I’ve finally decided to dedicate my time to creating a userscript that would allow users to add their own custom radicals, kanji, and vocabulary with their own mnemonics (or re-use existing WaniKani radicals/kanji). Ideally, these additional user-made radicals/kanji/vocabulary could be shared with other users. Sort of like a marketplace, but obviously free-to-use.
But I just wanted to make sure, does such a userscript already exist? I have not been able to find one that is actively supported from my searches, but maybe I have missed something.
In my mind, it would work something like the self study-quiz, where you can add extra items by level.
It would work great with the lists of words that aren’t in WK, and with the lists of common kana words, that others have made.
Well, there is a (probably inactive) project by Gorbit:
It looks promising but does not work, for me at least, currently. Maybe it was made dysfunctional by previous updates to the site. You could probably still take inspiration from that though. Hope that helps!
Gorbit’s script seems really good in concept, you might want to at least look to it for inspiration. But it also is only about half working when I tried it a few months ago, and decreasing as WK changes. The author wants to fix it, but is too busy, so it may or may not happen at some point.
I would love to have someone else doing things in this area… it’s a really good concept, and solves a lot of questions like “what if I want to keep adding things after 60?”, “what if I want to learn the whole Joyo?” “how do I learn readings not covered by WK?”, “can I learn WK words and ones I encounter in the wild without a second SRS?” etc.
I like your idea of being able to share content. I don’t think that’s been done before in a script like this, and can see a lot of interest in using it for things like being able to study the unofficial levels 61-70.
Anyway, your idea is definitely possible, and not currently being done despite some good potential use cases. I encourage you to go for it.
Thanks! I did find this, but as far as I was aware the project was inactive like you say. I guess my idea for this would be similar, just with the addition of sharing your user-defined “decks” for others to import through some back-end endpoint.
I’ll definitely take a look under the hood to see how they implement their script, and from that I think I can learn a lot or find areas that can be improved going forward with my design.
“what if I want to keep adding things after 60?”, “what if I want to learn the whole Joyo?” “how do I learn readings not covered by WK?”, “can I learn WK words and ones I encounter in the wild without a second SRS?” etc.
These are exactly the kind of scenarios I’d like to potentially solve or at least address with this script.
I like your idea of being able to share content. I don’t think that’s been done before in a script like this, and can see a lot of interest in using it for things like being able to study the unofficial levels 61-70.
Yeah, I think this would be the biggest selling point for people to use the script. Whether people want to create community decks for existing levels, or unofficial 60+ levels … I think it opens a lot of doors.
Anyway, your idea is definitely possible, and not currently being done despite some good potential use cases. I encourage you to go for it.
I appreciate the encouragement! I’ve already started laying out the roadmap for this project. I’ll probably continue to post back to this thread for feedback on certain ideas and implementations I have going forward.
Obviously the priority is the ability to add your own user-defined Kanji & Vocabulary.
Would adding custom Radicals be worth the effort? Have any of you ever thought that adding your own radicals would be useful? I’ve personally never thought so.
Yeah adding custom radicals is much less important imo.
For me (as an example) the most important features would be:
It should be integrated into wanikani reviews/lessons, not separate like self-study quiz is.
You should be able to import/export decks (less important but still nice to have).
You should be able to import/export progress (Quite important in my case specifically because I have to switch between two PCs every few months).
Maybe for later on, but much less important and probably quite difficult: importing ANKI decks.
As people have said, @Gorbit99 seems to have been working on this since earlier this year but hasn’t had time to finish it. One option if they don’t think they’re going to have time anytime soon could be for them to open-source their progress so far on GitHub for example? That could then let people like you finish it without having to recode everything Gorbit has already done, and allow anyone to submit pull request and stuff for fixes or extra features. Just an idea though!
In any case, a script to do this I think would definitely be amazing!
I agree regarding the radicals, I think if it’s requested in the future then it won’t be an issue to add.
To address your points, everything you listed is how this project is expected to work. The only exception being able to import from Anki, but that’s definitely something to consider after the initial release. I personally need to make myself more familiar with Anki, but I’m sure it’s more than doable.
I have reviewed Gorbit’s userscript, while it did provide some really helpful insight, the scope of my project is a bit larger and therefore the codebase is going to be drastically different.
Thanks you for the input! Hopefully I can have something for review within a week or two.
Great, looking forward to it! Will it be a tampermonkey userscript?
Like you say, the Aniki thing is definitely less important - just that at some point it could be a nice feature considering there’s already so many japanese Anki decks made!
Something that was on my wish list years ago. Perhaps finally it will become true.
I didn’t have time and experience with browser scripts/extensions then.
My quick and dirty first idea was to create a json file (Manually or by an online tool) and load it into browser memory as an additional level using a small userscript. The json files could be shared e.g. on github.
This will be a standalone browser extension that utilizes Manifest V3. The future of extensions like Tampermonkey seem to show it will no longer be supported, so it’s best to go this route.
It is my goal to have this available for all major browsers, or even browsers such as Brave. I think most browsers natively support Chrome extensions since they run on Chromium.
My quick and dirty first idea was to create a json file (Manually or by an online tool) and load it into browser memory as an additional level using a small userscript. The json files could be shared e.g. on github.
That is definitely one solution. But, I want to streamline it a little further. You’d be able to go to the marketplace (lack of a better word, it’s all free) and search for the decks you want, and just simply click a button to have them downloaded for use without any additional steps.
I’m excited to get a demo together, so I have you guys test it out and make this as user-friendly as possible before it’s officially released.
The more I progressed in WaniKani, the less I looked at the radicals (which is weird, since they should be used more as the kanji get progressively more complicated ). Anyways, that’s my current experience. I usually just skip the radicals and get straight to the kanji.
By level 60, I don’t think anyone would care to use radicals anymore? And for those in the lower levels, WaniKani takes more than good care of the base radicals
There is already a project by @polv where they create levels beyond level 60 which have their own radicals and kanji. Although the possibility of adding radicals as well might not be used that much, I would still be really excited if one could use your extension to do that and go through these extra levels for example.
This is not really a suggestion but just me being excited and sharing ideas that could be implemented with the extension you’re planning. Really looking forward to it! 頑張れ！
I don’t think adding custom radicals is worth it. I have just used WaniKani to learn radicals and has worked like a charm. The custom kanji and vocabulary idea though I like a lot.
