Rather than saying ‘I’m guessing that’ and then offering a, though not necessarily incorrect, fairly base level explanation of something, I feel like there is opportunity here to teach this phenomenon in a bit more detail. There are a great number of verbs which can be written using different kanji to give them nuance, why not dive into that a little bit — maybe give a bit more of a definite explanation? I know the goal of this platform isn’t to do much more than help drill kanji and vocab, but I think giving people this sort of information would probably help with that as well.
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Yeah, sometimes you need to sit on them before they’ll do any actual etymological research. The page on 交番 used to say something along the lines of “why do 交 and 番 combined mean “police box”? Who knows? It shall be a mystery for the ages”
Might be worth doing the research yourself and e-mailing it to hello@wanikani.com 
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I doubt it would have much utility outside a very small handful of curious learners, but I would love if they had a dedicated tab on each word that, even if not filled when no noteworthy info, had etyomology notes. Being able to tie history to each term would also serve as a great mnemonic- though I can understand 100% why WK devs wouldn’t want to type out thousands of mini history lessons on top of what’s already offered.
For as much as I’d appreciate if they filled in gaps a little more (like in the pictured example), on the other hand though I can admire the quaint and personable feel they have going with their more casual explanations too. Feels a little less textbook-y if that makes sense. Maybe just a me thing but both sides of the coin here have their value.
Great suggestion and I’m glad there’s an audience for rich language culture being explored fully. Love it.
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