rfindley’s Reorder Ultimate was probably my favorite that was hit in the update. Though Reorder Omega is working in it’s place for now, admittedly I kind of preferred Ultimate for it’s simplicity and the fact that it was right there in the lessons page for on the fly filtering. I prefer to knock out all radicals/kanji asap when I hit a new level and these scripts help move those to the front of the queue as opposed to WaniKani trying to prioritize dozens of vocab from the previous level when I can just practice those in the time between guru’ing my current level rads/kanji.
Very well stated. I’m using probably about a dozen userscripts and Double-Check is by far the most important one for these reasons. I’ve also found WK doesn’t even reliably pick up on the “auto-correct” English errors. E.G. it might pick up on things like “to liek”, but it’ll reject things like “t like”, “tol ike”, or “tolike”. The semantics are a really big one too, e.g. rejecting “boil” vs “boiling”. I treat WK as, “if the person I’m talking to would understand what I’m saying, then it’s correct.” Misspeaking, misreading, and typos are common in any language even by native speakers; in daily language it is a frequent occurrence, but in WK, it can set you back literal months, and WK doesn’t have a native way to account for it. It’s not cheating to work around that, it’s basic common sense. That is why userscripts are so important; they fill in common-sense gaps in the system that thus far Tofugu has not accounted for in WK. I think the only feature they just added that was previously filled by a userscript was adding user synonyms during lessons.
The irony of someone to call an update braindead yet think their proclamation of cancelling their subscription is of interest to ANYONE is laughable. It hasn’t even been a day - people will update their scripts. Stop being an entitled snob and expecting a company to stagnate so you can have a consistent experience rather than one that improves over time. Truly asinine.
I can’t give you any examples right now because I haven’t got any of them in a while but I know from time to time I used to get some items wrong because I inputted the wrong meaning, but that meaning was the translation of a word in my language which is accepted by bilingual dictionaries as a correct meaning for a kanji, so in those cases (instead of adding a user synonym because I never really found a use for this feature) I would mark the answer as correct or straight up cancel it and retype the “correct” answer.
Are you familiar with any sources that can replace WK? I’m also considering a change, as this “update” doesn’t feel like it’s for the user. Maybe Anki with WK deck? (sigh)
I hate the new graphical UI. Not only are the kanji too small, but my brain seems to agree with me as I’ve made mistakes on certain radicals that looked differently. These were radicals (or rather one) that I had ZERO problems with before.
I just did another review in the new interface and came across several other situations when Double-Check’s letting me mark review items incorrect after WaniKani marks them correct has been very important to me:
Getting a verb pair switched.
Misunderstanding the English definition presented in the lessons.
Homophonic near-synonyms.
(A leading asterisk means “incorrect” below.)
Gory details, with examples, of each of the above…
Getting a verb pair switched. Most of the time, in a review you can type, e.g., “to move”, and it doesn’t matter if it’s 動く (intransitive) or 動かす (transitive): you know what you meant, and except for a very few cases, WK reviews will accept either.¹ But I always check—unless I use the word in my own writing enough to be certain I know the difference.
And — especially with the so-called mediopassive pairs — sometimes I realize I had them backwards. I absolutely want to mark that wrong, preferably before it gets into the higher SRS levels where the wrong distinction may stick.
Yes, I can type “something/someone/somebody/etc.” for the transitive verbs. But there’s no ∅ (null object) I can type to indicate I think the verb is intransitive or mediopassive that will get marked wrong if it’s transitive. WaniKani’s reviews will just accept both of most of the transitive verb pairs with the identical objectless wording (i.e., 動かす as “to move”, just like 動く, though only 動かす gets accepted as “to move something”).
Before Double-Check came into my life I was typing “something” for transitive verbs, but that just meant the intransitives I thought were transitives would get held back while the reverse would get promoted. With Double-Check, I can just type the shorter “to move” for both and check, pressing - if I was wrong.
Misunderstanding the English definition presented in the lessons. Japanese has a lot of words that don’t neatly align to English’s parts of speech—adnominals versus adjectives (and -い adjectives vs. -な adjectives, never mind oddballs like 同じ). Add “-する verbs” and you can quickly get into a case where you think you understand a word, but you totally don’t, even though you can parrot the English back with no problem. A couple examples:
Advance: is that a synonym for
“a short-term loan from an employer”?
for “progress”, pronounced PRO-gress?
for “progress”, pronounced pro-GRESS?
or “Move ahead”?
or for “preview”?
or “to promote”? Maybe, “to be promoted?”
Foundation: is that
a kind of idea (“basics”)?
A part of a construction (the part of a building that must be completed before anything else?)?
Both? (There are words that mean only the first, only the second, and both.)
Or maybe, a “nonprofit organization that subsists on a large endowment fund rather than ongoing fund-raising”?
Homophonic near-synonyms. (異字同訓 or 同訓異字) — cases like
熱い and 暑い, both pronounced 「あつい」 and both meaning “hot”, but one meaning hot-to-the-touch/hot-like-fever, the other meaning “hot weather” or
早い and 速い, both pronounced 「はやい」 and meaning “early or fast” but the first for the cases in English where it would be wrong to say speedy, and the second where it would wrong to say premature.
¹ And actually, the rare times it forces you to type “something/someone/somebody” are another case where I’d like to Double-Check a wrong correct sometimes, b/c when I’m going fast I assume WK doesn’t care if I type “to X something” or just “to X”…
If I realize I’d been thinking「*私が落ちたから岩が落とした。」 (*I fell because the rock was dropped.) was what I should say, when I meant, 「私が落としたから岩が落ちた。」 (“The rock fell because I dropped it.“), I totally want to demote it, to give me more time to learn the correct meanings. Even if (especially if) I typed the right English letters in my answer.
And if I realize I’ve been going along thinking a word means a common noun when it actually means an action (as happens a lot with -する verbs), or that it means a sort of idea (i.e., “foundation” meaning “rudiments”) when it really means part of building construction (as in, “pouring the foundation”), I absolutely want to mark it wrong, even though I typed the “correct thing”.
Without a userscript, I can’t—if the reading didn’t come up yet, I can try to remember to intentionally botch it—but if the reading was first, it’s too late even for that.
Since you can’t manually change levels of items outside of reviews, even with the API, there’s no way to say “you think I got it right—but I didn’t.”
If I’ve not been using the user synonyms feature religiously — even though I habitually use slightly different translations than WaniKani for some items — because I’ve been using a userscript and could always accept my synonym after the fact?
On the very same day I am finally able to start burning items, and I miss my very first chance for this reason and won’t get my next chance to burn it until August? When I absolutely knew the kanji cold? Yes, it’s demotivating…
While I don’t disagree with the heart of your post in terms of utilizing double-check for things that make sense, this statement is not true for 紀 as a kanji. (Though yes, vocabulary-wise, it primarily sees the era/period usage). But there is at least one well-known document that would be using it in the “account; narrative; chronicle” sense: 日本書紀.
Which brings to mind the main concern I would have personally had using a double-check script when I actively used WK: I couldn’t be sure that I really know more than what the program teaching me does. Being aware of all possible uses, even the less common ones, is a good thing.
But folks should use what works for them. I don’t doubt that the scripts will mostly be back up and running soon, though I definitely understand the frustration in the meantime when workflow is disturbed.
I do think the reactions tend to be on the “over” side of things, though, having seen this happen a couple of times and things inevitably go back to normal.
WaniKani doesn’t do that much though, if you use the desktop version of WK, the review summary is a big part of the “experience” of using WK.
I agree maybe there’s a little much drama though but they basically did bork the desktop experience of WK in favour of mobile users it seems which is… honestly maybe a sound financial decision assuming they’ve looked at where people mostly use WK, but it’s also decision that makes me kinda sad.
Most of these things will be fixed I reckon though, so /shrug
Ah, I wasn’t aware that jisho.org was an official source. I was just going by the 文部科学省 ministry list. Between that and Kodansha, only “era/period” and “chronicle” get primary billing. Thanks for that!
I don’t think I follow what benefit you’re describing… Let’s get very concrete so I can follow what you mean. Here’s how this actually work(ed) for me yesterday:
A Master-level review offers me 紀, meaning I last saw this with only the “account, narrative” meaning a month ago. I have entered it with “account” or “narrative” at least six times before over the past three weeks.
I type “era” because I’ve seen it used that way a bunch over the past month and think I know it.
WaniKani’s review marks it wrong.
I expand the definitions and see “account/narrative”. Huh—did I misremember the kanji?
I go check the dictionary and decide that “era” is not a mistake. (For instance, Kodansha gives “era” as the sole psycholinguistic entry.) So I add “era” to user synonyms.
I use the userscript to say “consider that correct”, so it promotes 紀 to Enlightened. Now in 4 months, I can try for burning it, using any of the three English words.
Without the userscript today, the same happens, except it demotes it to Guru I. In 3 weeks, using “account”, “narrative”, or “era”, I will be able to get it back to where it was.
Why am I better off in that situation? I knew “account” and “narrative” when I entered “era”, but “era” was what was foremost in my mind.
But are you saying there’s value in my learning to give primacy to the “account” and “narrative” meanings, not “era/period”—are there for reasons outside of WaniKani? I mean, I typed one of the words “account” or “narrative” one additional time in this scenario (when it cycled back around in the review since I couldn’t use the script to mark it correct)—but is that really so valuable? (Or valuable at all?)
Or are you saying I shouldn’t have added “era” as a synonym at all, whether or not I had the userscript?
Well, it’s not technically official in that its recognized by the Japanese government, but it has a number of similar listings (and account/narrative are just synonyms of chronicle, anyway).
No, not at all, era is perfectly serviceable. But I may have misread something in your statement, but it seemed like you had come away thinking that “era” was the only potential meaning, and that WK had just made up a definition (which they had not). Had you not been challenged on that “era” meaning, you might not have learned that “account or narrative” is also a totally possible interpretation of the kanji. Double-check is very good, so long as you aren’t pigeonholing yourself into one meaning only just because it’s the definition you are most familiar with, is all that I’m getting at.
