Tbh I think this seems a bit pedantic. Doing your lessons is only number one because you can’t have reviews without them. I think your point can just be fixed by replacing “them” in number 3 with “your reviews.”
It’s a fair cop. It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve been accused of this. 
That’s a reasonable opinion, but I disagree. I’ve seen many posts on the forums of people continuing to do all their lessons as soon as they become available, even after they begin to struggle. (“I want to go faster” is also a common common, but it’s not because they aren’t doing lessons!)
As I mentioned in the first point, this is a subtle point, but I believe many are mislead from the beginning into thinking they should always do their lessons first, and as the highest priority, then never consider the point again. Your suggested change would be unlikely affect such user’s behavior. Would they start to do reviews first or prioritize them over lessons?
I’ve trained a lot of people on a lot of things for many years. I know the power of documenting short, simple, memorable rules, especially on the first page of training material. (The Spiderman admonition comes to mind.)
Every word matters, and so does the ordering. One rule is better than two rules is better than three. We really have just two unique rules, but if we were to reduce the rules to just one, would it be “DO YOUR REVIEWS” or “DO YOUR LESSONS”?
As I tried to explain above, I don’t buy this argument at all.
Firstly, brand new users may not know what lessons or reviews even are.
Secondly, the UI clearly shows when you have no reviews available and it’s not like they can do anything wrong. Even brand new users will be familiar with common web UI idioms: it’s immediately obvious that the reviews button is disabled and that there are 0 available (only the lessons button is selectable). At worst they’ll ask themselves why they don’t have any reviews available, which might even prompt them to read more of the documentation.
Finally, documentation must balance new users vs. intermediate/advanced users. On the one hand, there will (hopefully) always be far more new users. It makes sense to prioritize them. On the other hand, intermediate/advanced users are FAR more likely to eventually read beyond the first paragraph or two.
I’d be willing to bet pretty good money that many users never get read further than the three rules. That’s why I think it’s important to make “DO YOUR REVIEWS” rule #1, and, less importantly, add a page that explains lessons and reviews in more detail (for users who do read further, but mostly to give advanced users something to link to when responding to new user’s questions on the the forum!).
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I guess I’m an exceptionally stupid user then 
lool
I do see your point though, I think users should get into the community aspect of things ASAP too tbh, having people with the same goal to chat to has made me stick around and try to get more serious.
Oh, heavens no! I’ve enjoyed all your posts and appreciate your thoughts on the matter.
I truly welcome the pushback, even I recognize I’m not always right! 
I do agree that the possibility of confusing a small number of day-1 users exists, but, to me, the cost of telling everyone to prioritize lessons far outweighs that confusion. I also think the confusion can be mitigated with the introductory email, for example.
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I think the importance of lessons is explained with the explanation of what an SRS system is, but I think you’re right, a lot of people won’t even read those bits, people just want to get into it and use it and work it out.
They could even go as far as for the first few days reminding users over and over to do their reviews. They do send emails out quite frequently, to be fair 
.
I agree with this. It’s what I was trying to explain in the bit about controlling your workload:
But this still argues for de-prioritizing lessons! If you’re accuracy is falling, it’s unwise to continue doing lessons.
Here’s the thing to consider though, are these people who complain just a vocal minority? I think it may be possible that most are able to follow through with wanikani as is, even without having thoroughly read the onboarding guide. If they have trouble, they can always just post their concerns on the forums here and we can offer suggestions.
I noticed you complaining about a certain user here who had trouble leveling up, neglecting their reviews, and then ulitmately feeling bold enough to offer advice, despite still being at a low level. I don’t think most people complaining about wanikani are that . . . self-centered.
I think the free levels are the best way one learns how to use wanikani. You can only hold someone’s hand so much through the language learning process.
Perhaps another small guide should be written when one makes it to maybe the painful levels, to explain how to handle the increasing workload, perhaps even starting at a lower level than painful? It doesn’t help that wanikani is marketed as “learn 2000 kanji in a year” either.
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I’m requesting two things:
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Reordering the rules, making “Do your reviews” rule number one.
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Adding another page to the onboarding series explaining lessons and reviews in more detail.
I’m honestly a little surprised that either is at all contentious. Which are are you arguing against?
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I’m pretty much in favor of this as written, good work.
That’s very hard to authoritatively refute or support, but we do know the dropoff rate for Wanikani is very high. There are a lot of possible reasons one might quit, though we could imagine among them there are some people who get burnt out from creating bad situations that this guide seeks to hopefully avoid in the first place. Someone coming to the forums to ask for help has already gotten into a situation bad enough that they’ve recognized it and they now have to fight their way back from it, y’know?
Very true, but all of this is about the somewhat unintuitive way SRS and the Wanikani system in general works for people new to it, not language learning.
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The forums only account for a fraction of all WK users, so everything to do with them will be in the minority, but I think the overall trends still hold for the WK user base as a whole.
I think that’s just an illustrative example. I’ve been on here since 2019 and the most common problem I see by far are people who get overwhelmed with reviews. I even have a copy/paste set of suggestions saved since it comes up so often.
While missing days is a pretty common cause, the main one is almost always doing all the lessons as soon as they come up and then being unable to keep up with the daily review load as the levels progress.
Aye, good point.
I would agree that the marketing paints a very optimistic view of what is possible. There are many examples of people who have completed WK in close to the absolute fastest time so it’s not false, but it’s definitely trying to sell the ideal rather than the reality.
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I’m not against your idea of prioritizing reviews. I honestly don’t have much else to add. You all made good points. Maybe wanikani can hold a survey to guage how people feel about the srs, as only a minority come to the forums after all.
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The point is, I don’t exactly agree with small batches; other than it is safe. (also, it isn’t well defined) I tried to contemplate how large a batch size is calculated - what is the best batch size.
I might be wrong, but I don’t think people finish WaniKani or their Kanji studies in 10 years, although 5 years or less may be possible.
I get what you are saying, but number one cannot fundamentally be possible, because when you start wanikani you have no reviews, and this screen is designed for people to read the moment they sign up.
By your level you have been around for a while (and well done!) so you may not remember what it was like on the day you joined. For me who started only two months ago, I remember very well creating an account, then looking at the screen and thinking, ‘What now?’ Ok I’ll read this thing. Do the lessons, do the reviews, wait, do more. Ok then.
Your number two point though on making another screen I think is good. There should be a new page or section for ‘What next’ for after you pass level 3. Doing all your lessons the moment they arrive works perfectly well for the first three levels.
For people that get to level 4 and commit to the program, a new page stressing reviews first, then lessons as you can handle them, would be good. I don’t disagree with you that there are plenty of people who don’t get this, get overwhelmed and complain, but I don’t think editing the order of instructions on the first place is the place to address it.
I think keeping the onboarding pages as they are, in fine.
If I was in a meeting and we were discussing the problem, ‘when people join we tell them to do their lessons first, but this starts to be the wrong method after a while and they don’t realise this on their own’.
My suggestion would be, to add a new section in the knowledge guide after ‘Getting Started’ called ‘Continuing Your Journey’ or something, where they write all the stuff you are suggesting. I would put a link to this section in the Welcome to the full version of WaniKani! email so people that join for level 4 onwards will (maybe) read it then. That’s how I would do it.
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to be fair to wanikani, isn’t that most marketing though? Most just put “user results may vary”…
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New Eyes
For what it’s worth, it’s precisely because I understand the “new eyes problem”1 so well that I’m fighting this hard for the change.
In effect we are currently telling “day one” newbies that lessons are more important and that they should be performed before reviews. I’m sorry, but this is potentially dangerous and frankly wrong.
Habits are hard to break, especially habits you don’t even realize you’ve formed! I’d argue that by level 4 (or even day 2) it’s too late to expect users to change their habits (or start reading documentation).
This isn’t theoretical, it happens. Not to everyone, and not always for the same reason, but often enough that I believe the proposed change is worthwhile. FWIW, there are good number of very experienced people that liked this post and apparently agree with me.
Some things you may not fully appreciate yet:
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Lessons and reviews you perform today will affect your workload for months into the future. Unless you keep an eye on it2, you might not even realize that your actions today caused a huge number of reviews to all land on the same day several months from now.
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Enlightened items won’t begin to appear in your reviews until you’ve been here for at least six months or so. For me, this happened around level 17. Until this happens you can’t appreciate the difficulty of your “steady state” workload. Only a fraction of users even make it this far.
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Too much workload can quickly become too difficult a workload. If your accuracy falls too far and you start giving too many incorrect answers, it becomes a vicious circle that spirals out of control.
Handling day 1
The first login is an exception and should be treated as one. The knowledge guide (even the onboarding series) isn’t just for day 1 users, though, and the once-in-a-users-lifetime case of no scheduled reviews can be handled specially. (It’s also possible to burn everything, but those folks don’t need no stinkin’ documentation.)
I wrote Rule 1 as “Do your available reviews” (emphasis added, but otherwise exactly as I wrote in the top post). Yes, brand new users won’t have any available, possibly confusing them (despite my doubts).
But I’ve no objection to a footnote, aside, parenthetical comment or whatever that says something like:
If this is your first day here, you won’t have any reviews available until you complete some lessons. [linking to the lessons and reviews page]
Re: my level
Thanks, but I wouldn’t read too much into Wanikani levels.
There are users that started already knowing quite a bit about Japanese and SRSs.
There are level 60s that got there in an astonishingly short period of time and can read anything you throw at them.
There are several scary smart users in early levels that are on their second (or third!) time through after getting to level 60.
There are also (hopefully few) level 60s that used every trick in the book to get there and can’t really read or remember much at all.
Reaching level 40, level 60, or just sticking with Wanikani daily for a year or three is an accomplishment to be proud of, but it doesn’t necessarily mean much in the real world.
1 This is a form of “lies we tell children” as I discussed in my most popular reply on this forum.
2 I highly recommend installing the Wanikani Ultimate Timeline user script, and configuring it to show the next 120 days summarized by SRS level. It can be elucidating.
Edit: I rewrote the admonition that follows the three rules in the OP. Hopefully, this satisfies the concerns about day 1.
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While Kanji studies can indeed take decades, I’d estimate most people who finish WK do it in 2-3 years on average.
Edit: And we do have some stats to support that: WK general stats - #22 by bluesun212
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I am very wrong about insisting people to reach level 60; though, people should find their own way to study Kanji (to promote reading and literacy), imo.
In fact, dropping WaniKani is also an option, especially after like lv 30; but getting overwhelmed shouldn’t be the reason.
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I’m unsure of your native language, but “encouraging” something positive is rarely wrong. 
“Insisting,” “demanding,” or other words would be wrong, but “encouraging” is exactly right.
I couldn’t agree more strongly about finding your own way and deciding your own destination. Level 60 or level 30 are arbitrary “destinations”. Finishing the Wanikani levels is a significant accomplishment, and one to be proud of, but learning to read any fixed number of kanji is only a beginning. Learning a language never ends.
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Actually, I partially disagree about this. Learning languages should have tangible milestones. The only reason that it never ends, is that I can always go further. Or I am too slow or too dull, to reach such milestones in reasonable time.
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There is a limit to the amount that it can be measured though - you can’t say “I became fluent in Japanese this morning!”
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