You either have some small phones, or some big packets of cigarettes.
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I think this thread has run its course that this point.
To be fair, it had already run its course before it started, since right at the top of the feedback forum is a note to not create topics about the speed of the site.
They have heard what a minority of vocal users think about it and have decided not to make further changes so that the program stays in line with their teaching objectives. They know the start is slow, and it’s on purpose.
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Picture a pack run over by a car… that’s about an iPhone 6… but I don’t smoke, so maybe I’ve lost perspective. 
Oh, yeah. I was thinking mostly area, not volume.
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We know how to beat a dead horse around here…
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You won’t regret it and if you do things right, it won’t take 4 months to be useful.
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I don’t think we ever did hear how many kanji he knows. Someone came here saying they knew like 1500 one time, and I think people did tell them it probably was best not to bother with WK.
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This is certainly the thing Louis CK is best known for now.
At that point, I’d agree (if only because they’d be so far into WK’s pool of kanji, and already obviously have found a system that worked for them). But even if you already know a few hundred, I think it’s a useful resource.
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When I first attended swimming school, my instructor told me ‘‘Unlearn whatever you know about swimming. We’ll start from scratch.’’ Right away I understood why he gave me such an advice, whatever I know will only get in the way or will be a conflict in my learning. It is easier to build a building from scratch than to renovate an already built one.
I actually started Wanikani after a year of learning Nihongo and took it as a new approach to learning Kanji. Nothing has helped me more than Wanikani did for Kanji. It’s actually better than I hoped it would be.
To conclude, I want to share this Zen Koan that is very appropriate in learning new things:
Nan-in served tea. He poured his visitor’s cup full, and then kept on pouring.
The professor watched the overflow until he no longer could restrain himself. “It is overfull. No more will go in!”
“Like this cup,” Nan-in said, “you are full of your own opinions and speculations. How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup?”
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Oh yeah, I wouldn’t argue against that.
I knew 500 kanji when I came here, and I learned a lot during the time it took me to get to completely new kanji. I didn’t know a lot of the stuff covered in the levels that contained kanji I had already studied to some extent.
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No I had to change for my own learning methods. I simply do not have the patience to deal with the fictitious radicals they invent here and they do not help me learn. I simply adapted by focusing on what the real radicals are and trying to memorise the Kanji with my own methods instead of the ones presented on this site. The vocabulary helps as it reinforces the Kanji.
By using the site more of a flashcard type memory retention exercise with the reviews and levels it does seem to help sink in what the Kanji is. I am doing this entirely by totally ignoring the radicals (I know what the real radicals are so the knowledge is there). It is working for me in that sense, but that is my style of learning.
On the internet people come from all walks of life where some have had formal education in Japanese, others have picked it up travelling, others working with Japanese people. Everyone here wants to get better at Kanji.
I totally understand where people are coming from when they join this site and are a little more advanced than beginner. Learning things over again like 一 二 三 四 五 食べる 食事 飛行機 東京 日本 月曜日 新幹線 寿司 酒 居酒屋 is of no benefit to anyone who already knows them.
Yes there should be an entrance test for level insertion. All Kanji below the level which they are at should immediately go to either master level or enlighten level with a randomisation factor in the reviews to bump them up to burned as to not overwhelm people with too much material.
After a brief familiarisation session with the course here it is not going to put people off too much starting at a higher level if that is where they truly are at. It is just a matter of learning how the site works that would be the issue to contend with.
That said something definitely needs to be done about recognising someones true level.
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I’m not going to direct reply, but to those people who say they literally do not use the radicals or mnemonics at all, I genuinely don’t understand why you’d use WaniKani over something like Anki or Kitsun in the first place. In my opinion, the only reason the ordering of Kanji on WaniKani makes any sense is because of the radical system they’ve built. It seems silly to me to pay for a service that you don’t use the main component of, when other services provide everything except that main concept for free.
I don’t mean this to be a personal attack, or a diss on WaniKani, I love the system. I just don’t really get why you’d choose it over anything else if you don’t intend to use it fully.
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I wasn’t arguing that a placement test could never work (though I think it’s clear at this point that the staff aren’t interested in pursuing it/don’t find the way it might disrupt their system worth it)–just the idea that using mnemonics at the start would lead to an inability to read kanji fluently later, which is ridiculous. I’m not out to tell anyone they have to use them (I don’t always use them either), but the idea that their use is mutually exclusive to fluent reading struck me as a seriously incorrect assumption.
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What? It doesn’t take you 5 minutes to read a single sentence because you have to recite a story for every single character?
Hmm… Back to the drawing board.
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Finishing the N1 reading section last month was a struggle, but thankfully I managed to squeeze in just enough time to walk through every single mnemonic.
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I didn’t make it off of the first page of the test with the kanji reading questions, so I’ve got some work to do. I mean, I guess I could start by not reciting the mnemonics for all the characters that aren’t being asked about.
That still leaves me with like 30 more pages.
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Out of curiosity. The things you call ridiculous, and of no use, are what I consider to be the killer features of WK. If you take them away, all you have is a SRS system. So, if all you are interested in is SRS, why pay for WK? Are you getting something else out of it?
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I mean, I don’t always use the mnemonics, what I like WaniKani for is the SRS, and not having to know what I should add myself, instead being told, “Here, learn this in this order.” It’s also really cheap. (I have a code.) So it’s convenience.
The mnemonics are nice sometimes, though.
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I’m not necessarily new to kanji myself having studied Japanese for years before discovering WaniKani, so I’m just starting out and am still in the free period, and while I don’t like waiting, the method of spaced repetition is good, and even in this short time I find myself remembering things a lot better with the silly mnemonics. So I’m content to go with it.
After all if I knew as much as I thought I did, I wouldn’t be missing anything on these reviews. All systems aren’t for everybody, and since there are a lot of learning systems out there (especially for Japanese) if you don’t like one, there are plenty of alternatives.
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I’m new as you can see from my level, and I’ve replied already, but I just want to add that I definitely don’t use the mnemonics every time for stuff I already know very well, but for stuff that I forget the meaning/reading…? Yeah, it helps. The mnemonics are there for if you find yourself having trouble remembering, that’s all.
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