Leaderboard

Am I the only one who has wondered where the new names came from on the Spanish Leaderboard? Better than Tyler (630,000 points), Naked Bananas (421,000 points) and 201 (305,000 points) all seemingly rocketed (pun intended) from obscurity to the top of the board. And all joined on January 21, 2015?

I must admit, I haven't looked at the leaderboards in a long time, so I didn't notice the shift from being #1 in French eons ago to near the bottom of the Top 10 now. No big loss, since I no longer use the lessons, but yeah, it would be nice if RL explained the changes in algorithm.

Definitely. Position on the leader board seems to be an important motivator for a number of people and somehow these numbers have gone completely askew. Rocket Languages should definitely look into this.

I noticed them.  Some of them earned over 100,000 points in one day.  I don't see how one earns more than 10,000 points legitimately in a day.

I think these are testers. Some of them have all the courses installed in their profile (they did when we could see the profile info, which now we can't). So try not to worry about them. Rocket Languages doesn't seem to charge enough for their lessons to have a separate testing platform at AWS or RackSpace. Sort of surprising, but I guess it's a good thing for people that are price concious for their learning experience. For me, I'd rather pay a bit more and get a better system (up to a certain point).

I just like the Rocket Scheduler streak system. It's pretty motivating to keep it all green and good to know how much effort is put in each day.

I would like the vision to be a little bigger. For example, Memrise has it right (if you buy their premium package for about $60 a year). It's the right way to show over a very long period of time (365 days). They actually managed to make a beautiful grid showing 7 rows (one for each day) and 52 weeks (rolling format for columns). Each square has an color based on the number of mems you have studied. When you hover your mouse, it shows you the details (i.e. 906 Learning Events, Mon Feb 22, 2015). Very well done.

They also show active streak and longest streak but they also tell you how many days in total you have studied.

Then, they go further with a Learning Performance panel and they show you (beautiful charts by the way) the performance you have had with different courses (to help you select your best learning method/best teacher) and what time of day you have the best performance for learning and recalling the mems and what your best response time is for each question.  It's like Sleep Cycle on the iPhone but for learning instead of sleeping.

Smart.

-Jason

The first year that I studied here I really did not pay attention to the points. Then suddenly I noticed that I was creeping into the top 10. I was happy to get the #4 spot and was crushed...well not really crushed....when I was in Cuba and could not study daily so someone passed me by. I earned my spot back then these guys came along and knocked me back down.

I use RS to learn Spanish, not accumulate points. But I have to admit that being among the high scorers has had a certain motivation.

Sounds like an inside job. Trafficking points on the black market. Point laundering. It's not pretty.

Hmmm...so one of the users that seemed to come from nowhere and rocket to the top of the leaderboard is writing as if he/she is from RL? Either Jason is right (he/she is a tester or has some other function at RL) or else I smell something phishy here.

Hi everyone,

Thanks for pointing this out to us.  It's definitely an unusual amount of points for someone to earn in such a short time, so we will look into it.  

Thanks again, your comments are always much appreciated!

P.S. Our apologies for any confusion caused.  The users mentioned in this thread are not part of the Rocket Languages team.  In checking out one of the accounts yesterday, we inadvertently posted a forum post as that person - our mistake sorry!

Hola everyone,

I'm wondering how to use the online keyboard Rocket Languages provides to make an accented uppercase on the "Write it!" test. Could someone please tell me?

I also noticed the weird names on the leaderboards, and totally understand the concern.

Chao o Adios for now.

My leaderboard and badges have not updated for several days. Is this going to be fixed, or should I just forget about it? 
 

I've been having the same problem. It's frustrating. When will it be fixed?

I must admit that I'm having a similar problem. It will load up points after a quiz, then after the second, and then remain the same after the third while I study. And the fourth. And the fifth. Am I just not allowing it time to add points before I move on to the next? Or is it just totally messed up for some reason? (This might help too) When I visit other pages like this forum, it anti-rockets down to zero again.

I am studying Hindi and I have a ghost writer in India who writes short books for me. We correspond (simply) in romanized Hindi that I learned from RL and are doing great. BTW she speaks, and writes English better than I do. It is very satisfying. RL is tops in its field. Much better than the one that advertises on television that says you learn like a child. Trouble is we are not children and we learn differently!

Hi guys, 

I apologize for all the inconvenience caused. This is an issue that has been reported to our tech support team; who is currently working on fixing it; we are making some updates to the feature and everything should be resolved once the updates are completed. We appreciate your patience and understanding. 

Cheers. 
 

I have observed that if you take a quiz a second time after you had already received points for the first time, it will credit you with those points and your score will appear to increase.  However, it does not really increase.

Awesome, Marie. I have to hand it to you guys for being on everything that comes up so fast :).
​Interesting info, Robert. That helps. Thanks!

I have reported problems with the scoring a few times recently but now I can't get into the badges section at all to see if it is working or not. 

Hi all - Further to the points system anomalies... We are working on revamping the entire points, badges and leaderboard system. Currently we are using the legacy system and trying to match it up with the 2016 Edition, which is causing a few headaches. Rather than patch that system we are going to replace it in early 2016. So, sorry for any inconvenience but it is being worked on!

Thanks for the information - I'll stop moaning for a while then!

Merry Christmas

Thanks, Jason--once again, I always appreciate RL's speed at addressing any problems...it's refreshing :).
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
​Laura

Hey guys, any updates with the leaderboard situation? According to my daily score in the left column in the "points goal" circle, I should have made the leaderboard for the last few days, but my name hasn't shown up.

Hi everyone, 

Margaret here from Rocket Languages.  Thanks so much for your continuing feedback - we sincerely appreciate it.  Over the holiday period we have been down to skeleton staff, so the points system revamp is yet to be completed.  Everyone is back in the office as of next week, so we should start seeing more progress soon.  Thanks for your continued patience while we work on this issue.

 

Also, you should implement some kind of safeguard to prevent spamming a single word on Rocket Record to get thousands of points in a few minutes.

Hi Alexander,

Thanks for your feedback!  We do try to keep an eye on the spammy posts in our forums, but if you come across any that you don't think are genuine, please click on the Report Spam link in the bottom right corner of each comment.  That will generate an email for the Customer Support team, and they can remove the post and also check on any others that same user has made. 

I hope that helps!

May be slightly off topic but this is as close to as what I wanted to find out. I noticed the credited points were not the same as what was shown on my counter. Secondly which was more recent that when I posted a question on the forum I did not get any points as in the past. Policy change? 

Hi M-L,

Thank you for your post, it's much appreciated.  Our apologies for any concern caused.  I have checked your account, and it looks as though points are being allocated correctly.  The points widget on the left hand side of your Members Area should list your daily points earned (in green), as well as your Total Points (underneath in smaller type).  

To keep track of what you have earned, I recommend going to your Badges page and clicking on the Recently Earned Points list.  Please note that only the first post on a forum thread will earn you 100 points. 

If you are still finding that your points don't match up, please don't hesitate to let me know.  Or you can email the Customer Support team for further assistance.  It would also be great to know the specific places you are seeing these inconsistencies.  

Thanks so much!  

I just posted on this forum (Subject: Anyone else having microphone problems?) and received no points. There were none shown in my recently earned points either.

The points earned within the learning modules have been showing up correctly for me for a couple of weeks now. 

Hi Fred, thank you for your comments.  Have you previously posted on the "Anyone else having microphone problems?" thread?  If so, you will have received points for the first post, but any subsequent posts would not have generated points.  I have checked your account and can see that you have been earning points for forum comments, so I believe it's working correctly.  But please don't hesitate to let me know if you are still having any trouble.
 

In Fred's defense, a couple of weeks ago I posted a first response to a forum thread and received no points either. I chalked it up to the bugs that the new system seems to be experiencing since the rollout, and didn't worry too much about it.

Thanks everyone for your comments.  Hmmm....I haven't been able to replicate the issue myself, but if you notice any other instances of first posts that don't generate points, please don't hesitate to let me know and I will follow them up from here.

Thanks again!

Margaret: I just posed an answer to the question about the difference between lo sé and yo sé, and did not receive points for my response.
Dan

It's hit or miss with the points things.  I just responded to the same thread as Dan and I got my 100 points.  Sometimes I don't but may end up getting it for my second response.  It's almost as if the "points awarding system" goes offline for a few minutes.

This has been an interesting discussion.  Some mentioned not receiving points for responses in the Forum; I used to receive points, but haven't several months (I think since the new RL was released).  This also means that if I look on my Recently Received Points page, I'm unable to check on posts I recently made -- that's more frustrating than not receiving points.

A bit ago Jason referred to the old counter that visually showed one's active streak.  I missed that aspect of RF when it was removed (I still miss it).

I also quit looking at the Leader Board when it began to have all manner of wonky numbers.  For me there would be greater incentive to have a visual representation of my own usage of RF regarding the number of points received each day.

This is an edit to my above post:  After saying I never receive points for a post in the Forum, this time I did; it's the first time in a very long  time.

Well this is strange, and I must apologize for not picking it up earlier!  I will talk to my colleagues in the IT team.  As you may know already, we are planning a complete overhaul of the points system, and so any outstanding issues with how the points are collated should be corrected then.  

Thanks for sticking with me, even when I couldn't replicate the issue myself!  

Diana, I have checked your account, and can confirm that you have earned 100 points for your post above.  If you go to the Badges page and click on the Recently Received Points list, you should see it listed there.  Clicking on the name of the post should also take you to the forum thread - I just tested it myself and it appears to be working fine, but please let me know if you have trouble.

In regards to the Active Streak, you will see on your points widget a couple of things I hope you will find helpful.  Firstly, it will list the number of days you have been active.  And secondly, you should also see an arrow to the left of the date - by clicking on this, you will be able to scroll back through previous days to see how many points you earned.  It's not as visually convenient as the previous Active Streak, but hopefully you will still find the information useful.

Thanks everyone for your posts!

In the old system, I would go out of my way to ensure that I never had a "hole" in my Active Streak. Seeing 0 days next to Active Streak doesn't seem to have the same effect for me.
 

I feel the same way, Steven. It was kind of like looking at a picture of an otherwise beautiful woman with a missing tooth...

I still try to do something in RL every day, but even when life gets in the way and I cannot, I always work on my Spanish in some other way every day without fail. That work is not reflected in points or active streaks anyway, so for me the missing graph is okay.

Yes, Margaret, I did receive points for my above post, and I edited it to make note of that.  However, as I also noted, that's the first time in a long time that I received points.  Run a check on my name and you will see that I've made posts without points or having the post appear on my Recently Received Points page.  I realise that the second post on the same topic doesn't receive points, but that's not what I referred to.  I've also not received points for the first post nor have I received points when I started a topic.

I enjoy following the Forum and make posts from time to time.  Sometimes, I also want to follow up on a recent post I made, but when points aren't awarded, then the follow-up is very difficult.

Margaret,

I agree with Diana-S1 about the inconsistency of points and posting questions. I sometimes received no points, sometimes 10 points (just now, see Forum question I just posted) and other times 100 points. 

If I understand correctly the person who answered the Forum questions should receive points too. Diana-S1 certainly had replied to my questions a few times. Did you look into that too? 

Hi everyone, thanks so much for your feedback - it's much appreciated.  In regards to earning points via the forum, what SHOULD happen is the following:

Creating a new thread ("Ask it here") - 10 points
First reply on a thread - 100 points
Subsequent posts on a thead - 0 points

I've been in touch with the IT team again about this, and they have assured me that they will be looking into the issue next week.  So hopefully I will have some more news for you very soon :) 

Hey guys it seems like there's still a problem with the leaderboard. I got 3549 points today (according to the green circle on the left), but the leaderboard displays 2818 points for today. Any ideas?

No ideas, but a question: how many hours do you study a day to earn 3549 points???

Well today was special - there's a huge blizzard here in NYC so I spent 5 or 6 hours on it. Also, lesson 3.8 in particular had like 80 phrases, most of them short and easy.

Hi daytripper90, thank you for your post.  Sounds like you had a very productive day!  Yes, there are still issues with the leaderboard showing inaccurate points I'm sorry.  Looking into this is all part of our points system overhaul, so it should be fixed soon.  

Take care in the snow!

Hi everyone, 

My apologies for the delay in getting back to you all about the points earned via the forum (some users were finding that they weren't always awarded points for their responses).  I just wanted to let you know that the IT team have corrected this now.  Here's how the points will work:

Creating a new thread ("Ask it here") - 10 points
First reply on a thread - 100 points
Subsequent posts on a thead - 0 points

If anyone has any trouble, please don't hesitate to let us know.  All the best!