Please forgive me for saying so, but the one frustration with this website and the Heisig learning system is NOT the website and the learning system, it's the people who with increasing frequency are using the Study Area to post opinions and criticisms about Heisig's keywords or omissions. First of all, I think many people fall back into the trap of treating RtK as if it were a traditional kanji book, giving you all the correct keywords and sending you home to memorize them by rote. This is not the case. Heisig is not always trying to give the best or most accurate keyword, but one which he found useful in memorizing the whole body of Joyo kanji.

So for instance, when he uses "Ri" for the keyword in Frame 173, and then even allows it to function as "computer", everybody gets all up in arms, criticizing and complaining about what he left out and what your other kanji book says. Stop it already, you're missing the point. The choices he makes may not always be "the best" for a particular kanji, but they do a wonderful job of creating a foundation for memorizing many more kanji. This is not a dictionary. It is a memory program.

I am delighted and thankful for Heisig's efforts and his willingness to put them out there for others to use and modify in support of their own learning. Even if I tweak a story or keyword, what I feel for Heisig is appreciation and gratitude, not criticism and condemnation.

Of course, you have the right to feel however you want, and the right to write about. I just wish people would stop using the Study Area to do. If you have a good story, put it in the study area. If you have comments, complaints or criticisms, put them in the forums, or just write your own book.

Hhhh. Just had to get that out. All the complaining to be found in the Study Area was just beginning to poison my experience. I just had to get that out.

I don't really see the problem with it, as up until the point where I finally saw the one on computer, I *didn't realize* that was how Heisig was using primitives. Up to that point, I actually thought these primitives had something to do with the kanji itself. If someone can provide additional helpful info about a kanji, then I think that ought to be welcomed, as some people may find it helpful.

[ファブリス]

Hi Ningen. I agree that comments should be better left out of the Study area, though I don't have an ideal solution for this.

But don't let that bother you too much, you will find that this becomes less of an issue as you progress. Most people are still learning and don't yet understand all the ins and outs of Heisig's choices because it's too early in the book. By the time you get to frame 500 or so, the shared stories get better.

One of my earliest plans for the Study area was to disable story sharing completely for the first two Chapters as this would have made it impossible to post duplicates of Heisig's stories. In some ways it may have been better, but Im' sure there are also a few gems shared for the first 500 stories.

I agree with フアブルス (btw how do you make kata letters small? i did it before but forgot). I'm on the mid 600s and once you get to around 500 the stories start to get better. I think the best story i've read is the one for outlook. I fell out of my seat laughing.

Type 'x[whatever]' (xa= ぁ・ァ、xtsu= っ・ッ), or just 'fa', etc. (ファ、フィ、フォ) to get small kana.

Criticism leads to improvement. Nothing is perfect and to pretend that something is is fanboyism.

Jarvik7 Wrote:Criticism leads to improvement. Nothing is perfect and to pretend that something is is fanboyism.

Only if the person doing the criticizing actually has something constructive to say.

dilandau23 Wrote:Only if the person doing the criticizing actually has something constructive to say.

Are there actually stories in the study area that consist of nothing but a flame? The ones I see are more like "Heisig calls this x, but it actually means y" etc.

Questions of whether or not a keyword is correct are best left to the forum, where they are often discussed. At the most I think a study area comment should be confined to "Be careful not to confuse your image for x with your image for y coming up."

Maybe a middle ground would be a forum topic for each kanji. Then a link to that topic could be placed on the study page along with the post count. If someone studying gets to a kanji with a reasonably sized post count it will be obvious that there may be some cause for concern and that person can then decide if they wish to deal with the added overhead of reading the topic. If not they can just accept the keyword/stroke count/whatever and move on.

I agree with Fabrice. It seems that the critics either never make it too far, or change their mind as they pass the 500 mark. I started using this site after the 1000's mark, and I don't recall seeing any keyword or Heisig complaints. Hell, past 2043 there's barely any stories at all.

I actually appreciated having some of that criticism in the study section. It prevented me from going too far off the rails in directions that we're going to hurt me later on.

Hmm, can you post some frame numbers that have excessive criticism not of the constructive type.

At first, I thought you were complaining about the ones that offered expanded information on the Kanji (such a Tassel). As I don't look at the study area except for missed kanji, I had not noticed a problem.

Don't forget, you can always report a story.

dilandau23 Wrote:

Jarvik7 Wrote:Criticism leads to improvement. Nothing is perfect and to pretend that something is is fanboyism.

Only if the person doing the criticizing actually has something constructive to say.

And if the person being criticized can hear you. I seriously doubt Heisig checks the kanji on this site to see what criticisms people are making about his method.

I think study area comments along the lines of "wrong stroke order" or "the book is wrong and this is primitives X, Y, Z" are very useful. If they weren't there then how many people would bother to go and look in the forum for each kanji post? Much better to have them on the page you're actually looking at.

If you want to get into UI fiddles it might be nice to have a distinction between 'stories' and 'comments/warnings' (and maybe a thing for showing one or the other). But what we have at the moment works well enough IMHO.

[ファブリス]

I think Ningen took issue with comments from users criticizing Heisig's choices. He also gave a clear example with "Ri".

I can see how it'd be annoying to see comments questioning the validity of the very method you're putting your trust into, because we know that Heisig's method requires a bit of faith, the results don't show up straight away.

Still, don't worry about it. "Ri" is just one of those kanji like "fishhook", where Heisig had to make a choice and everyone has a different opinion of what could have been the better keyword choice. I think most people are happy the majority of keywords in RtK1. There is about 50 ? (just a rough estimation) kanji that creates some controversy. For example "village" and "town".

Don't let doubt slow you down. If doubts creeps in; then stick to the book. Otherwise read all the comments and make up your mind and then don't look back. Because no matter what making up your own stories is always a creative effort.

wccrawford Wrote:

dilandau23 Wrote:

Jarvik7 Wrote:Criticism leads to improvement. Nothing is perfect and to pretend that something is is fanboyism.

Only if the person doing the criticizing actually has something constructive to say.

And if the person being criticized can hear you. I seriously doubt Heisig checks the kanji on this site to see what criticisms people are making about his method.

Nonsense, who says the improvements have to be in the form of a new edition of the book? This forum is full of people adapting Heisig's method & information in ways that better suit themselves (and maybe others).