I wish Clozemaster offered the possibility of a Streak Freeze, or in other words, the ability to skip a course a day without losing one’s hard-earned streak.
In reality, I don’t care that much about streaks, but they are a good way to keep one studying on. Thus, it is very sad to see a long streak go, so one might be feel forced to keep up one’s streak even though one isn’t in the mood for studying, or maybe one isn’t very receptive every single day. But if one just takes one well-deserved break, just for a day, the streak is all gone on the the next day. That is certainly not good for morale!
To make matters worse, once you have lost a streak, it keeps on at zero, which makes it difficult to know, at a glance, for how long you have been inactive in a course.
I personally think a streak freeze feature could be a good selling point if it was connected to the Pro subscription.
And how should this work? Well, I could imagine that for every X thousand points earned, you would be entitled to an automatic streak freeze (i.e., your streak would not be affected if you took one day off). Maybe you could even be able to accumulate streak freezes so that a huge effort during a couple of days would earn you a couple of days off? That could be highly motivating for some, me included.
I don’t think it’s an accident that we, when it comes to work, have divided the week into workdays and weekends, with some holidays. Even students have weekends and holidays.
Ciao @morbrorper! I’m so used to being here rather than “there” that I’d forgotten all about streakfreezes. Not a bad idea, particularly in these days of medical visits or necessary trips elsewhere etc. Have a goodly day!
I actually like that we don’t have streak freezes here. A long Duolingo streak (mine is 2,142 days) doesn’t mean much, whereas here a long streak means you actually practiced a little every single day.
Seen from another angle, you have a good point, kadrian. I’ve never used one to take time off but to overcome internet blips they might be handy tho’ with “Mike’s” fair and amazingly quick help, perhaps blips don’t need one. Cheers!
I like the idea, and agree that it should be a Pro bonus.
I do have one liiiiiitle point of disagreement, though:
I would rather see it be a function of existing streak times rather than points. Why?
What are the reasons that a streak freeze would be useful?
(a) No matter what the subject you’re studying, it’s quite often useful to allow yourself time to step back a bit (even if only for a day or two… actually, ESPECIALLY if only for a day or two) and get some perspective. You can often find that coming back to the subject after a short break allows you to see things from a fresh perspective. It’s the whole “forest and trees” thing. If you’re working on a subject every day, you’re living in the trees. You never get the chance to step back.
(b) Related to that, it’s generally accepted that most people spend waaaay too much time in front of a screen and that we can benefit from doing periodic digital detoxes, where we don’t go near screens, tablets and ideally phones for a spell, ideally at least a full day, more if possible. The longer you’ve gone without one, the better it feels in my experience (though with my streak I’m way overdue for another.) Again, the time away from the screen can unclog your mind for better learning which is another reason to make the streak freezes a function of days rather than points.
( c) If we ever get to travel again, a lot of us will be travelling a loooong way. For me it’s 24 hours to Europe, at least 18 to North America, then there is the issue of gaining and losing days in time zones… the whole purpose of learning languages for many of us it to use the languages where they are spoken and it’s a bit counter productive if we lose our streak getting to those places because we’re stuck inside an A380 for the better part of a day.
The rules about streaks are too strict in Clozemaster but too forgiving in Duolingo.
I propose to replace the streak by a feature like
“has joined us for 328 out of 331 days” (numbers just examples)
Then one would have an incentive to join as often as possible for as long as possible without ruining it all with a day of illness or something like that.
There was an interesting proposal at the time on the DL discussion forums (with potential charts included of how you’d build up your streak over time, even with absences, or that was just the immediate image which it conjured up for me) which I quite liked, but I can’t quite recall the specifics.
There’s various nice options that come to mind though.
Indeed basically like you proposed: “You have been actively engaging with language X from Y for Z days” for each language pairing, and an overall one for Clozemaster “You have actively used Clozemaster for N days”
(I personally would prefer the total number of days to be optional, just because some people have been inactive for sometimes months at a time, then returning, thus it could potentially become quite demotivating to have the total denominator there, that you could never reset/decrease, rather than a re-welcome to Clozemaster).
Or total x days per language pairing/on Clozemaster, with perhaps in brackets the longest consecutive period? E.g. 673 days learnings Italian from English, longest “streak” 222 days
I think the DL one was something like you could build up days and then for periods of inactivity it would remove days, either one for one, or with some sort of multiplier. Sadly again don’t recall the specifics and the post itself will have been annihilated in the forum erasure. I thought it was a perfect solution to allowing people time off once in a while (either due to happenings in real life, much needed days off once in a while for better overall learning experience/enjoyment/retention, or other causes), without seeing 2 years of active learning wiped out.
Totally understand! Just out of interest I recently relinquished my 2000+ streak on Duo as I rarely visit there now. It felt odd at first then liberating. I quickly started a new one with Cloze and felt lots better.
However, have you tried contacting “Mike” to explain and have it reinstated. When my streak was affected by an Internet blip, he was most helpful. It’s worth asking.
I recall that @mike has fixed some issues with streaks in the past, but I think that might have been more related to syncing issues across app and web rather than genuinely losing a streak. On the other hand, it never hurts to make a request. Plus, if @mike keeps getting requests he might decide to implement some new features
Just as a recap, there are two feature requests in play here -
A “Streak Freeze” as suggested in @morbrorper’s original post, with the possibility of taking a day off, a weekend off, and so on (there are some interesting ideas in the discussions above about how this might work, or using X days out of Y as an alternative measure etc.).
A “Streak Repair” or “get out of jail card” as @mikeintaiwan called it, as an after-the-fact way of getting over the rage and frustration of missing a day.
What really puts pressure on me is not the streak, but the need to finish my reviews every day to keep them from piling up.
I like the idea of a “Day Off” feature, but whether it freezes your streak or not, I think to be worthwhile it would have to push all your reviews back a day. Otherwise you’d just get double reviews the next day as punishment, when you’re maybe still on vacation.
I’d be OK with letting my streak go, but I want to keep my reviews under control no matter what.
Reviews. I recently “drowned” having given up keeping up, so I’m trying the Barcarolle method for a while. I can add that since letting go of my reviews I have learnt so much more and forgotten about racing through my reviews. It’s like a breath of fresh air. As a Gemini completionist, this is a minor miracle. It can be done.
