I started thinking today, that for an SRS to work optimally, it should clearly test one thing per card, and one thing only. But I (and think most here) have, for example, Kanji -> reading + meaning cards, which actually test two things. For me at least, it is quite common to remember either the reading or the meaning but not both for the cards I fail, so I wonder if anyone has tried making kanji -> meaning and kanji -> reading separately? This would mean twice the amount of cards and twice the amount of reviews, but maybe it would pay off in the long run?

To go all out, you could have kanji -> meaning, kanji -> reading, reading -> meaning and reading -> kanji for all vocab cards...

Well, the beauty of Anki is that you can change your card as you go along. At first, you just do Keyword to Kanji. That's fine and all, then you get comfortable and start doing vocabulary, grammar and sentence cards. Now, some quit doing RTK reviews at this point, but some like me continue do their reps.

Well, maybe you think you can change the keywords of common kanji to show words using that kanji (in kana). So you have English Keyword to Kanji for rarer kanji and Kana Keyword to Kanji for more common kanji. The kana keyword(s) can be three common onyomi versions in addition to all the kunyomi versions for that kanji.

Later still, you get so comfortable with the kana keyword you consider it pointless since you're testing that anyway with your vocabulary deck. So instead, you change the common cards to now show Kanji to Meaning + Common onyomi. Later still, you think that you'll see Kanji in words so you change it once more to show Kanji Onyomi and Kunyomi words where the answer is the meaning plus the onyomi.

Well, you have fun with that, so you try to change up the not so common kanji cards. Perhaps the question shows English Keyword and English meanings in small print along with Kana keywords in larger print. You know that you're trying to remember the correct kanji just from the kana but you can lean on the English if necessary (small print so it's easy to not glance at).

So yes, a card could test just one thing, which is great at first. However, imagine adding to a mature card even more information to be tested. It's still one card and it's still i+1 you're just adding to the card and not adding new cards.

Heisig sort of suggested this with paper and pencil flashcards. In fact, the way he presented the layout was meant for this purpose (adding yomi for example). It's just way easier to do it with Anki assuming your information fields are verbose enough. That's why I'm trying to make a more detailed RTK deck for download on Anki. That's also why I made a suggestion to Fabrice to let user's edit the way their cards are tested.

Ah, I was a bit unclear. I meant kanji to meaning and kanji to reading cards for a post-RTK vocabulary deck.

There's really no 'most optimal' type of SRS card, and certainly that one piece of information per card idea is one type, but not the best type of card. I think the best types of cards test multiple complementary pieces of information and are flexibly graded less according to the algorithm and more according to variable focus per card/session, dependent on grading and generally automated expanding spacing.

In the case of learning words, having them together means you can make the reading meaningful and the meaning 'readingful'.

Slang, I got that. I'm saying put them both on the same cards.

See a kanji with a note (意味と音読み) above the kanji, with a few words using that kanji below it.

What I'm doing right now is setting the 1100 kanji from KO2k1 up so the Kanji shows up blue. My job is just to know the meaning and the onyomi (via movie method). I would have it also show words, but Anki does not let you easily bulk edit the cards (a major drawback I hope that gets fixed in some later version). Adding vocabulary to 1100 cards is a bit of time consuming process otherwise.

You can press ctrl+n in the browser to go to the next card and keep the current field focused. If you need the full power of a text editor, you can use the overwrite fields plugin to do your editing in a text document then pull the updates into Anki.