Lately I’ve been struggling a bit with motivation to keep up with my WaniKani lessons and reviews. I was talking to a friend today, and we thought it would be really fun (and helpful!) to add a bit of friendly competition, something like a leaderboard or group challenge system where you can track your progress alongside friends.
Since WaniKani doesn’t currently let you follow friends or compare progress natively, I’ve been thinking about building a small web app that connects to the WaniKani API. The idea would be to:
Create or join private groups with friends
Have leaderboards (e.g., XP, streaks, burns, consistency, etc.)
Set up challenges like “Burn 100 items this month” or “Road to JLPT N2”
See everyone’s progress at a glance for some extra accountability
Before diving in, I wanted to ask:
Would anyone else be interested in something like this?
What kind of features or challenges would motivate you the most?
Has anyone already built or used something similar?
I had a similar thought when observing how people in the same level tier wrote about a shared history, so that I could see there were pods/cliques of folks who had arrived at a similar time and formed community by interacting on the forums. (My related post)
I think a points system would be neutral or negative motivation for me personally. Other hobbies (drawing, jiu jitsu) taught me that finding joy/flow in a way of doing things is more motivating than quantifiers of progress.
Just because it isn’t relevant to me doesn’t mean it isn’t a good idea or that it wouldn’t find an audience here.
consider starting a study buddy thread… we had a small group, the originator of the thread never finished but several of us did…and we used the leaderboard script that was mentioned (though with wk breaking everything all the time don’t know what works anymore but it was a nice way to keep track of people)
the thread also gave the group a way to cheer each other on - no pressure or discouragement
then you can also use the cake thread as people make it to lvl 60
cake thread is here:
you’ll find other groups in the cake thread also…slow / fast / etc…
another way for motivation is to start your own study log… you’ll find lots of great motivation in the forums in general.
