What would be an instant short-term win is better communication from the WaniKani team. It takes very little to go from a vague “we are working on it” + a complete radio silence for 3+ months to just keeping people in the loop once a week.
What pains me as a software developer is that the WaniKani team is gating any and all more important info with a PR shtick, completely ignoring any and all help other developers (and WaniKani users) have to offer. When the Summary Page was removed, multiple people offered quick solutions. These were completely ignored. In the meantime, all third-party apps were able to put up a summary page of their own very quickly. Same goes for filtering out kana-only vocab.
To be fair, WaniKani also helped me a lot. At least until level 42. Later when I employed some of the practices WaniKani uses in my Anki routines, Anki became my goto tool, because it’s simply way more flexible.
At this point in time, I wouldn’t recommend WaniKani to anyone and instead would recommend Anki + a precompiled deck of common words. If I knew such things existed before I started WaniKani, I would’ve likely used that instead.
Not sure how to read this. Are you implying that I am tired of people who have differing opinions? If so, you are mistaken. For example in this instance, I am quite capable of understanding that for some users the kana only vocab is a welcome addition to WK. I am happy for them, however, I simply wish that those users were able/willing to understand that for many other users they are not a welcome addition and in fact are causing disruptions to our studies. If I misread your post I apologize.
I think some people against kana additions don’t accept other people’s opinion. I wasn’t referring specifically to you, but in some threads I have definitely seen messages of people against kana only words who were asking why other people who were in favour were posting on that thread, subtly implying that only people who shared their own same opinion should write on the board. I could go and find some messages but I don’t want to make it personal so I’ll refrain from doing that.
My personal hesitation there (I mean it’s still a good thing to use but I’m speaking to the exclusion of something like WK) is that I found that having someone break down radicals and walk me through it made kanji far, far less intimidating and taught me how to look at them without just seeing a mass of scary lines. Now that’s by no means exclusively a Wanikani method, which is why I’m talking about possible alternatives. I also acknowledge people definitely have had success learning Japanese without ever explicitly studying kanji that way, but I have no experience doing so and at least back then it didn’t feel like something that would work out for me personally. Who knows, though.
Fair enough. It’s definitely raised passions on both sides of the debate. I think that what is upsetting to people in both camps, myself included, is when someone is dismissive of their experience regarding the kana vocab rollout–or any other new feature to be honest.
Yeah, agreed! The way I describe it to people is that WK made Japanese feel possible for me to learn. It took the whole kanji obstacle and turned it into something that is basically a total non-issue for me now. If I hadn’t had that at the start of my journey, I don’t know if I would’ve even embarked on it. I think there’s a reason why I didn’t start getting actually serious about learning the language until I had a few WK levels under my belt, and in the process realized that Japanese was actually totally doable for me.
Obviously this isn’t true for everyone, and maybe I’m just not dedicated enough as a learner compared to most, but I don’t think Anki alone would’ve worked for me with kanji at the start. Now it absolutely works for me, but I had to learn how to learn kanji, first. Despite its issues, WK did that for me, and I have zero regrets with using the program, though I am also a bit hesitant now to recommend it to others due to the recent changes.
So far WK has been great. I have no problems with the program. I do wish that the WK team would update us on what is going on with the summary page and if/when they are going to add more kana only vocab and if they are going to add an opt out feature. Either way, I have no problem recommending others use this to learn kanji and vocabulary.
I totally agree. I always wanted to have kana only vocab since the wanikani SRS worked so well for me and I wanted to be able to use it for more than just kanji. At this point, I know pretty much all the vocab they’ve added, but I think it’s a good step.
I think part of why there is so much complaining is people who don’t like something are more likely to be vocal about it than someone who is positive or neutral. Also, let’s be real, humans like to complain. I’m just as guilty of it.