[jonathanjaeger]

My boss stopped learning Spanish on Duolingo when he lost his streak. It's a powerful motivator even if it's not a "true streak" due to streak freezes and such. My streak is at 1436 and if I lost it, I wouldn't stop Duolingo because I actually like it to learn, but the streak does make me happier, haha. I think I've had 2 days in the last few years of streak freezes due to 1 day forgetting and 1 day the site not saving my exercise. Ah well, I still like my streak even if it's not 100% pure!

[superasn]

Same for me. I had a 800+ day streak and I remember that on the days I couldn't practice, I used to play Duolingo story #1 at 1am with half eyes open just to keep it going.

But as soon as my streak ended, my frequency of playing went from 6 days in a week, to 5 days.. and now I haven't played it in months. Fake or not, keeping the streak alive did help me learn a lot of French (well actually there is one more side to it.. even after all that I can't speak a single proper sentence now apart from the basic je m'appelle stuff)

[Telemakhos]

> even after all that I can't speak a single proper sentence now apart from the basic je m'appelle stuff

This is the real problem with Duolingo: it doesn't actually teach you to communicate in the language. Rote memorization and communication are two different things, and Duolingo does very little aside from drilling memorization. Streaks and gamification don't contribute to communication, which has its own system of rewards: when you communicate successfully, you accomplish some real-world task like buying yourself bread or getting a date, and that accomplishment doesn't need game-level rewards. Gamification is only effective when trying to palliate some sort of otherwise boring "grinding" (to use a gaming term from RPGs).

[jonathanjaeger]

Yup, I always do one story when I'm strapped for time just to keep it going on days I can't do exercises.

[kqr]

In the context you mentioned it, the streak sounds like a powerful demotivator.

This is a more general problem with gamification and external rewards: they are just as good demotivators as they are motivators, if not more so.

This is why I wanted to turn off streaks when I was using Duolingo. I knew it was just a matter of time before I had my streak broken, and I was very concerned about what would happen then.

[DrewADesign]

The real question is whether they'd have used it to begin with— I’d guess not. It seems most folks here discouraged by streak-loss had sizable steaks to lose. That means they reaped real benefit and provided real revenue for duolingo. Nobody uses a language learning app forever.

The gamification requires two coordinating motivations— secondarily the game mechanics, and primarily learning a language. Duolingo won't replace candy crush for non-language-learners. I imagine folks significantly discouraged by poor game performance without doing some serious learning first just aren’t motivated enough to practice their language skills in an app.

Personally, I’m not motivated by gamification at all and am content to ignore it. It is noisy, however, and I also wouldn’t mind the ability to shut it off.

[ricardobeat]

That goes to show how easily humans are manipulated. When I read these comments it all sounds incredibly pointless. People cherishing a counter they are allowed to increase.

[bluGill]

The problem is progress is slow and hard to measure. Streaks are something you can measure and consistent study makes a different after many hours of work.

That said, if you want to learn a language you need to study a lot. Complete everything Duolingo can in a few months and then find better courses of study to learn after that. You should never in my opinion have more than a 6 month streak.

[tomerv]

Same here. In fact I lost my 1000+ day streak 2 months ago (a newborn will do that to you) and haven't done a single Duolingo lesson since then. However, I did replace it with another app called DuoCards (no relation to Duolingo, AFAICT) which is great for memorizing vocabulary using spaced repetition. Duolingo used to have a companion app that did something similar, but they closed it a year ago. Anyway, they lost my subscription.

[dghughes]

I was learning several languages and one day at 12:01am I lost a streak. That crushed me. From then on I haven't touched Dulolingo. It sounds silly but the streaks have a very real physical affect on me.

It's similar to redit where someone demanded a subredit of mine since they deemed I not active enough (I was active but not to random guy's satisfaction) and the redit mods agreed. I haven't been on redit since after being a member for 15 years.

So yeah streaks, the chain (as Jerry Seinfeld says), consistency being broken makes me feel like crap.

[Jare]

At a much smaller scale, that's what happened to me with the Wordle game. Once I lost my 100%, I never touched it again. With Duolingo the drive is the learning so I've lost the streak many times (current is highest at 60) but that matters nothing to me. With Wordle, I think I was no longer having much fun, and keeping the streak probably was the only reason I played.