I’ve been learning Japanese for about 2.5 years and I’m making my way through my first LN and the hardest sentences for me to wrap my head around are usually something like:
Not a kanji in sight. 
Don’t get me wrong, knowing Kanji is absolutely necessary for reading. But that doesn’t make the other stuff any less important.
The post complaining about them seemed to be implying that the difference is actually not important, that knowing that much is “enough” for anyone, and that’s why they wanted it to be skippable. I wanted to note that まずい and ますい are not just two very similar sounding things that anyone will interpret as 不味い, but that they are in fact different words.
Maybe that’s not what they meant.
I think there are 3–5 big milestones in Japanese learning. I have no idea what the others are, but one of them is definitely when all-kana sentences start to seem scarier than kanji!
While I can totally relate to what you are saying, there is a thing to keep in mind. You could benefit from the option, and some others could as well. But I can see how it could hurt other users, and so does the wk team. You seem to know what adjustments you need, but many ppl end up ruining their experience because of trying to customize wk, wasting their time and money. Think of it as a school system that benefits average children but isn’t very good for genius kids.
Like already mentioned, WK doesn’t do that and I seriously doubt WK will ever consider it. If you want an app that does that for you in a Windows environment, you’ll have to use Anki and either create your own flash cards or use decks made available for sharing.
Sorry but that’s the only reasonable alternative I’m aware of.
I believe it was Mark Twain who said, “the difference between the right word and almost the right word is like the difference between fire and firefly.”
or between election and erection! 
I have emailed to the WaniKani team and their support said “they will relay the message to the team and see if it’s something they’d like to add further down the road”.
I could not but smile reading last few messages above as the most recent arguments against that feature request is going in the direction of “I don’t have self control, I will abuse it if it exist. So no one should have it” 
This thread and other posts in the forum also shows how diverse are the learners of the Japanese and how different are their goals and learning methods.
I’m not saying no one should have it. My point is that what we think we want isn’t always what’s best for us.
The level system is the best part of WK the heck
True. But what we’ve got right now is obviously bad for a lot of users, so pick your poison. Something that is a known bad or something that might be bad, but doesn’t seem to be for every other SRS system out there. I know the way I lean. 
There are ways it could be done to avoid the worst self-sabotage. Two ideas which spring immediately to mind are
Both these would allow use while preventing the kinds of abuse people have been concerned about. I’d say we should create a script to do something like this, but I don’t think the WK API provides any way to do either of these at this point. At least, not in a non-hacky way, as far as I can tell.
To be honest, I don’t think it’s as big a deal as those who are concerned about it make it out to be. Most SRS systems provide a way to skip material inappropriate to the individual learner, and it doesn’t seem to be a problem. That could be selection bias, of course, but I don’t think it is.
You never really know what is going to be important, and what is not.
I’d never encountered the concept of filial piety until it came up recently in a video on FF7. Now I see that term popping up everywhere - Just because a concept is uncommon in English culture, doesn’t mean it isn’t common or useful in Japanese.
Baseball terms also - I’ve no knowledge of Baseball or any interest in learning anything about it, but Japanese does seem to have a large number of baseball metaphors, so some of that seemingly useless vocab may become useful one day.
some vocabs really dont stick to memory I dont know why and maybe wont even read them anywhere
those words saying heartfelt desire and heart’s desire, honestly, I rarely saw them watching movies and tv shows. And I started studying english seriously since 16 years ago.
I just keep making them as mistakes and I think they will be forever in my reviews
I’m not sure about throwing words out, but I do think there’s something to the discussion about transitive/intransitive verb pairings. I just missed 解ける a few minutes ago because I’m used to -eru verbs being transitive!
I don’t know what the solution would look like, and I doubt it would even fall within WaniKani’s scope. But memorizing tables or waiting to encounter each verb independently in an SRS both seem suboptimal. I don’t think consolidating two verbs into one note on WaniKani is the answer; that won’t teach which one to use when. And Bunpro’s transitive/intransitive verb note is more about memorizing what the words “intransitive” and “transitive” mean in English than producing the verbs themselves (no offense to Bunpro).
It reminds me of Russian perfective/imperfective verbs or Arabic plurals: there are so many different patterns in pairings that it feels like there’s no choice but to memorize one pair at a time. But that can’t possibly be the best way.
I have a lot of words like this too. It’s not certain, but the best thing you can do is hope you encounter one or the other while reading or listening to media in the target language. When I’ve seen the word “in the wild,” it sticks much better.
I agree it’s probably impossible to succinctly conceptualize the difference between transitive and intransitive verbs, because English doesn’t use them the same way and/or not as often. I also agree it’s likely not WaniKani’s responsibility to teach them. However, combining them into single word entries does make sense, because it does away with the silly “verb’ed” and “verb something”, and if one does grammar outside of WaniKani, specific usage becomes clearer.
There’s a small set of patterns for transitive/intransitive pairs and only a handful of exceptions. Also, I don’t think remembering phonetic verb endings in their plain form is a good idea, because one can very easily trip on phonetically similar pairs like 起こる (ichidan) and 怒る (godan) or 変える (ichidan) and 帰る (godan).
Yeah, some of WaniKani’s translations are trying to convey a concept more than directly translate the word/phrase. They’re accurate, but for these I often add synonyms in my own words 
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If you happen to know of any resources that list these patterns, I’d be interested in seeing them. I was just thinking about making myself a Google Sheet of verb pairings today. If someone’s already done that, I’d be thrilled to save myself the work!
I think you’d be interested in this thread on the Bunpro forums. One of the more accomplished and successful regulars is experimenting with designing some sort of kanji learning system that indexes by kunyomi. It’s preliminary but I see a lot of potential!
Ever since I started changing my Anki vocab from English into J→J definitions with pictures, I’ve been way happier with them. I fought it tooth and nail at first but it allows me to circumvent having to think of the word in English. I wish that idea was compatible with WaniKani but I certainly understand why it wouldn’t be.
That’s a very interesting point to make, and it has actually picked up my motivation at learning Japanese baseball terms ^^ thanks!
Event though, I too, lived in Japan and never had a conversation on baseball there. I wonder if you are more likely to get into a conversation on baseball with a Japanese person if they know you’re from the US…
hey, that’s almost kinda what i wrote!
that isn’t.
if the feature were implemented i wouldn’t ask for it to be removed. i was trying to showcase why wanikani maybe does what it does.
To be honest, many of the patterns I discerned exactly from long lists of verbs in their various conjugations I kept as a Google Doc 
.
Here’s a couple of threads from our forums here: 1, 2, 3, 4
Yup, makes sense! J->J seems like the optimal solution. I use J->E and a bit of psychological trickery by pronouncing the word in Japanese as I type the answer to the Anki card in English. That way I pull the emotional connection I have with the word in English and associate it with the sound in Japanese.