Chit-chat around Week 42's WIU
Hi folks, for anyone interested in discussing this weeks WIU, feel free to use the comment section below.
Because it is an unofficial post and I'm not helping put it together, I don't know why it's locked. But, my current guess is that it's locked so people with slow internet connections can still access it. (The more comments a discussion gets, the slower it loads for people with slow internet connections. If it slows down too much, it produces a page error. At least, that's what happened to me back when I had slow internet and was trying to access Duolingo's more popular posts.)
Anyhow, people were really missing the discussions and found them important. So, I hope having a new place to discuss it helps, while keeping the initial update information accessible. ^_^
Disclaimer: Unlike many moderators, I'm not a course contributor. So, I largely lack information about how it works. I don't have insider information either. And, staff is tightening restrictions on giving information that isn't already out to the public. So, I'm not sure what all contributors are allowed to say about their courses now either.
*Not really chit-chat ;)
55 Comments
Please note when commenting on WUI ! :
- Please keep comments/responses relevant to enhancing language learning.
- Refrain from badgering and useless/uninformative comments and discussions.
- Refrain from questions along the lines : "When when will this course be released ?" ; "Why is this taking so long ?" These questions do not speed up the process of delivery or the quality of the work people are doing. I know you are capable of better input than this. You can check this out yourself by going to the incubator and checking the information on the specific course. incubator
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Also, thank you as always to #Usagiboy7 , for picking up a need in this community, to maintain the quality of focus of positive and supportive interactions in this community, by creating this discussion.
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Perhaps also for us to consider, never knock yourself in choosing to be a good person to an incident that is wrong. That your actions say everything about you, and the actions of another says enough about them.
So simple yet so true:
That your actions say everything about you, and the actions of another says enough about them.
I don't have a slow internet connection and large threads still take a long time to load. I think it's more about the forum software than a user's internet speed. Duolingo really needs a much better forum software. It's just text, much less than the size of a typical novel, and loading it shouldn't be a problem.
You are who you are...and we are not what we do....we are human beings, not human doings! And I think you are great, whatever you are feeling about yourself.
It has nothing to do with Internet speeds, jrikhal specifically said the WIU is locked because it's an update, not a discussion.
Still, Update, or no update, it is still a lively and healthy discussion to ask and answer questions about the update. Also, if it had nothing to do with internet, than there would be no sense to not have comments ;)
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Indeed; in many WIUs people have used the discussion to provide useful information such as pointing out errors in the update, translations of updates written in various languages, contributors have themselves posted to clarify things, etc.
When I posted this discussion, I announced and posted a link to this discussion where those contributors who are also moderators can see. So, if they aren't here, it isn't because they don't realize this exists.
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I don't expect contributors to appear in every WIU; I have merely noticed that they do now and then. But thank you for having already thought of this, and for making this discussion in the first place.
It would be nice if you could persuade jrikhal to include a direct link to these discussions from the original WIU posts, or they will become less easy to find.
Any new word on Klingon? As it seems like it has been near 100% for the past 3 weeks. I also know Chinese started alpha-testing and a lot of people are saying it has been designed really well so far. It just seems a little strange to imagine when the course is still only 50% on the incubator.
With Klingon, on their last update, they said that apostrophes count as a letter in Klingon and capital letters have to be recognized by the system because capital letters are important in Klingon writing. So all that has to be done by Duolingo's technical staff.
I supposedly have high speed internet, but if there are something like 300 comments for a post, it's next to impossible for me to scroll through them all. It gets extremely slow.
Sometimes they lock the discussion if they don't want it to get too slow or if people would post silly comments.
If you are looking for a specific post, press Ctrl+F then type in the username of the poster or something.
Doesn't this only work properly when the relevant part of the page is already loaded?
I don't work on the Incubator side of things so, I could be wrong. But, usually when courses are stuck near or at 100% for a long while, it is because there are things outside of just the course itself, for example the website that have to be translated. There is also other stuff that happens. I'm not sure what all it is, but, it can take a few months even after a course reaches 100%
Actually, I just had another thought. I've updated it in a disclaimer up top. But, staff's been tightening restrictions on what volunteers can say about things that are happening in the background. So, I don't know what contributors are allowed to say about their courses before release right now. :(
The Klingon course is essentially finished and the alpha testers are still busy working through it.
There are still some technical issues that have to be solved before the course can be published - this is largely outside of our control and I can't give an estimate for how long this may take.
A new technical issue came up in the past couple of days which has been reported to Duolingo staff/developers as well.
I know it must be frustrating seeing the course stand still for weeks on end -- it's frustrating for us as well, as we'd love to release the course! But we need a course that works.
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I don't think it was locked to give folks with a slow internet connection the advantage. It was locked to avoid spam.
I remember someone saying there that the mod jrykil (cannot remember hows its spelt, in my head its a jumble of letters beginging with J :/) had said he did it because it is common that people with low interent cannot access posts with a lot of comments and wanted everyone to be able to access it.
They provided a link but I did not click it so cannot confirm, this is just what someone else said he said.
Well, I'v always heard that it is because of people with slow internet, but in this instance, I don't exactly agree with that. This is the second to last update, and it only has 51 comments. So anyhow, I think the necessity to lock these updates is unnecessary. I myself have slow internet, but a discussion with 51 comments loads in the blink of an eye ;)
Infact, check out this discussion, https://www.duolingo.com/comment/22360462 It has all the WIU updates that you need. And, if you click on those links, you will see that lots of them don't have that many comments. But the comment they do have are good, on topic questions. P.s Quick thanks to lindakanga for making and updating that discussion :D
56 seconds and this is not the worst connectivity I experience on my way to work.
This isn't really related to the WIU but is there any information you can give us regarding Swahili.
The last update was 3 months or so ago which said all the audio was finished and it would be intergrated into the tree within two weeks, nothing has been said since (to my knowledge) and the audio hasn't been added. I know that it isn't the most popular language on Duolingo but a lot of people have waited months with no word about why it was delayed or if it is even ever going to be added.
Hi Quinnn, I thought I recalled reading some information about that. But, I was wrong. I don't know what's up with Swahili. :(
It seems like only one contributor is left, and I don't know if he's actually visited Duo recently. I'm wondering if it has been abandoned. If so, I wonder if there is a way for some of us using the course to pick it up to fix the multitude of errors and push for sound implementation. Last we heard the sound was ready and waiting for Duo to add it, so I take it that means the Duo team has the files.
Just not sure how one would go about that. I know there is the contribute form, but that asks for a certain level of understanding of the language that isn't necessarily required for what I'm thinking.
I think all the contributors are still there. It only removes their profile from the page if they have been inactive for a while, so they just need to be active again. Last I heard, they were waiting for Duolingo to get back to them on the audio. They had recorded it already.
I know it has been recorded. They said 4 months ago they were just waiting on Duo to implement it. Since then they have neither chased it up nor apologised for the delay. I'm pretty sure they've been extremely busy, and I'm not blaming them or anything -- I've been one of their biggest cheerleaders -- but you do eventually get a little antsy when absolutely nothing is getting done, not even the occasional added translation. It is beginning to look abandoned.
Thanks Usagiboy for posting this. Anyhow, howcome Chines is coming along so much faster than any of the other languages? I mean, are there just a lot of contributors or what?
It is being worked on behind the scenes with the Duo team (Instead of just contributors by themselves)
Oh, what is the Duo team? Edit: I mean, How does a course get worked on by the Duo team? Are there paid contributors?
One of the contributors is staff.
Plus I take 'Duo team' to mean staff, not listed as contributors. There has even been a job advert recently for someone with abilities in teaching Chinese.
Oh, I can see how it is coming along so fast. 9 contributors plus staff members. so is there no way to tell how many staff members there are?
Well one of the contributors (mhagiwara) is actually a staff member, but he is fluent in Chinese. He also contributed to the Korean and Japanese courses.
You can find out some of your answers by going here yourself :
https://incubator.duolingo.com/courses/zh-CN/en/status
You can locate languages such as this by going to the Overview :
https://incubator.duolingo.com/
And you will find answers to some of your other questions there.
If you go to help , and type in the search field : "Incubator", you will get more information to assist your queries. https://support.duolingo.com/hc/en-us/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93=incubator=Search
Yiddish is making very little progress forma course with six contributors. Indonesian has five but is making more progress. Weird
Course contributors have lives outside the incubator, and the Yiddish team is no exception.
Do you know why we aren't getting any updates from Chinese?
I have been checking for updates from the moment it entered the incubator, and I don't expect weekly updates - It just would be cool if we could hear an update from them at least once.
I don't. Again, it could be that they are under direction not to talk about it.
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Duolingo posted this tweet a few days ago, the meaning of which does not appear to be excessively cryptic...
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Posts like these should be indexed at https://www.duolingo.com/comment/22360462 too. :)
I invite you to take over the project if you'd like to. (Please do?) It's really not something I'd planned on facilitating as my plate is already full.
What exactly do you mean? I mean, "Posts like these should be indexed at" such and such. But the link is to this discussion.
Oh, well that would be a lot of extra work for lindikanga. Also, these discussions are usually not active/useful after a couple of days. So going thru the work of putting a link on that discussion wouldn't be worth it ;)
