Personally I would find that approach more confusing. If “a ke ru” is the reading for the Kanji 明, then is 明ける “ a ke ru ke ru”? I thought (perhaps mistakenly) that in the Kanji readings in the dictionary that the reading (the sound/pronunciation) of the Kanji itself was the part before the period and the hiragana after the period was showing the cases where, if it is followed by that hiragana then the part before the period is always the reading that is used in that case.
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Note the point: “a.keru”, it marks the boundary between what is “under the kanji”, and what is trailing kana.
(Other countries mmonly used way is “a(keru)”, but it is one more keystroke)
That approach (reading based on real words) could be expanded to things like 蜘. Yes, it has an ONyomi of チ (just like 知, 痴, etc); but in practice you will see it only in the word くも. In such context, it would be wrong to say that 蜘 has a reading of く; but it would be nice to answer something like “kumo.1” to say “it is the first kanji used in the word くも. And 蛛 would be “kumo.2”
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I recently started with WaniKani even though I already know some kanji. My hope was that it would help me with all the kun‘yomi I keep confusing. Frankly, it‘s (relatively) easy to learn to read any word that has okurigana, which essentially serves as a hint. It‘s all those kanji compounds that are confusing. I really wish WK would stick to the kun‘yomi reading for the kanji and teach the on‘yomi just as vocabulary. Trying to remember whether WK wants on‘yomi or kun‘yomi for this particular kanji is just another thing to have to remember. We don‘t need that.
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You might want to create a separate thread for this because it is outside the scope of the OP. The goal of the topic is to ensure kanji are taught with their onyomi reading not kunyomi as that is pretty much what a kanji is. There is a reason it is written as 漢字 meaning Chinese characters so etymologically they have the onyomi reading.
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Just briefly hopping back over to this thread because I had a similar thought, but as usual I’m trailing my betters in good ideas. 
Actually, my idea is a little more radical (pun regretted) - just treat kanji the same way as radicals, maybe introduce the common readings with them but don’t actually drill them. Just like the letter A in apple vs. acorn, a kanji’s reading is only definite in whatever context it’s being used in. (Alternately, if that’s too wild, it could go the MM route of accepting any of the published readings or even allow adding userdata like on meanings so we could pick whatever reading we wanted to allow, even if it wouldn’t let people block off the ones they don’t want).
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Still think people are making a mountain out of a molehill when it comes to relatively trivial changes. Then when they stop doing updates, they’ll complain about not having updates. Just learn all the readings over time from reading and listening?
A lot of it also comes off as looking for an excuse to quit. Don’t tap out just yet! At least get to 35!
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Thoughtful discussion about pedagogy and the value of consistency doesn’t sound like people looking for an excuse to quit. Calling it “looking for an excuse to quit” comes off as looking for an excuse to – I dunno – blow it off I guess?
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I browse a lot of places, and this is the only forum that always has people LOUDLY say how an obvious problem doesn’t affect them personally, therefore no one else should worry about it.
You see this on every single issue/improvement raised in this forum
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For what it’s worth, I add my voice to those asking for kanji to teach onyomi and vocabulary to teach kunyomi as appropriate.
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I studied on WaniKani for a couple of years and then came back after about 8 years to refresh my Japanese skills, since I hadn’t been practicing for a while. I was really surprised by the change in pronunciation for this character and even thought I had imagined the reading ‘Mei’ until I checked my old reading note.
I really don’t mind if new pronunciations are added to make learning easier, but I don’t think we should remove readings that are actually valid?
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Wholeheartedly agree with the OP. Or, as we recently learned in our course: とっても賛成です。
I am just wondering where you browse that does not have this problem. When, I see certain users have answered and I think “Oh no! reading this will not be fun.” I try not to answer questions where I don’t have direct relevant experience. And I’m a little hesitant to post a study log because I don’t want to get a bunch of advice that is not really given in the spirit of being helpful.
If you mean in the JP space, I’m very active on bunpros forums too. And when people post suggestions there you generally get a positive response with other people supporting it, or staff members coming in to give a say on it.
On the WK forums here, no matter how good or important the suggestion is to the person. You will ALWAYS get multiple people jump in and tell you ummm actually it doesnt affect me, so like, just get used to it and dont worry about it?
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Thank you. I tried bunpro and found it a little daunting, but have been meaning try it again because I desperately need some structured grammar study.
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I’m in a few forums/discord myself, but generally speaking most people will be understanding of variances. I’ve seen loads of friendly and accommodating people on the NativShark and MaruMori forums.
Occasionally there might be someone who’s like “well I didn’t need it so it’s invalid”, but they tend to be the exception rather than the norm. Most people accept that even their favorite language courses could use some feedback.
Just adding my voice to this. Terrible, terrible decision on WK’s part. Regretting getting lifetime for the ap considering how bad this move is. Don’t fix what isn’t broken
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Also wanted to +1, such a poor move
I get that in some cases it makes sense to teach the kun’yomi if that’s the reading you’ll encounter virtually always (I don’t need to learn some obscure on’yomi reading of “strawberry” just because, for instance), but clearly that’s not what’s going on here
This is especially bad when the kanji in question can also serve as a useful phonetic component, like 付 or 皆 etc. It would make so so so much more sense to teach the on’yomi
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It’s ばい, or まい. 
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Sat on this for a bit. Now that I’ve lived with it for a while I think the following is the best way: pink should be onyomi only. Always teach the onyomi first, even if it’s the rarer reading. Anything else isn’t systematic and is therefore more confusing.
(There should also be also be an option to learn Japanese radicals but that’s another matter).
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Hello,
I think having kun’yomi as primary reading for kanji can be beneficial during the learning process, as you don’t have to learn two readings back to back when you study the vocabulary word associated with the kanji. It does smooth things up a bit.
However, I think this only applies to certain words or groups of words and doesn’t represent the “normal“ behaviour of the kanji. It also stops being beneficial down the line, when the first few words you learned don’t matter anymore and you’re just left with inconsistent readings for the kanji.
I often get reviews of compound words where I cannot infer the reading because I only came across the on’yomi through another compound word I have forgotten. Not being able to consistently fall back to the kanji reading I learned is an issue in my opinion.
And there also are all the compound words not available on Wanikani. It’s probably safe to assume they use the on’yomi reading more often than not.
Overall, I think long-term consistency would be better than trying to balance on’yomi and kun’yomi depending on basic word uses
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