Wanikani asks for meaning, which I type in japanese

WaniKani Feedback
#21

We’re totally happy to help! I don’t think it’s that your experience is not so interesting - it’s just that with the hindsight we have being a few levels further on, most people’s ‘solution’ is going to be fairly simple rather than a radical change to WK, as most people find it not to be a problem.

Also… it doesn’t really matter what word they use. It just has to indicate the difference between asking for the reading and asking for the meaning. You could get into a discussion about language, linguistics, philosophy… but ultimately the word here is just used to make this distinction :blush:

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#22

This is very important! You should send them a message explaining the situation. I’m sure there are many like you to whom the WK experience is not the best as could be just because of a poor choice in colors and it should be taken into account. I mean, I don’t think they would change it right away but it would be good for them to be aware of this.

#23

OK, I have no clue what you mean @Belthazar by “it’s Koichi we’re talking about here” …:upside_down_face: This is insider-understanding?

Egad, I’m not “expecting” anyone to simply change everything based on a suggestion I’m writing up here (!).

I did expect a bit more uptake of the “yeah, hey, although that would be a bear to program, and most people seem fine without it, I could see that could be cool, and maybe helpful to some users” flavor.

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#24

Pretty much this @elispringer . WK is designed with the team’s perspective in mind. However, they’ve been helping creators personalize WK on their own way through the API key. Recently there was the release of the 2nd version to further contribute to extra-party scripts.

The problem is that your case is so niche that no one had the interest of creating a script to solve it. Everyone goes by the choice (a).

Koichi is one of the co-founders of WaniKani.

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#25

I think it’s just that we know it’s unlikely to happen so we’re trying to offer you helpful alternatives / reassurance :stuck_out_tongue:

Also to add to what jpr said, there may be some notoriety surrounding another of Koichi’s products and its release date, hence Belthazar’s comment…

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#26

But maybe peopple don’t think it could be cool and they don’t think it could be useful to others. Someone disagreeing with your opinion doesn’t mean they think it’s not valid.

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#27

Thanks @Radish8.
Everyone, I know that talking about what would be better, in any complex program, is not immediate-gratification stuff.

I meant to offer an idea in the long-term spirit of feedback.

I’m not likely to put time into doing so in the future. Instead, I’ll simply explain where I’m struggling, and ask others how they handle similar challenges, since people have been really friendly in that regard.

#28

I think the overall feeling is that most people quickly figure out how to distinguish what WaniKani is asking for. People seem to notice different things: some actually reading the words “meaning/reading”, some noticing the colors (black/white), and others just noticing how their text comes out (romaji/ひらがな). Finding a solution that would work for everyone isn’t quite possible, and changing the system to suit one niche group might throw off everyone who’s already figured out their own way to adapt.

3 Likes
#29

I’m out of likes but I totally second this.

(also @timmknopf , it’s called “colour blindness” in English, just in case you’re interested to know ^^)

#30

@Coyoteclaw11 Yeah, I think the biggest obstacle to doing anything radically different is what you say: people have adapted, and any re-arrangement of the interface would really mess with established habits. So at best, I’d be thinking about what I’d do if I could design an optional plug-in.

But I should keep my day-job! :wink:

#31

@Radish8 Oh I’ve stumbled into complexities that are not at all on my radar. Ok…

#32

They are always welcome, but I feel like in this particular case It’s pretty much a dead end. After all there are several cues that hints you if It’s supposed to be the meaning or the reading of the word, I promise you that you will see no issues with this after you have used the service for a while. I think the reason people are answering the way they do is because they can’t see the issue in the first place.

#33

If I’m understanding you correctly the English term is “color blindness”

#34

I don’t think you should feel that you shouldn’t give feedback. But if you post a thread about it in the forum feedback section, people are going to comment on it, so you just have to be prepared for that (and people will suggest workarounds if they exist - this application has a strong 3rd-party script community, so it’s generally considered that if a script will do the job for you, job’s a good 'un!).

#35

@dianarz, to be clear, I didn’t expect everyone to say my idea is cool or even that this issue is interesting!

Of course people disagree. What surprised me was that there was not any person (at least at the beginning) whose response wasn’t a form of “get used to it/adapt to it/it’s not a problem for me/you’re being too perfectionistic.”

#36

It seems that this is the kind of thing that a script could be great for: rather than a wholesale abuse-inviting “ignore” button, I’d love to have a script that can substitute 英語 where wanikani puts “meaning” … and make a friendly “oops” bounce when the input is exactly the romaji version of the Japanese word whose English translation is sought. I would totally be into figuring out how to write such a script, except of course, life duties take priority… And actually learning Japanese!

#37

Thanks for your sympathy. I didn’t want to write ‘color blindness’ because I am not color blind I only can’t see red (e.g. I can’t see the difference between blue and purple because I don’t see the red in there and same for every other color).

Changing the colors anyway would not help much probably. Because I am just not ‘thinking that way’. You can’t depend on colors if most of the time you are wrong :joy: (e.g. the red in traffic lights is absolutely not a ‘signal’ for me I am just looking at the position of the light).

Also there are many other kinds of this so you would need a option to change it depending on your form of the problem. Like in games. But again thank you very much!

btw. if you want to know how the world looks for me:

900px-RGFruits.jpg866×1154 261 KB

900px-TCFruits.jpg866×1154 269 KB

I can absolutely see no difference :slight_smile:

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#38

I agree that a bounce when you type the exact romaji equivalent would be great (though as I said, you’ll definitely find you stop making this mistake quite quickly) - if you don’t have time yourself then you’ll just have to hope that somebody makes it for you!

1 Like
#39

But there are certain colour combinations which can be distinguished by most people with colour blindness, right? And you could at least make sure that it caters to those with the most common types, like red-green. It’s not like they have to come up with many distinguishable colours!

#40

Could be yes, I am also not an expert on this topic. But for most games I know there are like 3-4 combinations which seems to solve the problem for everyone!