So I’ve given this thing a good go. I had to restart a couple of weeks in because I hadn’t fully understood the srs thing and wasn’t doing them at the proper interval. Second time around starting from zero it of course went a lot faster at first, but I still ended up stuck on a few of the same kanji. Same reason as before, I just don’t see/use those kanji at all, but I do see and hear a lot of other kanji that are higher priority for my learning. But I’ve kept at it hoping this srs thing would actually work, but no. Even with just a few kanji I’m stuck on they still refuse to stick in my brain, meaning that to learn them I’d actually have to make the effort outside wanikani to set up a review specifically of them. I started to actually do that, but I just ran out of time to continue with it since I am stretching myself through several lesson systems.
So basically on it’s own the wanikani srs just fails for me. If I have no motivation to learn the kanji randomly chosen here then lengthening the spaces just makes me forget them, not remember more efficiently. Add to that the confusion of getting wrong answers for right words is just frustrating. I’m referring to giving a correct answer for the kanji but being given a fail because I chose the wrong one at the time- super frustrating when you know both but just aren’t quite sure which one they are asking for.
I have also gotten tripped up a few times by the kanji meaning questions. I feel this is too close to kanji reading when you’re going through a lot of them and to me it just isn’t quite right. It should be “Kanji Translation” since the meaning is in kana, the translation is in English.
I have said before this would be an amazing place to learn if it was fully customisable. I would totally pay for it then, and I would also pay by the month giving them the most money because I’m too poor to pay more up front. (poor people always pay more but if this program could be customisable I wouldn’t care about that at all)
As it is it is pretty much useless as my learning has all but ground to a halt here and I am just repeating the same kanji I don’t remember over and over again.
Okay
Well, that sucks.
Obviously, there’s no method that works for everyone, and WK/srs is no exception…
If you feel like giving it one last shot, you could try to install the self-study script, and do additional repetitions in between reviews. Of course, that will increase the work load in the short term, but hopefully decrease it in the long run.
By the way, I have found that the public API of WK makes it pretty customisable in practice, but you either have to know how to code yourself, or hope someone did it for you before. You can also have a look at the list of available extensions and see if something strikes your fancy.
Ah, thanks for trying but it’s really not the time I need customised. I’m sure that would work if the kanji had any meaning to me at all at this point in my learning. But I’m out there learning things that I am enjoying exposing myself too, so it’s the actual order the kanji that are taught in that I need to customise.
If I could choose each lesson’s kanji myself I would be highly motivated to learn and remember each one. That is what would work for me. I love most everything else about how this is set up.
I don’t like the radicals much, but they are super easy to learn when you use your own words to refer to them- I do use the supermonkey script for that. So I can put up with the radicals, they aren’t a bother even if they don’t mean much to me at this point.
So you’re saying a downside of the site is that the kanji in the first three levels are too rare?
What are some you want in those levels.
Yes, order isn’t indeed customizable. If you want to stick with SRS, some other service like Anki or Kitsun might be better suited for you.
Just for info, when I come across a kanji (or word) I’ve never seen before, I check its usage to help remember it. For kanji, that would be the words it appears in (last tab in the lessons); for words, that would be example sentences (last tab as well, or just google)
The majority of that Kanji is N5 content (some are N4 and very few are N3). So regardless of what method you use to learn, it’s likely that you’ll have to learn these kanji sooner rather than later(even if you have no interest in taking the JLPT, most books/apps are structured to teach in line with their content).
Shame the SRS system didn’t work out for you. What do you plan on using instead?
The kanji in the first 3 levels are super common, except for a few, namely 又、刀、丁. Even the last 2 while they won’t be seen every day are still common enough you need to remember them. The rest of the kanji in those levels I see nearly every day even if I’m not particularly exposing myself to much Japanese that day.
Can you physically move around Japan and not see 丁? It’s in every address basically. So you see it on signs on every street.
I was assuming they’re not in Japan. Yes that kanji is very common for that purpose but most learners don’t get exposed to them too often. It is used here and there in other words but not nearly as common.
Sorry to hear it wasn’t working out for you, though it seems you have another method of study in mind that’ll keep you motivated. Why don’t you try coming back to WK again when you feel more comfortable with Japanese? As already stated above, you’re gonna need to learn these kanji at some point anyway. WK has been amaaazing for me, personally. In any case, good luck with your studies. 
Yeah, it’s common even ignoring that, but it’s got to be pretty darn high up on high-visibility kanji, so, it’s just that the premise of what the OP was talking about is that WK is randomly pulling kanji out of thin air for what to teach and I’m trying to understand what gave them that impression.
Maybe I’m misremembering, but I’m pretty sure this same user had a thread where one of their complaints was that the word 入れる is unnecessary because they don’t say “insert” in English, though, so I should probably just stop.
I could just be misremembering how often I really see it 
But yeah, pretty much all the kanji on WaniKani I’d consider pretty common. Even when I was lvl 50 I often ran into kanji while reading from the last levels, which are supposedly just “extra”. I don’t understand what is meant when OP says the kanji chosen isn’t common either.
Have you considered adding your own notes? .-.
I can empathize that some mnemonics might not be perfect for you, but contributing on your end something personalized can surely aid in memorization.
It is that guy. Learn what you think sounds most fun at the time, that’s the best way? Knows no Japanese but has opinions on the best teaching method? - that guy. Your first answer was the most appropriate.
Look, kikichichi, we’ve been over this. If WK and SRS are not for you, then they aren’t. There’s not much any of us can say about that but “sorry to hear that.” They aren’t going to change the fundamental premise of the site. One thing I would caution you is, the true best program is any of them, as long as you stick to it. If you’re going to focus on the faults and the less-fun parts and keep switching part-way you’re never going to get there. But good luck to you.
Yes I did stick to this. They said following the srs by the numbers could get me to level 3 in a month. Well, it clocked over a few days ago to say I’m level 3 but I haven’t actually done any new lessons for a week or two (feels like longer) because I’ve been stuck on kanji I never use.
I’m just giving feedback as I said. I do use other stuff and eventually I’ll just pay more attention to the random kanji that are holding me back now and move on and learn up to level 3 which is the limit of the freebies here. But for me as it is it’s not worth paying for.
To be clear I did put a lot of focus into this and it just hasn’t worked for me. My other stuff basically slowed to a crawl so I could give this as much attention as possible. Now I’ve found a couple of new sites that offer some promise so am diving into them now. Even if they fail I will still learn something from each.
As for words/kanji, a couple of examples of what I’m learning now are 僕、雲、食、吸血鬼。Words that will be as random to you no doubt as the level 2 ones I’m stuck on right now are to me. That’s the point of being able to customise something, so that it can work for every individual.
I worked on 入れる and the others like that but it was a lot of effort for words I’m not using and got to the point where I was putting all my time into these random words and not enough into the ones I wanted/needed to learn.
Yeah, and I sincerely meant the good luck part. It sounds like a good tool for you would be more like Anki, and build your own lists from scratch one-by-one. It’s not as pretty as WaniKani, but it’s really flexible. That or a private one-on-one teacher who can tailor lessons to your needs. I don’t think any set program, even a college class, is going to work out based on what you’ve said.
Sometimes those aren’t the same thing, you just don’t know it yet.
sorry baby, it’s not you, it’s me.
It’s just hard to imagine native content that doesn’t have these level 1-3 kanji. But apparently you’ve found some. Nothing in the beginning is rare.
Of ones you want, 食 is level 6 and 雲 is level 8.
And it’s not like everyone who uses WK only uses WK. In other words, if I really want to study something that isn’t on WK, I just add it to another SRS system, I don’t quit WK.
Anyway, WK is never going to fully customizable. You can make a few more topics asking for that if you want, but it’s not koichi’s vision.
My first post was mostly asking a question about people’s experience with radicals. This time I just wanted to be clear that this is my experience after giving the system a good go. I obviously have liked using it and at some point will put the effort into learning the stubborn level 2 kanji so I can finish the final free level. But beyond that it’s not worth it for me.
It’s up to koichi if that’s the one person deciding here whether to listen to the feedback or do anything about it. I certainly won’t be repeating myself, I just thought it would be awesome if the kanji I need to learn could be learned in this format, so rather than keep that and my money to myself, I’ll at least share what would send my money their way.