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This is awesome! I had the same idea in high school and wrote a whitepaper about it. Personally, I think Duolingo shouldn't exist in its current form. The cour

This is awesome! I had the same idea in high school and wrote a whitepaper about it. Personally, I think Duolingo shouldn't exist in its current form. The courses are all created by teams of volunteers and only able to be contributed to by those volunteers, which slow downs course creation and bug fixes to courses. Additionally the data is all held hostage by Duolingo, which prevents you from integrating it with Anki for example. I don't think Duolingo should be getting revenue when most of the work is done by volunteers. I think a decentralized open source version should exist, much like how anyone can modify and upload Anki decks, people should be able to modify and upload "Duolingo-like" courses. Re: marketplace: I think this is a great idea! There are Anki decks that are sold by creators too, like Spoonfed Chinese. I think this is an actually fair way to implement learning like this.

syntaxing 3y ago
Really appreciate introducing Spoonfed Chinese to me! I was looking for a good Anki deck about a year ago and couldn’t find anything good, this looks perfect for me.
- JCharante 3y ago
  Wow I’m really glad to have helped! Yeah it’s a nice deck and only $3 on gumroad (or at least that was the price when I bought it)
JCharante 3y ago
I don't have time to dive into the source code right now, but how did you implement the types of questions? I had the idea (I'm not saying it's original, it's just what I thought at the time) of course lessons consisting of a series of questions, and each question is defined as a JSON object. There are built-in question-templates like multiple choice, free-form answer, or just true/false. If a course needs something really specific, then it can implement a custom renderer for that new template type, so that a course isn't held back by the upstream project. If it's a template that might be useful for more people, then it can be integrated into the core project.
- ceolin 3y ago
  There's a dashboard where users can manage questions for each course. It's pretty basic right now: - You can add multiple question. - Each question can have some content, one image and multiple options users can select. - Each option can have a title, an image and a feedback displayed to users when they select/confirm that option. I want to add an option to import/export JSON. It's actually on the roadmap for v1: - https://github.com/zoonk/uneebee/issues/41 https://github.com/zoonk/uneebee/issues/41 - https://github.com/zoonk/uneebee/issues/40 https://github.com/zoonk/uneebee/issues/40 In the future, I also want to implement some kind of plugin system because certain subjects require a different learning style. But I'm not sure yet how this would work. I need to think about it.
  - JCharante 3y ago
    > In the future, I also want to implement some kind of plugin system because certain subjects require a different learning style. But I'm not sure yet how this would work. I need to think about it. Right. People say that HelloChinese is better for Chinese because some of the question types are drawing Hanzi, so I think this is a perfect use case for a plugin system where a course could add a plugin for Hanzi/Kanji drawing and not be slowed down by the core developers.
    - dmurray 3y ago
      Duolingo introduced drawing Hanzi a couple of months ago. Worth checking out their approach if you haven't seen it.
  - JCharante 3y ago
    > There's a dashboard where users can manage questions for each course. It's pretty basic right now: I think that while this might be useful for teachers, it might be more sustainable if courses were stored in a version controllable medium to facilitate multiple collaborators.
    - ceolin 3y ago
mauricioc 3y ago
Duolingo courses are no longer created by volunteers. They stopped the volunteer program in 2021 [1], right around the time they increased monetization efforts. They offered part-time jobs and a $4 million reward fund to previous volunteers when closing the program, which I thought was pretty kind. [1] https://blog.duolingo.com/ending-honoring-our-volunteer-contributor-program-2/ https://blog.duolingo.com/ending-honoring-our-volunteer-cont...
- JCharante 3y ago
  Ah thank you, I haven't kept in touch with Duolingo's progression in a few years. While now I see it as more ethical that Duolingo charges for content that they are paying to produce, I still feel like it's slower progression than if everybody could contribute (and those most adept at the language would probably just focus on reviewing PRs)
  - 3PS 3y ago
    Disclaimer: I work for Duolingo, all opinions are my own and not those of my employer, etc. Part of the reason that content is slower to produce now is just that the standards are much higher. Internally we draw a distinction between the old volunteer-contributed content and the new content which is aligned to CEFR guidelines for how languages should actually be taught. Aligning content like this is not only more expensive but also requires more coordination and oversight from domain experts compared to previous methods.
    - jamager 3y ago
      CEFR or not CERF, Duolingo is clearly designed to be addictive but not effective, because if it were effective people would stop using it. Duolingo's goals are not the same as mine, and the best thing it does by far is to pretend (and make me believe) that I am learning a language.
    - josiahpeters 3y ago
      Thanks for the additional context. I love HN for little nuggets of explanation like this.

syntaxing 3y ago

Really appreciate introducing Spoonfed Chinese to me! I was looking for a good Anki deck about a year ago and couldn’t find anything good, this looks perfect for me.

JCharante 3y ago
Wow I’m really glad to have helped! Yeah it’s a nice deck and only $3 on gumroad (or at least that was the price when I bought it)

JCharante 3y ago

I don't have time to dive into the source code right now, but how did you implement the types of questions? I had the idea (I'm not saying it's original, it's just what I thought at the time) of course lessons consisting of a series of questions, and each question is defined as a JSON object. There are built-in question-templates like multiple choice, free-form answer, or just true/false. If a course needs something really specific, then it can implement a custom renderer for that new template type, so that a course isn't held back by the upstream project. If it's a template that might be useful for more people, then it can be integrated into the core project.

ceolin 3y ago
There's a dashboard where users can manage questions for each course. It's pretty basic right now: - You can add multiple question. - Each question can have some content, one image and multiple options users can select. - Each option can have a title, an image and a feedback displayed to users when they select/confirm that option. I want to add an option to import/export JSON. It's actually on the roadmap for v1: - https://github.com/zoonk/uneebee/issues/41 https://github.com/zoonk/uneebee/issues/41 - https://github.com/zoonk/uneebee/issues/40 https://github.com/zoonk/uneebee/issues/40 In the future, I also want to implement some kind of plugin system because certain subjects require a different learning style. But I'm not sure yet how this would work. I need to think about it.
- JCharante 3y ago
  > In the future, I also want to implement some kind of plugin system because certain subjects require a different learning style. But I'm not sure yet how this would work. I need to think about it. Right. People say that HelloChinese is better for Chinese because some of the question types are drawing Hanzi, so I think this is a perfect use case for a plugin system where a course could add a plugin for Hanzi/Kanji drawing and not be slowed down by the core developers.
  - dmurray 3y ago
    Duolingo introduced drawing Hanzi a couple of months ago. Worth checking out their approach if you haven't seen it.
- JCharante 3y ago
  > There's a dashboard where users can manage questions for each course. It's pretty basic right now: I think that while this might be useful for teachers, it might be more sustainable if courses were stored in a version controllable medium to facilitate multiple collaborators.
  - ceolin 3y ago

mauricioc 3y ago

Duolingo courses are no longer created by volunteers. They stopped the volunteer program in 2021 [1], right around the time they increased monetization efforts. They offered part-time jobs and a $4 million reward fund to previous volunteers when closing the program, which I thought was pretty kind. [1] https://blog.duolingo.com/ending-honoring-our-volunteer-contributor-program-2/ https://blog.duolingo.com/ending-honoring-our-volunteer-cont...

JCharante 3y ago
Ah thank you, I haven't kept in touch with Duolingo's progression in a few years. While now I see it as more ethical that Duolingo charges for content that they are paying to produce, I still feel like it's slower progression than if everybody could contribute (and those most adept at the language would probably just focus on reviewing PRs)
- 3PS 3y ago
  Disclaimer: I work for Duolingo, all opinions are my own and not those of my employer, etc. Part of the reason that content is slower to produce now is just that the standards are much higher. Internally we draw a distinction between the old volunteer-contributed content and the new content which is aligned to CEFR guidelines for how languages should actually be taught. Aligning content like this is not only more expensive but also requires more coordination and oversight from domain experts compared to previous methods.
  - jamager 3y ago
    CEFR or not CERF, Duolingo is clearly designed to be addictive but not effective, because if it were effective people would stop using it. Duolingo's goals are not the same as mine, and the best thing it does by far is to pretend (and make me believe) that I am learning a language.
  - josiahpeters 3y ago
    Thanks for the additional context. I love HN for little nuggets of explanation like this.