Ah, I see… I picked that particular kanji because it happened last night and was sticking out in my mind, not because I thought it was a particularly great example.
This is good to know, though—I wasn’t aware until, like, just while researching writing this comment that the learner’s and abridged Kodansha dictionaries (kanji and J-E) don’t include any vocab that don’t fall under their primary and secondary translations for a kanji except for “special readings” listings—which this isn’t, it’s the same キ reading.
What I found…
Like, apparently the most common word in the searchable corpus without a “time period” or “discipline” sense is 紀行, “traveler’s journal”, and it’s just not found in the J-E learners’ or abridged dictionaries at all as far as I can see.
I knew that Jōyō itself wasn’t great — since it’s geared towards how Japanese children learn things and has tradition and politics going on. But if it’s generally true that WaniKani’s done a better job of picking meanings than Kodansha’s Kanji Learner’s, Usage, and Synonyms dictionaries—when they pride themselves on not being beholden to the Japanese ministry—that’s actually pretty concerning. I need to look into this more I think.
But clearly my comment that WK “invented” this definition was wrong; I’ll add an edit. I (wrongly?) assumed they freely chose new English for kanji for the sake of mnemonics just as they definitely do for the radicals. Thank you for the correction (and heads-up about maybe not trusting Kodansha’s dictionaries)!
Oh for sure. Nothing hurts the morale more than being close to guru’ing a kanji or vocab than getting dinged for an accident. Impedes your progress and your goals. True I could eye each answer I put in like a hawk to prevent it, but when you’re confident and know the meaning of something but accidentally type “unerneath” instead of “underneath” and get pushed back a couple of apprentice levels due to it, that kind of sucks big time. Hence why I like my safety net script to catch me when I fall since the base WK experience isn’t so forgiving of honest errors.
And having to spend my hour of free time I had planned to learn new radicals this morning searching for and learning a new reorder script wasn’t exactly how I wanted to use my time either.
Granted I wouldn’t say I’m in the boat of people saying they’re going to jump ship over this update. Just as a new person seeing the WK team rock the boat like this for the users and tool creators, it sets somewhat of a worrisome precedent of what to expect in the future.
Man, I hate to think that my usage scenario is a case of spacebar heating, but I guess it is a bit down that path.
It’s frustrating because I thought I’d found the key to sustainable progress on WK, even if it wasn’t an explicitly supported workflow. “Pace yourself” is the mantra that keeps coming back in the FAQ, pinned community posts, and level-up testimonials. The whole “review forecast” feature seems to be aimed at supporting this. But that core piece of information, “how many have I done today” was always missing.
I guess the entire Review Summary page was essentially load-bearing jank, where nobody internally knew quite what it was for, but everyone using it had become dependent on it for their own unintended reason. And now that the team has replaced its intended functionality with something else, they’re caught off-guard by the unintended functionality it serves for customers.
Not aimed at you specifically, just using the meme as a jumping off point.
Nope you aren’t. Typos in English are usually not a problem. double-tap a letter when you’re supposed to be entering hiragana however and you’re screwed.
Yes—I’m most upset because I recommended WaniKani to a lot of people for whom saying “and they have an API and a great userscript ecosystem” carried a lot of weight and now it looks like maybe that was just an accident of not modifying their interface for a long time rather than actually valuing comunitry contributions.
I can handle it myself—I’m just ashamed I recommended it to others on a false basis of “with this-or-that userscript you can get exactly what you want!” when that was all a fragile house of cards.
Please be understanding. Not everybody learns in the same way that you do.
To the people who have a set routine to their studying, this could be a drastic set of changes, and they are valid to have their outrage, as we are all paying customers.
That being said, I wont say if I agree or disagree with the outrage- since I am not so hardcore with wanikani- but I am actually more confused at the removal of the summary pages. I would still like to know about the percents I received and which kanji I failed exactly on my review.
I’ve heard a lot of people complain about the honest mistake thing, but I’ve never been entirely sympathetic to it. It taught me very early on to be absolutely sure of what I was typing.
Actually, even the re-order script. I’m not sure I’m too sympathetic to that either. But hey-ho! Everyone learns differently. Best of luck.
To be honest I don’t really mind the update. It changed the API to make things easier for developers in the long run so I think that this update is quite beneficial. You do you however.
You’re a paying customer for WaniKani. The scripts aren’t provided by WaniKani - they’re something they let people do. Whilst it’s good that they take them into account, it’s not support that’s included in your fee.
Why is that an important skill, though? It feels like when I was in high school and computer standardized tests were still a new thing and they penalized you for hitting the backspace key. Okay, so I have to be super careful—but why? That’s not going to help me learn kanji, that’s just going to make it less fun and more of a drudge. (It might help with reciting Japanese out loud except it doesn’t teach pitch, so forcing exactly correct kana first time every time isn’t even good for that purpose!)
I mean, until today I’ve mostly been forcing myself to wait a couple hours to do enough in a batch to where I don’t get the sounds and meanings so close to one another. But after doing a few this morning and typoing my first chance at a Burn, I’m avoiding my reviews and that growing number is making me feel dread like a full inbox. After six months, that’s a totally new feeling—I got myself up from my Covid sickbed to do WaniKani!—and I don’t like it at all.
And to me, letting me manually mark things incorrect that it incorrectly accepted is the thing that’s really getting me angry because I can’t even close my tab and start over to fix that one…
I agree with you. My point was made in the terms of the removal of features (the summary pages). I don’t use scripts and I wont pretend to know what they are either.
We are entitled to be upset about changes we perceive to be negative about the product we are paying for, right?
Look, I like all the scripts that I use, but the idea that WK is unusable without them is wild to me. I mean, I guess people want what they want. But I for one am glad I didn’t start using Double Check til like level 50. And I definitely think I got a bit lazier once I started using it.
I make typos, but not that often. I just want back the ability to mark things wrong when I realize it let me slip. There’s no workaround. How does that make me lazy?
Am I supposed to keep a secondary flashcard/Anki system around just for things that the WaniKani interface accepted when I would’ve preferred it didn’t? I’m already trying to do that with Skritter for writing kanji with the WaniKani word list, and it’s super-painful.
Edit: I misread—you were saying that it made you lazier, I thought you were saying it probably made anyone who used it lazier. Sorry about that.
Let this thread be a lesson to WK that not inplementing basic features like a dark theme and a undo button to fix typos and relying on user scripts to provide things that should be built in has its price too.
For everyone wondering what they can do, I have something I use that doesn’t involve scripts of any kind in case I make typos. It does mean you’ll have to redo some incomplete reviews, but it’s a simple workaround.
Literally open the reviews in a new browser window, if you submit typos then just close the review browser window, then pick up with your reviews in another new browswer window. The local storage cache is cleared and you can redo the incomplete reviews you typo’d on
There is an option in WK’s settings where you can change the order of Lessons to “Ascending level then subject” which will give you Radicals first, then Kanji, then Vocab. Granted, the options for this setting are not nearly as flexible as the various reorder scripts, but just wanted to mention that there is actually a native setting that does address this specific concern you mentioned.
Yes, but there’s no workaround at all to mark things wrong, and that’s what’s really getting me annoyed at the stage I’m at where I have more things in Enlightened than in any other category—if I get lucky with a wrong answer or discover I’d misunderstood the meaning, I’m not going to see it again to have a chance to fix that inside WaniKani for months.
Also, for Master → Enlightened, back when i had userscripts I was being strict with myself if I swapped two homophonic and similar-looking/meaning kanji in my head (like 合 and 会 pronounced あ) or the meanings of, like 熱い and 暑い. If the reading comes second I can intentionally botch it (if I remember to and don’t do it twice by mistake since that knocks it down another level), but if the reading comes first, there’s no workaround at all.
So I’ve been starting an Anki stack just for “words I sent to Enlightened today that I don’t really feel 100% on”, but that’s really ridiculous…
It might be possible that I don’t recall an English word, so input something similar (?) instead.
About verb pairs, I feel the form is better captured by usage in sentences, or minimally, X-particle-V.
Nonetheless, to be sure, I put JJ “explanations” up. tbh, Wanikani’s context sentences work as well, and better than English meanings themselves. It also clears any doubt I might have.
I also use Double-Check to auto-Show Info. Thinking about it, at least it shows multiple meanings (or readings) a word might have.
The reason I use Double-Check to disable typo-checking and shake instead, though I really hope it could accept typo on demand (like Shift + Enter).
Kanji meaning is something. Vocabularies indeed explain Kanji’s meaning. Nonetheless Jisho’s KANDJIC hasn’t been updated for a while and doesn’t feel like a reliable source regarding Kanji meanings (while vocabulary counterpart, JMdict, is generally OK and still gets updated). For Kanji JE, Wiktionary became a better resource. (Though JJ does better (8 distinct meanings?).)
Not saying you are wrong regarding that specific Kanji, though.