Before anyone starts with the usual “Certificates are useless” mantra, I just want to express my perplexity on this matter.
You have something like the top 1% of your subscribers who, after paying hundreds of euros and using your app every day for YEARS, finally manage to reach the epic milestone of level 60… and you don’t even send them a simple PDF with their name on it?
Of course, I understand it wouldn’t hold any official recognition, but consider this:
It costs you NOTHING.
It serves as free marketing (people love sharing certificates on LinkedIn and other social media).
It helps motivate users who enjoy collecting certificates, making them less likely to give up and cancel their subscriptions.
It boosts your brand image.
Did I already mention it costs you NOTHING?
This post will probably get ignored, but maybe if it gets enough attention, it might reach a powerful admin or even our god Koichi.
Plus, WK already has issues with people complaining that it promises things based on misunderstandings / genuine miscommunication / other issues. Offering certificates that people will find out are not legit if they don’t read the fine print properly after working super hard to get to level 60 is going to be way worse, I feel like
Also, those same subscribers could just pay for lifetime, and instead of paying for years could just purchase the whole thing for, what, 200 dollars on Christmas? The month-by-month payment is their choice.
It would probably tempt people to cheat more and be in conflict of what language learning is about and what it is for. No shade towards those who do it for the badges tho
I’m not really opposed to a certificate since there’s no real big downsides it seems, but to be fair to Tofugu I don’t think it’s weird at all that they don’t provide one. Maybe it has something to do with how level 60 seems like a huge accomplishment to people who are still going through it, but to people who have completed it they realize it’s more just like a step along the way. At least that’s how I felt upon getting 60. It didn’t really feel much like an accomplishment outside of now having gold badge swag (which I don’t even use) and it was more just like “OK now on to the next thing”.
Well, I suppose another issue would be that Level 60 is not Level 60.
You could reach it (in theory) with all your items just on Guru, while others reach it with thousands Burned.
Under the premise that you learned the Kanji (+Vocab) once they are Burned, you should receive such a certificate when all items are Burned, not when reaching Level 60.
But I suppose that would be quite frustrating for most, as Level 60 has become the synonym for finishing, not Burning every last item…
I thought the reaching 60. email was nice, plus, even though it is an achievement, now with the lesson picker functionality I arrived to this level with 300 words still pending to learn, so I don’t feel like I am done…
WaniKani should give a certificate. After all, even speed runners to lvl 60 have spent about a year and likely more than 500 hours studying just kanji and incidental vocab. That’s quite the show of dedication even if they can’t read/write/speak Japanese by lvl 60.
