Wrong answers due to typos

There’s one thing I really dislike about WK, although it’s partly my fault.

When I’m doing a review, there are many vocab/kanji I can instantly answer but due to how fast I write them, I sometimes don’t realize and answer things with “っ” and it triggers me because it gives me a wrong answer.
And well, sometimes I’m writing an answer that has “n” and because of how fast I write, I sometimes forget you have to write “n” twice (if you have a vocal after it) and I get it wrong.
Lastly I have those times in which I press a wrong letter and don’t realize it till I see the red popup.

I know it’s partly my fault for not checking my answer before submitting, but when you have like 200+ things to review, you want to speed-run it (at least the ones you know).

The feedback I wanted to give, or maybe a question that’s already been solved is:

If something like the first 2 situations I gave happens, can’t we have a heads-up once we press enter?​ I hate having the object in “enlightened” and then having to wait for weeks until I can answer it again.

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You could install the double-check script to help you avoid loosing progress when answering with typos.

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WaniKani already gives a shake warning if you accidentally type な instead of んあ or whatever.

Asking it to catch you accidentally duplicating a letter, though, might be a bit much.

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Well, ultimately this is very much down to personal preference, so adding it to the native app would be a bit weird imo. That said, I do get you, I make a lot of typos too. Which is why it’s great that we have userscripts for this.

Here’s a link to the most popular one (and the one I use): [Userscript]: Double-Check (Version 2.x)

It does have extended auto-check, but most of the time it’ll be up to you to judge what is a typo and what’s an actual mistake, so use it responsibly. I’m guilty of cheating a bit with this…

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Yeah, I just did that, I kinda forgot about the existence of scripts in WK, thanks

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I hope the power doesn’t corrupt me… I’ll start using it

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At most a typo gets you two “unnecessary” reviews over somewhere between 12 hours and 5 months.

Is your goal to learn to read Japanese or to get through the levels quickly?

(Sorry to be brusque, but this comes up a lot. I honestly think it’s not worth agonizing over. Either slow down or accept that you’ll get a few extra reviews. It’s not the end of the world.)

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Another way of doing it is with the apostrophe, eg. 反応はんのう → han’nou, 万人ばんにん → ban’nin. I think it’s a little more consistent and avoids situations where I might accidentally tap n too many times or fail to actuate the key from sloppy typing.

Someone pointed out double check already, but that script also has lightning mode which I consider a fairly big time save. The other thing that saves me a lot of time, but is debated due to disabling interleaving is using 1x1 mode (aka back to back).

It’s not like those things are exclusive. Those unnecessary reviews are also minor frustration. In the grand scheme of things it doesn’t matter, but the natural tendency is to fix problems that cause annoyances. Some people don’t mind a squeaky hinge, others will go insane within five minutes of discovering it. Assuming they do move on to reading or other immersive activities they’ll learn/reinforce those items one way or another.

WK is already an incredible time sink. Adding an extra review’s worth of typing for an individual item doesn’t sound too bad, but in the context of doing the like 140k+ reviews needed to finish WK it’ll add up.

Which reminds me, I really hate that that script is named like that perma associated with undo functionality when it also incorporates mistake delay and lightning mode. I couldn’t live without the latter and the former is something I feel should just be site native functionality.

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I also tend to do this recently as I might be reading and writing a bit too fast. I have not installed any script for this as I am afraid to abuse the possibility, instead I use the careless mistakes as a lesson to slow down.

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Btw, are there meanwhile any userscripts to install on the iPhone?
I do not want to look at the hiragana typed, because I don’t like to memorize another visual of the same vocab, hence I sometimes hit the wrong key. I would appreciate to get a second chance to answer in that case.

I suppose it’s a matter of frequency. I think we can agree that 14/140000 is nothing to worry about. To my mind even 1400/140000 is nothing to worry about.

If anyone is making typos more frequently than that, perhaps they should find a less error prone method of entering text or at least slow down before submitting their answers?

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I’ve also found myself getting frustrated about typos / nn etc. and I like to do my reviews on an iPad (TamperMonkey etc. don’t run on IOS :frowning: ).
So, I’m going to try Macaque as a script manager and see if it’ll help.
(& I’ll try not to abuse the script, but I’m old enough to know that the temptation might prove too much sometimes :wink: )

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Do you not review what you’ve typed in your native tongue when filling out a form?

For some reason I’m grumpy tonight, but this seems silly to me.

It makes sense to either take care entering text or to accept that you’ll have more errors. But to want to back up and correct frequently submitted typos seems far less efficient than either of those options to me.

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You are right! I accept my typo errors without getting grumpy :blush:

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Sorry if I contributed to the that. I’d have to admit I wrote the above in a bad mood as well and regret some of it. My accuracy is unfortunately worse than your example (around 95-98% I think). Sometimes I think about giving that time to scritching my neighbor’s dog, socializing talking with my imaginary friend, or watching water boil than dedicating typos to the crabigator >.>

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It seems silly to me that you choose to die on that hill.

If getting items wrong even though you knew them seems minor to you, that’s fine. If you don’t trust yourself around an ignore script, that’s fine.

For me, every additional review that isn’t necessary is “time wasted”. As someone else put it, time spent on WK is time you can’t spend on other activities, and you do spend a lot of time on WK. Consequently, for me, I will choose not to fail a review when I’m certain I did know the item (or sometimes, when I decide I know the item “enough”, no use for me memorising the details of baseball terms when I don’t even know them in English).

In the end we all know our learning paths better than any tool, you may choose to use the tool as intended and that’s perfectly fine, but there is no requirement to do so and that’s why we have scripts.

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Nah, we’re good.

Let me see if I can explain my point more fully and less grumpily after a good night’s rest.

My feeling is that if a significant fraction of what you’re typing contains typos, it’s worth fixing the root cause. Japanese input is also a skill. An often overlooked value of WK is that it also helps you improve that skill.

Do over buttons aren’t always available to save you in the real world.

(Worth asking: do 5% of your do-overs on WK also contain typos? If not, why not? Are you really saving any time with do-overs?)

I find entering Japanese with the default keyboard on my phone quite tedious because I can’t touch type. My eyes are down looking at the keys I’m aiming for instead of up looking at what I’m typing, which often turns into gobbledy-gook.

I’m much, much slower entering text in either language on my phone because of it. Autocorrect mistakes are a meme precisely because of this issue (not hitting the keys your aiming for causes the software to guess wrong).

There are at least five solutions:

  • Find a do-over button like double check. That helps on WK, but not in the real world.

  • Accept that you’ll get some extra reviews because of it. This doesn’t make sense if your typo rate is too high.

  • Accept that you’ll have to go slower and review what you typed before submitting.

  • Figure out a way to improve your accuracy. Many people swear by kana or other alternate keyboards on portable devices because the targets are bigger. Using an IME on WK allows you to cheat, though, unless it can be configured for kana-only.

  • Do your reviews with a real keyboard. I think most portable devices support Bluetooth keyboards, and Mac or PC ergonomics ensures your eyes are on the screen more often even if you’re still a hunt and peck typist. A keyboard won’t always be with you like your phone, but maybe go slower when it’s not?

I chose the last option, for what it’s worth, and stopped using my phone for reviews around level ten. I only rarely use my phone now and have learned to accept that I need to go slower when I do.

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Fair enough. For me, every word I have to retype is time wasted.

Fwiw, “in the real world” this discussion only applies to typos in the reading and not in the meaning, since you’re rarely gonna have to translate a Kanji on the fly. Double-check is worth it for me for that reason alone given the extremely restricted (and inconsistent, see transitive verbs with and without “something”) glosses on WK. (On the phone, I actually use Anki mode for meanings.) But yeah, let’s restrict the discussion to Japanese input.

In “the real world”, you have an IME. If the Kanji that you’re expecting don’t show up, you’ll notice and probably correct. If it’s a kana only word you may have a typo. So what. I produce typos in my native language too, and most people I know are even worse than me. You can still be understood.

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In what real-world situation are you going to be typing japanese and not have access to the backspace key?

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