Because you can’t don’t mean every one can’t.
I have no problem with this feature on marumori, and I don’t think I’m super smart or anything.
It’s just properly done, and re ask you later, so if you don’t know, you’ll fail again.
It’s not just me, many I’ve talked to have said the exact same thing, and limited their use of an undo script for the exact same reason. This is part of human psychology, self-serving bias and the illusion of knowing all play apart in making you think you knew something when you in reality didn’t.
Yeah if only there was a feature which did that 
… Speaking of which, this daily recommended lessons / lesson picker thing is pretty awesome. They added this feature for the exact reason you are describing.
I actually like this day lesson feature. Feeling less flooded.
I’m just annoyed at having to redo stuff because the rer moved at the wrong moment, or my finger hit enter instead of back. I just want an undo button, you won’t be forced to use it.
And you are free to have it, the API is open for a reason. But again, people will unintentionally abuse it, it’s just how the human brain works. If their product doesn’t teach people what they advertise it will because they unconsciously mark themselves right to many times, then that’s bad business.
You can argue all you want, but the team have said they won’t add it for the reasons brought up by everyone above. Now I gotta go hit the sack before I end up with 4 hours of sleep again.
If only they did more customizable features like the Daily Lessons one. You have complete control over it.
What you are advocating for though is minimal user control.
Thist.
The number of lesson per day is customizable. You do what you want with it, and it’s good.
And I’ll say it again. I don’t want to have to rely on third party stuff to make the thing I paid for usable.
Just putting in my two cents as a paid and current user for both Bunpro and WaniKani:
An undo feature would probably do more harm than good to my study experience. Yes there are times where I typed in typos, but “it’s not a big deal” for me, just do the word again, it doesnt hurt seeing the word more than I have to. I find that for “small mistakes” in Bunpro, I would use undo unconsciously and level myself up where I shouldn’t have.
One thing I’ve done in Wk is adding synonyms where I think its justified, and it takes me a good minute to really think through whether the synonym is justified. I’d think the synonym feature can be used for typos that one sees oneself get into often.
I don’t feel i can cheat my way out of marumori, it asks again randomly, so if I don’t actually know, I won’t be able to answer correctly when asked again.
And we don’t have to suffer before you can’t use this kind of feature correctly.
And as someone else said, it could just be opt in, giving this feature to users who want it won’t hurts others.
The people simultanously going “you cant have it” and “you already have it” at the same time in the same post are amusing.
Short answer: no.
Koichi believes it’s harmful, and it’s his site. The person you need to convince with logical arguments and compelling use case stories is not in the thread.
Try the kana flick keyboard? It’s slower at first but once you get good at it it drastically cuts down the typos (for me, your mileage may vary). Bonus: then you’re also good at the kana flick keyboard.
It wasn’t my intention to say that I thought people weren’t disciplined enough. I just wanted to say imo people don’t always do the right thing or what’s good for them, and though the undo button may make life easier for people like you (That is to say those who wouldn’t cheat, not to make a dig on your character or anything), many people would use it to cheat, and so it’s not included in the official software, but can still be accessed through a third party site. A public site is about what’s best for the majority, and if someone gets a question wrong and there’s the opportunity to go back and correct it, the majority would choose to go back. Not everyone is like that, such as you, who probably won’t use it to cheat, but many are and so it is not readily available.
Again, I just don’t buy that kind of logic.
If people use it to “cheat” - that’s totally fine and not a problem. People are adults and can learn from their mistakes. This is already a thing with the Lessons as I already mentioned, why is it OK to let people do mistakes and “cheat” in one place, but not another? It’s even arguable if anything is indeed “cheating”. I can make a whole post arguing that the vanilla WK setup is not very good and “cheating” might be a straight improvement. All of this is in the eye of the beholder, which is why I advocate for control and customizability. Meaning options, and people can set them however it suits them best as individuals.
Second - nowhere in the real world do we accept restriction just because some people might abuse a certain function or be cheating. Sometimes we have no say and have to tolerate it - but no one is defending it. Just because someone litters in the park is not an argument for the park being closed down for everyone else. Or just because someone uses kitchen knives for murder isn’t an argument for pulling kitchen knives off the shelves for sale and confiscating them from our homes. Same thing applies to WK - just because someone doesn’t like a feature, or might be misusing it, is not an argument for that feature not being implemented. It might be an argument for the existence of an option to disable it on your end.
Also, WK is not a “public site”. It is a paid product, a learning tool. The more control and customizability it offers, the more people it can suit, meaning more people learn the language, and WK team makes more money. It’s not about searching for a one size fits all static solution (which doesn’t exist). It’s about giving people tools, robust tools that can be used in multiple different ways, to help them on their journey. I don’t understand this “you either do it this way or take a hike/you are cheating” or “this has already been discussed, its not happening/forget it” kind of mentality. This is the last thing a community of language learners needs.
In the end of the day, WK is a business, and the customer is always right. Any feature, as long as its optional and doesn’t hinder other people’s use cases, is valid and legit, and community pushback is just counterproductive. Tho point of this whole operation is helping people learn a language, not guarding the sacred ways of the vanilla WK experience against the “cheaters”.
One last thing - while some things are possible thanks to the extremely generous efforts of the community with userscripts and third party apps (and WK letting people have access to the API, we should also give credit here as well), this is not an argument for not introducing big changes and giving people options to the main site. There are many features that can be implemented that don’t exists as scripts or third party apps, and its unreasonable to expect someone from the community to step up and do them. We pay money to the WK team, and they as professionals working on this service as a job have the capacity to implement features that are beyond the scope of the community. Its perfectly reasonable to want them to continue improving the service, giving people more options, more control, more customizability and more robust learning tools. Just because someone in the community was generous enough to implement a features the WK team refuses to despite the obvious demand is not an argument for not continuing to ask them to implement both community made and entirely new features. A common problem with userscripts and third party apps is that they fall in disrepair. They may work today, tomorrow they may not. We can’t expect users to always pick up the slack - that’s the job of the people we are giving money to. So again - just because a feature exists from a third party is not an argument for the WK team not implementing/adding it to the main site and maintaining it professionally for the benefit of all. WK is starting too look like Bethesda with its games, always relying on generous modders to fix their sh*t. This is not the proper way, not least of which how to conduct proper business and keep your customers happy, coming back, and increasing.
I really wish Wanikani had this feature, not through userscripts or user made apps, but through the main webpage. At this point, in my case at least, it’s not a matter of comfort, or “cheating”, it’s an accessibility feature. I can’t even count the amount of times when I do my reviews where I either forget a word in English or get distracted, type nonsense and hit enter by reflex. Not to mention straight up typos, that and not realizing that I’m using the wrong keyboard setting. And while I hope for everyone’s sake that most of y’all don’t struggle with brain fog so much, it makes using vanilla Wanikani pretty much impossible for me, not long term at least.
I’m always trying my best to focus on recognizing the general meaning, and then the reading. And I feel like that’s what matters the most, unless you want to become a translator, it doesn’t matter if the meaning comes to you in whatever random language instead of English, or if you write a word that probably doesn’t exist but has the correct concept. Of course I don’t expect Wanikani yo predict every possible English brain fart, I can’t even do that for myself, but an undo button would be a simple and efficient solution.
That’s pretty much why I’m currently doing my reviews and lessons through Smouldering durtles, having to take out my computer everytime so I’d be able to use the undo userscript actually meant I was less likely to do those reviews.
So relatable
Hell—even if you do want to be a translator, it’s not cheating to look up words in one or more dictionaries to help find the best way to phrase something. Now, if you’re gonna be interpreting or otherwise translating real-time or on the fly, then you won’t have time for lookups and not knowing an appropriate gloss off the top of your head would be inconvenient. But most of the time, it’s gonna be enough to know at least the concept of the word, with context telling you the exact sense.
WK is teaching you Japanese—what should be important is your understanding of the Japanese kanji/word/phrase, not how well you can remember the exact English gloss(es) WK decides to attach to them. So what if my brain sometimes refuses to give me the correct EN word despite genuinely knowing the JP? Hell, I forget words in EN all the time despite being able to hold an image or concept of it in my head perfectly. Does that mean I don’t know it? No. It just means I have trouble verbalizing things sometimes.
Seconding it being an accessibility feature re: typos, as well. I will often make typos, no matter how slowly and carefully I type. It’s just a fact of my life. Should I really spend potentially a minute on every card to make sure I type it correctly with no typos just because of my poorer-than-average fine motor control? That just makes things more of a slog than they have to be. It’d be one thing if this was a spelling test to be turned in for a grade for school, but it’s not.
I don’t think anything you’re saying is wrong, in fact it’s quite correct. I still don’t agree with having such a feature officially, but disagreements are bound to happen. So let’s just agree to disagree.
oh what a brilliant idea…no one has ever suggested this before…nice
next we will get the summary page back …
and oh yeah those stats features will come back soon too…
only 19 more days and no doubt for sure absolutely certain this feature request will be added post haste
eto…eto…
An undo would be better, and I think you’re right to voice irritation about its absence, but it just isn’t going to happen the way WK is.
People sometimes explain how the lack of an undo is good to protect those who can’t help themselves from cheating, but it’s just one positive aspect to the system we’re taking for granted because it’s the one WK went with. In an alternate universe the people who can’t help themselves from abusing undo are being met with accounts of how the undue frustration of getting words marked wrong that you know you shouldn’t would, for many people, diminish motivation, cause a spiral into worse reviews from frustration, etc.
Someone here called it human nature – if it’s human nature to sabotage yourself, it’s no less human nature to feel deeply negatively in response to being wrongly labelled incorrect and having one’s time wasted.