If you’re thinking of quitting Duolingo, here are five tips to help you make the decision. ..
Of course, if some active users were willing to correct each others’ mistakes/misspellings/whatever as well as those made by DL algorithms, I’d be in favor of it.
Many would complain that the courses are not entirely error-free, and if we were to correct other users’ errors we would soon become victims of our own corrections; this is without mentioning that language is not static, so what’s considered an acceptable form today wouldn’t necessarily be one tomorrow. Basically nobody wants to do work for free that benefits a large audience, and Duolingo doesn’t offer incentives for correcting others (maybe they should add points/badges/etc). The best possible outcome right now would be having moderators whose job it is to point out mistakes (or even make useful corrections) in people’s answers. But since everyone already knows about such issues after taking the test or reviewing their answers, the moderators would have to do a lot of work for no tangible reward.
I guess what I’m saying is that Duolingo does not incentivize or allow activities that turn it into something more like a conversational forum or chat room where people correct each other’s mistakes.
An additional problem with this idea is that we don’t know who made any given mistake; if someone posts an incorrect answer and you correct them, then they’re likely going to be confused about why you care so much when it was in fact their fault (unless your correction actually makes it more obvious). I believe most capable users are already used to self-correcting, and those who aren’t probably won’t change just because of this feature.
