One thing I’ve been chewing on for months, is that every time I’ve shared a video of myself doing Wanikani reviews, people on this forum & on /r/LearnJapanese express shock that I use no user scripts.
I really understand the impulse to have an undo button for cases when you go too quickly and make a typo, but I frankly would rather get a bunch of items unfairly wrong and see them again sooner than give myself the ability to rationalize “oh, well, I totally knew that” and potentially burn items that I really don’t know. (I worry a lot about whether I really “know” a word in general, and it’s the main reason I created KameSame.)
Above is my leveling speed since starting and never using a single user script. I’d estimate that about 30-40% of my incorrect responses are the result of me moving too quickly or fat-fingering a key, but (other than cursing with myself), I’d rather roll with that than potentially rob myself of actually learning kanji & vocab well enough to use them outside of the context of WaniKani.
Curious how others feel about this topic! If folks can identify good reasons, it might encourage me to make KameSame more user-extensible.
I mostly use the ultimate timeline and ultimate reorder. It makes it really easy to deal with time critical items and keep leveling at (near) full speed. Otherwise, I would often get in a situation where I have only a few minutes to deal with say 100 items, some of which are time critical, and may be delayed.
(I don’t think it would affect your app, though, since I don’t think it has a notion of time critical )
I do have the undo script installed at work, but that’s because I’m only doing reviews during very short breaks, and at the speed I am typing, one third of that ends up being garbage. I feel I should time myself one day and check if I am actually going faster this way
I used to use an ignore script and found I leveled way beyond what I knew so I stopped and reset. Now I do WK raw and am moving a lot slower but feel I’m learning a lot better
I use scripts but not to have that undo button like you shared. I’m afraid to lie to myself too. I’d rather have lots of error / red ones instead of green ones but those are just the results of my guessing or things that I undo.
I use ultimate timeline, but I don’t use it to list items to review, so I still can’t know which items that will face me in my review session. I like ultimate timeline because I can check and prepare myself about how many things will face me in my review sessions.
I use dashboard progress plus because I like to see each item inside a circle and the mark of how many percents I master it, but I don’t use it to see when this item will face me in my review session. In short, I don’t use scripts to lie to myself. This is why I never hover my mouse to the item before I do my reviews.
I use WK Forum Lessons/Review Status so that I can zero my reviews directly from the forum.
I use KanjiDamage mnemonics to inspire me of other mnemonics, to help me find or create a new mnemonics if a new item doesn’t stick in my memory.
I use WK Lightning Mode so that I don’t need to see green ones when I’m in hurry. I love this feature so much. BunPro adopted this as a default feature, no green, just go directly to review the next item. I’d like BunPro implement this feature as a script though, just like WK, but IDK if it’s BunPro priority so far, because I can always search again the green item if I want to learn it again. I actually want this feature to be implemented on KameSame though, but not as a default feature like BunPro, more like WK. So that I can easily choose to have green ones or not on KameSame.
I also use WK Self-Study Quiz but it appeared that I use KameSame more often.
A little off-topic: to be honest, WK doesn’t teach vocab in a good enough way anyway. it’s understandable to not use the override in order not to fool yourself. I agree with you. What I mean is that even doing that won’t be enough to learn how to use the vocab you’re learning. For example, 沸かす (わかす) is described as “to boil” but in reality, it’s used when you’re boiling water (on a kettle for example). They’re adding these small details one by one, but it’s always good to be aware of this
I have an incomplete list of the scripts I used and a brief explanation on why I believe they’re important. You might want to check them out and who knows, you might enjoy 1 or 2
I have the Double Check script installed with the “Close but no cigar” setting enable. I use this to mark myself right (or retype) if I answered correctly but I hadn’t added that synonym yet. But I also use it to mark myself wrong so that I don’t burn things that I don’t truly know.
Most of my other scripts are quality of life scripts:
Wanikani Ultimate Timeline
Nice for preparing for upcoming reviews.
WaniKani Lesson Filter
Allows me to do lessons exactly the way I want to. When I built this last year, it took a ton of stress off of me.
WaniKani Show Specific SRS Level in Reviews
Really nice for seeing the specific SRS level during reviews instead of simply “Apprentice” or “Guru”.
WaniKani Lesson Hover Details
Simply shows how many lessons of each type are available.
WaniKani Review Audio Tweak 2
Lets me listen to audio on meaning reviews if I’ve already answered the reading correctly.
WaniKani Lesson User Synonyms 2
Add synonyms during lessons.
WaniKani Pitch Info
Really helpful for paying attention to pitch accent while learning.
WaniKani Keisei Phonetic-Semantic Composition
Really helpful for noticing phonetic components that aren’t that obvious.
I mean this seems to imply that every WK script in existence is made for undoing mistakes. I’m just using scripts for the Ultimate Timeline and my script that shows the exact time of the next review…
Though I did think about it for a while, and even learnt how to install scripts., The script I wanted was the one that added Kanji Damage, but in the end I just put Kanji Damage up as a bookmark on my screen and I check there when I need to.
The only other script I wanted was the one that celebrates when you burn an item. But I always make sure to have my own little celebration whenever that rare event ever takes place!
I use the override script primarily when it’s one of those words that I know the meaning of but struggle to find the exact word choice WK used. I know I know the word and what it means, but I get stuck when it comes to translating it into English in the exact same way. Being penalized for that seems rather arbitrary.
I don’t use any scripts. I briefly tried a couple like the ultimate timeline and a leech script but have never used any that are active during lessons or quizzes like reordering or ignoring.
That said, I generally enter 1-2 synonyms for things right after the lessons or when I find myself getting something wrong with another valid answer. I will also very rarely cheat by looking up WK’s definition when I know what something means but can’t remember which word WK is expecting specifically.
When I was trying to level up quickly (not max speed but ~1-3 days slower), I would often refresh the lessons to make sure I got a radical or 2-3 kanji to slightly cut down on the lessons I needed to do at once while also making sure I wasn’t building up a huge backlog of vocab lessons. I found that I have a harder time retaining the information when I study a whole bunch of radicals or kanji back to back too so I don’t think I would want to study all of the kanji at once. Maybe the reorder script has an option for this though.
Same. I used reorder and ignore. WaniKani just became a much nicer experience when I didn’t have to walk on eggshells during reviews. I also wanted to progress fast so reordering was the healthy option for me.
I used to use scripts until about a month back but since switching to Mac I had some trouble in figuring out how to install scripts. But then I realized that I don’t need scripts. So now I’m script less
fwiw, it’s the same on a Mac as Windows or other OS, since the scripts are browser-based rather than OS-based. So if you have Firefox/Chrome installed, the process is the exact same since installing TamperMonkey + the scripts is a browser process.
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So if you have Firefox/Chrome installed, the process is the exact same since installing TamperMonkey + the scripts is a browser process.