Thank you for this topic, super relevant for me. I’m at exactly this point- feeling that the WK focus on (often redundant/uncommon/irrelevant) vocab isn’t taking me where I want to go. Diminishing returns in usefulness and relevancy once basic kanji are learned (for reference from another thread- a graph of WK words by level:)
In reply to “email them directly” mentioned in thread, best of luck. Like many others, I tried several direct emails a million years ago (when Koichi and co were still around, haha) when I first bought lifetime, asking devs for an “opt out button” for any item, like so many other programs have. There’s always been huge resistance to allowing us to customize our study experience to what we want. Imagine basics like undo and opt out for those that want it. It would drastically improve the WK experience. Sigh!
Still love this community, but consistently saddened by WK’s execution and rigidity. Seriously looking for a new study platform. Thanks for the suggestion in this thread, I’ll definitely check out https://jpdb.io/
if u open the details of that deck its divided by volumes, not by seasons, like in manga. already finished the first volume and saw most of the deck cards
Oh that’s a simple problem to solve. Just use a couple of curse words here and there and mods will swoop in to moderate the contents for the prudes out there.
I would love for Wanikani to offer more vocab. Some readings practically never show in vocab on WK, but with a little digging on Bunpro’s vocab search I can typically find one I find useful and add it to my learning to better memorize the readings I keep on forgetting.
This becomes very noticeable when items come up for burning. I typically can burn the most common reading that repeats in vocab all the time, so the kun’yomi for kanji mostly presented with verb or adjectives, and the on’yomi for compound nouns, depending on which vocab was used more.
I think if a kun’yomi reading is only used for the single kanji word and nothing else, it doesn’t get this “I’ve seen this somewhere else” effect I get when looking at kanji items only.
I’m not advocating for really rare or complex words, I typically can find something on Bunpro’s vocab decks for the purpose. I do the same for words where the mnemonic really doesn’t hit home and I can’t think of a better one. For example kill/satsu - I looked up some common vocab words on Bunpro to reinforce it and added it to my SRS.
So, in general I would appreciate if the catalog of current vocab was put in review with focus on “did we actually reinforce the readings” for both on’yomi and kun’yomi. They don’t have to be totally balanced, but they can’t be completely onesided, either. And if a kanji is so common, that one of its readings will show up all the time while the other currently doesn’t in vocab on higher levels, some extra effort to balance the readings would be appreciated.
