How do you deal with Anki leeches? What do you set your threshold to? what do you do when after they get suspended? I'm trying to figure out how to handle mine more efficiently, as in the past I would just ignore them.

My leeches are usually words that I get mixed up with another word. So rather than just not knowing it altogether, I'm misremembering it. Correcting that can take a good bit of effort. So, I usually just leave them alone as leeches until I come across it in some memorable situation that will help me keep it more clear in my mind.

What kind of Anki leeches...?
When I went through RTK the first time, I dealt with leeches by first of all ignoring them until I had a day off and plenty of time. Just keeping up with adding and reviewing is enough on a work day! When I got around to fixing them, I'd look at the situation - if I was failing it because it was a close synonym and I kept getting the wrong character (dawn/daybreak/nightbreak/sunrise ... yeah.... don't even get me started on how nightbreak isn't even a real word and if it -were- a real word it should mean the opposite of daybreak.... ) Ahem, anyway, the best answer for close synonyms is to either change the keyword completely (be careful of collisions, just check a list of keywords first), or to put a hint on the front side ('not the one with primitive X' or some clue relating to your story but preferably not including any primitive keywords.)

If i was failing it for some other reason, I would rework my story. If I was having left/right top/bottom issues, I'd work directional elements into the story (I tended to use physical motion for left to right and movement in time for top to bottom, as much as possible; if you're lucky you can simply place on element in the right place compared to another element in the story.) If I was just not remembering the story, I'd come up with a more memorable one, or if I was not remembering the elements despite remembering the story, I'd look for a -simpler- story so the parts of the story that actually signify primitives stood out more. If i'd been using 'lazy' mnemonics with simple wordplay, I'd take the time now to really close my eyes and properly visualize the scene(s) of the story.

Vocabulary cards are a different issue altogether of course, and whether you use sentences on the front or the back or not at all changes the approaches to fixing a leech. With vocabulary, however, in the vast majority of cases, all you need to do is wait a month, review the card (look up the definition and examples in a good dictionary or example sentence site and stuff), and unsuspend it. Vocabulary memorization gets a lot of 'collision' problems where you mix up two words because they have similar pronunciation, or similar definition, or have one or more kanji in common. Once one of a colliding pair is a leech, if you let it lie until the other is firmly mature and well-learned, then the leech is easy to learn the next time you try.

Great responses thanks. I've finished RTK, and am now working through the core 2k, so its primarily tricky vocab tripping me up. I would usually just ignore leeches in the past, but I think its an unhealthy use of time to keep studying them.

(2015-11-29, 4:36 pm)xtreme1 Wrote: Great responses thanks. I've finished RTK, and am now working through the core 2k, so its primarily tricky vocab tripping me up. I would usually just ignore leeches in the past, but I think its an unhealthy use of time to keep studying them.

At this point I just ignore them. 

I think that when I first started using Anki I wasn't comfortable just ignoring them. This is probably because I was in the mindset of being in a school, where I would get weekly vocabulary tests, try to get good grades and so on.

With Anki and self-study I've found that it's more helpful to focus on the number of cards that are mature. The "accomplishment" plugin is really good for that. The number of mature cards in my deck keeps on increasing, so I'm pretty happy about that. I'm not particularly interested in knowing how many leeches I have, or which words are mature vs. leech. In fact, if I could figure out a way to turn of the "card has become leech" message, I would :)

Another point to remember is that Anki is just a tool, and that by the time a card becomes a leech you've already seen it quite a bit. I fairly regularly have the experience of seeing a word in NHK or an email, trying to add it to Anki only to find out that it's already there as a leech. At that point I just unsuspend it :)

I just suspend them until I finish the deck.  Then I un-suspend them and and after an initial partial relearning period, I don't generally have problems with them anymore.  Leeches for me are generally cards that I get mixed up with other words, so removing one of the words, allows me to learn the other word really well.  When I finally add the other word back into the mix, they no longer confuse me since I've learned one of them well.

As far as leech threshold, I use anki's default of 7 although I've used higher and lower values.  The problem with lower valuse is you end up with closer to half of your deck being leeches and that's far from optimal.