Lang-8 is such a disappointment

[rdearman]

Please allow me to quote the rules.

If you feel that somebody's behaviour is way out of line, and if you feel the urge to write an angry or sarcastic reply, it's usually best to use the "Report" or "!" button to bring the original post to a moderator's attention instead. In particular, do not attack people or their personalities. You can argue about ideas and language learning techniques, but individuals are off limits.

[Cavesa]

Thanks, Cainntear.

Blue, just like you didn't intend to personally attack me, I didn't intend to personally attack you. "A condescending prick" is quite a strong term, especially since vast majority of advice coming from privilege sounds exactly like that: condescending and not exactly nice.

The problem is that almost everyone on the internet, who has the privilege of a popular native language, gives this particular advice to everyone, including all of us without the privilege, at all times, at every occasion, without any thought about whether it is appropriate, and always expecting it to be a great help. And when we counter like with I did, especially when we are much milder about it and don't go into such "condescending" explanations, we usually get treated like ungrateful brats who simply look for excuses instead of thanking for the awesome advice we certainly couldn't have thought of before ourselves, otherwise we would have done the same thing like you.

And that is the annoying part. That a part of the language learning community, even such a well mixed and high quality community like this one, simply can't see that no, we cannot all just simply find a language exchange partner. We cannot all just buy foreign ebooks. We cannot all just choose the target language on our legally bought dvds. And if we steer away from the nationality, citizenship, or native language based privileges, there are also the economic ones. Not every learner can just pay a cheap tutor on italki. Not every learner can just have courses shipped. And not just the economic privilege, not every learner can just leave dependent family members behind and find a summer job in their target country, not every learner can travel a thousand km away from their doctor. And so on.

Lang-8 and similar tools are exceptional by removing, or at least trying to remove, some of the common privileges. To give the same advantages to more people. To widen the market, so that more people can not only profit from it, but eventually afford to become paying customers too, if the business model is well thought out, and such progress benefits everyone. That's why Lang-8 is so missed. Despite some troubles, that the users criticised about it (and surely rightly so), it was a pioneer service. And unfortunately, instead of getting a new and better sequel, the creators chose to make Hi-Native, which is an obvious fall back in every aspect imaginable.

[ask9emerald]

Hey all, i know this is an old thread, but i created an account just to post copy this update off of the Lang-8 blog which indicates that the suspension of new users will hopefully come to end in March 2018. The post was written in August of 2017.


http://blog.lang-8.com/post/16470644245 ... -on-lang-8

"Thank you so much for your continued support of Lang-8!

 We wanted to provide everyone with a little more information regarding the suspension to new sign-ups on Lang-8 that has been in effect since February, 2017. We also want to apologize for the lack of an official announcement these past few months

As of February, 2017, new registrations to Lang-8 have been suspended. Any users who registered before the suspension took effect continue to have full access to all of Lang-8’s features.

There are a few reasons why we decided to implement this suspension, the main one being a lack of resources here at Lang-8, Inc. We’re an extremely small company, and we were having difficulty actively developing Lang-8 and its sister service HiNative simultaneously.

We didn’t have the time or resources to update the Lang-8 platform or optimize it for smartphones and truly felt like we were letting our users down. We wanted new users excited about the Lang-8, Inc. ecosystem to experience the newer and more refined HiNative. We do understand that Lang-8 and HiNative provide very different experiences, however, and we believe strongly in the value of both.

We were also having an increasingly difficult time dealing with spammers and bots who were signing up for Lang-8 and abusing the platform. Again, we do not currently have the resources to implement preventative measures that are strong enough to combat this type of behavior, and we will be forced to extend the suspension period as a result.

We had originally planned to lift the suspension after 6 months, but due to a continued lack of resources within the company, we will need to extend the period into next year.



We are aiming to reopen sign-ups in March of 2018, though this date isn’t set in stone. We are currently looking at strategies to help us maintain and support Lang-8 while allowing free users who have already registered to continue using the platform for free. Some possible changes include charging a small fee to register to the platform.



Both Lang-8 and HiNative are nothing without their users and their communities, and once more, everyone here at Lang-8, Inc. would like to apologize to everyone for the radio silence and for the current state of Lang-8. Please rest assured that we are working as hard as possible to reopen sign ups as soon as we can and to continue towards our goal of developing the best language learning platforms in the world. Thank you, and talk to you soon!"

[kulaputra]

Update, post March 2018: still not available for new signups

[Cavesa]

Update, post March 2018: still not available for new signups

Don't expect anything to change with lang-8 besides them closing it down. The company only cares about HiNative now.

I think everyone has give up on them. If Lingora grows enough (which would require a lot of marketing work unfortunately and perhaps financial investments too), it can be a good replacement.

One question: why does anyone even use HiNative? There is google, there is quora, there is reddit, why should anyone use a service offering the same thing, just with an option to pay for it?

[kulaputra]

Assuming the service is still solvent, it's likely marketed more at non-Anglophones and casual learners. Or, like so many other startups, they're running on loans, investment capital, and the quixotic dreams of founders.

At any rate, I'm willing to work on a replacement for the site. Is there anyone else interested in helping?

[rdearman]

Assuming the service is still solvent, it's likely marketed more at non-Anglophones and casual learners. Or, like so many other startups, they're running on loans, investment capital, and the quixotic dreams of founders.

At any rate, I'm willing to work on a replacement for the site. Is there anyone else interested in helping?

There are already alternatives, some of which is listed in this thread. https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =17&t=8395 you might be better off finding something original to work on. Although I don't know what that might be.