Dear Lingscapers,
It’s been a while since our last update on the project. This time, however, we have good news. Before we begin, a quick disclaimer:
You might be wondering why you’re receiving this newsletter. There are basically two reasons: you might have signed up a while ago and forgotten about it because we’ve been so quiet, or you have an active project account on the Lingscape platform. We took the liberty of including all registered users in this newsletter. If you don’t want to receive these updates, you can unsubscribe using the link at the bottom of this message. Click it, and you will never hear from us again.
Now, back to the good news. Lingscape has been around for quite a while now – more than nine years, to be precise. During this time, we have transformed the platform from a limited-lifetime personal citizen science project into the community platform for participatory LL research that it is today. It has been a lot of fun – and a lot of work, and so far, things have mostly been good. However, as some of you may have noticed over the last two years, technology ages and requires constant maintenance and updates to run smoothly.
We have now reached a point where the growing success of the Lingscape platform necessitates rethinking its functionality and rebuilding it from scratch. We are aware of some bugs and limitations in the app and web interface, some of which directly impact your work on the platform. We apologize for these issues and would love to resolve them immediately. However, in light of the growing demands the platform must meet, we have decided to rebuild it from scratch instead of adding another fix.
We just signed contracts with our long-term partners at ibros.ch to revamp the web interface and the apps. Over the next six months, the University of Luxembourg will invest an additional 40,000€ into the project to ensure it runs smoothly, reflects the technological needs of its users, and receives a moderate facelift. At the end of this process, we will release Lingscape 2.0, which will include an updated web interface for project management and a new, cross-platform version of the app.
Consequently, we will stop fixing existing bugs and issues with the current apps and web interface. Should you encounter any problems while using the platform, please notify us. We will do our best to support your work and ensure the platform meets your needs. Please keep in mind, though, that our resources and time are limited, so it may take some time, especially during the rebuild. Bear with us for now, and you will get a shiny new platform in return.
In the coming months, we will also send out newsletters more frequently to keep you updated on our progress. While reworking the entire code base for the platform, we will publish some long-awaited features in the coming weeks, including user self-registration at last!
Thanks for being part of Lingscape!