Leech management is still a rather large issue for WK as previously mentioned. However, I haven’t really had too much problems with leeches as they usually sort themselves over time. Big caveat here is “over time” might mean 1 year or even 5 years (I’ve had leeches that I’ve only recently burnt even after being post-60 for almost a year now).
They are a way smaller percentage of your reviews that most people think. It just feels like there’s a ton because you breeze through the non-leeches so they aren’t front-of-mind.
Large wall of text below describing my leech squashing process
After dealing with leeches throughout my WK journey I’ve found a method for managing leeches but it requires usage of some scripts.
I use the Item Inspector script to help identify my leeches. I usually consider anything that has been answered wrong more than 10 times to be a leech. I also go by feel whenever there is an item that constantly bothers me (i.e. I keep making the same exact mistake), I consider a leech as well.
Now that I’ve identified my leeches, I check what type of item it is.
If it’s a radical (blue), I’ll review the mnemonic and really try to see (imagine) the image in the radical. At higher levels, the kanji method below will be more relevant since some kanji will become radicals.
If it’s kanji (pink), I’ll revisit the radical and mnemonic for the kanji to see if I just forgot what it was. More often than not that’s the case. In other cases, sometimes the kanji mnemonic just doesn’t stick so I’ll try to think up something that’s more memorable for me. If the kanji already happens to be burnt, I’ll also consider reviving it to have even more reviews for it.
If it’s vocab (purple), It’s usually because I’ve forgotten one of the kanji within the vocab. Therefore, I revisit the kanji and do the process described above. If it’s a word with a kunyomi reading, usually the issue is the mnemonic itself for that word. If that’s the case, I’ll also try to think up a better mnemonic.
Now if after all this, the leech still really bothers me, I will check how frequent the word is with JPDB, and decide whether to just leave it be or “remove” it from the queue. An example of this is the word 由来 (origin) it’s been bothering me since November 2021 (almost 6 years!) and I still keep getting it wrong. However, this is a rather common word at 6k frequency, so I decided not to “remove” it from my queue and just let it sort itself out (or export to Anki).
As a second measure, the item inspector script lets me export my leeches to Anki, and I do extra reviews there, save for the most stubborn items, this clears most of the of the leeches.
Now if I feel that I will never encounter that word in my life, I use this Item Filter script to answer that item correctly all the way to burned. I’ve found that this is the only script that works for “removing” bothersome items. However this is an extreme last resort and over all the items in WK, I’ve only ever done this 10~ or so times.
From my experience, most leeches are due to a “misreading” (and thus misremembering) of the kanji, that is, thinking one kanji is something else, mainly stemming from one misread radical. Another cause will be due to mnemonics not sticking and being too simple to be memorable.
Something like misreading radicals in 織 (weave) and 識 (discerning) they both use the 戈 (drunkard) and 音 (sound) radicals but differ with the 糸 (thread) and 言 (say) radicals. As one gets used to WK, they might glaze over this minor difference every time they see it (complacency/routine) and always get it wrong. If they don’t break it down, the item becomes a leech and creates frustration every time it’s seen. Another example is 白 (white) and 自 (self), if you look at these very quickly in a rush to finish your reviews, you might mistake one for the other. Again, this stems from the “misreading” issue and simply requires that you pay more attention to the review.
The best way I’ve found to alleviate this is to take your time looking at the items, as well as the Confusion Guesser script. This script will try to show you the radical/kanji/vocab you might have gotten confused with.
Further, I feel that mnemonics are essential training wheels for our brains to recognize a set of strokes as words/concepts the same way we see letters. If we take them off too soon, we run the risk of totally blanking on an item with no “breadcrumbs” to follow to recall it.
I realize that this seems like a rather long winded method to deal with leeches but realistically you won’t really have to apply this method all too often, and once you get used to it this is a rather quick process.
I could just move platforms, but without WK, I wouldn’t know as much kanji and vocab as I do now, even if I used stuff like Anki, etc. Their curated ground up approach and sheer amount of content outweighs their lack of leech management. While yes, I would very much love a way to deal with leeches officially, it is what it is, and my method works well enough for me.
The real short answer to kill leeches is frequency, the more stubborn the leech, the more often you should see it. If the word isn’t that important to you, just forget it and move on, and if at all you see it again, you are allowed to use the dictionary in the real world to see the reading/meaning.