Would you be intrested on an all-inclusive plug-in that improves the entire WaniKani experience?

#1

EDIT: Project has been called off. Thank you for your feedback!

WaniKani is a very long road. And when you’re in for the long game you want to be as comfortable as possible, as even the tiniest nuisance will build up over time. UserScripts tend to fix some of this issues, just not in a clean way. After installing my 14th User-Script (and having it break the rest) I thought: why not make mine?

What would be included on this plug-in? Everything to make the path between a fully burnt level 60 and you shorter: Many ideas that already exist on separate UserScripts and some ideas of my own, but on an all-inclusive, self-contained, and fully supported package. Be it Opera to Chrome, 2014 to 2020, the script will work. To name a few of the features I’ve in mind:

  • No tacky visuals. Every single function will be blended seamlessly into the UI.
  • Automatically pass to your next review if the answer is right. No more double enter!
  • The ability to undo an incorrect review in case of a typo, so the SRS doesn’t mess up just because our fingers betray us.
  • Added furigana to the example phrases to the kanji you don’t know yet. If you know the Kanji, no furigana!
  • Kanji stroke order on both Lessons and Reviews. WaniKani does not support writing, but that does not we shouldn’t at least be aware of the general idea.
  • On’Yomi writings in Katakana. WaniKani uses Hiragana only, and does not tell you whether it’s asking for a Kun’Yomi or On’Yomi reading.
  • The ability to export Writing Practice sheets of the Kanji you already have on Guru+ levels on one click.
  • The ability to review a pipe of burnt items.
  • Tracking how much time has passed since you passed a level. No more guessing!

Who are you and why would you do this? I’m a graphic designer who loves learning Japanese. I specialized in User Interface and User Experience, so I’m not banging rocks here - I know what I’m doing. I do this because while WaniKani is an amazing tool, it certainly could use some improvement.

Will it cost? Undecided. It might be a pay-what-you-want model, have a “light” version for free or a full version - we just don’t know yet.

Thank you very much for reading all of this. I’m looking forward to your answers!

Would you be interested in this Plug-In?

  • Yes, I am and would pay for it.
  • Yes, but I wouldn’t pay for it.
  • No. UserScripts work fine as they are.

0 voters

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#2

Surely you meant to ask ‘Would you be interested in this plug in?’

#3

Fixed! Thank you for bringing that to my attention.

#4

Your plan sounds to be addressing two main problems:

  1. Provide all the script features you want.
  2. Make it really easy to set up.

I haven’t checked the features you want closely enough. At least some of them appear to be something an existing script does. The good news here is that you can probably copy and paste a lot of existential by script logic. A word of caution with this approach is that he more scope your script tackles the more pressure you’ll get from im your users to provide options to turn things on and off.

I’d love to see you take a slightly different direction (for partially selfish reasons). I’m trying to solve problem #2 with the App Store script. Make it really easy to find what you need and also to get surprised with recommendations for what you didn’t know you needed. If the App Store is a success then finding those individual scripts (assuming they existed) would be very quickly done.

So … assuming that you’re persuaded by my line of thinking then that leaves you the job of finding the features you need that there’s no current script for. I’d love to see yet more dicersity in script offerings!

Whether you write a a number of small scripts or one huge script, I’d love to see the script hook into to the App Store (search for the post about it).

Good luck!

#5

There are free phone apps out there that cleanly do several of these things. I’m happy with what my app has so I wouldn’t use this “plug-in”.
While you could probably have a donation, I very much doubt WaniKani will be supportive of a paid, 3rd party addition. You’re basically monetizing someone else’s work with a 3rd party “premium edition”. I don’t know if its doable legally, but it seems a little bit off to me.

#6

This seems like a huge undertaking, and if you do go through with it, I wish you the best of luck :smiley:
One thing I am concerned about though as @hitechbunny briefly mentioned, I’d want to be able to turn different features on/off. For example on this point:

Automatically pass to your next review if the answer is right. No more double enter!

Personally I wouldn’t like that, sometimes even if I get the item correct, I may still be a bit shaky on it and want to go over it briefly during the reviews.

#7

So the idea is to make one userscript for everything, i.e., you still need tampermonkey, install the script, …?

I think the biggest complaints that people have is that they are not interested in running plugins like TM that need all permissions in the world to run, cannot install add-ons because their PC is restricted, or are on mobile.

Once you got started with scripts you just start collecting new scripts, but they are not that essential or break that often to pay for an add-on. At least for me there is not that much added value, and getting people to pay on the Internet is not so simple.

I would try to address the “want scripts but can’t” problem, or contribute to existing scripts.

#8

Yeah you might want to reconsider this.
Seconded what @Penguinonfire said.

#9

I myself am actually coding & designing a program (with electron as a shell) which includes not only wanikani but other nifty tools as well. But I would not dare to ask any money for it as, as has been stated before, you would be making money off of someone elses content.

That’s really not a proper way to do things in my opinion.

Donations on the other hand would be fine I guess.

#10

@Daru,
Would you be interested in contributing to a community effort to build an open framework?

@acm2010, @hitechbunny, and I (and maybe some others?) are each doing some framework’ish things, and I would love to see some of those ideas pooled together into an open framework if we can decide how it should look and who wants to work on the various parts.

I was planning to start some dialogue soon, after I was comfortable that my own framework is moving in the right direction. Maybe now is the right time to start a discussion. I’d be happy to start the thread (give me a few minutes…)