in, languages learned, purchasing country) all need indexing.
• why do you ask me to give you access to my microphone if you then explain that the audio recorder might not work - test these up front, and fail cleanly.
• no visual reminder that you have something in your shopping cart
• recorder doesn’t seem to work with Safari (Mac market?)
• on the profile page the add audio button is the only one that works (can’t click on My Audios/text) Be consistent in your visual languages don’t use colors/shapes as buttons if they aren’t.
• The Add Audio button - here the circle plus isn’t clickable, have to click on the text below…
  fonts, buttons, text size are highly inconsistent …
• Once I give feedback to an audio, why is this still in my list of things to give feedback...
• There are no products or language learning resources available in the shop... why is this then an option.

Language choices? You have Icelandic (400K native speakers) but are missing a huge number of languages with 1M speakers or more...
How do you plan to get corrections in the rarer languages - why should I post in Zulu if you don't have any native speakers. It would be honest to be transparent on the number of registered users in these languages - otherwise you're wasting the users time. This is what killed lang-8 for me. I posted a few times in German and when I stopped getting feedback I never came back, and that's for a major language.

Screen Shot 2018-01-18 at 10.20.53.png

This is the 'home' I see when I click on the logo. Perhaps the team isn't really what I should be seeing when I go 'home'? (plus those head shots need work).

Note the mess on the upper right. Enlarged:

Screen Shot 2018-01-18 at 10.20.53.png

Best of luck, it looks like a good start and I wish you success.

[ed101langs]

Nice to see someone doing this, we might be competitors one day. But if you do it really well, no one will need to enter the space

Overall, your site needs some UI/UX work, some initial random comments:

• lists (logging in, languages learned, purchasing country) all need indexing.
• why do you ask me to give you access to my microphone if you then explain that the audio recorder might not work - test these up front, and fail cleanly.
• no visual reminder that you have something in your shopping cart
• recorder doesn’t seem to work with Safari (Mac market?)
• on the profile page the add audio button is the only one that works (can’t click on My Audios/text) Be consistent in your visual languages don’t use colors/shapes as buttons if they aren’t.
• The Add Audio button - here the circle plus isn’t clickable, have to click on the text below…
  fonts, buttons, text size are highly inconsistent …
• Once I give feedback to an audio, why is this still in my list of things to give feedback...
• There are no products or language learning resources available in the shop... why is this then an option.

Language choices? You have Icelandic (400K native speakers) but are missing a huge number of languages with 1M speakers or more...
How do you plan to get corrections in the rarer languages - why should I post in Zulu if you don't have any native speakers. It would be honest to be transparent on the number of registered users in these languages - otherwise you're wasting the users time. This is what killed lang-8 for me. I posted a few times in German and when I stopped getting feedback I never came back, and that's for a major language.

Screen Shot 2018-01-18 at 10.20.53.png

This is the 'home' I see when I click on the logo. Perhaps the team isn't really what I should be seeing when I go 'home'? (plus those head shots need work).

Note the mess on the upper right. Enlarged:

Screen Shot 2018-01-18 at 10.20.53.png

Best of luck, it looks like a good start and I wish you success.

Hello

Thanks so much for your feedback!

I completely agree with all of your comments about the UX work needed. Again, the UX is not up to standard (at the moment) as the launch of this current new version was rushed.

lists (logging in, languages learned, purchasing country) all need indexing.

Yes, this should have been done before the launch of this new version. It's something we're working on now.

why do you ask me to give you access to my microphone if you then explain that the audio recorder might not work - test these up front, and fail cleanly.

Initially the idea was to warn people that they might not be able to use Lingora's inbuilt audio recorder. But it seems like this can put people off. And if the member is using a browser or a device which is not compatible with the audio recorder, only then should an error message occur.

no visual reminder that you have something in your shopping cart

- Very good point! We need to build one into the shopping cart logo, so members are reminded of the services / products they are interested in purchasing.

recorder doesn’t seem to work with Safari (Mac market?)

We're busy looking into why this is. The Mac market is huge and we're really hoping we'll find a way to make the recorder work on Safari.

on the profile page the add audio button is the only one that works (can’t click on My Audios/text) Be consistent in your visual languages don’t use colors/shapes as buttons if they aren’t.
The Add Audio button - here the circle plus isn’t clickable, have to click on the text below…
fonts, buttons, text size are highly inconsistent

Very good observation. The idea was that members can simply see how many audios/texts they have added on the site. But the fact that these are made to look like buttons is obviously rather confusing. So thanks for pointing this out. Think it will be a case of just using simple text.
Also, we agree that (again on the profile page) it is strange that we cannot currently click on the Add Audio button and have to click on the text below. The fonts, buttons and text sizes do need to be more consistent and again, this was due to us rushing the design of this particular page.

Once I give feedback to an audio, why is this still in my list of things to give feedback...

Another excellent point! The platform should be more intelligent in the sense that once a member has acted on a notification, it should disappear. This is going to be (potentially) tricky to do development wise, but it's something that would definitely enhance user's experience.

There are no products or language learning resources available in the shop... why is this then an option

This is because we are planning to add products and language learning resources shortly. Admittedly it shouldn't already be there if the products and language learning resources are not ready.[/quote]

Language choices? You have Icelandic (400K native speakers) but are missing a huge number of languages with 1M speakers or more...
How do you plan to get corrections in the rarer languages - why should I post in Zulu if you don't have any native speakers. It would be honest to be transparent on the number of registered users in these languages - otherwise you're wasting the users time. This is what killed lang-8 for me. I posted a few times in German and when I stopped getting feedback I never came back, and that's for a major language.

Fantastic observation. We need to create a page which shows the number of not only registered but active users in all languages. This will help members decide whether it is worth their time and effort to publish a text or an audio in a language the are learning. For example,as a Spanish learner I might see that there are hundreds of active, registered native speakers on the site, so would think it would be definitely worth my time posting Spanish texts and audios. Whereas if I'm learning a language like Icelandic, I might see that there are no registered native speakers, so would think there's no point in practicing this language on Lingora.
In order to get users from rarer languages involved (and this is one of Lingora's aims - to help the plight of endangered languages) we're planning on much more heavily rewarding those people who go to the effort of learning them and native speakers who go to the effort of correcting texts and audios people post in them. Do you have any ideas about what these rewards could be? This is something we're busy thinking about now!

Screen Shot 2018-01-18 at 10.20.53.png

Thanks very much for this. We're going to be looking into a fix for this very soon.

Best of luck, it looks like a good start and I wish you success

Thank you very much indeed. Your feedback has been excellent and this new version can only improve thanks to people like you

[zenmonkey]

And thanks for getting back to me.
I also did get feedback on my post, so already, that's better than the current results on Lang-8. Good luck.


By the way, the feedback page could use a layout improvement. Currently you have yellow, green, red columns. Either green, yellow, red or red, yellow, green would be less confusing.

Screen Shot 2018-01-23 at 09.19.05.png