This has been brought up before, but it looks like all of the topics are archived, so I wanted to create a new one.
One of the great benefits of WaniKani is the user experience on desktop and mobile. There’s also something to be said for having all of your content in one place. So are there any plans to allow users to add (and possibly share) additional kanji and vocabulary directly in WaniKani? I don’t know how this would interact with the level system, but it seems like it would be very useful and encourage even more people to maintain subscriptions long term.
IIRC, there is a deck or pack or something that mimics WK’s GUI, so you could always go with that. The most concrete difference between WK is the mnemonics anyway, so even if they let you add custom kanji/vocab, since they wouldn’t be built on that system or have WK made mnemonics, you kinda lose the point of WK anyway. All the other stuff is kinda just bells and whistles.
I want to learn Kanji. WaniKani can easily add 10 more levels to cover for all Joyo Kanji. (I don’t care about N1 anymore, tbh.) Custom levels could an idea, but I don’t know how.
In the process of learning Kanji the WaniKani way, a reading emphasis has to be chosen. Either Kun, On, or Nanori, and which of Kun readings, for instance, has to be learned first. I can’t think of any easy way to do this, other than a spreadsheet and Anki.
Vocab for the sake of remembering Kanji readings have to be added.
For extra vocab, you can always try Houhou. Too bad, I am not on Windows.
In my opinion, however, better learn more vocab in contexts/scenarios/textbook chapters; but for Kanji, it is better to be learned separately.
In a perfect world, it would be nice, but I doubt such a thing would happen. In the event erroneous data was added and disseminated, by permitting it to be used on the service puts the validity of the established data provided by WK in jeopardy. Also you would have to consider how to prevent the duplication of data from being added because a user did properly check to see if it was already in the system. Even though these fringe cases that are unlikely to happen, as an educational service one has to consider these types of issues. Is it even worth the risk when established alternatives outside the service exist?
After considering all that one also has to consider the maintenance of all the items. Obviously WK wouldn’t maintain content not created by them. So, for example, if the imaginary levels content were added and accessible for all users to add on, someone would have to ensure that the content maintains some continuity with the features and content provided by WK. Not to mention any legal issues that could stem from users demanding compensation for adding/maintaining content that they deem “significantly increases” the intrinsic value of WK.
To address all of these one at a time:
Data dissemination is not a risk if user’s add items to their own account and are not able to share their items with other users. Duplicated data is also not a problem in this context as it affects only the user who uploads the duplicate data.
The maintenance issue is a bit more complex as users would then need dedicated storage space to store their items. However since this is all text, it is unlikely to be a huge commitment. Letting people know the maximum number they can add sets solid boundaries. Charging for extra storage is an acceptable business strategy as there are real associated costs.
From an API perspective, this is easily handled by the addition of a boolean tag to distinguish between WK items and user items. This would allow for conflicting item ID’s with no associated risk and virtually no cost as the transmission of a boolean over a network, even across 500 items (number of items per page as I understand it) should be negligible.
Legal issues are easily curtailed by the fact that items are not shared so value is not added to the system by external users to the same extent. And even if they were, an updated policy everyone has to adhere to would solve that.
The biggest concern seems to me to be the end user experience with their own items as things like links between kanji they add and radicals would have to be made by the user. But even this concern is trivial in the grand scheme and in twenty seconds I have a couple ideas of how to make it work, so there is likely a more thought-out solution that can work.
I was simply addressing the ability to “possibly share” user added information. In such a context those issues become much more pertinent. If this were a matter of personally adding one’s own content for one’s own use, I honestly wouldn’t have anything to say.
I did tweet @WaniKani on Twitter twice in the last couple of months asking if there were any plans to add more levels in the long term, but never heard back, so I have no idea if there are any alternatives to user-created items in the works either.
Thank you, I couldn’t find that post.
What do you folks at level 60 think? Would you say, by the end of the journey, that more levels would be a positive change? @Leebo, @rfindley?
That’s very good to know. I am hesitant to tag Koichi for fear that enough tags later he may just ignore anything I would ask . Do you think this is something that’s worth bringing up?
They’ve basically said that some new vocab is planned, so I don’t think it needs to be brought up. I hope they at least get the kanji with no vocab updated before too long. I don’t want to have to start a ton of new lessons way after my last batch of the current content.
Since vocab does not affect the leveling structure, it’d be easy to fit additional vocab into the current system.
For those of us already using WK, the extra vocab could just appear as ‘unlocked’ lessons that you could optionally take. Once you take the lessons then of course they get added to your standard review queue.
Like others have said, the WK system works for me, much better than Anki or others. I am not sure why but I also don’t want to question it too much. The WK team has a winner of a learning system.
. Do you think this is something that’s worth bringing up?