Dear WaniKani team,
I have a sugestion for improving the platform’s experience. Instead of having the review icon stating how many words/kanji/radicals are there to be reviewed I would sugest another indicator.
It can be fustrating and intimidating to see a +100 review status for some people. As you advance in the levels it can be easy to miss some reviews on time and get drowned.
Perhaps some indicator which says: A few/Modorate/You have work to do get to it!
How about it?
After some disscusion on this thread I would like to add this:
I think the whole review system should be broken into smaller blocks. If someone didn’t do his reviews for 3 days he shouldn’t panic out and face +100 reviews. Maybe the whole review system should be modified to something more mild and gentle that gives you a way in regardless to your condition (late in doing your reviews for example). I think this might boost motivation and also prevent people from quiting!
(P.s I used to be at a more advanced level but restarted my acount)
How does not showing the numbers help you? It’s not like you will have to do 100+ reviews anyways, then freak out, then close your browser and hide under your desk?
It probably won’t prove useful by itself, as I had to modify the script myself.
I just made a greasy fork account, and I will upload the modified version (with proper credit, of course) as soon as I understand how it works…
You would probably will have to do all the reviews. But, I think the whole review system should be broken into samller blocks. If someone didn’t do there reviews for 3 days he shouldn’t panic out and face +100 reviews. Maybe the whole review system should be modified to something more mild and gentle that gives you a way in regardless to your condition (late in doing your reviews for example). I think this might boost motivation and also prevent people from quiting!
I’m not.
I just don’t have time to look it up right now.
I forgot the name, but that scripts prevents you from doing too many reviews, and reorder them so that you are always tested on the items you are currently learning first.
WK uses a simple SRS approach, I think the main problem is that people just can’t predict the consequences of their actions
If you do 50 lessons at once there will be peaks later as well. If you do it for 10 levels you will be hit by 200–300+ reviews, even if you don’t take a break. Take a week off and you collect several levels worth of reviews, and if you do them all at once it will happen again exactly the same.
You have to watch the pacing yourself, if you see 100 reviews as a lot, and you want to take a few days off, you should do 5 lessons per day or something. The lessons are the way to control your load.
Edit: some people may even like the motivation to do WK every day or be buried with reviews.
Personally, I thrive off of maximizing my lesson/review count, as, with my learning speed and needs, I feel listless and underwhelmed when I have less than 74 items. I intentionally delay my use of KaniWani until I have near 1200 reviews and then stack them intentionally.
The function of the SRS system is thus: how many reviews you have at once is determined by how many lessons you do at once and by how much you keep up with your reviews. The amount of time between each review is set and staggered in a way to optimize your ability to remember it. If a user is consistently going multiple days without reviews, the effectiveness of the SRS system is reduced
Vacation mode will halt your reviews if you need to take a few days away from WaniKani. While it seems wasteful at low levels, since it also slows your progress through WaniKani by delaying critical reviews, once you have all tiers of content (from Apprentice to Enlightened), using vacation mode when you are unable to review will help prevent the previous content from creeping back into your reviews with your new content as easily.
I do think it would be interesting to have an option to slow down/speed up the intervals between each tier, allowing for a more relaxed or more stressful work load at the preference of the user, but that also risks the integrity of the SRS system (those strong in short-term memory would have less long-term retention in shorter queue times and those using longer terms have would risk accuracy due to susceptibility of forgetting between reviews).
Like @acm2010 said, try managing your lesson consumption. My personal restriction for myself is to only complete 50+ lessons if I intend to finish the level within 8 days and to subtract 5 lessons from 50 for each subsequent day after 8 I intend to remain on the level. Of course, the lower your accuracy, the more divided your reviews will become, so, if you’re willing to endure the masochistic practice of forcing yourself through massive numbers of reviews, it’s likely your queue will natural split up between those words you remember well and those you don’t.
Your first suggestion would freak me out more because ‘A few’ and ‘Moderate’ are so vague, that seeing the actual number would then surprise me and stress me out even more. As for the second suggestion: what?! You seem to imply straight out tampering with the SRS for lazy people.
You don’t have to do all reviews at once. If you don’t wanna do 100+ reviews, then break it into smaller bits. There are scripts out there to do this (like my own Wrap-up button enhancement or a reordering script)
But the bottom line really is: instead of complaining, just do it. Making reviews more cushy or fluffy is not gonna help you learn Japanese. You just gotta put in the work. If you ignored your reviews for 3 days, like your example says, you gotta live with the consequences. Such is life.
Hi! it’s not about me… I can deal with the curent version. The reason I posted is that I am trying to make a better world for the rest. WaniKani is not aimed only at geeks (like myself) or computer geeks (writing or dealing with scripts, which is awsome!), it is for the wide public making Kanji friendly and accessiable! I thought that the normal offical vesrsion of WaniKani should be softer and more welcoming learners from all types.
