Ah, that’s something to get your mind off of, IMO.
Kanji are not words. There are words that consist of just a single kanji, but that does not mean the kanji themselves are in fact words.
Now, WaniKani is a bit confusing with its “kanji reading” and “vocab reading” terms, since both are readings for the kanji, but you actually illustrate the issue quite nicely here: it’s not that ちから is the reading for the kanji because that’s how you read 力 as a word, and リキ and リョク are not readings for the kanji but just parts of other words, it’s that all of those are readings for 力 depending on where and how it’s used and it just happens that ちから is the reading used for 力 as a word. It’s also what you use in 力強い for instance.
力 on its own in a text? Sure, that’s ちから.
But what about 実力, 馬力, 電力, 力説, 力点, 力士 and 力学 for instance? Knowing 力 as a kanji, and its associated readings, allows you to reason about not only what those words might mean but also how they might be read, even if you’ve never seen them before in your life. You’ll pick up on those patterns eventually of course, but I personally find that learning them in this manner does help.
You know, at first I thought this should be surprising, but…
Yeah, that explains I’ll be honest, r/LearnJapanese is like 1% actually useful and meaningful content, and the other 99% is a mix of whatever poorly argumented rants are all the rage now, beginners thinking they understand the ins and outs of Japanese culture because they know all the N5 vocab, and people gatekeeping language learning to high heavens (because how dare you not do every single aspect of your life in Japanese and learn purely by immersion).
You came in here not at all dismissive and are respectful in every single thing you’ve said in this thread. Sure, we could call you a dumb idiot for not “getting” WaniKani’s brilliance and the glory of the Crabigator, but… why would we? That’s just being toxic for the sake of being toxic, and none of us here are under the illusion that WaniKani is the one true source for learning Japanese. Hell, if you’re coming into WaniKani expecting to actually be able to speak or understand Japanese by the end of it, I’d say you’re likely to come out severely disillusioned, with no way of expressing that in Japanese
Also this:
We get our fix