I think it is inferred - whilst not explicitly stating that it is global, I would expect that it would be a setting in the user account that acts as a feature toggle.
When disabled kana-only vocab would be removed from lessons and reviews - as opposed to an auto-burn, it would keep the state of the items so that if someone wanted to enable/re-enable in the future they can pick it up where they left off.
Let me put this into simple words: I came here to learn Kanji and not vocabularies. Those kana-only can be learned with a textbook or somewhere else easily and just cost unnecessary time. And to be straight: I think the amount of Kanji vocabs here is too much anyways - I would cut it down by 50% to the most useful words and leave the vocab learning to something more context-based.
I see the point of those who say “it’s only a few seconds, what do you care” and such. But let me paint you a picture.
I’ve been here a while (slow pace) and I have a JLPT N3 exam from last year (so I don’t benefit at all from having to ‘‘learn’’ あなた or こんにちは etc). I have a good system that works for me, keeping my apprentice items around 100. Today I was doing my lessons and I had to go through 20+ kana words I already know. I have put in “optout” as a user synonym for each one to go through them as fast as possible.
Now my apprentice number is around 116, but in reality, it is less, right? Since it is full of words I don’t want or need. Not sure how much, since I don’t remember the exact number of the kana crap I had to put in to my review list. Sure, it was 20 lessons now, but if they keep this forced kana stuff up and introduce the rest of the couple hundred they want, you can calculate how much time it will take, to go through them. Still think this is a minor annoyance, that can be done with in a few seconds? Sure, but multiply the few seconds by a few hundred, then count that for each review.
I am beyond frustrated, and even looking at the damn kanji at this point is just making me remember the mandatory kana words, the disappearance of the summary page and the nonchalant “we are thinking of maybe looking into the idea of working on it sometime when we have time likely, we think” responses from the WK team. I honestly loved this website, but now I wish there was another similar one and I could just go there instead.
I think there are a number of alternatives that people have mentioned over the course of the last couple months. Obviously probably none of them work exactly like WK and they will each have their pros and cons, and I understand that it’s upsetting to have to change one’s study routines - but this might be as good a time as any for a change, for the people who are unhappy.
Maybe this forum just needs a “master list of Kanji learning resources/methods” thread or something. Could be community wiki.
I really don’t understand wasting time on this (that is the devs) when there are still heaps of common vocab words that use Kanji we are already learning that could be added instead or they could finish off the Jouyou, which has been requested for years…
Yea, the amount that these vocabulary are inflating my lesson pile right now is getting annoying. I`m taking the JLPT in 3 weeks and I was trying to cram lessons a little and these are making my apprentice pile so high and wasting my time.
Dear Wanikani Team,
Time for the weekly “WTF are we having to deal with these non-kanji words forced on us again” message.
Just logged in and was forced to “learn” the extremely useful words それ and あれ. Conveniently they are both accepting “That” as an answer, again highlighting two incredibly poor learning results from this implementation:
Yours Truly,
Annoyed Lifetime member.
yah. typing in 日本語 is what I want from WK, not translation.