How in Viet’s name are “write” and “write down” meaningfully different.
I guess write might be interpreted as “the general act of writing” whereas write down means “record”, but it’s still weird.
EDIT: Ya i’m aware of how the typo detection system works, but it’s weird that ‘write’ isn’t a meaning in it’s own right.
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The closest to how this kanji is used is “record” (as in, in writing). Anything else is kind of pushing it 
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I did some more digging and the “record” part can involve other media, not necessarily something that’s physically written so something like “register” would also work as long as one kind of understands the meta-meaning of “putting information into a specific place orderly”.
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Guess so; I’d say that’s the general idea behind 書 vs. 記… But those two concepts you mentioned carry a quite distinct meaning and logic between them, in my opinion at least
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I guess my complaint is that it’s weird for “write down” to be the first listed meaning and for “write” to not be mentioned at all. If “record” is the closest to 記’s true meaning, it should be listed first.
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You can suggest this to the content updates team.
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Where is this done?
One way is to email hello@wanikani.com, but responding on a content updates thread should also work.
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True; I guess it’s because of how hard it can be to find one single, “pure” meaning of the kanji.
When learning the vocabulary for 記, however, one notices that many—if not most—of the words are about (expectedly) recording things mainly through written (or “descriptive”) form. So the meanings of 記 provided by WK end up overlapping nicely, if that makes sense. 
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That’s pretty much how 記 is defined in Japanese dictionary though? Look at the definitions in kanjipedia. None of them are just 書く (to write). The first, most concrete one is しるす/かきとめる which both mean to write down/to note/to record. And looking in the Outlier Kanji dictionary the etymology of 記 is also “To put down in writing/to record”
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yeah, I might be in the wrong here. I think this is at worst a case of linguistic nuance not being translated all that well.
as a non native in English, it is odd and for me write down and write are the same in my native language, so I set as synonym
same as kill, murder, assassinate and slaughter are all the same for my native language.
I guess is like in japanese うで for foot and leg 
It was probably done like this so that either ‘write’ or ‘write down’ would be an accepted as a correct answer.
記 is “write down” specifically. “Write up” would be a different kanji, not to mention “write left” or “write right”.
/s
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I kind of think this is for the best, as it forces people to consider what sense of the word “write” 記 actually refers to; it is not (primarily, at least) really the physical act of writing, nor the act of composing creative writing, but that of documenting, recording or taking notes.
Of course, once you know that, you can add “write” to your user synonyms for the sake of saving time.
(Although, for the sake of contradicting myself, the vocabulary exercises should make that distinction clear, anyway.)
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I think they didn’t add write because the meaning is closer to record something. And the word write down has this meaning too. (Sure it can also be used to mean that one just writes something. But since thee’s also the word record here, I think they just mean for write down the meaning of “to record” too)
Just writing wouldn’t convey this meaningl. (After all you could for example write down a shopping list, but this wouldn’t be recording something, unless you intend to save up the list somewhere. But likely you would throw it away and it was just a temporary note. To record means that you want to preserve what is written down. Also probably is based on facts. (Like it wouldn’t be to record, if you would write a script for a novel. Which yes you might save it up since you want to use it, but it isn’t like saving facts.))
Write down: “Write that down!” Make a record of this information.
Write: “Write something.” Scribble letters without a specific purpose.
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