I can’t quite put MY finger on it, just a FEELING I ǝsoddns.
5 Likes
Hehe, I’m sure many share your sentiment. I don’t mind one way or the other, at least WK are updating their site to stay a little more competitive with other services out there on the market.
I’m just speaking in general that posts like the one in this topic are like screaming at a void, the masterplan eludes us all and always will. Some users have been trying to scream at the void for years and years as far as I’ve heard. The tone doesn’t even matter, it can be angry or pleading or suggesting… nevertheless, the overlords do as they please 
. And we’re left behind to mourn whatever is gone. Like the summary page. Or dear Jourm.
2 Likes
Oh, for sure. If the change is big enough, WK won’t do anything even if a lot of people get upset. Because the truth is, most people don’t use the forums, and even if they do it’s mostly to lurk. Most people don’t even stick with WK long term to level 50, because it’s a huge commitment for two years and not worth it for a lot of people. Anyone who joined after the scrapped the page won’t even know what they’re missing.
The team will change features if they’re quick fixes or tweaks, like the font issue of a few weeks back. But for anything that required a massive restructuring of the site like getting rid of session timeouts/sessions (and thus the summary page) isn’t going to be overhauled because people were incensed on the forums.
There’s no reason to get upset, but it’s worth making threads like these on the smaller changes, because WK may be able to add a “I don’t know this” shortcut.
2 Likes
Agreed! Especially bugs and such are important to report 
!
Alongside with an undo button, please 
But with this topic, you first have to sift through the outrage (or rather, first go to the comments) to see that the users want an “I don’t know” button, so the format of the original poster was definitely not super helpful for feature request. It was mostly just being upset at the void. Which is understandable, but fruitless.
1 Like
Are you saying the WK development doesn’t involve gathering and assessing customer feedback, and incorporating that feedback into their ongoing development?
[I can understand where such a feeling would come from, so I’m not exactly challenging you on that. Just looking for clarification, especially in comparison with my own position.]
For the sake of argument, let’s assume that they don’t. In that case, my complaint will provide yet another data point (when not responded to) that there are far deeper problems with WK’s development than just this one single incident in isolation.
Which would only further go to bolster my original overarching point: “that there are far deeper problems with WK’s development than just this one single incident in isolation.” And in particular that they need to get their act together, start doing basic things like beta testing before release, etc.
First off, showing my own (or – for anyone else with their own complaint(s) – showing their own) upset is a perfectly valid reason for making such a post in the first place.
But putting that aside, there are plenty of additional things such a post/complaint can ‘do’. For example:
- Communicate that upset to other users, paying customers, and potential customers.
- Highlighting the larger issue of WK development weaknesses to the same audience.
- Perhaps bringing these issues also to the attention of moderators and potentially to management, which could perhaps themselves influence future development practices.
- Inspire others to post about their own issues and frustrations. (While a single voice may not directly ‘change anything’, often times a chorus of voices amplify the situation to the point that it can no longer be ignored, which can eventually bring about significant change.)
- Indicate a potential weakness in business strategy (lack of agility on the UI front), exploitable by emerging and/or future competitors. Even if such competition does not end up displacing WK, the stirrings of it could (should, for a healthy company) spur WK to ‘wake up’ and take some action to preserve (at least) or improve (ideally) WK’s position in the market.
- Etc. I could go on. And I’m sure many other folks could also expound plenty of other beneficial things such posts/complaints can ‘do’, even in the face of an unresponsive development team.
2 Likes
I don’t care whether it’s aggressive or pissed off, it’s definitely not a tone I would use when trying to provide constructive feedback.
12 Likes
I’m saying that they’re a company with their own work processes and no, they don’t owe their customers anything, in theory. If people choose to become their paying customers, great. No? Also great. I feel like that’s the prevailing attitude.
Realistically, even outside of recent updates, that’s how it’s always been. The very system WK is based on goes counter-intuitively to other tools. It teaches things in an odd order based on a system WK came up with. Before that, there was that other tool they were marketing that just… died one day, because they were trying to work on another tool and just abandoned the old one. They have never been great with updating their customers on stuff. Whatever happens, just happens.
Another example is the “undo” feature. A lot of people have been requesting it and use scripts and alternative apps and tools to circumvent WK’s insistence on not having that feature. Does that show like they care about any customer feedback of workflow and such? Not really. They care about it as far as the tools work as they want them to work.
It’s their own product and they’re doing with it whatever they want to do with it 
.
My point was just that drinking some cold water and hydrating is a great idea… and whether there’s a really angry post of the forums or not, it’s not going to change things one way or the other as history has shown time and time again.
But instead, a topic requesting an “I don’t know” button would be cool. Feature requests sometimes work if they’re justifiable and polite (and easy to implement, and make sense to the overlords).
5 Likes
I think the reason is more likely this one:
1 Like
I think you need to calm the “F#@&” down. This is not how you leave feedback.
7 Likes
Emphasis is ‘being a jerk’?
If so, then umm 
… I guess, ‘to each their own’. I disagree, though.
If not, then how do you differentiate emphasis for the purpose of expressing emphasis?
Also, does passive-aggressiveness – for example, replying with a snark, but not actually directly answering the question – count as ‘being a jerk’? If not, why not?
1 Like
Watch this thread getting closed within 24 hours because of escalation! I’m definitely outta here.
2 Likes
There already is a topic focused on overriding this new ‘feature’ with an ‘I don’t know’ option: New Typo Protection Feature?
I wasn’t making a feature request. I was pointing out that:
I also called for a complete reversion of this change (to immediately solve the newly introduced UI issue) until it’s properly tested and its kinks worked out.
The other post did not bring up the fact that this is part of a trend, and a sign of deeper problems. Nor did it call for a reversion but for a workaround. Nothing wrong with the other thread at all. It just didn’t express these other things that I felt needed to be expressed.
1 Like
I don’t agree with the tone of the post but I think the complaint is very legit. I haven’t even done my reviews lately and I can imagine this pissing me off immensily when/if I decide to get back. WK please stop releasing features no-one ever asked for and focus on users’ requests.
7 Likes
This expresses all of my thoughts in one sentence. I’m really bad at communication lol
5 Likes
I’m not advocating that anyone needs to do things my way. Only defending against mischaracterizations of my intentions, attitude, feelings, and overall mindset.
Perhaps you don’t see the utility in expressing ‘pissed off’ emotions, without calling such expression as ‘being agressive’. I do.
1 Like
Just FYI I’m extremely bad at interpreting the feelings that people have, which is even harder when it comes to written communication. Either way, the tone was definitely something I don’t agree on.
3 Likes
Oh, awesome. I hope they implement it, then.
Exactly! 
You were just complaining at the void is what I was saying.
I don’t think it’s a ‘you’ problem here.
That would be a nice world to live in.
3 Likes
I don’t really have strong feelings on this because I’ve been using a script that lets you undo errors anyway to prevent typo failures. But yeah, I can see why this would really be annoying to people. Especially if it suddenly drops without any prior prompt and disrupts your habits. Which is how updates have been going the entire time I’ve been using Wanikani. 10 months or so.
I think the frustration people often feel isn’t helped by people who often jump in when they notice a change solely to mock the people frustrated and not good at putting that to words in an effective and calm way. If anything, those feel like the worst actors in most cases since they’re intentionally causing escalation with already frustrated people. Especially the ones putting up the condescending feeling XKCD comic.
To me, Wanikani is a means to an end more than anything. I have a LOT of qualms with a lot of things with it. But it gets the job done and once my one year is up I think I have enough of a base to spread out and fill what is missing beyond this point. (2 months left on an annual Paypal payment)
4 Likes
Well, if you want to get theoretical, then they actually do. In economic theory – not to mention in terms of actual, practical law – a contract is an agreement between two parties to codify an exchange of goods or services. Party A gives party B something, and party B gives party A something in exchange. A ‘contract’ where only party A gets something and party B gets nothing in return is not a valid contract (especially not under the law). So, in theory, since we’re paying customers (giving money), we are owed ‘something’ by WK. That’s the theory anyway.
But I’m not actually arguing about theory. Just pointing out that it’s not a good counter-argument to my concern that WK doesn’t pay sufficient attention to customer feedback – and, more generally, to their customer’s user-experience overall, regardless of feedback.
What about ‘inside’ of recent updates? That’s the context of my post. [Also, what you’re describing sounds like complacency to me.]
In the first paragraph, you seem to be saying that customer feedback in the forums won’t change anything. Yet in the second paragraph, you advocate for making feature requests (customer feedback) in the forums. That seems to me to be a contradiction in your assumptions.
My call for reversion is definitely justifiable, in more ways than one. In particular that this is update is an indication that there’s something fundamentally out-of-whack with their development process – like not doing basic things like releasing things in a beta format first.
Whether it’s politeness that matters? I was polite before, when the kana-only vocab was added and I expressed the same idea that they need to improve their development to avoid releasing changes without beta support or opt-out-ability:
That comment got 62 likes. Well received by the forum-goers, but ultimately – as is evident from this recent change – ignored by WK team, as they don’t even have a system to beta test even small changes like this recent one…
This time, I decided to be a bit harsher. Sometimes changing your approach to things can yield different/better results. Besides, there are additional reasons to take a harsher approach, as I’ve already listed off in comments above.
Nobody in the forums has been harmed by my tone in this post. Nobody at WK either. No one is obligated to read it if they don’t like it.
1 Like
it’s such a simple solution that is amazing they haven’t implemented it over the years. It’s ridiculous how much better this app could be if they put genuine effort into it.
3 Likes