I was wondering what are your feelings about restarting RTK 1 from zero (ie deleting all flashcards, starting from kanji 1 all over again). I basically had 200+ kanjis in boxes 4+, but since I stopped studying for many reasons and for a good amount of time, I would fail half of the reviews... plus with the huge backlog I just decided to go back to the begginning, which is a little bit dissappointing to say the least but I think it was the best option in my case.

Do you think that sometimes restarting your studies is worth it? Or should I have had done something differently?

If you start at the beginning, any ones you still know you can mark as easy and they will soon disappear into the high interval abyss.

Your choice of course but it isn't the end of the world to restart.

Don't delete card and don't start from 一!
I was in the same situation as you. After 2 months of pause i had over 1900 card piled up to review on this site.
Now i've recovered all card but it tooks a lot of time.

I think it's overwhelming to start from scratch and even if you will fail a lot of card(my rate was less than 40%) it's better to continue where you left than to start again.

(2016-01-06, 12:39 pm)Dudeist Wrote: If you start at the beginning, any ones you still know you can mark as easy and they will soon disappear into the high interval abyss.

Your choice of course but it isn't the end of the world to restart.

I agree. This is exactly what I'm doing. Didn't touch RTK for over a year and my reviews piled up so I thought it better to start from scratch. Which was good cuz I actually forgot half of the cards I reviews way back when.

I successfully recovered from a 1k+ review backlog after stopping RTK for a few months by using Anki's cram study tool. I think it is the most efficient way to go about doing that, as you don't throw away your personal statistics that took so much time to build.

You just have to create a new filtered deck ordered by oldest first study of the card. Anki will then show you the cards for review in heisig order, for which you can use the book to follow along with the primitives to remember them. You can also make a range a time, but I don't remember if it was advantageous or just something I did while I didn't know better.

I also suggest tweaks in the deck options, especially making the new interval for mistakes about 20% of the previous one (the second option, with the percentage). This will avoid your failed cards clumping together for tomorrow, hindering your progress. It will also take advantage that many of them you will be able to remember 5 or 10 days from today after refreshing your memory from a year long hiatus. The ones you don't, you just have to fail again for them to show up the next day. [b]Don't be afraid of failing cards you didn't remember quickly.[\b] And the part you easily remember after all that time you can press hard or good and you won't see them for a good time (easy is perhaps overkill except for cards like 一).

The start is the easiest part, as they are easier kanji in general and were the most mature. The last hundred kanjis that you studied on the other hand will be like new, you might not even remember studying some of them. The delayed reviews thanks to the 20% trick will also start pilling up, but stil pretty manageable. I suggest doing this catch up the fastest that you can, but not too fast.

It seems you are not using Anki. I don't know if RevTk has something similar to Anki's "Cram study".

tl;dr: reviewing kanjis in the heisig order is much easier after stopping reviews for a long time, but you don't have to start from zero to do that.

Huge backlog you say? I have just come back after over a year out so the entire RTK was due for review. My solution was to hit the spacebar and E key for a few minutes to clear the due stack down to a manageable level. (OK I cleared the lot). Now the due cards are just a dribble and I have been shooting through the RTK chapter by chapter from the beginning using the test option on the progress chart. Maybe you should do the same.

There's no particular reason to start over. The SRS probably will save you some time if you don't. If seeing a large number for the reviews due bothers you, though, deleting the information probably won't hurt all that much, particularly if you tune the intervals for review delay.

(2016-01-07, 6:00 pm)bertoni Wrote: There's no particular reason to start over.  The SRS probably will save you some time if you don't.  If seeing a large number for the reviews due bothers you, though, deleting the information probably won't hurt all that much, particularly if you tune the intervals for review delay.

The problem with RTK is that cards are dependent on previous cards, and also dependent on primitives that aren't in your deck and many whom you will have forgotten what it was. Reviewing in RTK order is much better to refresh the memory after stopping for many months. If your review backlog is a few days or weaks, this is not really necessary. Maybe just use the "power hard" method, of smashing the hard button to spread the reviews.

I restarted drilling RTK after several years off, and I didn't notice that problem, but everyone is different.

Sometimes I think about reviewing RTK again. But then I look at the 2200 due cards and my deck stats and just think ....nah. Who needs writing anyway.

(2016-01-06, 2:43 pm)ReneSac Wrote: I successfully recovered from a 1k+ review backlog after stopping RTK for a few months by using Anki's cram study tool. I think it is the most efficient way to go about doing that, as you don't throw away your personal statistics that took so much time to build.

You just have to create a new filtered deck ordered by oldest first study of the card. Anki will then show you the cards for review in heisig order, for which you can use the book to follow along with the primitives to remember them. You can also make a range a time, but I don't remember if it was advantageous or just something I did while I didn't know better.

I also suggest tweaks in the deck options, especially making the new interval for mistakes about 20% of the previous one (the second option, with the percentage). This will avoid your failed cards clumping together for tomorrow, hindering your progress. It will also take advantage that many of them you will be able to remember 5 or 10 days from today after refreshing your memory from a year long hiatus. The ones you don't, you just have to fail again for them to show up the next day. [b]Don't be afraid of failing cards you didn't remember quickly.[\b] And the part you easily remember after all that time you can press hard or good and you won't see them for a good time (easy is perhaps overkill except for cards like 一).

The start is the easiest part, as they are easier kanji in general and were the most mature. The last hundred kanjis that you studied on the other hand will be like new, you might not even remember studying some of them. The delayed reviews thanks to the 20% trick will also start pilling up, but stil pretty manageable. I suggest doing this catch up the fastest that you can, but not too fast.

It seems you are not using Anki. I don't know if RevTk has something similar to Anki's "Cram study".

tl;dr: reviewing kanjis in the heisig order is much easier after stopping reviews for a long time, but you don't have to start from zero to do that.

I'd love to do this, but my first run through RTK was using this sites SRS.  Is there a way to export my data to Anki from this site?  It sounds perfect, and I've been wanting to migrate all my SRS to anki for a while now...

(2016-01-13, 6:57 pm)Kuma_sensei Wrote: I'd love to do this, but my first run through RTK was using this sites SRS. Is there a way to export my data to Anki from this site? It sounds perfect, and I've been wanting to migrate all my SRS to anki for a while now...

It seems possible: https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/1980532144
I've never done it though, so I don't know if things like "date of first study" are filled correctly.

Interesting discussion, thanks for all the insights everyone. Unfortunately:

1 - I've already done it
2 - I'm using the site's SRS system

so I cannot apply some strategies people suggested me but I'll definitely keep that in mind, specially with the RTK->Anki thing posted here. For now I'm starting fresh.