Contributors generally had close relations with Ben Whately, at least if they could speak English or Mandarin, and could get access to the data so that we could better help contribute or come up with improvements. Once upon a time I had a copy of the JP/EN database, but have long since deleted it once I stopped being a contributor (when the data model had changed from the community-made wiki-like structure, so it wasn't much by choice).
A very large portion of the "original" Memrise community were people who had been abandoned by smart.fm, a free-to-use site which later became iknow.jp (subscription model). Our motivation for helping was a mixed bag of mostly the following three reasons, though I don't pretend to have known every original contributor or their motivations.
1) For our own educational use
2) Because we wanted to be able to help others learn our language or a language we had interest in
3) Because we wanted to see the smart.fm community stick around in this new home, Memrise
Personally, I fell mostly under the first reason. I never found Anki good to use and preferred having a website to navigate to and easily sync across devices (even in the early days Memrise had plans for the app) by well... letting someone else handle things. So smart.fm/Memrise were more convenient for me and my learning.
I've played some part in many of the Japanese courses with 50,000+ users. So the work I contributed has helped at least some portion of them begin their studies and I take satisfaction in being able to have done that for them.
E:
I didn't answer all of your questions, so in short. Yes, their data was closed, but they were willing to share large portions of it (except user data, even anonymized user data!). My contributions have my "by {Username}" for my courses - although many of the courses I built/contributed to became standard "Memrise" courses under their name I don't mind getting or not getting the credit - so long as they continue to help people learn!
A very large portion of the "original" Memrise community were people who had been abandoned by smart.fm, a free-to-use site which later became iknow.jp (subscription model). Our motivation for helping was a mixed bag of mostly the following three reasons, though I don't pretend to have known every original contributor or their motivations.
1) For our own educational use
2) Because we wanted to be able to help others learn our language or a language we had interest in
3) Because we wanted to see the smart.fm community stick around in this new home, Memrise
Personally, I fell mostly under the first reason. I never found Anki good to use and preferred having a website to navigate to and easily sync across devices (even in the early days Memrise had plans for the app) by well... letting someone else handle things. So smart.fm/Memrise were more convenient for me and my learning.
I've played some part in many of the Japanese courses with 50,000+ users. So the work I contributed has helped at least some portion of them begin their studies and I take satisfaction in being able to have done that for them.
E:
I didn't answer all of your questions, so in short. Yes, their data was closed, but they were willing to share large portions of it (except user data, even anonymized user data!). My contributions have my "by {Username}" for my courses - although many of the courses I built/contributed to became standard "Memrise" courses under their name I don't mind getting or not getting the credit - so long as they continue to help people learn!