Thanks for explaining. It’s nice to see that my guess above based on the limited data that was available was correct!
This comes just in time — feeling seriously stressed out by seeing over a hundred available lessons and feeling compelled to do tons every day and then stumble over them cuz I didn’t learn them properly
1 Like
But you can just pick two groups of 5?
1 Like
Yes, I can do that many lessons, but I cannot pick that many lessons as my daily amount. If the app is going to incorperate a “daily number of lessons” into its UI the least they could do is let you customize it. But nope.
I’m aware that I can do fewer or more lessons if I want to, but the only way to do that is to manually bypass this new “feature” every time I open the app. So I just really, really do not see the value in it.
1 Like
The value is having a small chunk of lessons preselected for you instead of dumping it all on you in the main menu. It’s a psychological thing. As you can read in the thread, people find that it puts less pressure on them to see lower numbers.
It take literally seven clicks from the menu to start into a five-item lesson. That takes three seconds, max.
1 Like
Sure, but when you’ve built up a habit for 8 months straight, “just seven clicks twice a day every day” is a big adjustment. It’s not the end of the world or anything, I just hate that the whole driving system of the app (do radicals → do kanji → level up → do vocab) was randomly swapped out for a whole new system (click button → do 15 random lessons → don’t ask questions) with no way to opt out. It’s no small change and it’s weird that they spent so much time working on this while neglecting other parts of the app that people have been asking to be fixed for months/years.
1 Like
I completely agree with your thoughts. I am dedicated almost exclusively to learning japanese this year and my calculations yielded 30 new lessons per day, which I was doing before this update. Now I am at a loss, the advanced button showed up once and never again so I am waiting for a response from the team about that.
Well I think the new system is much better and I’ve been here for literal years. You say people like me could “just get user scripts”, so I think the same probably goes for you?
2 Likes
Indeed, I’ve already gotten (and made my own) scripts to deal with it, it’s just annoying that I need scripts just to restore what used to be the default. I wish there was a setting instead.
Or not even a setting - just a system that was well-thought-out and functioned for everyone instead of one that seems like it was thought up in 5 minutes with no real consideration for the users. I can think of 10 (more than that) different ways this could have been accomplished with a much simpler, cleaner, and more flexible result. I’m really confused why they chose to do it this way.
1 Like
Actually, I even sent Tofugu an email like 2 months ago laying out how I would approach this (and a few other) issues in a much more logical fashion, fitting within the technical limitations of WaniKani’s backend. I was told “we actually already have something in the works that addresses those same issues” and was directed to the Lesson Picker. I responded by saying it was a really poor solution and pointed out all its flaws. I was then ignored, and now 2 months later the Lesson Picker comes out officially and big surprise! It’s just as bad as I knew it would be 2 months ago, and doesn’t even address half the issues that people have been asking for solutions for for years. (Still no way to suspend or burn items?? I thought that’s been the primary complaint since day one.)
I was about to recommend WaniKani to a friend of mine who already knows a few hundred Kanji, and then I remembered that there’s no way to suspend or burn items and that he’d have to spend months working through a bunch of stuff he already knew in order to reach anything new. He was burning out on his Kanji studies and Wanikani probably would have been amazing for him, but the lack of this one tiny feature that could be implemented in a single evening is what turned him away. I have no clue why they refuse to address that after all this time. And then the disappearance of the summary page, the reviews API endpoint being disabled… Just a lot of weird decisions from leadership lately under the guise of “we’re working on it but we’re just a bit short on resources” meanwhile they keep dropping new “features” that nobody even asked for. It’s just… Strange.
2 Likes
Because in order to create something, anything, you need a creator with a certain vision and pov, and in order to execute it you need to make decisions. It’s kinda impossible to make a consistent product that caters to everyone. And this has been the most positively accepted major change I’ve seen here over the years, that’s a rarity.
3 Likes
…not really? When your entire product is literally an SRS (extremely well established and mature concept) that teaches one single topic, it’s very attainable to make a product that satisfies everyone. Sure, maybe it will make the settings menu a bit more cluttered with 10 new toggle switches and number sliders, but that’s a more than acceptable tradeoff. Just lock it behind an “enable advanced settings” checkbox to prevent new users from being overwhelmed and you’re done. I don’t know why some people act like this is rocket science. When your goal is so focused and attainable like WaniKani’s is (and it’s to their credit that they’ve designed such a system - it’s not easy to do) it’s really not hard to add a few tiny features here and there to make it universally loved.
It seems like Tofugu has a large aversion to options in general, and their approach seems to be “if we want to add a new feature we need to remove an old one first” and for some reason simply adding a toggle seems like such a foreign concept to them. And in a lot of ways that’s a good thing - it helps keep WaniKani simple, sleek, clean, and approachable… But there’s a balance there that they seem to have missed completely with this latest change and I’m just not sure why it had to be that way.
Changing widgets, rearranging text, adding new content, rearranging items, etc… Those are always more than welcome. But fundamentally changing the flow of the entire application after your whole concept from day one has been “build a habit around our system and incorperate it into your daily life” - that’s just too big of a change to dump on people out of nowhere unless there’s a good reason. And “it hides the big scary number from people who don’t want to see it” is just absolutely not a good reason at all.
I think simply locking the advanced settings behind an “enable advanced settings” checkbox, along with maybe even blocking them entirely (e.g. not even displaying them) until an account reaches a certain level (like level 10 or something) would be a great way to keep the app approachable to new users while still allowing old users to continue on with their hard-earned habits and not have them disrupted when things are changed. They could also add a route (something like /unblockadvancedsettingsprematurely/) with a confirmation button that allows users to access the advanced settings before level 10 if they want to. That way nobody’s limited in what they can do but new users still don’t have to see any clutter or feel overwhelmed. I’m not saying this is the best approach, I’m just trying to show that there are ways you can still make everyone happy while also adding, removing, and changing things without worry. It’s not as hard as some people make it seem, you just have to think outside the box a bit.
I’m never opposed to new features or changes whether they benefit me or not. But no way to opt out of major changes like this is quite annoying. Simply giving me a toggle would be great.
5 Likes
That’s called Anki, and guess what? I really don’t jell with it.
The Uniqueness of Wanikani is not the SRS part, this you can find a dime a dozen, it’s the mnemonics.
This is an example of what vision and pov materialize into. At the end of the day it’s a part of their brand. You can hate it, you can like it, you can be indifferent to it, It won’t change.
The changes they’ve made are consistent with their vision from the get go. The lesson picker allows users to do things their own way.
6 Likes
I really like the new features, WK team! Good job!
5 Likes
Anki does not teach one single topic? Not sure what you’re trying to imply there.
I also never mentioned “the uniqueness of WaniKani.” No clue what you’re trying to imply with that either.
I also never said the changes weren’t consistent with their vision. I asked for the option to opt-out. That’s it. I’m not really sure what you’re trying to say. You’re not really making any points, you’re just picking out tiny out-of-context quotes from my posts and replying to them with unrelated things.
3 Likes
Makes sense. I’ve been experimenting with different ways to pace myself, with mixed results. @simias ‘s method of picking 10 vocabs a day and just ignoring the pile is interesting. I wonder if it makes it easier to remember the vocabs that use irregular pronunciation?
Good job on the new update! It’s only been a few days, but it helped me pick up the slack with the reviews.
4 Likes
Coming from a person that came back to WK after a few years and after resetting my level - this feature is awesome! 
I’m only using smartphone and simple app called Kakumei (so script-less) and this makes my life so much easier!
I love picking my own lessons and number of lessons.
Very helpful because:
-
I already know a lot of those lessons, I choose easy ones when busy and forgotten ones when have time.
-
I spend extra time on examples, so I choose more complicated vocab, when I have more time.
-
I stay motivated, because I don’t see that total number of lessons that often.
8 Likes
I don’t know if it makes it easier but in general I always recommend not dwelling on your leeches or trying at all costs to perfect the existing items before moving on. There’s a “critical mass” effect to language learning where new knowledge reinforces what’s already here. Once you practice with real Japanese content all that elementary stuff will come back constantly anyway, you’ll always have an opportunity to fix your mistakes later.
If I see that I really fail to remember a certain reading even after trying for days, I use an undo-script to pass it anyway and then reconsider later. Sometimes I get my leeches all the way to enlightened that way, and then a few months later I get an opportunity to reconsider and try again when the burn review comes.
The objective for me with a tool like WaniKani is to get as fast as possible to a level where I can actually meaningfully engage with native content and learn from that instead.
So Quantity > Quality. Knowing 2000 kanji “okay-ish” always beats knowing 500 perfectly well. I have a ton of burned items I’ve already forgotten. I’ll get the opportunity to revisit them when I encounter them in the wild…
8 Likes
Thanks a lot, it looks way better now! 
1 Like