People make mistakes, we’re all human, but the frequency of readings changing with WK has become rather wearing. Countless times I’ll answer a question in a review only for it to be rejected, because WK have at some point changed the meaning of a word. This isn’t a rare event.
I get it that mistakes must be corrected, but to have learnt something only to need to re-learn it isn’t great. I honestly wouldn’t mind so much if it was a rare thing, but it just isn’t.
The ideal solution for this is of course for the WK staff to get things right the first time, but failing that, add version history to kanji and vocab pages. Let me diff the changes. Sometimes WK will pop up and say “we recently changed the meaning of this”, but often not and I’m left wondering if I’m mis-remembering a word or if it really did change at some point.
I do completely agree with the diff part.
It would be great to be able to easily see what the past meanings/readings were.
I know I struggled a lot when the big change happened a long while back with many radical names, particularly because I’d see them used in the construction of another kanji and struggle to understand the mnemonic because my association with the radical was a different word.
I don’t know how to describe it besides it feeling like a weird form of inadvertent gaslighting.
Notion pages – update log – for each item could work, since WK is already using Notion. Just making links from info in review, and item pages. WK should figure how to display log contents on the website, and notifications, though.
I came to the discussion boards with the express purpose to rant about this! I just encountered it with 豪 - ‘luxurious’ which is now ‘exceptional’. It broke my flow!
I’ve only recently broken out of my 2000+ review hole to make progress again.
Hey everyone - we brought this issue back to the larger content team. I come with their message:
Thanks for this feedback! You shouldn’t be getting penalized for using old meanings, at least not for about 6 months after the changes.
In terms of how we handle meaning changes:
If the old meaning was incorrect → We move it to the warning list and give a pop-up message to say we changed the meaning recently. This is to teach the new meaning and to prevent penalizing learners who learned the old one. But after 6 months, we remove it from the warning list, so it just becomes incorrect.
If the old meaning is a bit off, too context-specific, or rare → We move it to the warning list and give a pop-up message to say we changed the meaning recently. After 6 months, we change the pop-up message to indicate that it’s close but not quite right, rare, etc. Then it stays in the warning list indefinitely, so learners aren’t penalized for trying it.
If the old meaning was acceptable, but we decided another meaning was better/more important to teach → We move it to the allow list. It’s no longer shown on the subject page, but you can still use it during reviews and it’ll be marked correct.
Changes to readings work in a similar way. We’ll give a pop-up for 6 months saying the main reading has changed & please check the subject page for more info.
Note: Typo forgiveness only works with visible meanings at the moment. So even if an old meaning is on the allow list, it’ll have to be submitted without any typos to be counted correct. And if the old meaning is on the warning list, the warning pop-up will only trigger if there are no typos.
So if you submit an old meaning without any typos, and if the meaning changes happened within the last 6 months, but it’s still being marked wrong without any warning message — that’s a mistake on our end. You can notify us and we’ll fix it. Basically, we don’t want you to get stuff wrong because of changes we made, and we want to give a 6-month grace period to learn the new meanings.
I hope this clears things up. If there’s any examples you find that don’t seem to fit into this list, please let us know!
Also, it doesn’t work very well with multiple alternative meanings and user synonyms. People can easily avoid answering the landmine for more than 6 months.
Transparency without “try answering” is important.
Thanks for the detailed response, but if 6 months was enough I wouldn’t keep crashing into this and I wouldn’t have made this thread.
Diffing the pages would be worth the engineering effort, even if it was just a notes section with the original reading.
Also, what happens with third party apps when the mothership changes a reading? (Such as Tsurukame on iOS). Will they insta-fail an answer the moment you change the source?
changing the primary meaning of kanji is SO DUMB I can’t believe it, it’s not even funny.
I’m rushing WK just to get it over with, I’m really bitter with how you guys handled this. @koichi seriously, WTF man?
This is particularly problematic when a kanji has been burnt, meaning there’s likely no way, other than blind chance, to know the the user has learnt the “wrong” meaning.
especially with how large my review pile has gotten, I would have no idea if any meanings have changed. is there a way for wanikani to still warn us with what changed, if we had never seen the warning?
a viewable history would go a long way. if only to be curious of how wanikani has been evolving the last thing i want after an extended leave is more difficulty. knowing that my flashcards may have swapped out from under me is a frustrating user experience
If we have a meaning change, could we move the word, regardless of learned status, back to the lessons? I’d rather relearn it fresh then being frustrated that I keep missing it because of the change. Half the time I’m not even aware of the change at all, and if my next review isn’t until after the grace period, I’m being marked wrong. And if it’s burnt I’ll have no idea it is a wrong meaning.
the last thing i want after an extended leave is more difficulty. knowing that my flashcards may have swapped out from under me is a frustrating user experience