Kaniwani Major Update: 1.3.4!

:warning: This is a third-party script/app and is not created by the WaniKani team. By using this, you understand that it can stop working at any time or be discontinued indefinitely.

I bet you all thought I was dead!

This update has been a long time coming. As some of you will remember from the original Kaniwani, I don’t really fancy myself a web developer or designer. That said, I managed to enlist some help! (Thanks Subversity and EvolutionXbox!) If you don’t know what Kaniwani is, scroll down to the Original Post section.

That said, the old topic was getting ludicrously large, so I made a new one to address this update. 


CHANGELOG:

Patch 1.3.4 - July 7, 2016

  • You can now login with your email!
  • New logo
  • Better quiz shortcut handling (you should be able to press keys like “i” while using an IME to ignore answer without having to swap to english input first)
  • Auto advance is prevented (for a single item) if user moves onto the next question manually
  • Quiz shows srs rank down notification on incorrect answer
  • Burning an item no longer permanently colors rank up notification black for the remainder of that quiz session
  • Upgrades backend Framework to newest
  • Fixes WK Timing Issue. We now use Identical SRS levels.


Patch 1.3.3 - May 15, 2016
  • Adds “Next Day” and “Next Hour” Review counts
  • Fixed a bug for IME users where ommitting “~” from an answer would mark it as wrong.  
  • Allows you to have a quick peek at synonyms before the review continues. The [Auto-Advance] is (intentionally) about half a second slower when [Show Answers on Success] is combined with it.
  • Simplified home screen to remove unnecessary bio text.
  • Added a friendly face to keep you company on your journey.


Patch 1.3.2 - April 20, 2016
  • Adds “Early review Exit” summary. Click the icon in the top left of review screen to be redirected to the summary screen for what you’ve done so far. 
  • Fixed a bug where users who had reset their accounts did not have that change reflected in kaniwani. 
  • Fixed a lot of miscellaneous bugs that most people never saw, but filled my inbox with notifications non-stop.
  • More styling and preparation for some larger features coming soon.

Patch 1.3.1 - March 24, 2016
  • Reviews are now batched in 15 minute intervals instead of down to the second. So if you finish 20 reviews in a fifteen minute period, they will all show up at the exact same time on the next review session, instead of exactly as you did them .
  • Site upgrades to save server costs. Speaking of server costs, thank you very much to everyone who donated, we have ~6-8 months of server costs just from the donations we’ve already received. You guys rock.
  • Small styling changes on the front-end

The long-awaited Patch 1.3
  • Adds ability to add answer synonyms. Tired of confusing 女の子 and 女子 due to the near-identical meanings? So are the developers!
See how it works here: https://gfycat.com/FatalDarkJaguar

The question mark will lead you to jisho.org if you need to lookup and copy the kanji for whatever word you’re turning into a synonym. 

Please note that this does not combine words in the backend, it simply allows you to add acceptable answers to pieces of vocab.  You can also remove synonyms you have previously created by visiting the appropriate vocabulary page, and removing them.



Mini-Patch 1.2.3.5
  • Adds ability to view your items by their SRS level. Click on “Apprentice/Guru/Master/Enlightened/Burned” on the home page, and see what vocabulary is at what level"
Patch 1.2.3
  • Adding in Kanji input! You can now use a regular IME to input your answers if you so desire 
  • Vacation mode! Head over to the settings page to enable vacation mode if you’re going to be gone for a while. 
  • Styling changes!
  • Donate button!  Some people have expressed interest in donating to keep the servers up and running, so head to the about page and click the donate button if you feel like buying me and Subversity a beer… I mean… want to keep the site running.  (´・ω・`)

Patch 1.2.2
  • Ability to “Ignore Wrong answer”. This is an intermediary while we get synonyms up and running. If you get an answer wrong, simply click the X on the right hand side to have that answer ignored, and it will be put back into the back of your queue., without being marked as wrong
  • Note the little X on the right.
  • The SRS indicator on the lefthand side of reviews now changes immediately when you level up a vocab item.
  • Reworked the “Next review in X minutes” so that it updates dynamically even if you remain on the same page

Patch 1.2.1
  • Adds SRS counts for Kaniwani Vocab, so you can see how many you have at each level. 
  • Adds a Password reset form(finally), so that you can reset your own password. Just a heads up, check your spam folder in case you dont get it.
  • Maintenance Page when we are deploying

Patch 1.2
  • Adds the ability to only review items you have previously burned in Wanikani!
  • Fixes some synchronization issues, as well as miscounting the number of locked/unlocked vocab. 
  • New reviews and new synonyms are synced more quickly.
  • Restyled the vocabulary cards on the vocabulary pages. 

Patch 1.1
  • Added “Automatically advance to next review when you answer correctly” settings
  • Added “Automatically show correct Kanji/Kana when you get a review wrong”
  • More css changes!
Patch 1.0.1
  • Adds ability to have Kaniwani stop tracking your WK progress so you can unlock at your own leisure. 


  • Contact Form fixed
  • Fixed bug with users that had burned items, not showing correct “time until next review”
  • Added little SRS level indicator during reviews.  

The update: 
  • Full Stylistic overhaul. This is what took the longest. It no longer looks like I pulled it out of a dumpster.
  • Re-locking levels.
  • Individual locking/unlocking of specific vocabulary items. 
  • A real contact form (mostly) 
  • You can now login even if your API key is wrong, along with the ability to change your API key. 
  • A large architectural overhaul. The reason I wasn’t able to deploy fixes any faster was the poor choices I made when originally designing the site. Moving forward, updates and features will come out much faster.
  • Support up to level 60. 
  • More things I’m sure I’ve forgotten.

The vast majority of changes were quality of life changes for me and the other developers, so that we can deliver updates and fixes a lot faster. 

I want to apologize again for how long it took to get this big update out. I had just started my job at a startup and couldn’t dedicate much time to it until recently. 

Upcoming changes:
  • Lock/Unlock based on Wanikani level (only review burned items)
  • Vacation Mode
  • Editable meanings/synonyms
  • More things

Cheers all,

–Tadgh





Original Post: 



I have recently developed a small site (www,kaniwani.com) which is meant to help you with your actual vocabulary recall. I made this tool primarily for me and my girlfriend to use to help our learning, and it has really helped us! I didn’t mean for it to really go public yet but it’s been picking up some steam so I figure I should make a post about it. 

You can watch a demo here of how it works.

I found while doing Wanikani that while I could recognise Kanji and Vocabulary when they were presented to me, I couldn’t come up with the words on my own without the visual aid. To that end, I created Kaniwani (A quick search seems to show that somebody has already made a similarly named service!). 


However, I am not a web developer, and as such, there will undoubtedly be bugs, problems, and general ugliness (If you are a front-end developer willing to work with me to make it pretty, drop me a line!). Onto the interesting stuff: 

Features
  • Start at your current Wanikani Level so you don’t have to trudge through the 10000 vocabulary below your current level.

  • Manually unlock old levels.

  • You unlock new Kaniwani vocab as you unlock new Wanikani vocab.

  • Your synonyms are automatically imported from WaniKani (still kind of in-progress).
  • Keyboard Shortcuts: during reviews, press P to show the Phonetic reading, and to show the actual Kanji in the vocabulary. Hitting F shows both (a la Wanikani).

  • Vocabulary conglomeration: Words in Wanikani that have the same meaning but different readings get combined. For example, when you see “Father” you can answer either “ちちおや” or “おとうさん”.

  • Full SRS system: The algorithm is identical to Wanikani’s SRS, in that the more often you correctly answer a review, the less often you will see it, until it is burnt.  Unfortunately there are no visual cues yet to show you what level each word is at. SRS operates every 15 minutes, but if you’re impatient you can hit the little refresh button to see if there are any new reviews for you. 
Changelog:


Patch 0.2
  • We now show the user when the next review will be.
  • You can now press the “f” key on the keyboard in order to show both the phonetic and Kanji readings.
  • Whenever you discover a new piece of vocabulary, any synonyms of it are automatically imported.
  • All previous synonyms should also now be imported.
  • Fixed a server error that prevented use when a vocabulary hadn’t yet been imported into Kaniwani.
  • Added more robust logging(You’ll thank me for this later).


Coming soon(ish):
  • Re-lock levels that you’ve previously unlocked. 
  • See which items are in danger(a la Wanikani Critical items)
  • A UI that doesn’t induce nausea.
  • Better conglomeration algorithm for vocabulary

Essentially the way it works:
  • Make an account (username/email/API key)
  • Click the big reviews button
  • See English words -> Type in the phonetic Japanese. e.g: When “Cat” shows up, you type in “neko” in english(the site will turn it into hiragana)
  • After inputting the word, if you got it right, it will convert the characters to the actual correct Kanji for the vocab.

If you have any suggestions or(especially) if you notice any bugs, please let me know. This is a side project while I’m in school, but I’ll work as quick as I can to fix any issues. 

Cheers,

–Tadgh

54 Likes

Awesome!! I have like 3000 reviews on there that I honestly couldn’t be bothered to answer. Now I can relock and improve my recall. 

Thanks for all your hard work! :smiley:

curious and curiousier

I really can’t thank you enough.  The overhaul looks FANTASTIC!  Props to the guys helping out with this :slight_smile:

Thank you so much for continuing to update!!

Fortunately, the people working on this want the new features the most (I’m pushing for burned only reviews pretty strongly :D).

Enjoy ~ and please submit any bugs you find with browser information so I can fix it for you :stuck_out_tongue:

Bonus: see if you can track down Kenshin, he’s somewhere on the site.

1 Like

Daaaang, the interface is looking awesome. Definitely a great tool. Gonna use it from now on. Thank you! 2iur 60  Super cute dog girl chat emoji gifs images are downloaded dog emoticons dog emoji

I was so worried for a second when I went to log on this morning and I was getting a domain error! I thought it was gone… But now it’s back and it looks sooooo nice. :smiley: Keep up the hard work, and thanks for not forgetting about it!

Looks really nice! My only complaint so far is that (it might just be how miserable my browser/internet/computer is) it took a long time to open my reviews, and that I couldn’t click the “reviews [number]” at the top to open it. I specifically had to click the review button under my icon.

…now the top button works? How curious.

Anyways! It looks really good! I’m looking forward to using it again; I have a lot more vocab to sift through now :')

W00t! Maybe I’ll have to work this back in to my routine.

Lookin’ good guys. Thanks for the hard work!

So I tried to send a message through the Contact Us page…but I got a Service Error (500) message. Anyway, just wanted to say thanks for y’all’s work, I enjoy kaniwani and the update looks great!

There will probably be a few things to iron out over this week.
If you can’t submit a contact form at least let us know here for now (like you did Raven2015!).
Cheers.

On a side note, I’ve mainly tested Firefox and Chrome. IE & Safari… not so much yet because urghh.



JackTsuchiyama said... Looks really nice! My only complaint so far is that (it might just be how miserable my browser/internet/computer is) it took a long time to open my reviews, and that I couldn't click the "reviews [number]" at the top to open it. I specifically had to click the review button under my icon.

...now the top button works? How curious.

Anyways! It looks really good! I'm looking forward to using it again; I have a lot more vocab to sift through now :')
 Might have been a resync of all your WK data.
Was this a new account you made on Kaniwani, or was this a previous account you have logged in with since the update?

This is amazing. I will definitely re-include it in my daily study. ^_^ 

Oh, this is so great. I wasn’t able to follow the amount of reviews I had accumulated, … I was so overwhelmed.

THIS is really really helpful.
Thank you guys so much.

Honestly, I actually was quite fond of the simplistic style, but I’ll take a look at the new design - which looks like a lot of work went into it - later on today and give it a chance.
Also, is there some kind of “correct answer/ignore answer” button?
Cause with all the “answer1, answer2, answer3 = vocab1” vs “answer2, answer3, answer1 = vocab 2” it would be a boon (gotta use them weird niche vocab).

c(´_:_`)つ
おやすみ~

Raven2015 said... So I tried to send a message through the Contact Us page...but I got a Service Error (500) message. Anyway, just wanted to say thanks for y'all's work, I enjoy kaniwani and the update looks great!
Hey there! 

Still working out some kinks. Just so you know, the message does go through despite the error! 

Lol, sorry for the multiple messages then! But glad you got them. (Tried to make sure it wasnt an ID10T error before I commented about it)

RayderBlitz said...
Honestly, I actually was quite fond of the simplistic style, but I'll take a look at the new design - which looks like a lot of work went into it - later on today and give it a chance.
Also, is there some kind of "correct answer/ignore answer" button?
Cause with all the "answer1, answer2, answer3 = vocab1" vs "answer2, answer3, answer1 = vocab 2" it would be a boon (gotta use them weird niche vocab).

c(´_:_`)つ
おやすみ~


I was going to add more info to the about page regarding this.

At the moment...

Words with the same base meaning on WK (like "feeling") will accept any correct answer (like 感じ、気持ち、気分). Unfortunately we can't group together vocab where the base meaning on WK is slightly different though - and often the order differs (皆さん&皆様) (everyone, all, everybody  vs everyone, everybody, all) as well as (木材 & 材木 - woodlumber vs lumbertimber, wood).

Added synonyms on WK are collected and valid for answers on KW though. So add synonyms to items here on WK for now. It's a bit annoying, but using WK's search bar is pretty quick.

Personally, for these items, I'll add a synonym of "not 皆さん" or "not 木材" to allow myself to avoid accidental wrong answers (but without giving away the reading/kanji of the real answer explicitly or polluting the vocab with lots of extra synonyms [less is better imo]). Of course you could just add a synonym if it particularly resounds with you! I ain't your boss :D

In the future

You will be able to add/edit synonyms directly on KW (preferably during reviews!). 

Regarding a correct answer button. That's not a bad idea to help combat the similar english meaning vocab like those mentioned above.
I'll put it in the todo-list to discuss with Tadgh (perhaps we'll toggle it on/off via settings), it won't be hard to implement.

Relocking! Awesome! I can’t wait to start using it again, thank you so much for your hard work.

The only thing I’d love is customizable srs to cut the number of reviews, but that’s probably just me tbh. (first time, one day, one week, two weeks, one month, Burned - would be my ideal I think, since we already ‘know’ these items…)

EskimoJo said... Relocking! Awesome!
I relocked lvls 6 through 31.. my number went down from 3000 to 400. However, that made me think "wth?? I know 400 things in level 1 through 5??"