davidtyperacer

Planning Typeracer’s Future: We Need Your Input!

Hi Fellow Typeracers.

As Typeracer is moving forward, we realize the importance of gaining user feedback in order to help us develop a clear direction for the future. The better idea we have of what our racers want, the better we can direct our resources to improve Typeracer.checklist

So, today I want to do two things. First, I want to formally begin looking for volunteers who can help us improve Typeracer in the future by providing feedback and suggestions. What do you love about Typeracer? What could we do better? What new features do you want to see? If you are interested in giving us feedback about potential new features on Typeracer, and participating in discussions that will help us decide the future of Typeracer, please shoot me an email at david@typeracer.com.  In the future, I might send interested persons about one email per month with ideas and questions we have, and you can tell us what you think.

Second, I want to start this whole process off by posting a poll here on the blog, in order to get feedback about some of the ideas we currently have. Some of the ideas below are projects we are already working on, but many of them are just ideas we have considered. We want to know what is important to you so that we can use our time and resources wisely.

If you’re interested, please look at the poll below and tell us which items you think are important.

Thanks for your input! Here’s the poll:

(please vote for at most 5 items)

83 comments

  2. i tried to type using a Vietnamese Keyboard and for some reason I didn’t work when I used the accents and tones. words like ngay and xem work. but Biết and và did not. because I would type like this first. va then add the accent và but it still turned red and didn’t let me progress. Please help as soon as you can.

    Xin chào và hẹn gạp lại!

    Reply

    • Hi Octavius,

      Can you email support@typeracer.com ? We don’t know how to type Vietnamese, so you might have to explain it to us.

      Thanks, and I hope we can resolve this as soon as possible.

      David Pritts (valikor)
      Typeracer Administrator

    • we need more sharing among those interested in typeracer and ideas and help and tips on how to speed up and all that.

  3. Well, everyone fluxuates in their wpm average, so maybe there could be an option to “Race Select”. Instead of being paired with other people based on your average, maybe have you pick where you want to go. (Example; 120-130 wpm). That would make the more higher speed players find matches much quicker, and of course make it optional.

    Reply

  5. I think that the “Top 10” scores need to be reset and to start from scratch. I’m tired of seeing people with 300+ WPM records on every quote, with some even having names like “LEARN TO CHEAT MOTHER******”.

    Reply

  6. The countdown timer seems to be very unreliable – sometimes it jumps from 2 to 0, sometimes you have to wait a full second after it reaches 0 before you can start typing. This leads to lots of guesswork and slow/false starts. Instead, could you give typists a short window after the countdown reaches 0 to start typing, and calculate the WPM & time from the first keystroke? I don’t think it would make a huge difference to the real-time race display, but it would improve WPM calculation accuracy and reduce the number of people quitting in the first few seconds of a race.

    Reply

    • I agree that the countdown timer isn’t a 100% reliable, but for me its not that bad as it seems to be for you.
      For me, the countdown timer sometimes jumps to green light when the timer just hits 0 seconds, and other times exactly a second after it hits 0 seconds, which, that isn’t so big of a problem for me personally.

    • I find that the timer becomes less stable when I have a ton of browser tabs open. I’m not sure if that’s a function of typeracer versus a function of overloading my already overloaded computer with too many web browser instances!

    • Others have experienced problems with the timer too. But if you have lots of tabs open, it would be expected that some of your pages might not perform optimally…

      David Pritts (valikor)
      Typeracer Administrator

  7. qwertrewq here..Just things in the list that I thought about that might be worth considering…I think quitting should be a part of everyone’s scoring, somehow. Also pressing “spacebar” twice, thrice, etc., doesn’t result in an error – i.e. after you’ve correctly typed one word, you need to press the spacebar one time, but the system allows n presses of the spacebar. Why not make the process of adding new typing challenges a social process? I.e. where I can enter a new challenge, and where there is a social approval process where, once something is edited / approved by the community, it’s locked and becomes something that can be used in typeracer? How about a web service API that would allow some interesting future analytics services like “how do I compare to the 3 other racers that I’m just about to go up against?” Maybe an algorithm that, if I want to use it, selects typing challenges that are “harder” for me based on my weaker results, rather than just purely random?

    Reply

    • Thanks for your comment. Yes, people quitting races can be annoying at times. To be honest, we’re still not entirely sure what the best way to deal with this is. I don’t think it’s good to count these races in peoples’ scores (for example, giving them 0wpm) because sometimes people need to leave races for legitimate reasons, and Typeracer is a game, after all. But this is an area where we can definitely make improvements.

      As for your comment about adding new content, I think this is an interesting idea. I’ve always thought that the selection of Typeracer texts could involve the community more, and this might not be that hard to implement.

      David Pritts (valikor)
      Typeracer Administrator

  8. All of these features sound really cool, and I like that you are considering giving typists the opportunity to improve in a more comprehensive way. (And, I have to be honest, I’m an achievement junkie. I’d love to win awards.)

    Keep up the good work, guys.

    Reply

  9. Another idea I have just thought about after already voting, would be to replace the Bot racers with ghosts of players who previously raced, and it would choose a ghost about equally as fast as you. So instead of racing versus bots, you would race against the ghost(s) of players who typed this race before.

    Reply

    • this is a interesting way of communication as with typing is a skill anyway and typeracer teaches us this .but the communication part is a bonus. which could be improved with modern technology at our finger tips. would you say?

    • Thanks for the suggestion. I agree that the current bots could be improved upon.

      David Pritts (valikor)
      Typeracer Administrator

  10. I’d like to talk to my friends and customize my profile more. If you aren’t a member you can’t really do anything with your profile. But besides that I love typeracer, had really helped me a lot!

    Reply

  11. More texts. Seriously, there are thousands of awesome texts we could be typing and we only have a handful for some reason. We should very rarely have to repeat a text we’ve typed before, rather than repeating the same texts over and over.

    Reply

    • Thanks for your input. This is one of our top priorities; as you can see from the results above, this is something a lot of people want, and it’s not particularly difficult for us to do. We can hopefully have more texts added within a few weeks!

      David Pritts (valikor)
      Typeracer Administrator

    • Yeah that can be kind of annoying, can’t it?

      Thanks for the suggestion!

      David Pritts (valikor)
      Typeracer Administrator

  17. How about rating each passage for difficulty based on the site’s average WPM scores – the passages with the highest third of WPM scores would be ‘easy’, the middle third would be ‘medium’ and the lowest third would be ‘hard’. Then, along with each user’s overall average WPM score, you could show their easy, medium and hard average scores. This would show which of the ultra-fast typists genuinely deserve kudos and which ones are just skipping or quitting the difficult passages.

    Reply

    • yes i like this idea alex. it’s so important to not ailanate the slow typists thought. so as to offend them , or make them inferior to the quicker and faster typists. but saying this not all will be offended , just the most sensitive. I like your idea. but you must at same time try to keep progress simple so as not to complicate progress

    • Alex: Interesting idea. This might be something we can consider as we try to provide better statistics in the future.

      Thanks for your input.

      David Pritts (valikor)
      Typeracer Administrator

  18. Great options on the poll. It was a hard choice. One thing that wasn’t there that I would like to see is a subaccount system. I have premium on my regular account, but when I go to another account to practice QWERTY, or yet another to race-select and advertise the IRC channel in the leaderboard, I have to deal with the “please buy premium or don’t block the ads” popups every few races. It’s a small thing but gets bothersome.

    Also, it would be nice to be able to opt out of bot races altogether. I’m sure some of us won’t mind waiting longer for a real opponent.

    Reply

    • Thanks Jack. I know what you mean; I also have to manage different accounts (such as my Qwerty versus Dvorak account), etc. and it would definitely be cool to merge them. We will keep this in mind as we develop more premium features, although to be perfectly honest I do think this feature would appeal to a relatively small audience, so there are no guarantees.

      I think a lot of typists would like changes to how the “bots” work now. Thanks for your input.

      David Pritts (valikor)
      Typeracer Administrator

  19. there is always room for improvement i know .But in fairness this site is great for learning typing on it;’s own , I’m interested in improving off course,and by my past typing this few years I havent really, and wonder how come i keep making very similar mistakes. is there a remedy for this?

    Reply

  20. Hi! When you rank the person, you should average over at least 30 races and exclude people with less than 100 races from statistics. So, the info like “among 6% fastest” has more meaning.

    Reply

  21. Could we have a better way of challenging others for a race? I mean, why do we require entering someone’s email to challenge them for a race?

    The menu that pops out when we take the mouse pointer on a person’s name (or vehicle) should have an option of “challenge for race” – this challenge should then show up as a notification in the other person’s profile.

    Of course, the challenge invitation should be time-limited or unlimited. That’s your job to think but I think there should be an easier way of challenging someone on the race.

    Reply

    • Majid,

      Thanks for your comment. We appreciate the feedback, and hope we can improve in this area.

      If you have any more suggestions, let us know.

      David Pritts (valikor)
      Typeracer Administrator

  22. Racing on our own text will not do any good. A typist should be able to write on any given text. Writing on his/her text will only improve the speed on that particular text only and would give a fake idea that they can type fast.
    Moreover I also want a section about “typing for programmers” which would include special symbols as {(&$$ etc. so that they can increase their speed in the coding department as well.
    typeracer rocks!

    Reply

  24. i have only one wish of typeracer:
    start using real german texts in the german version those google translates are horrible and make me cringe
    same probably goes for the other languages
    you should get a lot of free texts at project gutenberg

    Reply

    • Hi Yesmaam,

      Thanks for your comment. You’re right–the current translations are cringe-worthy. We’re in the middle of a significant project to improve these. Would you be interested in helping to submit real German texts and/or translate your favorite texts from English into German? If so, please email me at david@typeracer.com.

      David Pritts (valikor)
      Typeracer Administrator

  25. Hi Mr. David,
    You are working good, but i want this, provide the details about the fingers movement or working on keyboard. I mean to say, typing tutorial, so that everyone can learn about how they can type more and more fast.

    Reply

  27. Hi there typeracer staff, wouldn’t it be cool if you could allow full screen customization? I mean a button under the text, once clicked the whole websites fades away and get the text bigger (filling the screen), please put this one to vote. Thanks a million.

    Reply

  29. Nature’s first green is gold,
    Her hardest hue to hold.
    Her early leaf’s a flower,
    But only so an hour.
    So leaf subsides to leaf’
    So Eden sank to grief
    So dawn goes down to day.
    Nothing gold can stay.

    Reply

  31. The most negative aspect of Typeracer for me has been not having ability to choose the content of the texts or to use my own texts. The aggravation of texts I dislike has often detracted my focus from my typing goals. The more choice, the stronger the appeal of the site.

    I also like the idea of more feedback on mistakes, which would equal more efficient practice time.

    So I’m glad to see that the Typeracer team is working on solutions, and I’d be glad to volunteer to give feedback and submit English texts. I’ll be sending an email regarding this soon.

    Reply

  32. 1940 tuesday, october 22, 2013

    Hi David Pritts.

    I would wish to help the TypeRacer with the Mexican Spanish translations but I have been very occupied doing other activities.

    by now, my comment is about one thing that is in my mind since a few weeks: it would be highly important to create some type of MOVEMENT —I mean an International Typist Movement— in order to be preparing ourselves against the proliferation of so many keyboardless devices.

    for example, you can imagine the frustration of a classical guitarist in an imaginary world who decides to discontinue or to stop the construction of classic guitars.

    on the other hand, we typists would be kind of annihilated if this keyboardless technologies would want to eradicate our computer keyboards.

    during the recent few years I have had this intuition regarding one of the main reasons to create keyboardless things: the maximum control possible of people’s minds of course.

    I recognize that some smartphones and tablets do a fine job for instance at night to relax oneself listening to some good podcast or reading something interesting before getting asleep but that’s about it —to typewrite some good old text nothing can surpass a real QWERTY or one of those DVORAK keyboards.

    maybe I’m a little bit paranoid about this subject but who knows?

    Reply

  33. i improved a lot from this 😀
    Thanks

    Would love to see the chat and then challenge other players to a showdown 😉

    Reply

  34. I was not really a fast typer until like a year ago and now with this website/game I’m ten times better then I was.

    Reply

  36. this website is so amazing and the tension of trying to beat your fellow racers is so inspiring ! Thank you to the designers of this website for making this! 🙂 😉

    Reply

  37. This is very hard for me since I don’t have anything that I usually type on . Like a computer or cell phone .

    Reply

  41. I’m strictly against the chat feature. That would be a major distraction and an open port for flame. The chat function in the private track is completely okay and enough.

    Reply

    • communication is important in a game that is quite competive , not a distraction , other peoples comments are important . similar to this . reply im doing to some other one;s comment . so . regardless off my comments . A improvement on more communication and more comment’s are the way forward . As the say in olden times up-wards and on-wards.

  42. I’m strictly against the chat future. That would be a major distraction and an open port for flame. The chat function in the private track is completely okay and enough.

    Reply

    • Hi Soner: Thanks for your feedback. We will be posting some more polls soon, and this is one thing we’d like to gather more data about. We realize some people might be opposed to some changes.

      David Pritts
      Typeracer

    • It would be good to have some ,if possible contact with the personal that we ‘re racing with in a race . To exchange feeling and thoughts about the race .

      It would be nice to have difference stories to type in a race , rather than typing the same stories over and over. Which is an advantage to long term racer’s

  44. More polling, like how many are using Dvorak keyboard vs regular? How about, if technology permits, adding a feature for dictation? Either for individual training or in a race situation where the score is NOT who is the fastest but who makes the least mistakes. So you would place yourself in a certain WPM categorized race and the passage would be read with or w/o text and the winner would be the one with the least mistakes.

    Reply

    • Gus good idea. i’ve got over 10.ooo races now and still remain doing the same simpliest of mistakes like spelling the easiest word wrong, even though the word is in front of me. Your idea is good but what’s id like to see is say over a period of races say above 5000 races and people like me who make the same simpliest of mistakes get a chance to focus on the words im typing wrong, say a full page or more . Like these words with a sentence to them . (short sentence.) but i’d need something like this to improve my speed and accuracy if im going to change to been a better typist i believe.

    • Thanks Anonymous. This is a good suggestion; suggestions like this help us continue to plan for the future.

      Keep the feedback coming.

      David Pritts
      Typeracer

  46. i find it important to do regular races every day at least 20 in a bad and 50 in a good day . Main Aim is to not take racing for granted for that would be a mistake.

    Reply

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    Reply

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