Imagine if each lesson / review had a dedicated comment section built right in. You would be able to share thoughts, tips, better mnemonics, or even just vent your frustrations, all in one place.
Now you might be thinking, whats the point if we have these forums. Well, that’s what I wanted to discuss here.
While the forums are great, they aren’t integrated into the lessons. Nobody goes out of their way to search the forums during each lesson to look for a thread that may or may not be there. But, there is good chance they will skim through a readily available comment section underneath each lesson and perhaps glean some valuable info shared by others.
It would be great if this was native feature developed and provided by the Wanikani team, but I don’t think that will happen in the foreseeable future. I found this post that suggested something similar a while back, but nothing came of it. For that reason, I’m considering to make a plugin / userscript that does this, by integrating a third-party service like https://fastcomments.com/ or https://disqus.com.
But before all of that, I wanted to hear what the community thinks. I don’t know what percentage of wk users use scripts, but the amount using this script will be even less. Is this something worth pursuing?
It would nice if we can just use Discourse directly as the comment engine, and both community.wanikani.com and wanikani.com see the same thing, but perhaps, only WaniKani admins can do that.
Some counterpoints here, because I like to be fun at parties.
There are about 9000 lessons in wanikani. Having a separate comment section for each of them would make it very rare that you actually see a comment. Imo it’s better to create forum threads for the purposes you want for this comment section, so one for better mnemonics, one for venting, one for jokes. And I actually believe these exist already.
From a script programming standpoint, this would need a server someone’s either paying for or is running on their own to store the comments on. Given how this would need everyone to download the script and then comment frequently, I don’t think the results are worth it in the long run.
Some counterpoints here, because I like to be fun at parties.
Yay!
Having a separate comment section for each of them would make it very rare that you actually see a comment
I don’t really think that’s an issue. If enough wk users actually embraced the comment section, it would accumulate over time, especially on items that people often struggle with. The point isn’t necessarily to have an active comment section under each item, but rather a convenient place to leave a bit of knowledge so that someone (perhaps far) in the future stumbles upon it when they need it most.
this would need a server someone’s either paying for
Yes, although it should be relatively cheap. Going by the flexible pricing tier it would probably cost less than $5 a month. Still, money is money. It’s not worth spending if the community doesn’t embrace it.
Given how this would need everyone to download the script and then comment frequently, I don’t think the results are worth it in the long run.
Fair point. Although this post has only been up for about a day, the community hasn’t really shown any interest in it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I feel like this is something which could be extremely useful, but would have to be implemented by the devs, both to increase it’s use and because of the server managemnet/cost issues. As @QWee says - Duolingo has a feature like this and imo it turns an app that is barely useful to one which you can actually sometimes learn things from!
I could also see this as being very useful. A counterpoint to it would be that, in my case, I would get distracted by the comment section, and lose quite a bit of efficiency while doing my reviews. Perhaps it could be done by way of collapsing windows? If I don’t see it, I’ll be less likely to check it out unless I actually need it, or want to share my thoughts.
I see a lot of potential in this idea. Duolingo does the same, and it’s great when there’s anything not clear for you, or that the site didn’t explain well enough.
Examples would be, having a place to discuss the multiple ways to say “dad” that is linked directly to their vocabs. Or having a place to discuss the differences between two readings of the same vocab that actually mean different things, such as いえ and うち on the 家 vocab
Yes, it is a big difference between learning grammar and just learning new vocab.
But I still see the appeal with being able to share and partake in the struggles of others and how they overcame it. For instance, I regularly encounter new kanjis which are, to my current knowledge, very different from what I’ve learnt so far, thus easily recognized early on. Enter additional kanjis which are similar.
I’d happily read about the frustration of others having the same problem, who knows - it might even make a stronger impression and enhance my memorization.
Imagine users sharing custom picture interpretations of each Kanji or their own comments and tricks to memo them. I’d say it would be rather nifty!
