If the equation is “add more obscure kanji OR add common kana words” then I don’t really have any comment. I didn’t post with the idea that we were discussing kana words.
WK is about learning about kanji, that is why people get into it. Leaving out core kanji knowledge and adding kana words makes no sense. It’s not that complicated.
And like I said, I have no problem with rare or obscure words, but somehow the vast majority is, which blows my mind.
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I’m not sure they’re in the business of maximizing profits…
It would be pretty easy to:
1 )add levels 61-70, the community has already done most of the leg work on sorting, and it would lengthen the treadmill
2 ) Oops, eto eto was too ambitious, let’s scale it back. Ok, here’s wanikani(+), for an extra 3$/month, we’ll give you a selection of graded readers specifically made for wanikani. Each level has 3-5 passages to read through using only kanji you’ve already learned to that point, and using only minimal unknown vocab. And as a bonus to keep the funds flowing and disincentivize people from cancelling, we’ll continue to update this section every few months with new material. And to extend that, maybe there’s a vocab list with each reader of the unknown vocab, and you could choose out of that vocab what to add to wk’s SRS.
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Pretty easy as in… new mnemonics for hundreds more kanji, writing maybe thousands more example sentences (when people are already mad that levels 21+ still only have one sentence per item), paying for the voice actors to record all the new words?
I mean… if it made business sense, then sure. “Easy” makes it sound like they just have to append a list of kanji to a database and the change is made.
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I have no problem with WK pricing, they could’ve made it 10 fold and I wouldn’t bat an eye, you get alot for your money. If they added a premium service for 60-70 I would buy it.
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I think it would likely make business sense. I’m thrilled with services like bunpro, because of the trickle of new features and content they seem to be adding. Even if 95% of people don’t use 61-70, it gives the impression of an ever expanding knowledge base.
I always thought the sentences are weird. Kodansha made an entire book of copyright free sentences for kanji, I don’t know why wk doesn’t just tap into that.
WKs own sentences are actually garbage tier, didn’t actually bother to read them.
I had no idea about Kodansha however, might look into it.
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They are already adding more Kanji recently, without more levels. But sorry, many mnemonics don’t help much despite the attempt to revise. Choice of radical breakdown too sometimes.
Sentences aren’t well received either. Patterns of use are somewhat experimental and still not yet in the API.
Book might be a bit of a misrepresentation. They have a book, the Kodansha Kanji Cearners Course, which is kind of like heisig, but better, and has readings and example words. Then they have a book series, I think 9 volumes in total, that have example readings for each kanji. It’s actually pretty brilliant. Each reading ONLY uses kanji that’s already been taught. So kanji #1, 日, has examples like: 日ごとに。it then explains every grammar point that’s new up to that example. Kani #2, 一, can then have examples like, たのしい一日だった。
By volume 5 (701-1000)an example reading might be: 博
単に友人のワトソン博士が初めの部分を聞いていないからというだけでなく、異常な性質の話ですので、ぜひともあなたの口からできる限り詳しく聞きたいと思いますので。
By kanji 1000, there will as many as 20 readings like that per kanji. Sorry for any typos there. I believe the course covers all or almost all joyo, plus about 200 more useful kanji. The last couple volumes might not be print, but ebook only. Don’t quote me on that
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I think well before you get to those you really want an app structure that supports adding the vocab and kanji you personally care about and have encountered to it (maybe with a “hey, kanji X’s mnemonic relies on kanji Y, want to learn that first?” nudge). I don’t think it’s feasible to have a single “works for everybody” path through that much content – on average almost everybody will find they waste time on things they won’t see for ages while also not learning some things they do meet until unnecessarily late on.
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They wouldn’t necessarily have to do that. Someone who gets so level 61 provably doesn’t need mnemonics anymore or can write their own. Similarly, they can find pitch accent or example sentences by themselves, if they so wish. I’d rather have streamlined extra levels with just the bare essential, than no extra levels at all.
Honestly I used to think there was a rhyme and reason to the kanji ordering here but the further I go the less I care 
I just wanna be done and get my life back.
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Nobody forces you to stay. If you find the service is not useful or beneficial anymore for your needs you can stop using it anytime.
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I tend to agree with people here saying that already, as is, Wani Kani feels quite bloated. I come here for the kanji, it’s nice to have vocab as a bonus. If you’re going through wanikani at 1 level per week, you already end up with extreme time investment. I’m already at 300-350 reviews per day I don’t want any more vocabs, while I’m here for the kanji in the first place.
Once I’m done, I’m out sentence mining. Wanikani is so heavy I don’t even bother sentence mining during my reading/watching right now as I don’t have the time for it.
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The length of the treadmill doesn’t matter when (conservatively) 95% of your users don’t make it to level 60 already.
In order to maximize profits WK needs to recruit more newcomers, not cater to the tiny minority of people who have already made it to level 60 (and may or may not even engage with the new content if it was added, because by that point you should really have moved on with other ways to study Japanese than drilling random assortments of more or less obscure kanji and vocab with silly mnemonics).
That’s why adding これ made more sense to them than adding 叶う.
But the kana vocab also does that, for better or worse.
Honestly if I was tasked with improving WK from purely the objective of improving its kanji-learning core objective (and not conversion metrics), adding more content/levels would be pretty low on the list.
In fact I think one way to improve WK would be to remove obscure entries and kick less frequently used (but still useful) words and readings to higher levels to streamline the earlier levels. They appear to have been working on that with the recent updates, but there’s still a long way to go (and arguably adding the kana vocab bloated the early levels even more).
If you think about it, the “fast” levels with less content should be the early ones, when you’re trying to bootstrap your kanji knowledge and need to quickly need to reach a critical mass of knowledge (both in terms of radicals/components, but also readings and generally get a feel for the logic and patterns behind the symbols). The difference between knowing 100 kanji and 500 is tremendous, as is the difference between 500 and 1000.
Once you’re past that point however the returns diminish tremendously fast and, in my opinion, it’s when you want to slow down and focus on other things and more advanced vocabulary/readings/etc… So at that point it makes sense to revisit the early content with new readings and trickier words etc…
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I’m not sure I agree with the length of the treadmill argument. I know so many people that buy one product over another just based on extra features they’ll never ever use. Wanikani isn’t in a vacuum. There are an increasing number of competitors to wanikani, not just in the Japanese learning space, but specifically in the kanji learning space. I think WK needs to push itself to do things to stand out if it wants to remain on top.
Maybe the answer to that isn’t more levels or more vocab. Now that I’ve had this conversation, I think the weak point might be their sentences. I RARELY use WK’s example sentences. They use kanji I haven’t learned yet and sometimes the sentences are weirdly complex. If it was structured vaguely like the graded readers I posted earlier, it would be hugely useful. I would actually have another mechanism for internalizing the kanji/vocab rather than just relying on the mnemonics until it stuck. This would have the benefit of adding ZERO features or bloat, it would just be replacing an unused feature with a useful one.
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The general problems with WaniKani are overall polish and a too rigid of a structure. WaniKani doesn’t exist in a vacuum, but it sure feels like that the higher in levels you go. If they tried to align better with JLPT or some measure of proficiency progression, load their vocab pool with more common vocabulary and aim for being fun instead of weird, some of the problems might be more bearable.
One of the other reasons competition wins is because the other tools are way more flexible in the way they teach.
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Yes that’s true. Sorry my previous response not at you.
I agree with a few earlier comments… WK should really add a separate track for learning non-kanji words as it’s needed to increase the ability to comprehend Japanese readings. This would also help bring in more people in my opinion as learning non-kanji words is easier for beginners.
I also think WK should allow users to write-up meaning and reading explanations then have a vote up/down system… I say this because often the WK explanations are lacking and they miss some really great ways to remember meanings/explanations (crowd source!).
That said love the product and it’s helped me to really increase my kanji level. Now if there was only something as effective to learn grammar
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