Talk:Duolingo/Archive 1

Archive 1

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Warning!! I clicked on a Duolingo ad and it was a scam that gave hacker access to my device. I strongly advise against clicking on their ads. I may have to replace my device to shut down access to the hacker. Reported to Duolingo - received no help. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:8801:A81:F800:C1E4:F728:DA7B:AD73 (talk) 18:16, 26 November 2017 (UTC)

Contested deletion

This page should not be speedy deleted because the project is high-profile. By doing a Google search, it has been covered by TechCrunch, Technology Review, New Scientist, Hacker News, etc.

Hi, Huyzin, I agree that your references confer notability and I will remove the speedy tag. Ta, Baffle gab1978 (talk) 00:21, 3 July 2011 (UTC)

Out of Date

Duolingo is a rapidly evolving website, with missing features being added, plus the logo used on this page is quite obsolete. They have a new one with a CGI green owl character, though I can't find a version that has both the owl and the "Duolingo" logo text together. Kelvinsong (talk) 21:34, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

Update

Yes, the data on what languages are available to speakers of what language, needs to be updated frequently. Same where the language courses (for English-speakers) are listed in order of popularity; the rankings keep changing. I, in particular, am closely following the growing popularity of Hindi; today, based on current trends, i will probably see Hindi overtake Ukrainian in popularity; tomorrow, i will see Hindi overtake Welsh in popularity; before November is out, Hindi will probably also overtake Hungarian in popularity. (I say "i will see" because the popularity figures apparently update every 24 hours, and the calendar date on which the update takes place may depend on your time zone [i liv in Vermont, United States].)--Solomonfromfinland (talk) 18:23, 18 November 2018 (UTC)

I updated the part "Courses available in other languages", and added a source, and edited for legibility and concision.--Solomonfromfinland (talk) 19:26, 18 November 2018 (UTC)

Update two

Duolingo has continued growing, and it has now surpassed 300 million users. I'll be updating this info soon.––Jmaxx37 (talk) 12:00, 21 November 21 (MST)

I fıxed an error ın the projected completıon tıme of (Castılıan) Spanısh for Arabıc. You're welcome. GlottalStop777 (talk) 15:00, 29 December 2019 (UTC)

Criticism source

In the article, it is used the reference of the duolingo forums to show that there is criticism of the more advanced lessons. Is someone's personal opinion on a forum, really a reliable source? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.207.225.251 (talk) 18:16, 29 August 2012 (UTC)

It was a complaint I filed which got a relatively large number of upvotes, and it triggered a long discussion(mostly consensus). When talking about user opinion, I think there is no better source than asking the users themselves. -- Kelvinsong (talk) 18:48, 29 August 2012 (UTC)

That would still, strictly speaking, be original research on the basis of unreliable sources. —Tom Morris (talk) 14:00, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

Fine, removed it for now. What about the rest of the info about how Duolingo works? Its not the kind of thing that you can find a newspaper article written about it.Kelvinsong (talk) 15:46, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

Sure you can! [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9]. —Tom Morris (talk) 10:09, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

I didn't have time to read through each and every one, but I'm pretty sure they all go like "Duolingo is crowdsourced" and "Duolingo has language lessons in a tree format" or "Users translate sentences and get points for them", or "User vote on Translations". Some things that you only know by using the site daily like how there is a minimum of 6pts and max of 15pts per sentence and up to three bonus for rating, difficulty scales from 1-10, various bugs and quirks, points only getting awarded if match with computer is greater than or equal to 50%, points than show up in the daily count, but not the activity stream, etc.

Oh, and some of the info there like: "and the program automatically detects blatant errors." is wrong, and I can give you about twenty screenshot examples to back it up(Though I guess that would count as Original research.) Kelvinsong (talk) 13:18, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

Number of [active] users

Are any stats available out there? --eugrus (talk) 20:58, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

"Duolingo publicly launched in June and now has about 250,000 active language learners. The company plans to expand to Italian and Chinese later this year. It also plans to release an iPhone app for mobile learning." http://www.forbes.com/sites/tomiogeron/2012/09/17/duolingo-gets-15-million-to-translate-the-worlds-text-through-online-learning/ Mimjac (talk) 02:31, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

November 2018

The number of activ learners of Spanish for English Speakers, alone, is now 21.2 million. For English for Spanish Speakers (currently the most popular Duolingo course of all), it is even more: 27.3 million. (Data from https://www.duolingo.com/courses/all; in the "I speak [language]" part, you can just click "All languages" to get a complete list of courses.) The total number of activ Duolingo users is probably difficult or impossible to know, given the question of multiplicity, i.e. how many people study multiple languages on Duolingo and if so, how many languages?; plus how many people use multiple Duolingo accounts to study the same language. (I myself am currently studying 5 languages on Duolingo [listed in order of when i started on them on Duolingo; first languages first]: Greek, Chinese, Swedish, Portuguese, Hindi. And it is not uncommon for me to see a Duolinguist listed with 10 or more languages that they hav studied.)--Solomonfromfinland (talk) 18:55, 18 November 2018 (UTC)

"offers extensive language learning lessons"

I would say that it offers extensive vocabulary learning lessons. It offers very few tips on grammar (in Spanish) and none at all in French. Thoughts? --TheSeer (TalkˑContribs) 23:48, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

I have been using Duolingo to learn Spanish for a while. It teaches grammar using an immersive method. I haven't noticed grammar tips and I have certainly not been missing them. If you see lots of sentences that all use the same grammatical construction and you know enough words to see what they mean, then you automatically learn that construction. The process is faster in small children (who learn languages only by this method), but it also works for most adults. It certainly does for me. (I am over 40.) Rosetta Stone doesn't do explicit grammar teaching, either, and it works.

In addition, it should not really come as a surprise if you need some additional material such as a grammar to help you with theoretical understanding. The lessons are for practice, and they are quite good for that. Hans Adler 11:54, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

Neutral?

This article is well organized but to me sort of reads like an ad. I don't really know what would be changed but does anyone else see this as a problem? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.188.200.55 (talk) 02:32, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

It doesn't seem like an ad to me. The article is written in a rational, observent-like point of view. The features of duolingo.com are described in an unbiased form. If you think any part of it is not rational and advertises the website, then tell us, or edit it yourself. --Yashowardhani (talk) 12:52, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

It seems biased in favor of Duolingo. Needs to cite drawbacks, as in http://www.lang1234.info/3/category/duolingo/1.html . It does not teach as much as other free courses like http://Book2.de (many more languages, and downloadable to practice offline) or http://bbc.co.uk/languages (good video courses in most of the same languages as duolingo). The discussion below which says that "active users" probably means "users who have not clicked the deactivate button" means it seems puffery to list it as having 5 million users in the first paragraph. The sponsored study did not test speaking or listening. Numbersinstitute (talk) 00:45, 17 August 2013 (UTC)

The opening paragraphs read like marketing copy – in both tone and content. The way that it emphasises the fact that the service is free feels like advertisement, and clauses like: "includes a language-learning website and app, as well as a digital language proficiency assessment exam," read just like about-us text on a company website. Other marketing copy examples include: "Duolingo uses only very limited advertising in its android app. There are no subscription fees for the tutorials," and "Duolingo also includes a timed practice feature." Zach Beauvais (talk) 22:06, 10 November 2016 (UTC)

5million users, 30minutes on average daily

I can't believe these numbers and the source wont open for me. Can anybody confirm, that the source link is not working? COuld anybody give a working link to a reputable source or better some different sources for this big statement? 178.11.231.171 (talk) 19:28, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

I could open both links (in firefox, not sure which version). The second source states that Louis von Ahn claims there are five million active user. It says nothing about how an active user is defined. I could not find anything about the average user use duolingo for 30 minutes pr. day in either source. The source, TechCrunch seems reputable enough. JakobSteenberg (talk) 20:01, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

Economist article (http://www.economist.com/news/technology-quarterly/21578514-luis-von-ahn-helped-save-internet-spammers-his-larger-quest-put)

says on June 1 that "Duolingo already has 3m users, who use it, on average, for 30 minutes a day." The Techcrunch article of July 11 has a headline that says it "now Has More Than 5M Active Users".

It's naughty to conflate figures from two sources that differ, in such a cherry-picking manner. Still, they are big numbers. I fear that since Duolingo is an unlisted/closed corporation they can say what they want to say. William Avery (talk) 20:07, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

Agreed that this form of cherry-picking is a no no. How about deleting the part with 30 minutes? While it is pretty certain that Duolingo have the 5 million active users if they state it; an easy statistic to make if you say e.g. how many individual user logins have been made in the last month. Claiming that the average use is over 30 minutes per day however; Are they saying that each task takes x time and the daily number of task per user is or are they much more likely measuring how long each user are on the website. If it is the last I have personal contributed quite a lot by having Duolingo open i my browser without doing anything on the site because I was doing something else. JakobSteenberg (talk) 20:44, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

That sounds good. By the way, the Duolingo user interface has a "Deactivate my account" option, so "active accounts" in their terms might mean accounts that have not been actually deactivated, but could still be pretty dormant. William Avery (talk) 21:28, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

I agree, that the user number might be accurate enough - perhaps "active" could be set in quotation marks in order to show the questionable meaning. I certainly cannot believe that the average active usage time is 30min per day at such a big user base. I think the latter statement needs some bomb-proof sources or should be deleted.178.11.231.171 (talk) 22:01, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

I seems like we had a consensus. I have deleted the bi-sentence about 30 minutes in the article. Please have a look at the change for good measures. JakobSteenberg (talk) 10:14, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

Yes, everything is fine now. If anyone comes up with some reliable usage-statistics, i still would be interested.178.11.231.171 (talk) 10:25, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

Plan for Chinese given up? Any source?

Bilinguist88 deleted this source on July 14th, which mentioned Chinese among languages to be introduced later. What is the source that supports that this piece of information is outdated? Adam78 (talk) 20:33, 11 August 2013 (UTC)

Oh sorry. I just noticed this addition. Adam78 (talk) 20:32, 18 August 2013 (UTC)

Deletion of reference to Duolingo's study of effectiveness?

On 13 Sept 2013, an anonymous user removed the bold items in the paragraph below (not bolded in article, just here for clarity), saying "Removed unnecessary information and claims with no reputable source"

The efficacy of Duolingo’s data-driven approach has been backed up by an external study commissioned by the company. Conducted by professors at City University of New York and the University of South Carolina, the study found that 34 hours on Duolingo was equivalent to reading and writing ability of a first-year college semester, which takes in the order of 130+ hours. The research did not measure speaking ability. It found that a majority of students dropped out after less than 2 hours of study. The same study found that Rosetta Stone (software) users took between 55 and 60 hours to learn a similar amount. It did not compare to other free or inexpensive courses, such as BBC, Book2, or Before You Know It (software).

The bold info was sourced, primarily with a cite to Duolingo's own study, which previously had been mentioned but not cited in the article. If their study is not reputable, the entire paragraph should be deleted, rather than just the limitations of the study. It is necessary information, because the dropout information was significant in the report, and the non-measurement of pronunciation is significant in any comparison of language learning results.

In fact the positive finding of 34 hours is a stretch. There were too few absolute beginners to measure their progress directly, so the study reports a synthetic estimate, based on progress rates of students who already knew some of the language. Duolingo may take longer with actual beginners. The 34 hours is standard Duolingo publicity, but not really proven. Further a comparison only to Rosetta Stone begs the question how free Duolingo compares to free competitors.

I welcome other editors' thoughts. i am thinking of reverting, and adding a note on the weakness of the 34-hour estimate. Numbersinstitute (talk) 23:29, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

Word Count per Language (only French is Verified)

Reference 7 only verifies that French offers 2000+ words. Do we not need more information to verify the word count for other languages?

Mooglemann (talk) 22:29, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

I finished the German course and it taught me 1710 words. Repeating the lessons doesn't increase the vocabulary.

Marting456 (talk) 03:11, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

Turkish and Hungarian

Updating the percentage of completion for new courses is fine, but when y'all edit the Turkish and Hungarian percents, please use citations 36 and 37. Most languages on Duolingo are Indo-European, so the "model" used for making new courses is based on IE languages, taking into acount syntax and grammar. Neither Turkish nor Hungarian are IE languages, so the percentages on the site (citation 35) are wrong. Both teams regularly post their progress on the course pages (citations 36 and 37) based on the number of words in their courses, please use those. If you spend some time on the site, you can see that the percentages for these courses jumps up and down. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Last edited by: (talk • contribs) 23:20, 9 February 2015 (UTC)

Guardian article

I stumbled upon a Guardian article from today about Duolingo [10] which I thought could be of interest to some. There is not really anything new or surprising in it. But it is also good to have good sources. Kind regards JakobSteenberg (talk) 19:45, 19 March 2015 (UTC)

ChineseSkill

"Why this app specifically?" I guess since of the screens (the skill tree and list of lessons in a skill) look a lot like the analogous screens in Duolingo. Is there a lot of language learning apps that take design clues from Duolingo? TvojaStara (talk) 21:06, 15 March 2016 (UTC)

I found the similarities very striking. Especially 'Test Out' facility. William Avery (talk) 12:12, 27 September 2016 (UTC)

Not to mention the fact that ChineseSkill is free, like Duolingo, and consequently caters to a similar market. Triptothecottage (talk) 03:31, 15 November 2016 (UTC)

Fluency Badge

Certain duolingo courses have a fluency badge, that can be shared to linkedin. It judges your fluency percentage as you progress through the course. Again only certain courses have this. Can this feature be reported on in this article? 47.20.9.43 (talk) 22:57, 31 July 2016 (UTC)

Please note what I am referring to above is distinct from "Duolingo is also collaborating with LinkedIn to allow the score to be easily incorporated into a user's résumé page." 47.20.9.43 (talk) 23:00, 31 July 2016 (UTC)

Self promotion article

There is no problem having a wp article about Duolingo. It meets the notability criteria. However, the article has developed into a barely disguised marketing tool, whether intentional or not, and that is not, in my view, appropriate. For example, the company offers various languages. It is not necessary to have a long list of these languages, that varies every month or so. Some of the references used are from the Duolingo website, seeing as ssome contributors have admitted they work for Duolingo, this is a clear case of wp:or, or self advertising. There are cases where claims made (to the benefit of the company) have been questioned as ambiguous or illogical or simply not reliable wp:rs. All of this breaches several principles and guidelines. An example is wp:10YT. What possible importance will it be in October 2027 what the list was of courses offered in October 2017, when that list will have changed by February 2018, and again by April 2018, and so on? There is ample opportunity to develop this article to be a good encyclopedic standard, without filling it with wp:trivia and giving the company free advertising. I can see that similar concerns have been raised many times before in comments made above. Roger 8 Roger (talk) 01:02, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

You overstate how ephemeral the items in the list will turn out to be. The vast majority of languages offered are presumably permanent features, i.e. the list will only grow (more and more slowly) and will never shrink. Therefore wp:recent does not apply. The fact "Duolingo teaches Spanish to English speakers" and every other similar fact are long-term facts worthy of being mentioned in this article. I don't see them as advertising but as interesting and important details in the description of the article's subject, so they are not items of wp:trivia. Tayste (edits) 02:15, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

I agree. The complete list of languages should stay. They are highly relevant to this article and I do not see them even slightly as some kind of "advertisement" (quite a stretch, in my opinion). PS: I do not, nor have ever, worked for Duolingo or any related company. --Thorwald (talk) 04:03, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

Advertisement template message

Hello, I am an employee of Duolingo and want to open a dialogue with the editors of this page around the advertisement tag. I make occasional edits to the page to keep it up to date and accurate. I have no intention of using our wp page for self-promotion or advertisement but understand that my position biases me and would rather work with the editor community to suggest changes and ensure we avoid violating any rules.

When would it be appropriate to consider removing the advertisement template message currently appearing on top of the page? I would be glad to provide sources or further information as required.Sam at Duolingo (talk) 16:48, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

I'm not associated with the company in any way, and have never used the product. I agree that the "reads like adsvertising" tag is no longer accurate. I think it can be deleted. —johndburger 13:57, 11 May 2018 (UTC)

New Section: "Game Elements"

I did not think there was a lot of information on the specific features of the Duolingo app/website itself. I therefore added a section on the common video game features that Duolingo uses. I thought it would provide a better picture for the readers of what it's actually like to use the program. Bbkesler (talk) 03:00, 11 May 2018 (UTC)

New Section: "Classroom Uses"

I added this section to provide an important example of how Duolingo is used systematically. My discussion on its effectiveness at different levels of language-learning was intended to give the readers a sense of Duolingo's strengths and limitations. The source cited in this section says that beginners improve very rapidly through Duolingo, whereas more advanced learners have a harder time with it due to the ambiguity of trying to perfectly translate sentences that involve complex words and phrases.Bbkesler (talk) 03:05, 11 May 2018 (UTC)

80% of traffic comes from the app?

This claim is made in the article but the source provided does not seem to mention this. Is it there? M.T.S.W.A. (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 22:20, 20 June 2018 (UTC)

This article seems just an advert

Nowhere is it explained what this app/platform actually does. It is something to do with language learning, but how does it do it and what does it actually offer/provide? quota (talk) 17:52, 18 November 2018 (UTC)

Possibly a section about the Incubator?

Hello all. I frequently edit this article, and I have noticed that there is no section about the Incubator, which is a crucial part of DL. People create the courses, and I feel that that is important. Could someone help create that section? I am not sure how to not make it sound like an advert. Jmaxx37 (talk) 03:44, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

I agree, there ought to be a section, or at least information, about the Incubator.--Solomonfromfinland (talk) 11:54, 25 December 2018 (UTC)

Category

I added Category:Education in Pittsburgh, on the grounds that this outfit is based in Pittsburgh, and it is about language education. Okay?--Solomonfromfinland (talk) 11:46, 25 December 2018 (UTC)

Cite

In the subsection "Duolingo Clubs", i added the template, "This section does not cite any sources..." We ought to add sources. Okay?--Solomonfromfinland (talk) 11:53, 25 December 2018 (UTC)

Free or freemium?

The article previously described Duolingo as "freemium", but I changed it to "free" since there aren't actually any additional features in "premium" besides the removal of ads, which any free ad-blocking extension or software could alternatively do. Buying it seems to be just a symbolic way of supporting the project. Does anyone here has objections to this change and thinks the article should describe it as freemium for some reason?? - Alumnum (talk) 05:03, 21 February 2019 (UTC)

I would keep it as freemium because adblock isn't particularly usable on mobile, where the app tends to push the majority of its updates. Additionally, the app gives you stuff for buying premium, rather than just asking for donations. Now there's also the fact that leveling skills up requires either the spending of lingots (which can be bought with real money) or premium. puggo 16:36, 21 February 2019 (UTC)

Missing a Duolingo lesson

There is this meme going around that Duo, the website's mascot, is a scary and evil owl if you miss your daily lesson. He will haunt you or even kidnap your family. I would like to know how this started because the comment sections always seem to be aware. --2001:16B8:31E8:6300:7CA0:EB4B:9F7F:6DCF (talk) 11:31, 2 June 2019 (UTC)

Probabily from those Duolingo notifications?

see this [[11]] for more info. Worra Mait Kosit (talk) 07:30, 7 June 2019 (UTC)

Sorry for the late response, but the meme started when people started missing their Duolingo daily lesson and a notification pops up saying, "Looks like you missed your (insert language here), you know what happens now!" The media takes the "You know what happens now" part as a threat and thus the meme began. 122.172.101.206 (talk) 13:09, 16 April 2021 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page has been nominated for speedy deletion

The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page has been nominated for speedy deletion:

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You can see the reason for deletion at the file description page linked above. —Community Tech bot (talk) 02:52, 29 August 2019 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion

The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion:

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Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 18:07, 12 January 2020 (UTC)

"Duolingo tree" listed at Redirects for discussion

A discussion is taking place to address the redirect Duolingo tree. The discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2020 December 20#Duolingo tree until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 22:13, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

"Effectiveness" section needs work

Thought I'd bring this up here instead of editing because I want to avoid a conflict of interest since I currently work @ Duolingo and efficacy is a topic that could be easily subject to bias.
Basically: if there's going to be a section on efficacy, it should probably come from several objective, researched, peer-reviewed sources rather than commentary from a single user (whose edit history looks like a possible sock) on a press article. A few possible routes for improvement come to mind:

1. Make the section encyclopedic and build it up with a wide range of studies that point out both strengths and weaknesses.
2. Remove the section for now until/unless someone is ready to make real pass at it like in #1.
3. Add something like Template:Unbalanced_section and just leave it bad for now and wait for someone else to hop in to get it to a place like mentioned in #1

Would love to hear anyone else's thoughts on this. Do any of these options sound best? Any better options for improving the article that I didn't think of?
Thanks,
-SColombo (talk) 20:09, 10 January 2020 (UTC)

Has anyone found any "objective, researched, peer-reviewed sources" about effectiveness of Duolingo? I haven't. --TuomoS (talk) 20:15, 10 January 2020 (UTC)

Yup :) there have been a number of academic studies over the years... a good starting point is a Google Scholar search for "duolingo effectiveness". They'll have various levels of being peer-reviewed, but you can weigh that by numbers of citations, etc.. To do a good job of distilling those, it would help for someone to have a bit of a linguistics (or language assessment) background. I wonder if Portal:Linguistics would find that interesting. -SColombo (talk) 23:31, 10 January 2020 (UTC)

Great, such studies seem to exist. I agree that someone who is familiar with linguistics should take a look at them. I am interested in the topic, but I don't have the expertise to assess which studies can be considered reliable and independent from Duolingo's business. --TuomoS (talk) 08:38, 11 January 2020 (UTC)

Number of links to duolingo.com

So many of the links in the tables are directly to duolingo.com or a wiki page based on this, and I think the whole tables should be culled (as per WP:NOTSTATS / WP:NOTRELEASENOTES) unless some reliable, secondary sources can be found to support them. I've already removed a list of courses in development and am reviewing the other lengthy tables. Spike 'em (talk) 08:44, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

Also, a large number of the links are used as references for student numbers, but don't appear to show them. Spike 'em (talk) 09:11, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

Hi there Spike 'em, thanks for taking the time to review the Duolingo page. I took the time to create the tables as I believe they are a useful and clear reference to see when courses were created, what stage courses are in, and how many learners they have. Not only that, but it provides an easy way to see how many courses teach a language, for example how many courses there are teaching German. I hope it's ok to keep the tables as they are useful. CcfUk2018 (talk) 12:19, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

They seem to repeat the same information 3 times, and each table has different numbers of students for the same course. I don't see the need for more than one table, which should be properly referenced to links that aren't to duolingo.com. Spike 'em (talk) 12:21, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

And rather than just reverting changes, could you please explain how they don't violate the guidelines above. Why do you believe they are useful? They are technical details that have no real use in an encyclopaedic article about the company. Spike 'em (talk) 12:24, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

HI again Spike 'em. I see what you mean in some ways in how some tables repeat information. For example, the "Courses for English Speakers" and "Release dates of English courses" tables both repeat the same information on how many learners there are. I think it would be beneficial to combine the information of the number of learners of Courses for English speakers, with the release dates of the courses. However, in regards to the "List of courses being created table", it provides insight into what the company is currently working on, providing the information in a clear manner. I hope that makes sense. And with the tables, I agree with you, and I think it'd be better to combine them into a table with the number of learners and their release date as there is quite a bit of information that is repeated in terms of number of learners for courses for English speakers. But I would like to request you don't delete the tables yet, I want to change them and create one table, which is harder to do when the tables with the information have been deleted. Hope that's ok and thanks for the feedback on this page. I want to make this article the best it can be. CcfUk2018 (talk) 12:21, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

@CcfUk2018: Those tables are confusing, making it harder for people to understand which course(s) are actually available (which is counter-productive). "Courses for English speakers" subsection that contains Complete, Beta, and Alpha in the "language courses" section is already sums up those tables. flixwito ^(•‿•)^ 14:00, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

{ping|Veracious}} I agree, and additionally they do need work. One of the several factors for why I created the tables is because I wanted a way to quickly look up what courses for learning German, or English, or Spanish etc have the most learners. I think there should be a way to make the information much clearer on which courses are available, when they were released, as well as the number of learners. At the moment, there's 10 subsections in the Language Courses section: 1. Courses for English speakers, 2. Complete, 3. Beta, 4. Alpha, 5. Release dates of English courses, 6. Courses available in other languages, 7. Number of languages available for speakers of 'x' language on the app and on the website, 8. List of courses by number of learners, 9. List of courses in beta, 10. List of courses being created. I personally think tables 8, 9, and 10 are worth keeping, but I'm not sure about "Courses available in other languages" and "Number of languages available for speakers of 'x' language on the app and on the website". Another thought I've had is it would be beneficial if the tables under "Courses for English speakers" were merged somehow with the other tables in the section. So basically, I think the whole, if not most of the "Language courses" section needs a declutter. I'm not quite sure yet what that would look like though, and I also don't want to erase other people's hard work on here. But yeah, I definitely agree that the number of tables, and amount of repeated information is overkill: it's confusing, and makes it difficult to find the reliable, accurate information people are looking for. If you have any ideas on how I can provide information on all the courses, I've got a fair amount of spare time for the next few weeks, and happy to do everything I can to improve it! Thanks as well for posting here and providing a much needed perspective for me. All the best, and sorry as well as I couldn't quite work out how to properly ping you, CcfUk2018 (talk) 14:34, 28 March 2020 (UTC)

List of Courses

Should this page include a list of courses available? I believe it should. Edwyth (talk) 20:42, 12 October 2020 (UTC)

Yes, in my opinion a list of courses would be useful information for readers of Wikipedia. But the tables in the earlier version were too detailed. I think that we should keep this version, as edited by Wolbo. I don't see the list as advertising. Instead, it gives information about Duolingo for readers of Wikipedia, so that they don't have to go to the website to search for the information. --TuomoS (talk) 06:12, 13 October 2020 (UTC)

I agree TuomoS, the previous version got out of hand, but the streamlined version as edited by Wolbo looks good and very comprehensible. My question is: how can we post the shorter version of the course list, without it being taken down because it "doesn't have encyclopedic value"? Because I believe it does, but how does one prove that? --Edwyth (talk) 19:31, 13 October 2020 (UTC)

Whether something has "encyclopedic value" should be decided by secondary sources; Bonadea removed that Wolbo-edited list as well. It is worthwhile noting that while they claimed this was "a core subset of language course info", but it's worth noting that none of the sources provided claim that this is a "core subset": Lifehacker and TheBalance are just websites, and at any rate they don't make that claim: "Lifehacker" is a highly commercial website that merely lists the languages; if there is anything valuable in that article it's the evaluation, but Wolbo chose not to use that. TheBalance--well, just read it: it's just another business-friendly review that can't be taken seriously. And of course they added an overwhelming number of links to, guess what, the DuoLingo website: it could have been reverted with a spam warning for the editor. Bonadea reverted, WITH an edit summary and explanation, but Wolbo has the gall to remove it again and again claiming "no explanation given", a prima facie lie.

No, that content is not of encyclopedic value. If things are discussed and reviewed, those can be discussed, but listing all the languages they teach (or "teach", as the case may be) is like listing all the classes taught at a university or high school, and we just don't do that. You want to know their complete course offering? Their website is linked in the External links section and in the infobox. Drmies (talk) 22:38, 13 October 2020 (UTC)

I don't know how a list of courses isn't WP:SOAP and WP:RECENTISM just to start. There simply won't be high-quality sources with any depth covering the topic. The article as a whole suffers from these problems, so it's no surprise that there are attempts like this to expand on what's simply promotion. --Hipal/Ronz (talk) 01:39, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

CcfUk2018, it is really time to stop. I'm reverting you to a version that is ALREADY crazy promotional, and I'm pruning that a bit as well. No secondary sources, no claim to encyclopedic inclusion. Drmies (talk) 14:04, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

I've removed the section. At very least, there's no consensus for inclusion. No one has addressed the content policies at all yet. --Hipal (talk) 20:54, 10 February 2021 (UTC)

Future courses

The Future courses subsection lists several supposed future language courses, but neither of the pages cited supports the editor's statement. The pages cited are nothing but discussions created in the Duolingo forum by end users expressing a desire for their languages of interest to be added. Nowhere in those pages does a Duolingo employee or volunteer say that a language is going to be added. I think that either 1) the subsection should be deleted or 2) it should be rewritten to say that there are currently courses in the Duolingo incubator for Haitian Creole, Māori and Yiddish, citing the incubator page at https://incubator.duolingo.com/, but I don't know if that counts as "original research." There are two other new languages in the incubator, K'iche' and Yucatec, but those are taught only from Spanish, not English. For anyone unfamiliar, all current and planned Duolingo courses teaching any language from any language can be viewed on that incubator page. Metrowestjp (talk) 13:36, 6 January 2021 (UTC)

Other Courses

Duo also has High Valyrian and Klingon which is in Beta — Preceding unsigned comment added by Number1pencil (talk • contribs) 18:19, 27 January 2021 (UTC)

I've remove the entire section as hopelessly promotional. Much of the article needs to be rewritten or trimmed back to what's covered in independent sources, rather than their publicity. --Hipal (talk) 16:50, 5 February 2021 (UTC)

You accidentally removed all the courses, not just the future courses. I restored the currently available courses. --TuomoS (talk) 20:40, 5 February 2021 (UTC)

It was no accident. I removed them all as advertising. --Hipal (talk) 00:07, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

We are discussing the Future courses section here, as the title says. You wrote that you removed the entire future courses section as advertising, and I agree with that. However, there was no reason to remove the currently available courses. --TuomoS (talk) 08:04, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

I'm discussing the entire "Language courses" section, and plenty of reason has been given. None to retain that I'm seeing. Why waste time on a subsection when the entire section is blatant advertising? --Hipal (talk) 16:53, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

Promo? A list of available courses is NOT a promo, it is simple information

I don't understand why one Wikipedist insists that the list of languages available for learning on Duolingo should be considered "promo", or "ad". That one Wikipedist keeps deleting that valid information again and again, and, IMHO, that's NOT a positive attitude.

If he or she decides to delete valid info, he or she should, at first, explain **WHY** a simple list of the available Doulingo courses should be considered an advertisement: with the same criterion, we would delete the list of models offered by a car manufacturer, or the list of operating systems and plataforms a Steam game can run on.

190.174.4.171 (talk) 21:01, 11 February 2021 (UTC)

I agree. A list of available courses is not advertising. It is information that is useful for many readers of Wikipedia. In the earlier discussion, some people were requesting secondary sources. There are lots of secondary sources for every course in Duolingo. For example, the Finnish course was widely reported in the media. However, it is much easier to take the list from the Duolingo web page, instead of searching the secondary sources. --TuomoS (talk) 21:17, 11 February 2021 (UTC)

It's the very definition of promotion. See WP:PROMO. If independent sources demonstrate encyclopedic value, that would be different. Press releases, announcements, and other publicity pieces like the one mentioned by TuomoS do not suffice. --Hipal (talk) 21:25, 11 February 2021 (UTC)

Hipal, could you specify what kind of "independent sources" you are expecting? The news article that I linked was published by Yle, Finland's national public broadcasting company. Another independent source has been published by Finland's biggest newspaper Helsingin Sanomat. Similar articles have been published about most, if not all, of Duolingo's courses. However, it would be tedious to search for the sources one-by-one. Referring to the list in Duolingo's own web page is easier, and equally good for the reader. --TuomoS (talk) 07:24, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

Sources that clear any WP:NOT or WP:RECENTISM problems. So far, we're just talking about NOT, which I think is a waste of time even trying. RECENTISM is much more difficult.

For NOT, something that demonstrates encyclopedic value rather than just promotion. Press releases, announcements, and publicity pieces should be rejected outright. Academic sources that provide historical context would be ideal. --Hipal (talk) 16:37, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

Am I understanding correctly that Duolingo course contributors are mostly volunteers? That might explain the COI-like editing going on here. --Hipal (talk) 18:01, 23 February 2021 (UTC)

I do not think it is promo at all. I used to rely on the list of courses for reference. TV shows have lists of episodes/seasons/characters etc, and that's not promo. It is simply information DaniloDaysOfOurLives (talk) 20:20, 23 February 2021 (UTC)

This isn't a vote, but an application of content policies and guidelines. --Hipal (talk) 22:14, 23 February 2021 (UTC)--Hipal (talk) 22:14, 23 February 2021 (UTC)

In order to break the current impasse, I am proposing a compromise: 1) Let's delete the list of courses available in other languages and the section Courses unavailable in English because they suit better to other language Wikipedias. 2) Let's delete the Future courses section because Wikipedia is not a crystal ball. 3) Let's move the section Courses for English speakers to the end of the article because it is useful information but not the most important part of the article. I hope that most users could accept this compromise. --TuomoS (talk) 12:11, 25 February 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for following up.

I agree that those sections should be removed. Would it be acceptable to do so now? --Hipal (talk) 17:08, 25 February 2021 (UTC)

I've removed them. --Hipal (talk) 16:19, 27 February 2021 (UTC)

Hipal, why did you remove the section Courses for English speakers? I thought that you accepted my proposal for a compromise. --TuomoS (talk) 17:55, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

Compromising on policy is detrimental to the improvement of this encyclopedia. --Hipal (talk) 17:58, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

Compromising is a part of Wikipedia's policy: Wikipedia:Consensus. --TuomoS (talk) 18:15, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

No, we don't compromise on policy: Consensus is Wikipedia's fundamental model for editorial decision making, and is marked by addressing legitimate concerns held by editors through a process of compromise while following Wikipedia policies. --Hipal (talk) 19:23, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Bbkesler. Peer reviewers: Hlydon.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 20:21, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Nonsense sentence

...the mascot is "evil" and will stalk and threaten users if they do not keep using the app such as breaking a streak. This is baffling. Whatever it means, such as does not fit the sentence. And what is a streak in this context? Koro Neil (talk) 03:25, 2 July 2022 (UTC)

I removed the end of the sentence. A streak means on how many consecutive days the user has finished a lesson in Duolingo. TuomoS (talk) 14:29, 2 July 2022 (UTC)

Duolingo Navbox

Hi, I have created a basic template for a Duolingo navbox, which can be found here. Please let me know whether this would be something useful to add. Thanks, Max263 (talk) 14:31, 31 July 2022 (UTC)

I have added the navbox I have created to the article and the DET's. Please let me know whether this is useful, whether it should be added to the founder's pages, and whether there are any other categories that I have missed here. Thanks. Max263 (talk) 16:19, 1 August 2022 (UTC)

Duome

A few weeks ago Duolingo appears to have discontinued offering advice when users find the "correct" answer confusing (or "wrong"), and possibly other services as well like group chats. A lot of users were unhappy about this, and it looks as if these things have been picked up by a volunteer service called Duome (which does not have its own Wikipedia entry). I cannot find a clear explanation of what happened or of what Duome does, and I would suggest that someone who does might add a section to this article explaining it. Deipnosophista (talk) 14:43, 12 August 2022 (UTC)

Improvement of the article

What can/should be done to improve the "languages offered" section of the article to get the tag removed? I'm not understanding what's cruft/otherwise wrong about the section. Realtent (talk) 15:43, 21 September 2022 (UTC)

If you look at the article history, theres a link at the top, "External tools: Find addition/removal", which is handy to find out when tags were added. In this case the tag was added in this edit by User:Pyrrho the Skipper, with the comment "Not necessary to list every single language and the number of users, and not sourced to anything".

The sourcing issue might be resolved by reference to https://www.duolingo.com/courses, which should be authoritative, though it's not from a third party, but we are left with the question of whether it's necessary for the Wikipedia page to carry a full course list, duplicating the actual service provider's website.

Digging a little further, there is also the discussion above (#List_of_Courses), which seemed to end with this removal of the course list. But it has since been added again. William Avery (talk) 16:16, 21 September 2022 (UTC)

In my opinion, it still feels like not a very effeicient way to show that there are a lot of languages offered. I just don't think a table like this, with each language in its own row, is the way to do it. Maybe a three column list of its most popular languages, or something else. I still think the tag is appropriate, but that's just me. Pyrrho the Skipper (talk) 16:17, 21 September 2022 (UTC)

• I just converted the list into columns and added a source. I removed the tag, also. I think this is an improvement, personally, but I'm open to differing opinions. Pyrrho the Skipper (talk) 16:35, 21 September 2022 (UTC)

I believe I was just going to remove the list every year or so. If the independent, reliable sources don't mention it, we shouldn't. Also, we shouldn't be attempting to maintain a complete list. --Hipal (talk) 22:08, 21 September 2022 (UTC)

I feel like in its current form it's notable enough to keep, just the fact it doesn't have a citation shouldn't have us delete it. In its past form, it wasn't exactly notable which languages were learnable by who. Also, this list should probably be languages able to be learned by English Duolingo speakers due to this being the English Wikipedia. I assume the list is already this, but just checking. Realtent (talk) 00:41, 22 September 2022 (UTC)

It should be removed. An encyclopedia would just give the total number of courses offered, not list all of them out.

There's also no need to have a future courses section: that's purely advertising and would have to be updated fairly frequently. 71.11.5.2 (talk) 21:41, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

Deleting Disruptive and Spam Edit Summaries

Can someone delete the edit summaries of the vandal in the edit history? Not only are they personal attacks, they're an eyesore. I don't know how to do this, so if someone else could do that, it'd be great.

Thx Realtent (talk) 20:41, 21 September 2022 (UTC)

Tagging @Bishonen from the list of recently active admins. Funcrunch (talk) 20:53, 21 September 2022 (UTC)

Done. Thanks for the ping, I enjoyed that. Vandal blocked. Bishonen | tålk 21:00, 21 September 2022 (UTC).

Hey, thanks! I wasn't expecting a block due to the vandalism being stale but it's nice anyways. Ty again! Realtent (talk) 21:12, 21 September 2022 (UTC)

Sentence in Effectiveness section

"After six months of studying French with Duolingo, von Ahn demonstrated a lack of basic verb tenses when asked to describe his weekend in French, "mangling his tenses." Bob Meese, Duolingo's chief revenue officer, did not immediately understand the spoken question "¿Hablas español?" ("Do you speak Spanish?" in Spanish) after six months of Duolingo Spanish language study"

I think this sentence can be deleted as it really doesn't tell you how effective the app is, it's just the anecdotal experiences of two people, and it doesn't even say how much they used the app for those specific languages (it says Meese was learning Spanish for six months, but how much did he practice per week in that time? and was he learning other languages at the same time?). In addition it doesn't even make clear when this happened: was it when the app was first created? or was it more recently? The rest of the section actually gives helpful information and studies, but starting it off with this sentence just seems out of place and unneeded. Relinus (talk) 00:54, 24 September 2022 (UTC)

I agree, the sentence should be deleted. --TuomoS (talk) 06:52, 24 September 2022 (UTC)

Great, I've deleted it. Relinus (talk) 08:17, 24 September 2022 (UTC)