Duolingo forums shutting down March 22

March 16, 2022 2:03 AM

I just learned about this, and I know many MetaFilter members use Duolingo, so I thought it might be helpful to share this here.

Note: This is the Duolingo FORUMS, not Duolingo as a whole..

I just saw this on r/German and it was the first I'd heard of it:

https://www.reddit.com/r/German/comments/t15ytn/for_duolingo_learners_what_you_should_have_before/ (link)

The official announcement at Duolingo is here:

https://forum.duolingo.com/comment/55930597 (link)

Duolingo has a Data Vault (https://drive-thru.duolingo.com/ link) where you can request "a copy of all your personal data stored by Duolingo", although it can take up to 30 days to receive that info.

I'll probably look for any posts I've made and try to archive them - but as the poster of that reddit thread noted, there are lots of useful resources on various forum posts, and this would be a good time to try to save some of those, as well.

There are at least two sites trying to collect some of the most helpful posts for various languages:

https://duolinguists.wordpress.com/ link (announced on https://forum.duolingo.com/comment/56831442 link)
https://duome.eu/faq (announced on the reddit thread, link)

I don't think I got an email from Duolingo letting me know the forums were going away. I'm glad I found out in time to request my data from the Data Vault.

(The above info is copied from my post at language-learners.org.)

There are some great resources on those forums, and if you use Duolingo, you might have posted to the forums yourself, and may wish to keep copies of your posts.

posted by kristi to MetaFilter-Related at 2:03 AM (8 comments total)

Mod note: (Added links to the copied section)
posted by taz (staff) at 2:04 AM on March 16, 2022

Sigh. Chowhound is shutting down its forums and removing the public site from the web next week, as well. It's a sad trend, I guess.
posted by jacquilynne at 6:01 AM on March 16, 2022 [1 favorite]

(I don't use the forums much, but, if you use Duolingo, maybe you'd like to be my Duolingo friend?)
posted by box at 12:49 PM on March 16, 2022 [2 favorites]

I use Duolingo through the iPhone app and have therefore never engaged much with the forums... but I would never have been able to find out how to turn my profile private (in order to escape the leagues) without them. There's a privacy settings page on the desktop site that the app doesn't have at all and the mobile site keeps very well hidden. If someone hadn't posted it in the forums, I would have concluded that it was a feature they'd removed, and resigned myself to an eternity of league-related stress.

Here, for posterity, is the link (I hope! - don't have my credentials saved on the computer so can't actually log in to confirm!): https://www.duolingo.com/settings/privacy
posted by ManyLeggedCreature at 12:10 PM on March 17, 2022 [3 favorites]

Added you Box. My profile is here.
posted by kathrynm at 5:49 PM on March 17, 2022

Huh! I've been doing Duolingo off and on for years, but never thought to look at the website -- I've always used the web app. The website seems better, surprisingly.
posted by The corpse in the library at 1:51 PM on March 24, 2022

They seem to be gone from the website but still on the mobile app.
posted by The corpse in the library at 8:52 AM on March 25, 2022

Ah, no, never mind -- they're still there for "sentence discussions," which is what I was looking at on the app and not on the website.
posted by The corpse in the library at 8:53 AM on March 25, 2022