Im sure those who use the 3rd party add ons have noticed that now none of them work since the recent update. Some of these add-ons are so useful for studying here on Wanikani and without them it makes the whole experience much more tedious and cumbersome.
Obviously i appreciate that these are third party and not the responsibility of the devs and when they do updated, inevitably the old code will make the third party add-ons obsolete.
However…
I’ve been a paying member of Wanikani for 3 years (yeah i know my level is low but i’ve reset a few times) and what i cant understand is why the devs have not yet simply integrated the most popular and obvious add-ons most of us use e.g. auto commit, an undo button, among others. Just simply put them in the settings so we have the option to use or not use them? It would be such an easy win in my opinion. This has been brought up so many times but yet the devs have yet to give us an answer as to why not.
So basically wanted to start a partition to get these way overdue mechanisms integrated into the main site.
Who is with me?
Reply with the add ons you find most useful and the reasons why, we pay good money for this site so let your voices be heard!
Put simply, some of the most popular scripts provide functionality antithetical to Wanikani’s core learning principles backed by their own research. As such they will not provide the functionality. Furthermore, it is not as simple as just giving the option as that incurs maintenance of the features, not all of which are easy.
I know as a user it’s tempting to think “why can’t they just do this” but as one of the people currently helping out with the scripts I use where I can, I can tell you this really isn’t such a feasible thing.
Additional comments for the sake of commenting:
For anyone wondering, the changes made by Wanikani this time are good and very needed for the upkeep and future of the site. Please do not fall into the trap of thinking the changes are intentionally there to break scripts or that they are useless and “they should just keep things how they are.”
As for an undo button, even as a user of Double-check’s undo functionality, I am in agreement with Wanikani to not add this as a feature. Sadly in my time here (since 2018), I have seen far more people wanting to use the functionality to skip things or short the learning experience than as an actual typo corrector. And I myself am guilty of that too. I’ve had to stall a few times specifically because I let the undo power slide too much. It’s tough to find the strictness balance to use it.
Really, being a paying user still doesn’t entitle one to third party support or, more relevant to what you’re saying, implementation of every oft requested feature. This is a path of consumerism I’m quite loathe to indulge.
Edit: oh and yes, to Belthazar’s point, the fact that we can use these third party tools at all by them providing a public API is already more than enough. They don’t have to do that. At all. They don’t even have to maintain it. We should really count our blessings it’s still here and working (aside from GetAllReviews endpoint).
Is a petition necessary? From my limited reading (and comprehension, the coding jargon is over my head) in regards to all of today’s shenanigans, I doubt most of the scripts will be out of function for much longer. I only use the most popular ones (pitch info, timeline), and I’ve gleaned that people are already working on fixes. But that’s just me, I am in no way a member of the extended WaniKani community (I’ve been trawling the past couple of hours due to the break).
I also think, WaniKani shouldn’t include functions of third party scripts. There are too many different ways for more or less the same outcome to boil it down to “that one way of everyone”. With those third party scripts, everyone can choose which one works best for their personal learning style, and I’m very thankful that WaniKani makes it possible for a scripter community to even exist.
Sure, an undo-button would be nice, but when I’m honest with me: I already overused it once or twice, instead of really getting a spelling (とう vs とお) in my head and therefor just lying to myself. Everything else is just a part of stopping the habit of rushing and instead typing slower.
There is no WK mobile app. All of the mobile apps that are available are third party apps developed independently of WK, using the API (as do the user scripts).
Although, to be fair, they haven’t. They provide no support for add-ons and consistently make that clear, and they all rely totally on the script authors providing their time for free to try and scramble to fix them after each WK update which advance notice is rarely provided for
And they won’t even keep the public API working properly, removing features “temporarily” and never adding them back…
I appreciate there’s likely only one dev (Scott) working on WK but whatever your opinion on integrating third-party scripts, I do definitely think WK has a big problem with lack of proper communication and refusing to listen to what users want. I also think they’re a bit too adverse to giving users options…
If I could have one script added into this site as a feature, it would be for the review forecast to be in 24h time. I absolutely loathe am/pm. I also use auto-commit, but I doubt they’d ever add that.
I think this is a very important part here. A lot of the time Wanikani does update things, a very large portion of the userbase is not happy about it. Most of the time the updates are things that already existed as scripts before too, so it’s not that nobody wanted these features. It’s that they once get turned into basic site functionally. They end up erasing a choice that existed, until a new third party add-on helps make it either optional, or require less clicks to get back to base speed again.
I still hate the way lesson picker was rolled out, even if it basically let you use the site as if you’re using a re-order script without installing one.
Userscripts allow for a level of choice and control in a way that is antithetical to how WK believes their platform should be run. (WK is extremely controlling and authoritarian when it comes down to it. Sticking to their own vision so you don’t have to worry about choice as an end user. That’s both its greatest strength and worst negative) So the nature of them remaining as additional, optional, scrips is vital.
But isn’t the whole purpose of having a public API and making it available/open to support allowing users to integrate with the platform? If the goal is to provide no support for add-ons/extensions then you would not have a public API.
Sure, although the API is aimed a lot at e.g. third-party apps - while some scripts also use it WK provides zero support for scripts which actually modify the website from the website side. For example if they actually provided any level of support for them they would have released today’s breaking Dashboard changes a few days before on their preview.wanikani.com domain to allow time for script authors to update (which we know is possible as they did it once before). They also consistently remind us that they provide no support for scripts in related forum posts.
Also - they disabled one of the most important endpoints of the API last year and we’ve yet to hear anything about bringing it back
Don’t get me wrong - there’s a reason I paid for WK - but in the past year or two they’ve become increasingly hostile to choice and to real communication about things like them disabling the reviews API, and instead release changes that no-one has been asking for while consistently breaking scripts so many people use after giving no warning…
I’ve been begging WaniKani for years to add a recent mistake burn items section…
There are so many features people have been begging for and instead of doing that they just take away things like Summary pages and add things no one asked for like kana vocabulary…
Haha, don’t worry about your level. I bought the lifetime subscription in 2021, and yet here I am!
Honestly, I’m fine with it as it is, though! The heat map would be cool for motivation, but ending your streak and having a gap could have the opposite effect. Pitch accent and kanji stroke order could be cool too, but that might make new members feel even more overwhelmed with Japanese. Having Wanikani focus on doing one thing and doing it great is part of the appeal, I think. I’m not too sure about the redo button, though. I elected to add it for myself, but I also understand their reasoning to avoid it.
Other features that used to be add-ons have also been added. IIRC, when I first tried Wanikani, the Recent Mistakes tab, Extra Study, and Celebratory Level-Up screens weren’t really a thing, right? I also remember seeing an add-on that would hide your lessons and give you a certain amount per day so you wouldn’t feel overwhelmed, and that is now a feature too!
Something I would like, however, is more kanji being added in general. Why stop at 60 levels? It would be extremely satisfying to end your journey here knowing that you have covered all of the missing F5 2500 Kanji, JLPT N1, and Jouyou Kanji! There’s probably diminishing returns after level 60 where other forms of study would be more effective, or some other reason why they aren’t included, but I can’t say I don’t want it!
Yes, absolutely. Ideally there should be a mechanism for announcing changes that will impact API and any integrations/customizations to the community that maintains those 3rd party add-ons and customizations, with details of the changes, well in advance. I had presumed that they had done this (as I do not participate in that community I do not follow any such forums or would be on such email lists) . If not, that is a pretty big oversight on the part of WK. I have worked on several very large commercial applications and platforms and announcing such changes to our customer base and system integrators was a standard part of our product management process.
There is a difference between “That is a third party extension written by someone else and we are not responsible for providing support to the end users of that extension, please contact the developer of the extension” and “our platform does allow extension”. From what I have seen, I have seen a lot of the first case and I have also seen quite a few threads where the WK devs have answered questions to the developers of the scripts about the API.
I was making no assertion about the quality of the design or implementation of the API (I cannot as I am not a user of it), just that they do provide an API.
The number of user scripts and mobile platform apps that exist and work and have been used by lots of end users, would seem to indicate that the API is to a good extent functional and usable. Of course, when the API changes, that may require changes to the scripts. There are decent ways of ensuring a coordinated approach to this, not sure how good WK is at that part of the process - again not a script developer so no first hand experience but from what I have seen probably not as good as they could or should be.
Granted, in the case of the current updates it does not appear to be an issue with API, but with the page design and layout. That is a much more finicky beast to deal with.
For sure - I’m not saying they provide absolutely no help to script authors, I’m grateful that they occasionally do. But they do also remind us script authors that they provide no support for the scripts and that, as seen today, anything can change at any time with absolutely no warning or preparation time, breaking the scripts.
They can’t prevent third party scripts (nor can any website), so they just provide very basic answers occasionally but nothing else. I appreciate what they do do - but they’re a very very very long way from providing any meaningful support for scripts.
And on top of that they go around breaking the public API
That’s precisely why they should be options that are off by default but can be turned on (and back off again) by the user in settings. That way people can still choose whether to use them or not rather than just having them shoved on them, and the people who do use them don’t have to worry about them breaking… sometimes permanently because a script isn’t maintained. Of course, the biggest QOL things (a.k.a. what people want WK to add natively) usually are, if not by the original creator then by someone else who took over for them, but that doesn’t mean it’s not still a potential concern.
But that’s probably not gonna happen with anything WK adds, seeing as their attitude is very “my way or the highway.” I’m very glad I’ve been using WK solely through Tsurukame for at least a year now, as I’d hate not being able to see how many total lessons I have unlocked without having to go digging and hope I didn’t miscount, but that’s what I’d have to do if I used the website because WK made the executive decision that it’s better for every single user to only be able to see a small portion of their unlocked lessons each day, when in reality that’s only the case for one group of users.
That is a pretty standard statement for any commercial application or platform. A company cannot just halt innovation and evolution of their entire business because “someone wrote an extension/integration and if we make any of the changes we need to make to evolve the product it will break that script”. They can make sure that they let folks know (presuming they know who they are and how to contact them) and provide details of the changes and a decent amount of advance notice.
I spent considerable time in a system integrator and end customer facing role dealing with integrations/scripts/customizations. My team designed, implemented and delivered this for customers that paid us to do so, and provided support to customers that wanted to do it themselves. That support was at the level of answering specific technical questions, but not to the extent of effectively designing and writing it for them. There was always a disclaimer that in the future the product could evolve in a manner that could render any customization obsolete.
