Can we talk about WaniKani’s development and support for community tools?

WaniKani Feedback
1

Hey everyone,

I’d like to hear how others feel about WaniKani’s direction and how feedback is handled. I’m a lifetime member, I’ve referred many friends and I’m always singing its praises. I appreciate Tofugu’s work helping us learn Japanese. A few things have frustrated me, though, and I’d welcome their perspective.

I develop Wanilog, which thousands of WaniKani learners use, so I have a personal stake.

For some of us, WK Stats, Tsurukame, Kakehashi, Smouldering Durtles, Double-Check, Ultimate Timeline, Item Inspector, and Jitai are part of everyday study. Apologies to anyone I’ve missed!

This work is unpaid: devs build features, answer support questions and fix things in their spare time. It adds value to a paid service, yet I sometimes feel underappreciated when discussions focus on restrictions. I’d like more of a conversation about how we can work together.

I understand that third-party apps and userscripts are unofficial and unsupported, and that the team can’t guarantee compatibility with every update. Keeping them working is our responsibility as developers. Advance notice and clear technical notes would still help us do that work.

Shortly after I added lessons and reviews to Wanilog, staff contacted me about API guidelines they were already revising and suggested pausing further updates. The branding changes would affect other apps too. I clarified Wanilog’s unofficial status as requested. I don’t know when those changes were first planned, but being asked to pause just as I’d expanded the app felt discouraging and left me unsure how to plan further development.

With the recent item-info change, related items began opening within reviews instead of new tabs. Scott restored proper links and Ctrl/Cmd-click support, which I appreciate, but users still reported difficulty navigating back through items. I shared Wanilog’s option to use new tabs or a closable modal. Staff asked me to keep Wanilog posts in its dedicated thread, and my reply was hidden. I understand limiting promotion, but this was discouraging while the remaining navigation problem had no clear answer. Could there be room for disclosed, relevant workarounds?

There have been similar conversations before. In July 2024, the dashboard update broke established scripts. The broader migration had been announced, but that release had no advance notice or preview testing. Hubbit200 asked for clearer warnings and progress updates while acknowledging the team’s difficulties.

Individual review history API access was disabled in April 2023 because of performance problems. Users were still asking for updates in March 2025. That October, staff confirmed individual review data was no longer stored. Statistics tools lost a capability they relied on; official dashboard widgets don’t restore developers’ access.

I appreciate improvements such as the lesson picker, customisable dashboard and review-ordering options. Recent Mistakes and Last Answers also restored some lost summary functionality. I’d like that progress to come with clearer answers about what remains unresolved.

Could we have:

  • A visible outcome when feedback gets “passed along”, including why a request is declined?
  • Advance notice and technical notes for changes likely to break tools, with a preview where possible?
  • A clearer explanation of how community developers fit into WaniKani’s future, and what support the team can offer?

I’m sharing this discussion with Wanilog users so they can contribute their own experiences.

Am I the only one finding this frustrating? If you’ve reported a problem or suggested a change and felt it went nowhere, I’d like to hear what happened and what would have helped. And if you’ve had a better experience, I’d like to hear that too :folded_hands:

2

I’ve been studying with the help of WaniKani off and on since 2017 (I made a new account when I purchased my lifetime). I’m incredibly grateful to the WaniKani team for maintaining this site and the core learning experience in their signature quirky and unique way. And I’m happy that the site continues to receive updates and new content despite other Tofugu learning projects struggling to find success. Even though I’ve stumbled in my personal learning journey a few times, I keep coming back to this site because it’s just the best way for ME to learn.

During the time that I’ve used WK, I’ve found certain userscripts not only invaluable for my learning process (like Jitai allowing me to train myself on reading/recognizing different fonts) but also just… fun. Like having extra information on my dashboard with lots of little nerdy stats. It keeps me interested on multiple levels! I feel like these sorts of capabilities are a blessing and I’m very thankful for those that go out of their way to make these things possible.

I also have some experience with third-party apps that interface with WaniKani directly to move some or all of the process “off site.” Apps like Smouldering Durtles, Mina, or most recently Wanilog. I’ve had mixed results with some of these and fantastic results with others. But what I value most is that I had the choice and opportunity to try these tools that provide what they consider is an improvement to the (already great) baseline experience.

Naturally I’d love to see the WK team support these efforts in any way that isn’t a major burden to them. Notice of changes coming and clearer responses to feedback help everyone and I strongly believe would be a win for WK itself, its obviously enthusiastic community of third-party tool developers, and for users too.

3

I’ve had a couple of minor problems,
but they were handled quickly
and politely, for which l was grateful.

4

Since here everyone is extremely polite I will be the one saying it plainly: wanikani felt exposed with your app, which is vastly superior to wanikani in all aspects. I even stopped using WK and now I’m only using wanilog.

Wanikani has spent years doing nothing and relying on third party apps. And then you came with a free product that exposed a program we’ve all paid for (I’m a lifetime user). They have had it coming.

Just keep going. If you have a Patreon or similar feel free to share. I want to support you.

Thank you.

5

I would like to add that I share the sentiment that better announcement of changes should really be implemented in some way. Currently things randomly are added/broken/etc which results in a lot of confusion.

I think you made a very cool webapp, and you require a key that has a coupled subscription to WaniKani. As long as that is the case I think your app should be allowed. I think being asked to pause really sucks and I think it is not fair.

I hope this discussion improves WaniKani as a whole, because it really assists me in learning, and all opportunities to make it better should be encouraged :slightly_smiling_face:

6

this might be my first ever comment: if you are the wanilog dev
But thank god for your review thing where i can like ‘‘mark correct’’ it is a livesaver because sometimes you just want to get going or make a mistake and dont want to reload the whole app. plus all the other things on your website it is soooooo good. biggest quality of life change since i started was using your application

7

There is a ハート形 button at the top of Wanilog that links to a ko-fi page where you can support them.

8

I’m a professional software developer.
I also have experience with modding and dabbled in creating my own tampermonkey extensions.
Honestly I think a lot of issues stem from the fact that we external developers to the team do not see the full impact of our work on the team.
I do think that all your work do add a lot of value for the users yes but do they add value for the WK team I can’t say for sure.
I stopped releasing publicly mods for games when I saw that users that liked my mods were starting to attack the original team on their game vision and advancement. Even today I feel extremely bad about the bad climate I introduced unwittingly.

Frankly if I was in the situation of the WK lead I would consider closing the api (by that I mean making it private).
Would we lose some users and business ? Sure, but how much ?
Would it be easier for the business than to have to handle the many rogue extensions that cause stress upon us ? Maybe.

I not taking anyone side. But by our own disclaimers “XXX is an independent project and is not affiliated with YYY” means to forego your right to complain about it.

9

So far I am the only one who introduced the “bad climate”. I am just being sincere. I would have long ago abandoned Wk if there were not for the third party enhancements.

It just baffles me that a team with so many users and resources haven’t even introduced anything relevant for the last 10 years.

But as we say in Spain: there are as many opinions as asses. I am just blunt, that’s all.

10

I do agree strongly with this but also,
I think that we have the right to create our own platform and user-base and community from scratch but not to steal by building upon the established system without paying ourselves the cost and risks of acquiring them legitimately.

11

Let’s not get too critical about Tofugu and WK. I really appreciate what they do to make the learning of kanji approachable and (almost a little) fun. They continue to tweak the system, adding some content, reordering the sequence for presumably better learning. All of that is, in my opinion, the most important because it makes learning easier. That WK offers the API keys to allow connections to things like Satori Reader, Wanilog, WKStats etc. is also wonderful. I also very much appreciate the forum and the resources at the Tofugu website, where I learned a lot about how to learn Japanese.

Obviously WK should focus on improving its own product because that is what its subscribers are paying for. How much heads-up about upcoming changes should the other developers be given is a decision that WK will have to make. I only recently started using Wanilog, so I don’t really have any opinion about problems Ricardo1 mentioned…simply because I didn’t experience them.

I do like Wanilog too, and recently contributed a bit towards the costs. What I like best are the tools to use in the review, particularly the ability to correct typos, mark an answer correct and directly add synonyms. These functions are actually a little “dangerous” so, I only do the latter two after a check in a proper dictionary. I also like Wanilog’s options for practicing mistakes, though it would be nicer if you could also practice all the mistakes you made today, rather than just those you made in the last review session. That said, Wanilog may be getting too many bells and whistles.

What I do appreciate about both WK and Wanilog is the rapid response to comments and suggestions.

12

Fair enough. Maybe I was a bit too harsh in my earlier comment. Indeed, we all have benefited from Wanikani. But let’s see if they reflect on this and start making some real changes for once and for all.

From my part that’s the end of the discussion.

It’s time for my daily Wanilog!

13

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!

And if you don’t like it, don’t use it. No need to complain. No one is forcing you to use it. Buy one of those kanji books and memorise them the old-fashioned way.

14

here here!

I am lifetime WK member but recently I realised how much I rely on 3rd party scripts, because they broke and I was forced to use “bare WK experience” and I wasn’t amused, to put it lightly…

WK is a great tool and the content is superb, but the app and how it’s being developed (especially recently) is a little bit “meh”.

For me I can’t imaging using WK without Double-Chek, Item-info (and all related scripts), User synonyms, Media sentences, Review Plus and Radical Guesser.

In some of the thread with 3rd party addons I alredy mentioned/suggested that WK Dev team could be more transparent about website/API changes so the plugin devs could adjust them in time without scrambling to fix them because yet another surprised update was pushed but… @Mods and Dev team completely ingored it…

And some extremely basic features like correcting one answer - Double-Check made using WK pleasant after my first stint where simple typeos resulted in piling up review queue for no sane reason - are still missing… :confused:

My thoughts exactly! WaniKani feels “stale” and without a bunch of extensions (that breaks more often recently) is kinda annoying to use… and surprisingly @ricardo1 came in and in a short ammount of time created a “battery included” version of WK that doesn’t require so many addons to work and be useful…

Oh, but it would be nice if it was the case. The issue is that WK is constantly doing slight adjustments that breaks things so… maybe they should listen to your advice?

I very much dislike this very much passive-aggressive comment saying: “GTFO” in oh so many nicer words. World is not black and white and providing feedback (even in the form of perceived “complaints”) is still valid, especially considering that WaniKani is a paid service.

15

As I said, it’s WK’s decision how much heads-up they should give to the developers of derivatives. Maybe it should be longer. I don’t know and I’m not in a position to judge. WK should be focussing on its OWN product though because that is what they are being paid for. The basics of WK (curated kanji and vocabulary sequence building on what’s been learned, with a bit of gamification) aren’t “broke”.

My comment was a reaction to Silmendil’s complaint about “nothing relevant in the past ten years”. That was, in my opinion, a bit over the top.

16

As others have said above, it is very healthy for any kind of service to receive feedback, especially if it is paid. WK have been lacking proper feedback for a long time, already. And it’s time they receive some reality check for once.

17

What if the feedback is not healthy?

Really? Every update post had users giving feedback. Me included.

If I were a dev, this comment wouldn’t sound very healthy to me :face_holding_back_tears:

As for the original post: unfortunately when making mods, you know (or should know) what you’re getting into: the fact you’re unofficial, the fact the software could update/break any day, the fact it’s pretty much a thankless job.

Should the WaniKani team be more supportive of the modding community? Would be nice.

Do they have to? No.

Their focus is WaniKani.

I use a third-party app myself, but I still love WaniKani. Years ago, I found this application, tried the first 3 levels, saw that it worked for me, and was happy to pay. I knew exactly what I was getting out of it: an SRS to learn ~2,000 kanji and a bunch of vocab.

All the third party apps are great. Fantastic. I’ve tried many myself. But let’s not forget they’re still ‘skins’ and the actual ‘body’ remains WaniKani. Without WK first, these apps wouldn’t exist. WaniKani pretty much pioneered a seamless SRS to learn Kanji, and are pretty damn good at it. WaniKani spent years and countless of hours creating this application. And contrary to what some here are saying, they still release updates.

They’re just not massive updates, but it still does its job, as advertised: a kanji-learning platform.

OP, hopefully the WK team will be able to be more supportive, but I hope everyone else can also understand they don’t have to, and we are not entitled for them to do work beyond their scope.

If I were a dev, personally, I wouldn’t release APIs. Like @YandrosTheSane mentioned, too much of a headache :face_holding_back_tears:

18

Well… I don’t know when you started your adventure with WK but being a long time user myself (with a bit of fits and starts) it does FEEL like nothing relevant was added…

Don’t get me wrong - the content and the structure is AWSOME (hence me using and paying for it) and it’s being constantly worked on (which is actually another contentious point because it messes up previously learnt stuff… which theoretically shouldn’t matter, but it is mildnly annoying).

However, Silmendil comment (IMHO) was more about the website itself, which in the grand scheme of things indeed hasn’t seen anything relevant or groundbreaking (apart from the dashboard, which is not that important IMHO…). There was a huge rewerite of the UI some time ago and this is important and technical debt can significantly hamper the development but… for the most part WK is as-is at it was 10 years ago…

What made is great is the lot of community TLC that created and extended it beyond original idea. And this is the contentious point - to elicit more colaboration between WaniKani dev team and the community so they would work in better synchronisation which would, in turn, make WaniKani even better.

WaniKani is not only the content… it’s the whole package:

  • AMAZING content
  • great structure
  • community
  • 3rd party developers and extensions

And they interact and influence one another…

19

You need to grow a skin, bro. In other forums feedback of all kinds is an every-day thing. Without feedback a product becomes, well, stale as wanikani.

20

This sounds very immature. No, I don’t have to ‘grow a skin’. Rudeness is never ok, and I won’t accept users being rude and passing that off as ‘feedback’.

WaniKani has never been stale. It has continuously released updates, but because of what they do, it’s always small updates. There’s nothing ‘big’ to add to this sort of application. Unless they wanted to start delving into teaching grammar, speaking, listening, etc too, but I don’t see that ever happening… And in a way, I hope it never happens, because WK works great just focusing on kanji.