I would like to suggest that all content providers stay within certain guidelines for length.
Beginner 1: under 1 minute
Beginner 2: 1-2 minutes
Intermediate: 3-5 minutes
Advanced: longer than 5 minutes
This is better for the learners, and makes the redistribution of points fairer. If I had to pay points for a lesson I would not buy a 40 second lesson for the same price as a 5 minute lesson.
Your thoughts.
Well, I am not sure you can set the level of a lesson based on the length only.
A longer text isn’t necessarily more difficult than a shorter one. What about audiobooks? You asked me to label “Cuore” as Int 1 because it’s clearly read and because there are no advanced students of Italian… but all those lessons are longer than 5 minutes.
Frankly speaking, I disagree with this suggestion.
I agree that beginner 1 lessons should be under 1 minute, and beginner 2 can be a little longer, but I wouldn’t have a minimum length. For intermediate and advanced I don’t think length guidelines are needed.
How does this make the redistribution of points fairer? If intermediate and advanced lessons must be longer, and on top of that are taken by less students, I don’t see the incentive to create those lessons.
No Michele, I agree that the length if the lesson does not determine the level. However, if the lesson is Intermediate or higher, then I think it should be at least 2 minutes long. I do agree that we could have Intermediate lessons that are longer than 5 minutes and Advanced lessons that are shorter. As an Intermediate learner I would prefer not have to load up many short lessons, and feel that a lesson 2-5 minutes long is comfortable. As an Advanced learner I regularly import lessons that are 45 minutes long. But I am interested in hearing how others feel.
Angela, you have a point. However, most original content created by our talented content creators is either for beginners or intermediates. Advanced content is usually third party content.
Anyway, I am interested in the views of as many people as possible.
Oh, now I see what you meant, Steve!
Steve says “This is better for the learners, and makes the redistribution of points fairer”.
That length rule makes the redistribution of points fairer? how??, this is a joke right?
@Steve: “and makes the redistribution of points fairer.”
Sorry, I don’t get it. Is LingQ planning to change the points distribution policy according to the length of the lessons?
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We are not going to introduce a hard length limit. I only want to suggest that we try to adhere to some length guidelines for different difficulty levels. The value of a lesson in terms of quality is up to the user. The length, however, is an objective fact.
We are still looking at ways to enable a member to reward providers who provide lessons that are especially appreciated by that member. Stay tuned. I hear you , I hear you.
Madre de dios!!! Pepe, dame una copa de agua ardiente.
jajaja Steve, sí, ¡siempre tocando las pelotas!
Yes, but please explain how that length rule makes the redistribution of points fairer! 
Points according to effort, right? (short lesson - minimum share of points, long lesson - more points). In theory it could mean that a long content is downloaded once, but still gives the contributor more points than if a particularly short content is downloaded several times.
Whether this is “fairest” solution, I don’t know, but you and Oscar should be happy. Didn’t you quit uploading content because it was valued equally as a 20 second lesson?
jeff, Steve doesn’t say that he’s going to give more points the longer the lesson is. He says that lessons should have a different lengths according to their difficulty, I can’t see how that makes the redistribution of points fairer. We’re waiting for his explanation.
Anyway if you just give more points to longer lessons and not consider if the lesson is copypasted or not, that’s even less fairer than the current system.
Copy-pasters don’t care if the lesson is 30 seconds or 15 minutes long. It takes exactly the same effort to upload those lessons, just that in between your “copy-pasting” you have to wait a bit longer to upload the audio and upload the next copy-pasted lesson.
No wonder why “Advanced content is usually third party content” (quoting Steve).
berta,
If a person is reading texts from Wikipedia, or some other source,for intermediate or advanced learners, I would prefer to see the length guidelines above followed. If I only wanted to maximize my points under the present system, I would make each paragraph or short section a separate lesson. This is inconvenient for intermediate and advanced learners in my view. It also distorts the points distribution system. Four 30 second articles are worth 4 times one 2 minute articles.
For beginner material, on the other hand, which is usually more difficult to make, the learner appreciates the shorter content.
We are not going to give more points for longer articles. We are going to try to enable some way for the users’ appreciation to influence how points are distributed, beyond the present usage based system. But I don’t want to say more for now.
For advanced level: all content should be at least 10 minutes long, in my opinion.
Steve, I have to strongly disagree with you. Reading a 5 (let alone 10) minutes from the wikipedia is far more tiering than making a 20-40 second lesson for beginners. You can’t even begin to compare them.
Beginner material is the easiest to make, by far. That’s my experience. They’re only beaten (by far too) by the copy-pasted ones, and those don’t require any effort at all, just the hassle of uploading them (but that you have to do with all the lessons you upload anyway right?; so I’m safe to say that copy-pasted lessons require 0 effort).
I’m glad you aren’t planning on giving more points just for the sake of being longer articles, you’d be encouraging even more the copy-pasting. I know you love them, but me myself I prefer good created content, one I can only find here on Lingq.
Berta, for once I have to disagree with you (but I still love you dearly): writing lessons for beginners is far more work than for intermediate or advanced students in my experience. I write notes and translations for Beg 1 and, sometimes, 2. The notes, in particular, takes ages to do - and, no, they are not too extensive at all. The intermediate and above material doesn’t require that much work. I just write and record it.
Sanne I love you too dearly!.
I’m talking about the lesson itself. Writing and recording 20 second audio compared to recording 5 to 10 minutes. Your advance-intermediate lessons are never longer than 3 minutes and of course you don’t make notes for those (and you could!).
It’s up to you if you want to make notes, or add translations or add background music to the audio or record a video… all those things are up to you and the way you make lessons. Most of beginner lessons don’t have any of those things. Making notes is not mandatory for beginner lessons.
I believe you when you say your beginner lessons take more effort than your intermediate-advanced-(2 to 3 minutes!) lessons. But that’s because you take special care adding notes and so forth. Nothing to do with the lesson itself. I don’t know if you see what I’m saying.
SanneT, I am afraid I have to disagree with you, too. When it comes to creating original content (audio and transcript), If beginner lessons have to be very short, and advanced lessons have to be much longer, there is no comparison at all about the amount of time needed for each type.
Here an example:
Beginner (37 secs):
Advanced(10 min):
The first one has only 75 words, the second one, 1730 words.
With that said, I am not saying anything against short or long lessons. I just want to point out the work that it takes for each type, from my experience.
Yes, I see what you both are saying. I am just very protective of Beginners’ lessons.
The length of my intermediate lessons has always felt natural to me. Anything longer is obviously harder because of the time it takes to record. So, yes, I am with you there.
If I were to write longer texts, it would indeed take exponentially more time to get them ready to share, especially as I sometimes have to do several takes before I am reasonably content with the recording. Writing more, on the other hand, wouldn’t bother me so much, I think.
Berta wrote:
“Steve doesn’t say that he’s going to give more points the longer the lesson is. He says that lessons should have a different lengths according to their difficulty, I can’t see how that makes the redistribution of points fairer. We’re waiting for his explanation.”
Oops, I misinterpreted what I read. My bad.
Regarding what is easy/difficult to make - this varies a lot. One could read the alphabet or a conjugation table in just under one minute (yes, some learners seem to want that!) or one could record a pedagogically planned dialogue using the same kind of vocabulary in different ways (e.g. like Assimil).
It takes ages to transcribe longer lessons, but if you’re “only” recording a text, the text itself might have been “easy” to write (free thoughts, a travel log, diary etc.) without particularly focusing on any issues of grammar, vocabulary, “style” etc.
One can simply never be too sure about how much the contributor has worked on the lesson, nor how useful the learner will rate it.
I agree jeff, but we can all agree that if you transcribe, record or make the lesson from scratch… that’s making an effort. Copypasting is 0 effort.