Because not everyone can dedicate the same amount of time to everything. .-.
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Yeah “set” is the important word here. But what do they mean by that? Doing a schedule? I doubt most slow wkers have one.
Back when I was a new user, my initial tendency was to go as fast as possible.
If there were new lessons to be done, I did them. That was… a huge mistake and the load became crazy out of control.
Slowing down and having the community was a help.
It’s not a race, learning fast is great, but sustainability is key.
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I think it’s not about speed, rather about consistency? I’ve restarted twice, both times because at the time the first items start burning I would have 200+ reviews per day and I have a fulltime job. Basically my other fulltime job became WK. Now I learn 10 items per day. 5 in the morning, 5 in the afternoon. I have 80-100 reviews per day, nicely spread out because I tend to only do 10-20 reviews at a time. This gives me an average of 19 days level up time. Is it fast? Nope! Do I get burned out around level 20? Also nope!
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People learn at different rates. Some can blast through all their lessons in a single sitting, others can only squeeze in 5 or 10 a day. Some people can remember the readings no problem, others need more time for it to sink in. Some people prioritize learning Japanese, and for others it’s just not that important.
There are plenty of reasons why someone might go at a particular pace, and yeah sure 200 kanji is better than 100, but does it really matter how fast you go if you do eventually make it to that 200? I don’t think it does.
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Being slow or fast assumes that there’s a standard speed for learning all the joyo kanji.
Lets assume that the standard, or normal speed, is the speed that the most people learn all the joyo kanji. Most people learning kanji are statistically japanese schoolchildren. So it takes them what 9 years to learn all the joyo kanji.
So 1 level per month (60 months, or 5 years) is actually 4 years faster than most people. 
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If you are comparing yourself to children lol. Also you don’t learn how to write with wk.
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It’s people who say things like these who end up encouraging others to abuse the reorder and ignore scripts, to not learning the material well, and burn out and stop studying all together.
If someone asks for your help, by all means, give it. If no one does, posting things like that is geared towards 1) making yourself feel better about yourself compared to others, 2) shame others for the very real progress they are making, and 3) make them unlikely to be willing to ask for help when they want or need it.
Your post? Is very much not something to be proud of.
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I’m confused
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I think the one making assumptions here is you. Some people have kids, or work responsibilities, or health issues, or a million other things you couldn’t begin to guess at. Or maybe they just have other things they like doing too. Don’t assume that everyone going slower is doing so because of a lack of diligence.
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I was waiting for someone to bring that up. I signed up in that date, before deciding to pay much later. I haven’t used wanikani in 2 years. Not using wk is not the same.
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Good to know you have a reason, I’m sure nobody else does 
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I don’t understand your point, my level up times are totally normal.
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You don’t even know what’s the average for level up times across users. The WK team have never released that info, and the forum participants are not the average. If anything, I suspect that the forum participants are on the quicker side, especially those who share their levelling up times.
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I wish they would release more statistics. It would be really interesting to see.
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Whether you go slow or fast, progress is progress, I think that’s the general idea people mean when they say “going slow is fine”.
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I go at a pace of 8 to 9 days per level because I have more time than most people. I am very well aware of that.
Because I do not have a 9 to 5 job. I have a child that I care for, and that is it. That child goes to school, meaning i got 5 free hours a day which I mostly dedicate to studying Japanese. That is a privilege not many others have.
Of course, I aim to not only get to 60, I aim to be relatively fluent in the language because of my desire to be a translator. Not studying, means I take longer before I can get that job. And I kind of need a job yesterday even though I suffer from a burn out that does not improve all that much. (Which is why I’ve applied to deliver newspapers on the weekend, but that’s just to get out of the house on Sunday and make money taking long walks, but that’s besides the point.) Studying is fun to me. It’s how I relax, oddly enough, because I know I can have a future with the results.
I have more time than others. 8 days per level, is easy to maintain because of it.
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I mean, there was that guy that got pretty uptight about us trying to get to 60 within 1.5 years… 
I think if you’re focused on leveling to level 60 within a set time frame and having a ranking system to see who is first then you’re treating it as a race/game and you will not learn and keep the information in your long term memory.
I think you should stop trying to and move along from learning a language, you will quit long before your so called dealine.
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I think this a really weird thing to say…
I’ve been going at ~1 level a month since the beginning, while studying with a private teacher on the side once every two weeks for ~6 months of each year, I play Japanse-language games, I watch Japanese-language movies (with subtitles), visited Japan twice and tried to use the language where possible, etc. And still I really don’t feel at all that my Kanji & vocabulary progress is ‘too slow’.
If you finish 60 levels in 2 years and remember everything you are basically at a vocabulary that would be sufficient to pass JLPT N2 or N1, if you completely disregard everything else (grammar, interpretation, cultural aspects of the language). It would take most people close to 10 years to get to that level, and the vast majority would never get there even if they really tried.
So what use does it have to race through 60 levels at a high risk of burning out, and sacrificing lots of time you could also have spent on other things (including taking Japanese classes, or doing reading/writing/listening for example). How can you possibly say it’s a sign of ‘lack of determination’ or discipline if people chose to learn at their own pace?
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