“That being said, the reading まいねん works as well. I don’t like this one as much as まいとし but it’s equally acceptable.”
What are the reasons for the above comment given in the reading explanation? Anyone know?
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Both readings can be used. The author of the reading explanation must prefer まいとし.
As far as I can tell maitoshi is just way more common.
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まいねん is going to sound more formal which is why まいとし is the preferable reading in most occasions. Just like how you can technically read 今年 as either こんねん or ことし, but again the latter is going to be preferable for the same reason.
This will be the general case for all words where there can be both a native Japanese reading and a Chinese-derived reading for the word. The latter will always be seen as more formal and possibly stuffy sounding.
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Thanks @anon54313967 that makes a lot more sense now, that it’s preferred due to formal / informal reasons. I just wasn’t getting that from the Koichi explanation, or that it generalised to other words as well. Thanks heaps! 
Yeah to be honest the one for 今年 is almost worse IMO:
With the first reading (the more common one), the こん of 今 is actually just こ. This gets shortened sometimes, so look out for it. Also, the 年 is the kun’yomi reading for some reason. It’s a total mystery why this is. Perhaps the ancient aliens know, but I do not. You’re going to have to remember this exception with that brain of yours and rely on the SRS to bestow this knowledge upon you.
The second reading, which is less common but still common enough, makes more sense. It is こんねん and just follows the jukugo patterns.
There’s no actual mystery here and there’s actual a pretty logical etymological explanation for the reading of the word, but unfortunately Koichi often fails to do any such basic research on the etymology of words. 交番 also used to suffer from this same nonsense explanation until it was later fixed based on the actual etymological derivation of the word.
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Literally just came across a similar thing with the 皮肉 explanation. Koichi’s all like “who knows! just learn it” (ok, I’m paraphrasing)… but I look it up and there’s a perfectly reasonable and memorable explanation… 
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To be fair to Koichi as well, sometimes etymologies of words can be shrouded by time or disputed, but too often when it’s not just a straightforward mashup of readings or meanings he does just shrug his shoulders and say it makes no sense when he could find at least some form of etymology for many of these words. 
Oh well…
Yeah I’m happy to let it slide - in the grand scheme of things it’s not the end of the world to look up some explanations if I’m interested
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Rather than not bothering to do research, I kinda get the sense that wanikani prefers to take the approach of ignoring etymology in favor of mnemonics and leaving you to learn the finer details yourself, but there definitely are some words where I feel like a brief explanation about usage or etymology would make things a lot clearer.
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I’m not stating all the explanations need deep dives into etymology, but these explanations that claim that things are random and make no sense “so just learn it” I think doesn’t serve users well and simply breeds confusion.
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