Yes, But ...
Social features are definitely part of the bigger vision for Remember Me, and there has been a lot of thinking about it. Since RM is quite different from Duolingo, social features will have to be implemented differently, too.
- RM relies on self-control. This makes cheating very easy.
- Scores are based on the number of words memorized. Therefore the same verse results in different scores for different Bible versions and languages.
- Memorizing God's word together includes some shared contents, not just comparing scores.
Taking these differences into account, what kind of social features would make sense on Remember Me?
A Working Example
One user family has found a workaround to make Remember Me social. Each of them has got their own verse account, but they are all part of the same user login. This means, they have got full access to each other's verses and can see each other's progress immediately and completely. The pros of this workaround are:
- Complete accountability. Your accountability partners know what you are memorizing, when you are memorizing, and how successfully.
- Content sharing. You like a verse your friend is studying? Just copy it to your own verse account.
The cons are:
- Security issues (shared password!)
- Integrity issues. You can mess up your sister's verse account.
- Privacy issues. To some users, this might be just too much accountability. They might want to memorize a Bible verse (or other text) once in a while without anybody else knowing about it.
Accountability Done Right
A proper implementation of this kind of social feature without the disadvantages would be very easy to achieve in Remember Me.
- A user can already create multiple verse accounts with the same user login. This allows to separate private and shared verse accounts.
- A feature that would need to be implemented is copying/moving verses from one verse account to the other more easily.
- Another feature would be inviting other users (your accountability partners) to access one of your verse accounts in read-only mode. A way of managing accountability partners would have to be implemented as well.
- The counterpart feature would be to display other users' accounts in read-only mode. This would allow you to see their progress and copy their verses without messing up their accounts.
What do you think?
Are there any social features that would be missing with this kind of implementation?