Hi there,
It’s the first time for me using an SrS learning method and I have some question about it, I find the review spawn very very long after the master “rank” of a vocab and usually have forgotten about it so I wonder if I should from time to time go and check the vocab between reviews or if it’s “cheating” and defeat the purpose of srs method
Hello and welcome to the forum!
That would definitely defeat the purpose of the SRS. The whole point of SRS is to get it wrong when you don’t know, because that means your knowledge of the word is insufficient to last that gap in time. Any item that you know well enough will still be in your memory.
SRS spacings are scientifically geared towards testing at the very end of your retention span. It tries to ensure that only the properly cemented concepts continue to longer time intervals, while the weaker items fall back to lower intervals. That way the weak items will be reviewed more often and hopefully get committed properly to longer term memory that time.
I often feel like extra practice is more beneficial when a word is in low SRS. The long intervals are the proper tests to see if it is sticking in the long term, and I think you would do yourself a disservice to muck with that.
There are things like the self-study quiz with the additional filters that can test leeches, or items that you got wrong on your most recent reviews. That can also be beneficial.
If you can’t remember during the Master review, the word is not cemented in a way that you can meaningfully retain over a long time, so it should get more exposure at that point. ^^
You shouldn’t check the vocab between reviews in order to better remember it for WaniKani, but it’s expected that you will encounter this vocab in whatever media you’re consuming, or textbooks you’re using.
That, by itself, is practice that is necessary for learning, instead of just seeing a vocab once every 2 months or so.
Of course, if you encounter a word in the wild, and don’t exactly remember what it means, you can always check it on a dictionary, and that’ll help you cement it in your memory.
It is to be said that there are no “One size fits all” SRS-intervals though. You’re supposed to be somewhere between 90% to 95% answered correctly, if your retention is significantly higher/lower than that the SRS intervals are not ideal for you (or the content/learning of the cards needs to be reworked).
True. ^^ “[…] attempts to test at the end of your retention span” would have been more exhaustive.
One thing to note: If you find that you are forgetting an item during reviews, you should take some time to re-read the lesson text and try to commit it again to memory. Next time it will come up, you’ll have a better grasp of it.
SRS would not be useful if you had to completely avoid seeing the material outside of the review system. The reason we use SRS is to cut down on the amount of excess reviewing of things that you won’t forget any time soon. So the worst that would happen if you do additional reviewing is that you waste some time reviewing things that you don’t need to.
Thanks all of you for your replies that helps a lot, gonna read more of this forum for more tips 
I don’t disagree with this but I think it’s important to point out that getting a lower score on reviews is not bad. I know for me I am constantly adding in new information which I usually get wrong the first few times. Add in leeches, life and other factors and the score is almost never near 90%.
TL;DR - Ideally 90-95% should be your correct percentage but different factors affect this and lower it. It does not mean you should stop SRS.
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