Lots of small, seemingly simple fixes they could make WK less frustrating


I don’t know about all of you, but even though wanikani is a great tool there seem to be a lot of small things that build to frustration. For example, the error above. Why is びいだま not accepted as a correct reading when ー is just a vowel extender? Also, I realize this next issue can be solved by me deliberately slowly going through reviews. However, when I have 50+ reviews at once I tend to get in the flow and will oftentimes accidentally type the reading of vocab instead of the meaning and it gets marked as incorrect. If they can have the Kanji entries recognize the wrong reading (kun vs on) to prevent you from getting the answer wrong, couldn’t they change it to have it recognize people typing the reading by accident as well? I’m not a programmer, so if this is actually a bigger issue to solve beyond just the time it would take to enter common romaji readings for vocab, please let me know. What are everyone else’s thoughts?

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I don’t know why not, but I would support this change. When I’m on my phone, it is a real pain to search for the hyphen on my keyboard.

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Maybe they don’t want you typing びいだま because they don’t want you to get in the habit of typing it that way? My IME doesn’t let me change びいだま to ビー玉. As for the reading instead of meaning, I remember people talking about it previously and how it had some issues with certain words. If it’s really bad, you could try the ignore script and use it exclusively for mistakes like that (Although many people say it can easily get out of hand and ruin your learning experience).

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Also not a programmer, but here’s my 2 cents: When you add a synonym for the meaning of a kanji/word, you could technically type in the reading, and then it would mark that as correct every time they asked for the meaning :eyes: so theres no way for them to know if you’re typing the reading for that specific kanji/word, or some random hiragana someone added as a synonym for the meaning

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Is the ignore script different from the synonym section? Sorry I’m just not very knowledgeable with programming/coding jargon like that haha.

That would be a decent work around but my main worry would be that it would be marked correct instead of reminding me to type in the meaning. U feel like that would mess up my learning.

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That’s done through having a list of specific answers that will trigger the “try again” screen-shake. It’s easy to do for kanji, since we just pop in the other reading, but it wouldn’t really be a practical solution for reading typos since we’d have to think up and then manually define thousands of instances.

Plus, it is technically wrong, unlike using the kun’yomi instead of the on’yomi, where you put in one of the readings for the kanji, it just wasn’t the one we wanted. :slightly_smiling_face:

Still, I totally get the frustration, since it’s a pretty small mistake. There are technical reasons as to why the typo-forgiveness system we already have for meanings doesn’t also apply to readings, but I don’t want to get into them while I don’t have Viet and Darin around to correct me. :wink: (they’re on vacation atm, and I’d probably mess up the explanation)

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This doesn’t necessarily help your frustration, but if you type in caps, the built-in WK IME automatically types in katakana.

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I’ve just realized that you’re on mobile, which this wouldn’t work on, my bad. But if you use PC sometimes:

The Double-Check Script is what I was talking about, I’ve just seen people call it the ignore script (Unless they’re talking about something else idk). It’s a 3rd party program that you can install into chrome (or similar browsers). Among other things, its main feature is allowing you to go back and override whatever answer you just gave, changing it to say you got it correct or incorrect, which would let you fix things like a typo or an incorrect answer. However, as this is basically just cheating, people tend to subconsciously lose their self-control over time with this script and abuse it to say they got something right when they honestly didn’t know the answer. This can be a bit problematic for some.

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I’m all for it. I’d also like another tool : like having a list of all your frequent fails. Like I keep typing
ねんちゅう instead of ねんじゅう for 年中 kanji. Wall of shame doesn’t display it, and critical items only display items from your level. So a list of problematic kanjis/vocabulary would be a good time saver, instead of going threw all your lessons 1 by 1 and look at a bunch of stuff you really know.

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In this particular case, isn’t writing it with i just wrong?

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Yeah, I don’t think びいだま is ever an acceptable way to write it, even if the pronunciation would work out to be the same thing.

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I could be wrong but I don’t even think the pronunciation is actually the same anyways. it’s just a small nuance that foreigners don’t notice very well.

EDIT: that was meant to agree and add to what you said, not argue it.

You should try using those scripts:
Wanikani Open Framework → a framework to enable functionalities of others scripts
Wanikani Self-Study Quiz → self study quiz which lets you filter “leeches” (items that you frequently fail) and train on them

This seems like exactly what you’re looking for

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Sound good indeed. I’ll try it, thanks.

excuse me if this is a dumb question but how are the pronunciations not the same?
Aren’t びい and びー both just long vowels?

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I think it’s more that it’s just spelled incorrectly - like writing out sentery instead of century. It sounds the same, but sentery isn’t correct no matter how you look at it.
At least that’s the way I see it…

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I wasn’t the one who said they were different. びいだま isn’t an acceptable way to write the word though, so it doesn’t matter what the pronunciation is.

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oh whoops i misread the comment, my bad

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“It’s easy to do for kanji, since we just pop in the other reading, but it wouldn’t really be a practical solution for reading typos since we’d have to think up and then manually define thousands of instances.”

Thanks for your feedback! Although, I wasn’t talking about typos for the meaning. What I am talking about is that a lot of times there will be several vocabulary prompts in a row that ask for the reading of the words, and then suddenly one will appear which asks for the meaning. Because I just entered the reading of the past few words, my brain automatically thinks I should input the reading and not the meaning. For example, yesterday I saw the word “前” and I tried to type in まえ, but it was counted as wrong (understandably so) because it was looking for “front.” It is a small grievance, but if it shook and said “that’s the reading. We’re looking for the meaning instead,” it could lead to a lot less frustration when working. Also, while there are a lot of vocab words, there are only two main methods that are used for romanization of Japanese words, so inputting those (in this instance “Mae”) wouldn’t be too much of a task (as opposed to inputting typos of the correct answers, which would be impossible). Again, though, thanks for your feedback!

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