Aye, I want to find out, what’s wrong about an undo button for reviews.
We all know how frustrating a typo can be and how it feels to say さよなら to a Kanji you knew, just because you accidently facerolled over your keyboard.
I’m also convinced that many people already work with the Double Check script or using a mobile third party app with the feature implemented.
This thread aims for a discussion about, why it shouldn’t be a feature, with honest opinions.
Let me know what you think.
Well, the third party apps are just that. They don’t really reflect on WK as a service.
Personally, I don’t use Double Check. I get why some people wanna use it, but it’s also known to be prone for abuse, which has been discussed in-depth many many times on these forums. There are pros and cons to everything in the end and Double Check isn’t a silver bullet.
I mean i get that there might be the opportunity to overdo it with undo’s. I only can speak for myself. I use it to be fair with my reviews. If i get something right but did a typo, or i translated it into the wrong english word but 100% got the meaning, it’s pretty useful. I’m not a native english speaker so it happens frequently. I feel like a whole lot of people use it, which leads me to the question, why it shouldn’t be implemented. The last update showed, how dependent people are about it.
I think that’s the core of the argument for whether they should implement something like it or not. Are there are whole lot of people using it, which naturally includes everyone that don’t frequent or use these forums? 
I’d be interested to see some actual statistics on that one.
But, I still think the main problem remains - this is a feature prone for abuse. is it then truly helpful? For now, WK seems to say no. it’s not an ANKI style app where you just click forward for the things you know.
I mused this a few weeks ago during updategate.
I’ll stress again that this is neither my views, nor confirmed views from the WK but I do think my reasons have some merit.
This seems to be the main arguement against a double check feature, however it’s a very personal issue. By that I mean, it only every affects at most a single user, and is entirely dependant on how they use the service. It has no greater bearing on the userbase as a whole. Someone who abuses a double check is only affecting their own progress and learning. Since there are no rewards for levelling fast or reaching 60, there’s no actual reason to keep such a feature from the general public because some people might abuse it.
That, and to say that people would abuse the feature, is simply pure conjecture to be honest.
There’s not really enough information around for us to make a proper measurement, but there are little pieces of data here and there we can use to make some guesses.
According to this thread the number of users is about 90K (active and past), measured mid last year. Since most apps require Wani Kani Open Framework, we can quickly look and see that that script has been downloaded 45K times, so we can assume that about half the WK users want extra functionality enough to modify heir user experience. (assuming unique downloads)
Using the same logic, we can see that Wanikani Double Check has been downloaded 21K times, so about ~23% of users make use of that feature. Again, reasonably significant.
I couldn’t find download stats for any of the major apps (most of which include double check and other new features), so I can’t really comment on them. This is particularly difficult since Tsurukame for example, is available from so many different places, it would be almost impossible to accurately determine how many people use it.
This is probably it, but there’s no reason it can’t be an option in the settings that is set to Off by default and has a warning about abuse. Most of us are adults and perfectly capable of making our own informed choices, impulse issues aside. If some people still choose to abuse it, it’s their money to waste.
I think the main thing here is that some users don’t use a computer for reviewing, period. Most phone apps have additional functions, but would they stop using their phones for WK reviews if those functions were not available? probably not, is just my own reasoning as it’s the platform that’s primarily the choice here. 
I think its about giving people the opportunity to abuse the system by default. If someone decides to go for it, he can. But maybe they don’t want include it because of that. But i also see your argument. The update showed how scared people are, that such a feature could be lost. And it messes up your routine if it goes down for even 1 week. I’m sure other major scripts have the same issue. In my opinion they should think about implementing it.
Good thought. No chance to choose when downloading an app. So that wouldn’t be a fair comparison.
I think there are at least 6 other scripts that are of more general importance to improve user experience before double-check though, that truly improves learning ability and retention of what you learn. Just my own opinion here.
But, I think it’s been mentioned before, they don’t want to add too many functionalities to WK that all must be updated and kept going. I’m assuming, that’s because their team is so small, they can’t really handle that sort of thing.
The compromise becomes user-scripts, letting users do the maintenance and allowing for differentiation of user experience to your needs.
Thats something i would like to have answered by a staff member. If that’s the reason, i can totally get that. But you know, i can’t imagine that it’s too big of a deal. WK isn’t the most cheap app to find. They should have at least some resources to spend on their main product.
I’ll try to remember which update that convo came up, but it was by WK team members as I remember it. There’s been a lot of discussions about adding functionality to WK over the years though. 
I think it comes down to wanting a sleek app that’s simple to maintain for them, while they improve the actual content and that’s where they put their hours.
I don’t really know if an undo button is that much of a deal actually. Not a script writer or staff member, but it doesn’t look like rocket sience to me. Focus on content should be ofc priority. But making the actual app more user friendly is also an advertisment banner for WK.
Double Check feels like an essential feature to me and i caught myself not wanting to continue without it. It’s even more useful if you are not native in english. Some words are so strange, that even native speaker dont really use them.
So i was waiting for the nice dude who updated the script until moving on.
One thing is definitely sure, few scripts evoke as much of a reaction once they break. I think that’s something to consider as well. For those that DO use Double-check, it seems essential. If not, then does it truly matter if it’s included then?
Maybe that’s also a specific concern/question they’re considering for the team, though we can only speculate.
Just that people dont know about a feature, doesn’t mean they couldn’t want it. If the thing itself is useful or not, can only be told by people knowing about it.
I think if they implement it, people wouldn’t mind at all.
Out of curiosity, what are some of the scripts that are of more general importance to improve the user experience?
From my experience, those that alter the contents during lessons for sure. The biggest one being the Keisei-script. That one is pure gold and makes a huge difference in how you learn kanji readings and understand relationships between them from radicals.
Others that also adds things to how you learn are:
Those are probably the most important ones for improving upon on your learning experience overall during lessons and on info pages. Also works during reviews as well, when you check info.
Outside of lessons, I’d say “Self-Study Quiz” and “the Item-Inspector” are both hugely helpful with your learning process. And of course things like the “Heatmap” and Ultimate Time-line are as well. But, concentrating on what adds “content improvement”, the above linked scripts wins out for me.
Thank you. I’m already using the first two scripts, and I agree that vanilla WK would benefit a lot from including that information, but I’ll have to check out the rest.
It’s not conjecture, search the forum for plenty of examples of people who abuse the feature (some with regrets, some not).
I abuse it big time. In fact, I get virtually nothing wrong because whenever I get it wrong, I click the button and give myself another shot.
Personally, I go for full script abuse and correct literally everything.
I thought “Double-Check” was my friend. “Oh, yeah of course I meant that…”. But at level 21, there were dozens of reviews, that I couldn’t even recognise.
I’ve been using the Double Check userscript and it’s at the same time a blessing and a curse. On one hand, I will never rank down my SRS over silly typos. But on the other hand, it’s been hard for me not use on other occasions when I probably should not be using to give myself an unfair advantage over the SRS.
Sure you’re only cheating yourself, but making it an official feature would only encourage abuse, and potentially lead to less learning. If you get something wrong it goes back into the SRS pile – that’s the approach they advertise and it works perfectly well, cries of “literally unusable without Double Check” notwithstanding.
In fact people are so rude and childish when the script breaks that I hope it’s never implemented, personally. If they do it should have some gamified limits.