The topic was already brought up a couple of times already over the past years but it would be nice to have an option to disable burning of items and simply increase the interval further (like any other SRS system does).
I know all the usuall points:
use the un-burn option (it resets to beginning, no-go)
use the addon to manage them
read alongside the WK
it will pile up reviews endlessly!
but those are just workarounds or are not really valid.
Yes - reading along japanese texts is a must
No - with burning disabled the review pile wonât grow endlessly because each time the item will be scheduled far in the future so unless someone is doing absurd marathon then it will be a non-issue. Currently before englightend and burned we have 4 months (jump from 1 month from master) so the next review could be scheduled in 4*4=16 months and then follow the same patterrn and have the next one in 64 months (or could be 1 year and then 3 years for example).
I donât actually se any valid point of NOT doing that
The point is kinda that when you reach the Burned stage, you know that kanji/vocab/whatever well enough for natural usage to take over the reinforcement. I mean, youâre not doing eternal SRS for your native language, are you? You know your words well enough that normal day-to-day usage is enough. Sometimes you forget a more obscure word, in which case you ask someone what it means, or look it up in a dictionary. Same deal for Japanese. Expose yourself to native material.
My question to you: what exactly is your argument in favour, here? Whatâs the benefit of having another review over a year later? If youâve encountered that word in your various readings in the intervening period, then you donât need to review it. If you havenât encountered the word, you probably donât need the word. Either way, thereâs no purpose to the extra review stage.
If everyone would limit themselves to only using âday to dayâ then we would quickly stoop to âme hungry, me give munch-muchâ.
I donât really subscribe to âif you donât use it you donât need itâ and ocassional refresh of some (more obscure) word could be handy/fun. Same with my Anki decks for English and Spanish - often they serve as a reminder that cool vocabulary exist and I try to include that.
But you donât maintain knowledge with flashcards, you maintain it by using it. Youâre not really presenting an argument for why WaniKani needs infinite SRS here. Youâre mainly putting all your emphasis on the âwhy not?â argument.
Well sure, if thatâs how you talk day-to-day. Ya know, you do you. But for the rest of us who talk in complete sentences when we interact with people, practice makes perfect.
I also think that once an item gets to âburnedâ you donât need to review it anymore. If you encounter it in the wild, it will get reinforced naturally and if you donât, that means you donât need it. I still have quite a few military ranks in my current review pile and while I do want to burn them I would never want to review them for forever.
You asked whatâs the benefit of burned items: For me it means there is an endpoint and I like that. Whatâs the point of a review scheduled in 3 or 5 years and later 20 years? I donât plan on doing srs forever. Most people donât. Having a burned pile on the other hand is motivating to me. It tells me âlook how far youâve come! â
Then thing is - everyone has different background, needs and objectives. I donât intend to master Japanese and be profficient in it (more so - most likely I wonât even reach intermediate level). Between being non-native to both English and Spanish (which I use daily and consume the most content in those) learning Japanese/kanji is just a âfun side projectâ so no - I donât have that much exposure to the language and I wonât drop everything for it becuse itâs not the centerpiece of my life - âme do meâ. And in that context - FOR ME - being able to have ârefresherâ once in a while would be handy/beneficial. Iâm fully aware thatâs not ideal nor efficient from the language learning point of view but for now Iâm having fun and a total blast doing snail-pace 5-new-items-per-day with the forcast of finishing WK in ~5 years. Is it that terrible? Could you accept that some may have different needs than you?
This is very valid point! Maybe flip that on the head and for the burned items add an option âIâm done with itâ?
Different people have different needs and perception? I donât care about âlook I burned all the itemsâ - for mew itâs not the goal
Again - Iâm asking for an OPTION - so anyone could choose what they prefer - why would having an OPTION be so bad? Noone would be forcing you to use it
I think as an option itâs fine. After all, sometimes you see people saying theyâve forgot their burned items, and itâs not that convenient to try to go search through your burned items to find which ones you want practice on. Some people would rather just re-practice everything and letting a continuous SRS figure it out.
As far as having an endpoint, it could still be called Burned but just behave differently. For people who have the option on, they keep getting scheduled. Thereâs loads of methods for doing it, whether itâs having a way to track the last interval and always multiplying by 4 if itâs right, or by using a fixed interval thatâs large.
Of course it would be opt-in.
I do something like this for my Anki listening deck. I have a set highest interval and cards just repeat endlessly once they reach that maximum. Just to act as a reminder. I probably wouldnât use such a system on WK myself, for the sole reason that Iâm on annual and Iâll be renewing one more time to get to the end and then when that one expires Iâll probably just put in the effort to move anything I need extra help on to Anki or something, but I could see how someone on lifetime might want this to be built-in.
There are plenty of niche options that would be nice to have for targeted use cases like yours, but they need to be weighed against available resources.
WaniKani was never pitched as a life-long learning tool; it was designed to drill a bunch of kanji and vocab into your skull so you can go out and do what you really want to do with Japanese. Spending even more time in queues just really seems counter to that ethos.
You already have the data and if you need it your language study will bring it back up for you. You have grown all the data you need, now you need to get into the optimization stage where your source of maintenance is the language itself.
Wk is a powerful stepping stone to victory. Though I wouldnât know the feeling. It feels so far away.
Bunpro added this feature about 3 weeks ago. There is some discussion about it in forum if you want to read more oppinions.
I personally donât mind it being added, but also donât see any point. Going beyond the max level is just a waste of time. But you do you, sooner or later you will realize that.
I see bunproâs approach effectively gives the card a cap on the max level length, so once you get it up to master it then repeats every six months. Personally I prefer the anki and jpdb approach where the intervals just gradually get longer and longer, so as you keep answering correctly it eventually goes out to years in the future. I find that means I donât worry about âdo I feel I know this well enough now to be happy never seeing it againâ while still in practice keeping very familiar items from clogging up my review time.
I just had a review for the æ„ kanji last week; its next review is scheduled for just under thirty years from now
Iâve been learning languages for past 30 years, starting with SuperMemo. The initial idea to have âinfinite, exponential SRSâ simply is a result of my experience (both how and why I study).
I already gave a reason - I donât have that much exposure to Japanese, nor I donât plan on having more in the forseable future (I probably wonât ever move to Japan, there is a vague chance of a short trip there, I donât watch as much anime as I used to, etc).
In the grand scheme of things, living in many countries on different continents - without actually immersing onself you will always lack some vocab depending on the context in which you use language but that doesnât mean this vocab is useles and having a gentle nudge/refresher is OH-SO-VERY-TERRIBLEâŠ
I get that for some Japanese is the center of their life, and they are quick to offer âhelpfulâ advices how to go about restructuring my life to fit their perspective, but it would be very nice to rein the condescending remarks
This! So much this! You reach the âburnâ level but then your next review is in months/years⊠this doesnât make your queue âpile upâ but is a refresher.
However, it would be nice to still have option to âburryâ some items (like the military ranks) after they were burnedâŠ
Just use Anki which has all the flexibility and a better SRS algorithm for this kind of thing. Wanikani doesnât do much development on the app to begin with and catering to some niche desire doesnât make the top 20 things they should be looking at improving tbh
Well, most likely adding burned items to Anki would be the most sensible. THough I wouldnât say this is not that huge change/development.
OTOH for me WK has quite nice lessons progresssion (love the recent change of mixing radicals/kanji/vocab) and with a couple of scripts I donât see those other things that need improving
Technically this is true, BUT, itâs NOT practical! What WK does is offer up your ENTIRE Burned items for you to review! It doesnât matter if you know it cold, luke warm or forgot entirely. You have to go thru the ENTIRE list to get to the ones you would like to review.
I think if you actually use this review of Burned items you would probably see what Iâm getting at, but imagine if you had thousands of Burn items!!!
Furthermore, you canât restart the Burn list. Letâs say just by coincidence the first 25 items contained all the items you wanted to review. You canât just quit and expect those same 25 items to come up again the next time you do a review. BP will start your next review at Item #26 and continue on until the end of your Burn list.
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I donât care about âlook I burned all the itemsâ - for mew itâs not the goal 
