Need help with rolling back

Japanese Language Questions
1

Greetings everyone.

There is an awkward situation I’m currently in. I’m actually ashamed.

I used this application in 2017 for a year or something, and got to level 32. But it got really messy because of how dumb and lazy I am. To be short, I went impatient and decided to rush my progress by using a reorder script for reviews, to avoid dealing with vocabulary and focus on kanjis. It ended up with 4000+ reviews queue, which is literally psychologically difficult to deal with (feels like fighting with a hydra), but I still tried and at the moment it’s “only” 2400. Then, I had a big break from this application and used some other means to study the language. Eventually, I finished the kanji-only course using a similar system, and also worked on my vocabulary.
All seemed to be good, but in the end, the first love is the best love. I need to admit that this application did a god damn great job with pushing the huge amounts of stuff in my brain. I want to try it again and this time do things diligently and go all the way through. So, there are several problems I encountered when I returned back:

  1. Seems like there was a big radicals/mnemonics overhaul at some point and the answers I remember often just don’t work anymore, so these items need to be rolled back and relearned.
  2. The stuff I learned in the other system often has a different meaning word, which is a synonym to the one used in wanikani. That marks even more reviews as failed, even the ones I remember very well.
  3. The queue is still damn big and I don’t feel much sense in re-learning the completely forgotten stuff by answering wrong and looking up the reading and the meaning separately.
  4. Some radicals, kanjis and words are already in a burned state (around 2000 in total), and among them sometimes there are words I don’t remember well, or radicals/kanjis with updated phrasing and mnemonics.

So, I feel like it’s natural to roll back some progress. Could you guys propose an approach I should take?

As far as I remember, a radical blocks the associated kanjis, and a kanji blocks the words it’s used at. So, is it correct to assume that for example, resurrecting a radical also resets the progress of all the kanjis and words based on it? If so, I can just go through the radicals and resurrect everything I don’t clearly remember in the phrasing which’s used. Then do the same for kanjis. The system will do the rest and it will become bearable. What do you think?
Also, is there a new (updated) content and mnemonics on the starter levels which keep reappearing through all the course in the later mnemonics, like before? If so, maybe I should rather just start from scratch and use that opportunity to reinforce the basics?

2

No, that is not the case. Once an item reaches Guru status once it is considered “passed” (which unlocks the items it was blocking). Getting an item wrong or resurrecting to Apprentice will not remove the “passed” flag.

They did change a whole bunch of mnemonics. Not sure it’s worth completely starting over just for that, but it depends on how much you remember.

Assuming this tool still works, you can see which radicals you should relearn based on your level and if they would appear in kanji you haven’t learned yet. Then you can choose to relearn all of them if you’d like. I’d recommend doing at least that.

Other than that, you might want to reset to an earlier level, but probably not all the way to level 1. Unless you truly have forgotten (nearly) all kanji, resetting to level 1 would be a waste of time. But if you don’t feel confident in the approach you took (especially the skipping vocab part) you might benefit from resetting to earlier and relearning some of the content.

3

Thank you for answer!

Getting an item wrong or resurrecting to Apprentice will not remove the “passed” flag.

Aww. Okay, that makes sense in general. Thank you for clarifying.

Unless you truly have forgotten (nearly) all kanji, resetting to level 1 would be a waste of time

No, I didn’t forget the kanjis. In fact, I remember the majority of JLPT kanji pretty well now and I’m here for the vocabulary mostly. But the different phrasings for kanjis are treated like forgotten ones, and for every one I need to either re-learn the meaning the WK accepts, or make a custom one, which is not always a very clever decision, considering the english is not my primary language and I should just trust the system I choose to learn with.
I agree that resetting to lvl 1 would be a little too much if there is no particular reason hidden in the content update. And that’s exactly what I was curious about.

But if you don’t feel confident in the approach you took (especially the skipping vocab part) you might benefit from resetting to earlier and relearning some of the content.

I don’t feel confident mostly about the words I learned in 2017 which got burned.

Okay, this was really helpful, thank you. So, I guess I should do something like this:

  • Use the tool you suggested and reset all the updated radicals.
  • Go through the burned items and resurrect everything I don’t remember or would like to remember in a phrasing WK uses.
  • Try to find a level with the breaking point when I decided to use the reorder script and reset exactly there.
4

The old radical answers should be whitelisted for all items… I have had no trouble answering with old answers.