I'm giving up on WK, and here's some feedback after making it to level 20 in three-ish years

[cezarL]

I actually like the “horror”/creepy mnemonics way more than the “innocent” ones. I’m new around here so I can only imagine how much more fun people were having with these back in those good ol’ days

No problem whatsoever with either the labeling of the level groups, nor with the “you should know this” statements - I find those rather funny, especially so when I do not know what I’m supposed to know already
(that said, it so happend that I knew the reading for 犬 - it was one of the very few words I knew before coming here)

As for the “in just over a year” bit… yeah, I had a good laugh at that one when I decided to create my account
I’m going it at it rather slow, 12 (rarely going up to 15) daily lessons and may even drop to 10 soon. Up to know, except for one funny mnemonic (which I didn’t take as anything other than ‘funny’) I didn’t feel like WK is having a go at me because I might be slow or anything like that. I just don’t get how showing you a number of available lessons puts any kind of pressure on you, but that’s just me.
I’m also using Bunpro and can’t say that I’ve spotted any difference as far as slowness and pressure are concerned

And, while Bunpro does have some of those desired features (like ‘undo’) baked in, it has its own shortcomings too and what’s worse, it doesn’t seem to have support for userscripts. I’d have liked a couple that I use here…

@mgrice

I believe that the design is intentional, and IMO, a good thing.
WK is testing me on the meaning AND the reading of a kanji, and these are INDEPDENDENT.

@spiced_onions

I’ve always thought this was to give you a chance to have another think. When I get something wrong, I don’t automatically look to see what the correct answer was; I sit for a moment and see if I can pull it out of my brain. I imagine it’s the benefit of doing this that WK are trying to encourage. If they did introduce a function where it automatically showed you the correct answer, I’d want it to be optional.

+1 on this. I only expand those sections after I’ve had a good think - were they to be shown automatically I think it’d be detrimental in the long run… for my brain and learning, at least.
I couple this functionality with deciding when to use or not use the doublecheck userscript, because…

@servette

I’m treating the SRS as ‘just a tool that works for me’, rather than as ‘a religion which must be followed assiduously in order to gain the benefits’.

… because yeah, I take the same approach

@mitrac

I’d say try it free for a month or whatever the trial period is

Satori doesn’t have a trial period as such, it has unlimited access to a selection of chapters from stories, then the subscription can be used to gain access to the rest.
I think this is great - I created an account this weekend but the content is still considerably above my knowledge right now. I’ll go back to it in a month or two, with no fear of a trial period expiring.

EDIT:
There is one thing I really like about Bunpro that goes towards the complaint here around sample sentences:
I wish WK had fully voiced sentences and they’d be played automatically when getting the reading right for a vocab item.
In fact, give me a full sentence to review with the key word highlighted and if I provide the correct reading then play out the sentence.
On the other hand, a shortcoming of Bunpro is that with this type of review they don’t allow typing the answer, they just want you to choose between ‘hard’ and ‘good’. And without userscripts there, I have to type the JP and EN readings in a notepad, to simulate the WK SRS style - annoying.

[mgrice]

@DaraM18

I think you need to do ‘F’ and then ‘E’

Yes, the shortcut key to expand all (E) on the info page works when you are on the info page. From the review, the shortcut key to open the info page is F.

There is a small keyboard icon at the bottom right of the screen, beside the chat icon, that opens a hotkey/shortcut key menu/guide. Or you can use the “?” shortcut key to open/close that menu.

On the topic of hotkeys/shortcut keys, there are some useful ones available on the lessons page as well. You can see all of those via the hotkey menu from any lesson page.

[mgrice]

@cezarL

I wish WK had fully voiced sentences and they’d be played automatically when getting the reading right for a vocab item.
In fact, give me a full sentence to review with the key word highlighted and if I provide the correct reading then play out the sentence.

There is a user script that provides something like this for the context sentences. It highlights all kanji in the sentence, different colour for ones you have already learned in WK vs. those that you have not seen or will not be seeing in WK and provides an icon to play audio (computer generated) for the context sentences. It also provides a pop-up if you hover over a kanji showing info about that kanji (WK level, readings, meanings, your SRS level for the kanji and some other stats).

Advanced Context Sentence 2

[cezarL]

Thanks for mentioning it, it is a good addition and well thought of!

I have it installed, actually… but I rarely use it, to be honest.
For one thing, I don’t like the CG voice. And because of the way the sentences are tucked away at the bottom of the page. I don’t have a reasonable explanation for it, but I almost always “forget” to check out that section.
Hence my wish for the sentences to be integrated in the review process. Doubt that’ll happen anytime soon, if ever…

[spiced_onions]

@MiracleGro

@milila

I still struggle to understand the point of naming the levels as “death”, “hell” etc. I see no benefit to it and I understand it might be a joke but is it worth it if it’s possibly going to cause anxiety on some users?

I assume they assigned them names just to distinguish them.

I don’t think anyone’s taking issue with them assigning names to distinguish them - it’s the choice of names. I agree with @milila that they’re weirdly negative, although I can imagine they were intended as tongue in cheek. The feedback makes sense in the context of a thread that mentions a flippant attitude to difficulty; I can see how some find it off-putting.

[Phased]

Totally understand. I bounced off of WK myself a few times before falling into a rhythm. Due to RL stuff I had to take a break when I hit 37 this latest time but recently came back and was able to catch up over time then finally make progress again.

Almost all of your points are issues I myself had and solved with userscripts. Context sentences, retrying Kanji/vocab when I get them wrong (which takes discipline to not abuse, but works for me) and some other stuff.

RE: The level naming scheme; I find the names of the levels are mostly performative. Difficulty wise I don’t find it any different than early levels. By level 20 you should be pretty used to the review queue and as long as you’re managing it then it doesn’t actually get much harder imo.

At a certain point it kinda clicked for me. I found myself able to guess some of the Kanji readings just from the right side particle (which is a trait many Kanji share) so it really does get easier the more you know.

With that said it’s definitely not for everyone, and if it isn’t for you that’s totally legit, but, I’d say if you haven’t yet, give some userscripts a try, they can solve almost all of the issues you mentioned here. I also don’t totally disagree with the comment about passive aggressive notes on some stuff and how it could rub someone the wrong way.

Like others have said, I think the “in just over a year” is nice to think about but not realistic for most people, and may put unnecessary pressure on some to think they NEED to. In reality I’d say 2-3 years is more realistic when taken at a normal pace, and keeping in mind that by the time you’re level 25-30 you’re going to have enough Kanji under your belt that you’ll be able understand most of what you see on many places like Twitter, even if you don’t know the words themselves.

[Vanilla]

I tried reading your post but I was so horrified at the realization they taught 肯くrather than 頷く that none of the information entered my brain.

@nikuotoko

This program needs to make space for the 50% and 60% accuracy crowd

I feel like this gives the impression that accuracy is some predetermined trait of any given individual rather than something that is directly influenced by the amount and kind of work you put in, how focused you are, and how fast you go.

The 50% accuracy crowd should be given NO space because they shouldn’t exist in the first place. 50% accuracy is a symptom of a clearly terrible study routine and not some trait you should be identifying with. It’s a problem that needs to be addressed and fixed by the person themself and not some aspect of individuality to be appreciated or accommodated.

[simias]

@Vanilla

I tried reading your post but I was so horrified at the realization they taught 肯くrather than 頷く that none of the information entered my brain.

There are a handful of those uncommon or less common spellings taught all over the course.

[mike933]

I suppose you put to much attention to how wanikani supposedly wants to be perceived by the users. Yeah, maybe they suggest that you can do 60 levels in a year, but you can simply choose to ignore that and understand that it doesn’t apply to you and doesn’t have to. You shouldn’t expect that they will put multiple disclaimers after what is essentially advertisement slogan - it’s up to you to take that with the pinch of salt.
The same goes to percentages, review counts, leeches etc. - maybe wanikani could improve on this part, but I doubt they will be able to ever satisfy everyone. It’s up to you to work out good relation with this tool.

I simply try to always end the day with 0 reviews, and do average 8-9 lessons a day. I don’t really care how much vocab there is in the queue, especially after recent updates. It’s easy to realize that the more you try to do the more work will be thrown at you, having 0 pending lessons for a day or two doesn’t really matter.

I figured that what matters is how much exposure I have to the learned material, so essentially how often I do reviews and how much attention do I put in. If item goes from almost being burned to the bottom for the second time, that’s great, I just don’t know it well enough and wanikani does it job to remind me about it more often. If something gets stuck as it’s meaning in unclear for me like 都合 or 勝手, eventually I see it so often that I learn it by heart, just because I saw it so many times. If I don’t want to learn a word, as it seems useless like 飴細工 or 阪神, I just cheat through it with undone button, if needed - though this happened to me less then 5 times over 20 levels.

[servette]

@mgrice

@DaraM18

I think you need to do ‘F’ and then ‘E’

Yes, the shortcut key to expand all (E) on the info page works when you are on the info page. From the review, the shortcut key to open the info page is F.

There is a small keyboard icon at the bottom right of the screen, beside the chat icon, that opens a hotkey/shortcut key menu/guide. Or you can use the “?” shortcut key to open/close that menu.

Perhaps there may be an issue with the Brave browser - I can toggle the menu with the ? key, but neither the E hot key nor clicking on the E menu item expands the closed items for me (and none of the menu items other than the ? one seem to have any effect on the display of the page)…

(I did see some console error messages in the inspector, but they did not seem to be related to clicking those menu items)

[mgrice]

I have been using various hotkeys every day for as long as I have been using WK but I do not use the Brave browser, so it may indeed be an issue specific to that browser. Probably worth reporting to WK Support so they can take a look. I do not have Brave installed on any of the machines I have access to so I cannot give it a try myself.

[MiracleGro]

I understood that, I just wanted to put my 2 cents in. I like the names, I think they’re leftover from a time when this site was a little bit different and irreverent, which can be kind of charming on independent projects like WK.

So for every person who finds them “off putting” as you say, some people like them. Nothing wrong with not liking them, but I see no point in trying to get them changed. I was sort of irritated when they went through and sanitized a lot of the zanier mnemonics, since they really did help things stick in my mind. I don’t care that much either way, but worth noting.

[simias]

@spiced_onions

The feedback makes sense in the context of a thread that mentions a flippant attitude to difficulty; I can see how some find it off-putting.

I don’t quite understand, isn’t it the opposite of flippancy? If anything you could argue that it overstates how difficult it is, not making light of it.

One of the most effective aspects of WaniKani for me was the level structure and the fact that it gave me milestones and some objective (if completely artificial) measure of progress. It motivated to keep pushing and trying harder than I would have with a regular SRS system.

I can certainly understand that this type of gamification doesn’t work for everybody but I don’t really get why anybody would be irritated by it. It doesn’t get in the way.

Also for what it’s worth, I actually didn’t think that the difficulty ramped up continuously throughout the course. If anything in hindsight I could argue that the longer you go the easier it gets because you can build on top of your existing kanji knowledge.

[DuoLingo]

I tried it out on Brave and got the following results:

1. meaning and reading came up automatically. Used menu at bottom, clicked on F.
2. everything seem to work ok, i.e., input answer, clicked on F to get meaning, clicked on E to get reading Then, I think, I went back to the menu and clicked on F again…and everything went goofy!

For example, the F/E key didn’t work, the functions for those keys got reversed, it worked okay again only to revert (on its own) to something weird!

So, I gave up…back to Chrome!

[servette]

@DuoLingo

I tried it out on Brave and got the following results:

Thanks for checking it out - normally I’ve been very happy with the Brave browser (and IIRC it is built on the same underlying codebase as Chrome) but not everything is always ‘coming up roses’…

There may also be ‘local’ factors at work, as right now I have an insane number of browser windows and tabs open - I am planning to address that ‘soon’ and may try again afterwards.

[Joyful]

The app “Tsurukani” has a great oops button and jiggles my answer if I have a small typo or enter a different form (like radical v kanji). I live by it for all my reviews. Then I do Wanikani to review everything I got wrong in the last 24 hours. It’s be great if one place had it all, but this helps me a lot.

[mgrice]

@DuoLingo

Used menu at bottom, clicked on F.

When you say clicked on F, do you mean you used your mouse and moved the mouse pointer over the F in the hotkeys popup and clicked on it, or do you mean you pressed the F key on your keyboard?

If you are clicking on the items in the help pop-up, that is not what a hotkey/keyboard shortcut is/how it is used. A keyboard shortcut is so you do NOT use the mouse.

To use a hotkey/keyboard short-cut, just hit that key at any time. There is no need to use the menu at the bottom.

[mgrice]

I just installed Brave (latest version - OS is Win10) and tried out WK. I did not experience any difference in hotkey functionality, all of the provided hotkeys functioned correctly.

[DuoLingo]

@mgrice

or do you mean you pressed the F key on your keyboard?

I pressed the F key and later I tried the menu F as well to experiment. I too got it to work ‘properly.’ But I tried various things to see what would happen and it got weird like I posted earlier. When it did work okay, if I kept using it (correctly) it would after a while (4 or 5 uses) not work properly all on its own, i.e., without me trying to experiment - so I would just press the F and sometimes F & E and it would no longer work properly after 4 or 5 uses…???

Like I said, I just gave up then since I normally just use Chrome.

[servette]

I just refreshed the browser instance where I was running WK and now the hot keys (beyond the ? key) work for me (not sure how long it will continue to work, however).

So it does appear to be a bit ‘flaky’ in Brave.