"That looks like a typo." No! I'm actually trying to FAIL the review!

[tenizey]

@wct

So, in theory, since we’re paying customers (giving money), we are owed ‘something’ by WK.

You are owed what you pay for, which is a product that teaches kanji, vocab and whatever else. Not how it teaches that, necessarily. In fact, if you pay for lifetime, they even say that it includes all the changes they want to make. So you do pay for a product, you just don’t pay for someone to maintain it, nor to listen to you. Only if they want to do it. Am I saying it’s a good attitude to have as a company to not listen to your users? No. I’m just saying that it’s the way some companies operate.

@wct

Also, what you’re describing sounds like complacency to me

Yes, yes it is. I’m not paying for the service anymore, nor do I use it, though . The forums are great, though. And free. I think my sarcasm is getting lost on you a lot, though

@wct

That seems to me to be a contradiction in your assumptions

sigh
Again, I said that angry-posting on the forum isn’t it. Requesting a fix might do something. At very rare instances requesting a feature also brings some change (scripts are faster, though). But throwing yourself around isn’t. There’s a big difference.

@wct

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.

But was it civil? Not really. Using F words isn’t super super civil. And it’s not really ‘harsh’, it’s just rude. But I get it that you were upset.

---

Anyway, this was entertaining for a while, but I shall go back to studying

[simias]

@wct

To my detractors: Don’t forget that this is a pattern in WK development releases. Releasing things without beta testing for user feedback. Remember the kana-only vocab release? Remember the summary page ‘stream-lining’?

I agree at least in part, but at this point I’d say “fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me”. This type of opinionated, “I know better than you so shut up” approach to developing the website is clearly the core mindset of the WaniKani staff, for better or worse.

If you don’t like it cut your losses and move on. Personally I also have many issues with this approach which is why I only ever interact with WaniKani through the Smouldering Durtles app these days.

WaniKani doesn’t care about wrecking your workflow without notice. That’s a fact. You deal with it or you use something else.

[wct]

@tenizey

@wct

So, in theory, since we’re paying customers (giving money), we are owed ‘something’ by WK.

You are owed what you pay for, which is a product that teaches kanji, vocab and whatever else. Not how it teaches that, necessarily.

Ah ah ahhh! You brought up ‘in theory’. I responded with theory. You’re slipping back into ‘practice’ with this response.

@tenizey

I think my sarcasm is getting lost on you a lot, though

Or I’m deliberately disregarding it.

@tenizey

But was it civil?

Did I claim it was ‘civil’? No, I claimed it was ‘harsh’, and justified being harsh in this particular instance.

Also: But was it uncivil? I don’t think it was. Just expressing frustration. (I thought we’re supposed to be expressing our emotions these days, instead of bottling them up! )

@tenizey

Using F words isn’t super super civil. And it’s not really ‘harsh’, it’s just rude.

Using actual swear words might be actually rude. What I did was no worse than you’ll find in Saturday morning comic strips in the newspaper. (Do newspapers still exist???)

@tenizey

Anyway, this was entertaining for a while, but I shall go back to studying

Escalation averted!

[tenizey]

@wct

Ah ah ahhh! You brought up ‘in theory’. I responded with theory. You’re slipping back into ‘practice’ with this response.

I think there’s some misunderstanding on your part. But if you really want to move it to less Japanese-related realm, here:
A bookstore offers books. Customers complain and want more fantasy books. The bookstore doesn’t care. They offer whatever books they want. Are they tell of a bookstore? No.
Let’s in theory add a subscription where you get 5 books for free on their online ebook reading service every month. You can pay 5 dollars to get access each month. Everyone’s complaining they want more fantasy. Still nothing. But they’re still paying~ let’s even make it so they keep adding random features nobody needs to their reader, but won’t offer a bookmark feature where the book deosn’t always reset to page 1 after you close your reader app… that everyone wants.
Are they not fulfilling what they’re offering? No, they are. You get 5 books. The quality isn’t assured by just you being a customer.

Again, not a great practice, because eventually customers get frustrated when their needs aren’t met, but if the bookstore doesn’t care… well, then it’s what @simias said.

I hope that’s a bit clearer as to how I meant it in theory.

@wct

Or I’m deliberately disregarding it.

This makes your responses even more hilarious.

@wct

What I did was no worse than you’ll find in Saturday morning comic strips in the newspaper. (Do newspapers still exist???)

There’s a newspaper emoji, so even if they don’t exist, we can ensure the next generations know what they are by virtue of virtual representation.

I keep worrying I’m posting on the polls by accident

[wct]

@tenizey

I think there’s some misunderstanding on your part.

Or yours. You had said:

@tenizey

I’m saying that they’re a company with their own work processes and no, they don’t owe their customers anything, in theory.

I responded that, in actual theory, they do owe their customers something, since contracts are always a two-way street.

If you didn’t mean ‘in theory’, you could have not written it.

In any case, I’m not arguing about ‘theory’, I’m arguing about the current, actual situation. Your diversion into ‘theory’ seems to me to be just a post-hoc rationalization for your (admitted) complacency. It does nothing to convince me that I should also be complacent, especially when the ‘theory’ you stated is not accurate theory.

At the end of the day, all I was doing there was refuting your claim that ‘in theory’, a company “[doesn’t] owe their customers anything.” In actual theory, they do. That’s all.

Whether WK itself does or doesn’t is stepping outside of ‘theory’ and into ‘application’ or ‘practice’, so is irrelevant to the discussion of what ‘theory’ dictates or doesn’t regarding theoretical companies and their theoretical obligations, or lack thereof, to their theoretical customers.

As a theoretical starting point, if a company-customer transaction exists, then said company does, indeed, owe their customer something in return for the customer’s payment. So, no, I don’t agree with the seeming foundation of your position of complacency.

In practical terms, maybe nothing comes of this post’s complaint. But there’s nothing ‘theoretically’ flawed in making it. And, again in practical terms, who knows?, maybe something will come of it. It’s not a theoretical impossibility either. So, even in practical terms, I don’t agree with your argument for not-even-trying.

[Ceuteum]

[tenizey]

@wct

I responded that, in actual theory, they do owe their customers something, since contracts are always a two-way street.

You’re arguing semantics. I love that for you. But what I said was that they don’t owe their customers anything (people who have already received the service and benefited from it as per contract that they made once the payment went through – they get a service, and they receive said service. What they don’t pay for is the inclusion of extra features or otherwise based on their desires). And you can get into practicalities, for instance, if a service owes maintenance and such. But here comes the definition of what you mean and what I mean. I love our circular discussion we can continue going in circles, but you seem to just read past whatever I’m writing.

@wct

So, no, I don’t agree with the seeming foundation of your position of complacency.

I just said that you’re not the first person who’s done it. There was, a really short while ago, an open letter to WK encompassing all of their history, way beyond what you’ve mentioned, and “harsh” in a polite sense… and it has been very fruitful, as you can tell. There has been way more constructive criticism posts posted in the past not including what encompasses your definition of ‘harsh’, but it’s not been addressed. And I highly doubt that using colourful language is going to make people up there more excited than they were before.

@wct

I don’t agree with your argument for not-even-trying.

I’ve never made the argument, I just painted a reality. Of course, if there will be a change, I’m sure plenty of people will welcome it.

@Ceuteum

FBEmCyeVQAETiet_2

I’m sorry, I’m not making it better. I just find it a little humourous, and I really should stop.

[Chiksea]

This isn’t a solution, but I use the Tsurukame app on iPhone so I get past this issue in two ways:

1. If I truly want to “skip” but come back because I’m trying to knock out my easiest reviews while multitasking, tired, etc there’s an actual skip option built in. The skipped term will come back up later in the same review cycle.
2. If I really don’t remember the word/phrase, I put in jibberish + anything that I know exists because it’s already in hiragana. For example: 考え方 is かんがえかた but if I forgot that, maybe I’d type ああえああ so it’s not angry at the missing え in the middle. 運ぶ becomes ああぶ because I know it at least wants me to acknowledge the ぶ.

[PuX]

normally something like this would be configurable. so the user could opt out.
so that’s what I would suggest, to add an on-off toggle for this in the settings.

[PuX]

an “I don’t know” button that inputs one of those options randomly?
is there some advantage vs just inputting the same value which is always wrong?

[anon6600565]

You’re not wrong and that’s generally been the response to most changes made for a long while now.

[Belthazar]

Listen, there’s an obvious solution here: just know all of the answers. That way you don’t need an “I don’t know” function.

(Personally, though, I don’t think I would use it even if it existed. If I don’t think I know an answer, I’d take my best guess, if said guess turns out to be correct, that means my intuition known more words than I thought I did.)

[Beyond_Sleepy]

@milila

WK please stop releasing features no-one ever asked for and focus on users’ requests.

I mean, someone might have actually requested this (there’s a userscript that does it) – if not on the forums then via email. In which case they’ve done exactly what you’re asking them to do, albeit in a fairly clumsy way.

I wonder how many WK users there are outside of the forums (prolly quite a few), and what the ratio of feedback is between email and forum posts

[shuly]

there’s nothing to worry about

えーと えーと

wasn’t it only 19 days for the summary page fix

MaruMori! @MinaCaesar
Renshuu
Anki

[polv]

Except that people don’t choose the value that is always wrong, but rather the value is easy to type, and supposedly mostly wrong.

The new typo prevention makes it impossible to use the same value for everything, making inconvenient to type.

Also in some cases, it’s not that mostly wrong. It’s right sometimes.

[NeoArcturus]

@wct I believe they removed it?

[wct]

Just checked: Yep, they did. Thank fricken goodness!

Sometimes when you scream at the void, the void actually listens, I guess.

[sirmarksalot]

You have to keep in mind that WK is a very small team, and a lot of these “best practices” are generally the things you expect at a big company with lots of people and infrastructure to make it easier. I do agree that a lot of the changes have been pretty hubristic, but even without that I still wouldn’t expect to see extensive usability studies and beta testing on every feature rollout.

I think it would definitely benefit the company to make a pass at understanding all the different common workflows and workarounds that people are taking, so that they can understand the impacts of proposed changes.

[wct]

@sirmarksalot

You have to keep in mind that WK is a very small team, and a lot of these “best practices” are generally the things you expect at a big company with lots of people and infrastructure to make it easier.

I disagree. I’m not talking about old-style software dev practices. I’m talking about things that even benefit single-developer teams, for example many free/open-source developers use simple best practices as a matter of course.

If they’ve got source control – and every software project, especially one that’s part of a business should have source control – then having an additional branch for ‘beta’ and ‘release’ is virtually free.

Most of the things I’m talking about can (and should) be automated, so that – once they are set up – they can be activated with the click of a button. Or, sometimes better, continuously automated. (I’m thinking of continuous-build / continuous-integration.)

It’s not a question of ‘is it practical or not?’, it’s a question of ‘do they actually do it or not?’.

Indeed, many of these practices save time, money, and resources. Yes, they require setup, and some knowledge of how to do them effectively, but once set up, they become invaluable.

But I’m not asking for the world here. I’m just asking for the basics. E.g. a beta branch. Simple opt-in/opt-out settings.

A good counter-example, which I already mentioned, is Bunpro. Revenue-wise, they are definitely no bigger than WaniKani. Yet their development process is much more mature. (And I’m not saying they’re perfect. They’re just noticeably better than WK’s dev process.)

If anyone can ‘afford’ to have a strong development process, it’s WaniKani. There’s really no excuse, IMHO.

[sirmarksalot]

I guess it comes down to a difference of what should be easy and practical vs. what actually is easy and practical. And also what you feel like you ought to be able to expect, vs. what you actually reasonably can expect. WK has been around for a while without really teching up, and as you’ve illustrated, the state of the art has moved on significantly. I’d imagine the situation there currently is high legacy, low technical maturity, and that’s a really hard spot to get out of.

End of the day none of us really knows what it’s like there, we’re all just projecting based on our own past experiences. I suspect I’ve been in more legacy shops and you have more green-field experience.