Hey everyone - we brought this issue back to the larger content team. I come with their message:
Thanks for this feedback! You shouldn’t be getting penalized for using old meanings, at least not for about 6 months after the changes.
In terms of how we handle meaning changes:
- If the old meaning was incorrect → We move it to the warning list and give a pop-up message to say we changed the meaning recently. This is to teach the new meaning and to prevent penalizing learners who learned the old one. But after 6 months, we remove it from the warning list, so it just becomes incorrect.
- If the old meaning is a bit off, too context-specific, or rare → We move it to the warning list and give a pop-up message to say we changed the meaning recently. After 6 months, we change the pop-up message to indicate that it’s close but not quite right, rare, etc. Then it stays in the warning list indefinitely, so learners aren’t penalized for trying it.
- If the old meaning was acceptable, but we decided another meaning was better/more important to teach → We move it to the allow list. It’s no longer shown on the subject page, but you can still use it during reviews and it’ll be marked correct.
Changes to readings work in a similar way. We’ll give a pop-up for 6 months saying the main reading has changed & please check the subject page for more info.
Note: Typo forgiveness only works with visible meanings at the moment. So even if an old meaning is on the allow list, it’ll have to be submitted without any typos to be counted correct. And if the old meaning is on the warning list, the warning pop-up will only trigger if there are no typos.
So if you submit an old meaning without any typos, and if the meaning changes happened within the last 6 months, but it’s still being marked wrong without any warning message — that’s a mistake on our end. You can notify us and we’ll fix it. Basically, we don’t want you to get stuff wrong because of changes we made, and we want to give a 6-month grace period to learn the new meanings.
I hope this clears things up. If there’s any examples you find that don’t seem to fit into this list, please let us know!