I tend to do my reviews quite quickly and end up accidentally typing something wrong sometimes. When I do this it shows a red down arrow and says apprentice. Some of these kanji/vocab are at master already. When I get this message, what exactly is happening? is the progress completely reset and I have to get a perfect streak? Or how exactly does progress work?
Guru and above, it goes down 2 SRS levels. Apprentice goes down 1 level. If you answer the same item wrong 3 or 4 times in the same session, it doubles the number of levels that it goes down.
https://www.wkstats.com has a lot of information, including current SRS levels. Just feed it your API key (it tells you how) and it will show you a lot of neat stuff. The Universal Timeline userscript also shows the levels, but if you search around on here youāll see some dire warnings to consider before using that.
There are 9 total SRS levels as @DerpiesDerp said above
If you get correct everything youāll eventually burn that item
But if you fail (meaning or reading) and the item is on apprentice, it will fall back 1 position
If you fail and the item is on guru1 or superior it will fall back 2 positions
So if you were going to master an item (i.e. it was in guru2 state) and fail it, the item falls back to āapprentice4ā
However, once an item has been Guruād, even if it falls back down to Apprentice, you can still keep progressing through WaniKaniās levels! You arenāt stuck at a level even if you make a mistake later on
Even better: by making mistakes, you will learn!
I love the system of WK because you are not āpunishedā for your mistakes. If you donāt know an item well enough, you will review it more often until you know it. In the end you will know all items (or at least 98% of themā¦ but thatās totally enough).
@Cancer : if you are anoyed by this little typos, there is something called āuserscriptsā. These little extensions do extend the funktions of WaniKani.
For example you can show which item will come when in your review pile with the Ultimate Timline Script
Or for your purpose I can advice Double Check. It has many funktions, e.g. to delete a given answer and retype it. ( Of course you should not abuse it by just change everything in the right answer. )
By the way, if you want to know specifically which of the four Apprentice levels or two Guru levels an item leveled up or down to, check out this script.