One of the big things that makes WaniKani appealing (to me at least) is the idea that with enough dedication and study it can be finished in just over a year. I like the idea of aiming for one week level ups and I have made them a few times. With default level ordering this is nearly impossible. As things stand the only way to make the one week level up is to learn the bulk of the vocabulary for a level and the next levels radicals in one go. This can be 100+ lessons at once, and doing this regularly will make it very hard to maintain accuracy for most people. The normal solution to this problem is the reorder script, but this is easy to abuse so I think it’s not the best solution. My suggestion is that the default lesson order be (level n = current level):
all level n-2 and below items
level n-1 radicals and kanji
level n radicals and kanji
level n-1 vocabulary
level n vocabulary
With this order it is still practical to level up at a rate of one level per week, but it is impossible to be more than one level behind on vocab, meaning the kanji meanings will still be reinforced by vocabulary. Maybe there’s some aspect I’m missing to the current order that works better so I’ll be interested to see what you all think!
Thanks for reading
Edit: The reason I’m level 7 even though I’m talking about making one week level ups a few times is because I reset from level 10 (or 11 can’t remember) after leaving the site for like 2 months and coming back to find I’d forgotten a lot of kanji.
This adds some risk of skipping vocab temporarily, but because you mentioned doing all n-2 items first I guess you can never more than one level behind on vocab. I wonder if this would only keep you at optimal level up time for a single level though, and then you’ll be back to catching up on vocab.
The idea is that if you do all your vocab within the week you will be able to maintain the one week pace, but if you can’t you will be forced to slow down. I’m also using a userscript for it at the moment, but it adds an ugly GUI to the lesson and review pages and it’s kind of unintuitive to use. I might look into making one which just enforces this order to be honest as I think it would work a lot better for me.
It can be tough to accept that although it’s possible to hit 60 in a year, it’s not feasible for everyone. Shortcutting through vocab isn’t going to solve that problem for those people, just defer it. WK isn’t about meeting some arbitrary level up speed, it’s about learning kanji. Don’t stress about having perfect level up speed; it’s meaningless if you are forgetting everything.
Again my point is that this makes it possible to do it in a year without scripts, without allowing shortcutting through vocab. The entire point of my suggestion is that you cannot be more than one level behind on vocab or you will lose the ability to level up in a week. I guess my post wasn’t too clear
They do the opposite because they believe in the user learning the n-1 vocab right after the n-1 kanji => Maximizing Reinforcement. For the speeders, by following their order, going from the start of n-1 kanji until the end of n-1 vocab might be just about a 2/3 days’ difference, but for others this might go up to 1 week even. For the latter, if you’re reordering it like you suggested, you will be missing out.
That’s why WK does the way it does. Sureee, you could have it as an option as well… but there are other scripts out there that take priority in becoming actual features, imo (like being able to remove the 42+ in the settings, because after level 5, that’s the only thing u see).
Don’t get me wrong, I agree with your suggestion. Maybe allowing it to be in the settings, but definitely not by default.
That’s an interesting perspective, I guess if a user is only doing say 5 lessons per day this order could lead to the vocabulary being very separated from the kanji even if it is only by one level. I also agree that it isn’t the most pressing issue with the site for sure. So I guess I agree with you that making it a toggle in the settings would be the best option ultimately. Tomorrow I’ll look into how the reorder script works and see if I can get my own version working with my order and without the (imo) ugly / confusing UI.
