I understand where you are coming from, but the features and especially content of MaruMori feels way out of scope for inclusion in Kitsun. When starting with MM, I of course considered adding it to Kitsun at first, but ultimately decided against it.
Some (not all) of my main reasons being the following:
MM content does not fit with Kitsun. Our main focus has been grammar lessons, exercises, drills and more things for specifically the Japanese language. A growing portion of our Kitsun userbase is learning either multiple subjects/languages or languages other than Japanese.
The SRS in MM is ājustā a part of the whole course weāve been working on. Every grammar lesson, reading exercise, drill, unlocks etc was made to work in tandem, based on what you already learned previously. Not to mention that writing and managing all this content has been a massive team undertaking, and weāre not nearly done with it yet either!
Due to Kitsunās dynamic nature (custom-made layouts, templates, cards, decks etc), itās (near) impossible to implement certain things like automatic shared āknown wordsā between decks. The known words system we have in Kitsun is kind of a patch on a design decision that revolves around how Kitsun was intentionally set up to be dynamic. MaruMori āonlyā has to worry about Japanese, and has one dataset for everything. At this point we can not switch Kitsun to such a system. We would not be able to fit our ideas for MM into Kitsun because of this.
MaruMori is much more restrictive in terms of SRS, you can not change layouts, templates, SRS intervals and such, whereas in Kitsun you get pretty much as much freedom to do whatever you want and suits your needs. This too has been a decision we made on purpose for MaruMori, as often the complexity can feel overwhelming.
MM was made with the mantra of having āone platform for everything related to Japaneseā, whereas Kitsun is a multi-tool where you can learn multiple subjects and customize most things. Having Japanese-only tools on the website already felt like a bad fit in that regard.
Because of the dynamic nature of Kitsun, users can share custom made content with their own custom made layouts and such. Often giving a very different experience, which is part of itās charm. MM has no such things, everything is made by us (also no user-shared decks/study lists).
I personally view the two platforms as having two different target audiences:
If you are looking for a tool that (will) have everything under one roof and will take you from beginner all the way to āmasteringā the Japanese language in specific, youād probably want to take a look at MaruMori.
If you are a more advanced learner who wants to customize things to their own preferences, ājustā want flashcards with quality community-improved content or want to learn multiple subjects, youād probably want to take a look at Kitsun.
Both platforms will continue to exist, and both will get major improvements in the future. Next to that they will get syncing and other mutual features (such as the dictionary for Japanese being shared) in case you end up using both platforms, or are already using Kitsun. We still have big plans for Kitsun too
Regarding pricing, if we switch to a paid plan in the future, we would definitely offer bundles of both platforms and give a discount to those already being lifetime members on Kitsun. Aside from that, I have more ideas regarding Kitsun, but thatās for a future post!
I hope that explains a bit what my thought process was when deciding to make a new platform.
sorry, should have specified. between 5 seconds and a minute or more, it varies I didnāt really count properly, but I would say average of about 15-30sec. a few times I was able to get it to load in a more reasonable time frame 1sec or less, but the majority was more than 5. It also seemed to increase in time waiting after a few questions which helped lead me to believe itās something with how it loads, but Iām not all that familiar with how the programing works, so itās simply a guessā¦
I made an account to check it out and while at first the performance of the world map was good, after a few lessons it progressively deteriorated until I eventually closed the tab (which hung my browser for a few seconds) and after re-opening it the performance was good again.
[SRS question]
Are personal synonyms not implemented yet? Iāve clicked the pencil and paper icon but canāt seem to input one.
Also, the textbox doesnāt stay focused so you canāt just type an answer hit enter, and then type the next one you have to type hit enter and then click on the textbox to type the next one wasting valuable time and just being an annoyance.
Correct, but weāre currently working on it so it should be in there with the next update (within a few days)
Yeah thatās definitely a bug. Browsers usually really want to prevent you from auto-focusing inputs because it can be annoying for the user, but there are workarounds we can utilize (which means our current one isnāt working as expected).
Would you mind letting me know which OS/Device type you use? That can also influence auto focus a lot.
Edit: Just to clarify, this is only during reviews or also during lessons? If only during reviews Iāve found the cause and it will be fixed with the next update
I just started MaruMori and I like how it looks and works. Just one thing:
Suspending an item does not work in lessons (works just fine in deck settings)
And making it PWA would be awesome. It already looks good in the mobile browser.
I suppose that depends on how soon mobile apps can be expected. For now it works rather well on mobile from the limited testing Iāve done. If making a PWA takes away time that could be used towards mobile apps, Iād rather they made the apps .
I in my second year using Kitsun - and just found out about MaruMori. Was there an announcement in KitSun anywhere?
I started checking it out, but I cannot figure out how to get to N5 material - only preN5 and N4. Iāll keep looking. Looks fun - and I am likely to sign up for early lifetime if the offer is still up.
I love Kitsun - I was never able to figure out Anki. I have set up several personal decks. I would love to know how to get my personal decks to look like the Genki deck though.
Yes! Thereās a deck designed for that purpose. You simply select that deck, mark all cards as Known, and thatās that. Then all those words will be marked on Kitsun as āknownā and you wonāt see them again. Itās very easy to do. That deck does not contain any WK info beyond the item and the level itās from so you can add words to your Kitsun Known Words.
I guess you could say itās kinda like Anki but looks way better and has more features by default. Thereās a whole set of decks available for subscribers and you can make your own easily.
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