I said I’d follow up with an update on the Summary Pages. Sorry for the delay!
This probably isn’t news to most people by now, but the background is that we’ve been making a lot of changes behind the scenes. The changes were necessary (our codebase was bringing our development speed to a crawl) but I know that for a lot of people, there were visible changes that were steps backwards. And taking out the Summary Pages was one of them.
On the positive side, you’ve all given us a lot of great information about how you used those Summary Pages, especially the post-reviews pages. We’ve been following along, and we’ve heard you loud and clear. We’re working on replacing the functions that people are missing, hopefully in a way that makes your post-reviews studying better than it was before.
And now that our codebase is more efficient, you’ll see more, and faster, progress on new features and updates.
Anyway, we’re working on it, and I’ll post again as soon as I have more details. Thanks again to everyone who’s given us feedback. And thanks for putting up with us.
Great news! Please consider to make item info more accessible aswell.
I really appreciated the old interface, for showing readings, meanings and kanji compositions
all at once. It is bothersome having to open each one individually.
I think it’s a good announcement. Sure there’s no schedule or deadline, but it completely clears the air regarding a lot of speculation about WK’s motives with removing the summary page and not listening to their userbase. Hopefully it should stop a lot of the debate that’s been happening, most of which eventually seem to reduce to childish argueing (which I have also admittedly partaken in)
Plus this and the other announcement give us all something to look forward to.
This is, unfortunately, going to sound scathing, but I’d rather be honest:
This “announcement” is no different than what WaniKani has been saying. It’s another placation post without any new content or information. It boils down to “we claim we’re working on it, still.” There has been no proof, and therefore, no trust.
This is great, but any details or roadmap (even without specific dates) would be appreciated. What features are you restoring? all of them? Specific ones? Adding new ones that were not there before?
I’d say “we’ve heard your feedback and we’re working to replace lost functionality” is pretty significantly different from “we made some changes and some stuff is gone, don’t worry about it”.
Some sort of release date or roadmap would be nice; then again, where software development is concerned, release dates and roadmaps are all false promises and speculative garbage anyway.
“Putting up with us” is pretty negative language - just excited to hear it’ll be making a return soon even if the new code base is easier to work with, new/re-implemented features can’t just pop up overnight. Thanks to the team for working this out for us!
Please, bring at least the choice to enable the old UI, the current one is unusable for a lot of people and according to some posts, the auto-scroll that now ocurrs due all the extra collapsable things in the item’s info is so annoying it has made people quit, made the desktop browser version not an option and has even caused “vertigo” on some users.
Unless the point of the new UI was slowing people down on purpose to force them to subscribe for longer, there is no reason to not give us the option to use the old one.
Thanks for understanding! I’m sorry I can’t give more details just yet, but I can confirm that we’re prioritizing it.
Koichi will be 100% on board with this!
To respond to comments about the Item Info UI, the intention with the update was to consolidate the UI across lesson quizzes, item pages, and reviews. We know we have work to do to make it better now that it’s consolidated, and we’re paying close attention to feedback on that too.
Thanks a lot for all the hard work of the WK team!
As users, it is easy to only focus on what may affect us negatively, and not see all the effort that was put in making WK into a better platform for our learning. Thank you for letting us know about your struggles and progress, and know that they are very much appreciated.
Great news! I definitely joined to chorus to say why it was such a bummer to lose the summary page, but i also understand how necessary invisible refactors can be, how much they suck, and what a bummer it is that the hardest (and often most technically satisfying) work in software often goes unappreciated. I really appreciate yall listening and trying to work with suggestions from the peanut gallery, and also that youre not attempting to give like concrete dates or something silly like that. I look forward to seeing what yall are cooking! Hopefully that new framework is everything yall want it to do for you and not just a new pain in the ass.
This is exactly why I cancelled my membership, motion sickness and all. I still check back in the community every now and then to see if there’s any updates because I did like WK a lot and would be willing to re-subscribe, but the UI is genuinely miserable experience.
I hadn’t seen anyone else mention the vertigo or sickness yet besides this post so it’s reassuring to know I’m not alone.
even if the new code base is easier to work with, new/re-implemented features can’t just pop up overnight. Thanks to the team for working this out for us!