I have been thinking about this site and a possible suggestion to make people like myself and others who have some past experience with Japanese more satisfied and to concentrate on learning new things instead of rehashing stuff already known.
The biggest irritation on this site is 100’s of reviews and often finding Kanji and vocabulary in the list that you know off by heart taking up the time of what would be better off spent concentrating on what you do not know.
To cut the long story short, I have noticed with a “burnt” item you have the option to “resurrect” it. Would it be a good idea to allow each and every individual member the ability at any time to have a new button created like “retire it” where we could force the Kanji, vocabulary or radical out of all future reviews and have it permanently blacked out unless you personally choose to resurrect it.
By doing this I think it would cut down on wasted time. By filtering out the Kanji we know it should count as percentage complete before jumping to another level thereby increasing our chances of jumping levels early and focusing on the stuff we want to learn but do not yet know.
I don’t think they want people to be able to get out of levels early. But they could always only allow this feature for an item after you get it to guru once. In that case it wouldn’t let you level up faster, but it could stop you from being bogged down by reviews.
This is a terribly selfish thing for me to say, but getting to 60 comes with prestige, only because it’s a concrete path that nobody can skip. If we were to each tailor the SRS experience to our own preexisting knowledge, the effort required to get there, and indeed the quality of the knowledge one has gained, would differ from person to person.
In the grand scheme of things however, that doesn’t matter at all, of course. I’m just here to learn Japanese and the 60 badge will be but a few days of celebration on a much bigger journey. On the other hand, if the WK team were to allow people to tailor their own learning experience according to what they think they know, it would dilute the certainty they can assure users in what it means to get to any given level, be it 30 or 60.
I’ve expressed this sentiment before in another thread, but I’m not sure it’s a risk they can afford to take, at the risk of people undermining their own quality of education here. It’s one thing for disciplined veterans of language learning, but when WK seems to aim for complete beginners, those beginners would be the most at risk of falling into the “I totally know that” fallacy.
Wani-Kani self study quiz script is doing wonders for me. I can customize it to train me in anything I want, be it only vocabulary or radicals.
Although this won’t remove what you consider to be worthless reviews, it will allow you to practice what you truly care about.
For me the goal is not levels. It is to learn different Kanji. There is no prestige in any level at all because it can already be cheated and is not a certified declaration that you are an expert at Kanji.
When you think of it this way. There is no point revising Kanji that are simple, that you already know, that you know off by heart, that you have known for in some cases up to 20 years. You cannot unlearn 一 二 三 四 五 四 六 日本 白 赤 黒 空港 東京 京都 新幹線 飛行機 寿司 酒 車 電車 電話… to name a few.
My suggestion is that say someone comes to the site who already knows these Kanji. They cannot do anymore than what they have already mastered. All these are going to do is waste time (time is valuable) and clog up the learning and review systems.
I would rather have had the ability to ignore these straight from the start. Black them out. Have them marked as complete so when you go through level “x” and you need 90% complete to get more then the ones you have marked down as self mastered contribute to that score allowing new Kanji to be filtered to you and fed to you giving you the ability to learn something new which is the main goal here.
When I joined I could easily have jumped in at level 7. No problems at all. In level 7 the only Kanji I did not really know was 組 and in level for there was 他 and 打.
I would rather have spent my time learning the new ones rather than rehashing the stuff I was already an expert on. To me that is the big issue. I was not learning and wanikani was not teaching me anything. It was all just a long game drawn out and tedious until I got to the level where I could finally start learning something beneficial.
Obviously some sort of “queue for review” system where the ones you mark you are already an expert on should go into a mass review session and if you get them right first go then they are marked out would be the way to go.
It would alleviate a lot of the drama of revising stuff you know off by heart. If you can get those kanji correct in a nominated review system before you go through the learning steps with this website then I think they should definitely be marked off as burned automatically.
My whole idea is I want to study, I want to learn new stuff. I have no interest in time wasting old stuff when the simple stuff puts off the lessons I am really after by about 4 months.
The biggest problem with learning is not the learning, it’s the not forgetting. If you know these things by heart you could just breeze through them instead of devoting mental energy to being annoyed by reviewing the basics.
It is not that at all. It is the waiting period to get the Kanji delivered to you in lessons that you desperately want.
You sign up for the JLPT, have a deadline, know the basic Kanji and want the Kanji you do not know for immediate study. Unfortunately going through the basics will throw you off access to the lessons you are after for up to 4 months.
This would give people who don’t want to take time to learn and who overestimate their knowledge a lot of control. The discussion of easily abused features has come up before and some people think it’s only a problem for the individual if they mess up their learning and others think it would be bad for WaniKani’s reputation.
absolutely this. and the reordering scripts let you get to kanji items anyways. I have no idea off the top of my head if the reordering skips let you put items in order from apprentice → enlightened, but that would also basically achieve what you want.
Well sure, I get that. What I do personally is not rely on WaniKani as my primary kanji learning tool, but as just one tool. I do think it would be good to be able to advance at your own pace and study as much as you want.
I do not think a fully grown adult in control of their own finances who goes out and “pays” their own hard earned money to pass a JLPT test and also desires to learn Japanese would cheat in any way.
Wanikanis reputation on this is already not good at all. I would not recommend them to anyone as it stands as it is. It is too dogmatic with no room to allow people with existing knowledge to start where they need to start.
Besides they are all moot points. People can already cheat. They have developed codes, scripts and other methods to bypass the system.
All systems like this is doing is penalising the people who actually want to learn. Allowing something like this would probably make more financial sense as it may get more people subscribing to the site to learn and with that cash the site can develop and expand further.
If other people cheat I do not care. It is not me that they are hurting. All I care about is learning Kanji myself. I do not care about levels, points, badges, scores or games or even rankings. Being able to read all of this stuff proficiently and get around in Japan is my top priority.
I think very few people would do that to a significant enough degree to hurt themselves. Most people are here to learn, and there will always be some minority group of people that cheat to “win” WaniKani instead of learning.
It’s not even about people wanting to cheat. I’ve had to take many placement tests for language courses and people always try to argue that they really are in a higher level than the result of the placement test. And the response never is “oh yes, you’re right. Take whichever class you want”. I think you should have to prove what you know.
I would hope so however with the reorder script going around and people abusing the script which lets you cancel a wrong answer(I dont remember the name as I only use vanilla myself)
I feel thats not the case. It is exactly how you say, that they are only cheating themselves instead of learning.
I think if you are inclined to download a script that allows “cheating”, all because you typed fast and got something wrong on accident (which probably doesnt happen even 5% of the time lets be honest), then you also will be inclined to “cheat” on that one kanji that you really knew but for some reason couldnt remember while reviewing. I for one get many items wrong because I type fast, however I just take the loss and go on. In the end its more review for me which is why I am paying.
If we were to each tailor the SRS experience to our own preexisting knowledge, the effort required to get there, and indeed the quality of the knowledge one has gained, would differ from person to person.