This isn’t a criticism of you at all, but then seems you’ve picked a tool for study that doesn’t match your needs. Why not just pick a tool better suited to how you want to learn? It seems you’d be better served by something like Anki where you can entirely control your own pace.
Unfortunately, WK isn’t going to be the optimal tool that works for everyone. Rather than expecting them to rewrite the way their system works for a minority of speed learners, you’re probably best off saving your money and using a different system.
A parallel to this would be grammar resources. Some people love Genki or Tae Kim or Cure Dolly, etc. and some don’t. We all learn differently so there’s no point in spending your time fighting against a tool when that time could be better spent advancing in your learning.
This is really unfortunate and honestly seems like a blatant business strategy.
I’m not sure how to take this. Businesses are supposed to have a concrete strategy to stay in business so calling out a business for having one is confusing. There’s also the concept of supply and demand. The prices are set based on what people believe the value of the service is. If the price of that service is too high, it loses demand. People leave and the price goes down in order to maintain demand. That being said, using a different service that fits your needs better is the most effective move here.
I mean I don’t see how WaniKani is gatekeeping you from studying the later levels if you want to already. You have access to the later items just by browsing future levels in WaniKani right now. You could even study all 2136 Joyo Kanji today in one sitting if you don’t want gatekeeping to get in your way!
Or to put it in other words, this gatekeeping is part of what people on this site are paying for, I believe. To let WK drip feed them Kanji at a reasonable pace, so they don’t get overwhelmed.
The business strategy argument is strange. I mean, I get it, you probably think from an MMO or other “Game as a Service” type perspective, where they controll your pace to keep you signed up longer and essentially using various tricks to get you “addicted” to that product.
But this isn’t the same. This just tries to match the speed of the average person, so they can study kanji efficiently while going about their lives and not try to keep you in the system for as many hours as possible in the day.
Also, usually the better business strategy would be to force you to fail and burn. Thats what all those “quick diets” do, for instance. Instead of teaching you how to properly plan your meals and find a balanced diet that brings you to your weight goals over a long period - and is possible to stick to past that - they give you some extrem programs with quick results that are build so that you crash and burn. Then they can sell you the next silly thing a year or two later, since you are probably more overweight since when you started, you really need it now after all.
And despite this we all still pay for it. Almost everyone here knows of anki and heisig, which will let you cram as much as your heart’s desire.
And I apologize for how that last sentence sounded. I didn’t mean to imply that they don’t care about money at all because obviously they’re a business. But the point I’m trying to make is that WK isn’t some get rich quick scheme for them, scamming dumb Japanese learners. They care about the product they’re making, and (while everyone has a different experience) many people have succeeded with WK where other methods fall short. They can’t be charging that absurd a price if they’re still able to compete with cheaper options.
There’s a limit to the credits you can take? That’s outrageous. They must be doing it to make sure you have to spend more money than you otherwise would. If I want to take 4 years of school in one semester, I should be able to.
Your sarcasm is lost on the fact that there are many people actively trying to change the university format for the exact reason that they have become money hungry corporations.
I think you all seem to be missing my point, I never called it a pyramid scheme or some kind of scam, I simply pointed out the fact that I’ve gotten to a point where the business model is blatantly showing.
I think this argument is silly, if I can’t add future items to the queue then I’m not studying them using the WaniKani SRS system, which is why we’re all here isn’t it? Adding those items to Memrise or Anki is just as silly an argument. Obviously I’m here for the system, but let’s look at Memrise. It’s 100% free and interestingly enough they don’t feel the need to prevent me from studying more than a set amount every week.
I think this is the fairest point I’ve read. Don’t forget that I have and am continuing to pay for it, I said in my post that I appreciate the service, I just wish that the gatekeeping wasn’t so blatant at times. If I could get through the system in half the time I think that would be great.
I’m not incorrect, you’ve misread my post. I’m currently on level 16, 28 out of 33 kanji are unlocked in the first set, which is 84.84% of the levels kanji, I only have to guru one of the remaining 5 kanji to unlock the next level. Would it really be that much of a difference if I just learned those remaining 5 kanji now?
yes, thank you this is basically what I’m saying. If the kanji were evenly split I would feel much better about it. I don’t feel that the current format is the best learning format because as it is I am cramming 28 kanji over 3 days, and then only learning 5 kanji for the rest of the week. As someone else pointed out, this does provide a buffer period to really get comfortable with the previous kanji, but I’m not convinced this is the most effective learning method.
If you aren’t learning more by immersing yourself more, then why do so many people suggest going to Japan as the best way of learning Japanese?
Im not sure what I said that was wrong, I’m on level 16 right now, the first set of kanji unlocked is 28 kanji, I only have to guru one out of the remaining 5 kanji in the second half of the week to move on. Would it really make a big difference if I learned those 5 kanji with the other 28?
As others have stated, the “gatekeeping” is part of the business model. It’s probably not to keep users on their subscription for longer, but more to have a more paced feed of content. After all, the number of users who get through WaniKani in a year or less is much lower than those here for longer, and those that are subscribed for longer/are levelling slower aren’t being slowed down by WaniKani at that point.
It sounds like you’d like a feature to help you go through the content faster but that’s just not how WaniKani is structured, and maybe it’d be nice for WaniKani to have some way for power users to get more out of it. But to frame it as a “blatant business strategy” (i.e. capitalistic greed) seems like a stretch. If this was something that was affecting a significant number of users the way its affecting you however, I’d be more open to this viewpoint.
Yes! Go siditious, fight the system! On a more serious note, the levelling system has been the same from level 2. Radicals → unlock remaining kanji. Why’d it take you to level 15 before you realised this?
Yeah. They really should allow us to get all the kanji and vocab as soon as we want, along with all the paticles they’ve been holding out on us. And while we’re on the subject, what’s with these long SRS intervals. Six months??, should be like six WEEKS. Then we can burn all these guys in no time, have this NEE-HONG-OH thing licked, and move on to the next language with all my awesome polyglot friends. Comprende vous?
The “protect you from yourself” thing is real. It’s very easy to start an SRS system, feel like it’s too slow, and then regret what you did later when it comes back to you 9x over. They made a business decision all right, but that decision was they lose more by people getting overwhelmed and dropping out than by “gatekeeping”.
That said, maybe there should be an option that appears eh, I’d say a month after you start burning items, a “Don’t tell me what to do I know what I’m doing” option that removes the set SRS wait times and lets you set your own.
But then are you really doing WaniKani? Why not just buy a dictionary and study as much or little as you want every day?
