Duolingo forum closure

[yuuago]

There has been an announcement that Duolingo will be closing its forums on March 22nd. Sentence discussions will remain open, but everything else will be removed.

This doesn't surprise me at all. The Duolingo forums have a huge issue with spam, and the volunteer moderation team has difficulty keeping on top of it. It's kind of a cesspit, really.

Since it seems like everything will be removed (rather than marked read-only) and won't be accessible after it closes, I guess I'll have to copy over some reference posts. The previous head of the Norwegian course posted some very helpful tips/explanations/resources, and I'll want to have them at hand.

It's too bad that Duolingo has been slowly removing every part of the site where users can interact with each other. I remember that at one point you could comment on your friends' progress - I never used that feature much, but I appreciated that it was there. As for the forums, for quite a while now they've mainly served as a resource repository (interspersed by a lot of spam), as well as a place to hear about course announcements in advance. Conversational language practice was discouraged, though.

Anyway. It's been a long time coming. I'll have to make a note to find time this weekend to copy/save the few posts that I need.

Comments

[wickedlittletown]

I seldom visited the website version in the last months so I haven't heard of that.
Thanks for spreading the word about it.

I have some things as well from my target languages (which I'm not learning actively at the moment) that I need to save as well.

I knew the commenting feature from my first account and it was a nice feature to get in touch with other users.

What I also find sad is that they removed most stories that don't include their characters. There were many nice ones back then, most of the new ones are not my cup of tea and I don't enjoy doing them anymore.

Old duolingo was way better, imo.

[yuuago]

At least they gave us some time before shutting it down. (Sigh)

There were never stories for the courses I was taking, but I've heard that they were a fun part of the site for those who did have them. For some languages that didn't have official ones, there were user-made translations of them into the target language on the forums. (Yet another resource that will be lost).

It seems like every change they implement makes things worse. :V

[wickedlittletown]

That's a tiny thumbs-up for them. Other sites silently delete stuff and you wonder what the hell they just did.

It's a shame they don't do stories for all courses, since that is or rather was a fun way to learn. And it was fun to do some in different languages. It was always nice translation practice.

Oh yes, there are some very dedicated user on there who provided fan-made ones for the courses that don't have them. I really need to save the Dutch ones. I have dark memories of there being Russian ones as well but I'm not entirely sure about that.

Personally I think that Duo is getting a bit too childish with the characters and too much animation. Dunno ... when I look back at how it was in like 2018 or earlier: much more fun.
I still keep my account there but I will only go on there when I am in the mood for it.

Too bad there is not much of an alternative out there which is free. Sure you have clozemaster but that is mostly also user-made, since the sentences are mostly taken from a different site (I always forget the name, even I have an account there but forgot about it for too long) where you can translate sentences. So you may end up with learning mistakes ^^;
At least this is what I have read about it.

Personally I like this site because every lesson is short and you can pick two difficulty levels.
It is worth trying out if you already know a decent amount of your target languages. If you haven't checked it out: https://www.clozemaster.com/
You use it without an account as well and see if you like it.

[yuuago]

Oh yeah, I'm familiar with Clozemaster! Since it requires being a little further along rather than absolute-beginner, I think it's a nice supplement to Duo. Though you do have a point about learning mistakes. There have been a couple of times where I've been pretty sure something is incorrect, but don't really know enough to be sure! Ah, well.

Maybe this shakeup will make me turn to traditional textbook-based learning a little more. ;)

[wickedlittletown]

Oh yes, I miss the days of learning with books. I always loved it to be surrounded by books and office supplies.
I have a couple of language text books for various languages but I did next to nothing with them ^^; Besides from the textbook I have for language school in pre-Covid times.