I wish I'd known about SRS in high school. All that brainless memorization of formulas and other nonsense...
And surprise surprise, I don't remember any of them now. Fancy that.

financialwar Wrote:

faneca Wrote:Well, one of the multiple incarnations of Murphy's laws say something like this: "trying to avoid an effort, people will do things in such a way that the results are bad, even if it is a harder way which requires more effort". Or, rephrased: "Usually, some hours of trial and error will save you from five minutes of reading docs". It's one part of the human behavior that really fascinates me... specially when I see it on myself ;-).

you need to improve your English and your logic.

I suspect it's your reading comprehension that's at fault.

Aikynaro Wrote:I wish I'd known about SRS in high school. All that brainless memorization of formulas and other nonsense...
And surprise surprise, I don't remember any of them now. Fancy that.

This. I would've aced German if I knew about this. Even after five years, all I can say in German are some of the phrases Hitler shouted in Der Untergang... <_<

Bokusenou Wrote:I mainly link people to an article Lifehacker did on learning languages using Anki and immersion because it's shorter than asking them to read a lot of AJATT/Spanish-Only/Antimoon articles, and because I think I tend to be too enthusiastic when introducing things, which makes people think I've fallen for some scam, so letting other people's words do the talking works better...Still, I haven't introduced someone to SRS who stuck to it for more than a week. I think most people I know offline (college-age & middle-aged Americans pretty much) don't want to learn a language enough to stick with SRS or any serious immersion environment for long. Most people say things like "I don't have the time", and these are mainly people who are on Facebook whenever I glance at their computer...In other words, I do try to tell people about it, but nobody cares.

Exactly. I used to try and help people, but now I have reverted back to a similar stance as the OP. They're not really interested in helping themselves so why should I care.

[Zgarbas]

financialwar Wrote:you need to improve your English and your logic.

You should learn that English can be used to politely point out that someone made a mistake, as well as to differentiate between bad English/logic and a pretty obvious error in expression. Politeness is important on this forum.

That is all.

I'm not really sure if you're a troll or just someone who can't express himself without sounding like one. Please try to be less aggressive and show a bit of politeness.

edit: Indeed. Thanks frony0

Zgarbas I think you meant to quote "financialwar", not "faneca".

(See, mistakes can be pointed out without insults and aggression!)

A secret that's easy to keep, yes. No-one seems interested when I mention it, and later on a few days later they complain they can't remember language stuff -and see no relation between their problem and what I had mentioned earlier.

i never really needed it before studying japanese, memorizing 200 things its easy, memorizing 2000 is different, so aside from learning a lenguage its not that useful really...

I agree with pretty much everything that's been said.

Do you guys use Anki for non-language stuff? I'm in college, and I always want to use Anki to help me understand concepts, but I never really know how to. In math, for instance, we don't really need to memorize the formulas (often we're allowed cheat sheets), it's really about understanding them and being able to use them. Anyone have thoughts on how to integrate Anki into this kinda thing, or should Anki be used strictly for memorization?

somstuff Wrote:I agree with pretty much everything that's been said.

Do you guys use Anki for non-language stuff? I'm in college, and I always want to use Anki to help me understand concepts, but I never really know how to. In math, for instance, we don't really need to memorize the formulas (often we're allowed cheat sheets), it's really about understanding them and being able to use them. Anyone have thoughts on how to integrate Anki into this kinda thing, or should Anki be used strictly for memorization?

put in a practice problem and just see if you know enough steps to solve the problem.

[s0apgun]

financialwar Wrote:except Damien ruined Anki with Anki 2, he even banned me from Google discussion because I was complaining too much.

In Anki 2, there is no delete or generate card function, everything is done through coding, good luck on make that mainstream.

Luckily, I wasn't voted a moderator. I would have banned you 25 posts ago.

I have also used Anki's cram function to ace tests hours before without any prior knowledge of the material. My materials science engineering class for example I took all 3 tests using an hour or two of Anki cramming. Received top 5 marks each test and all my friends are like how the hell??? You never study let alone show up to class!!!

Mainly use the 20 rules of formulating knowledge from supermemo's site to ensure crammed material lasts in my brain for another couple hours after cramming. Minimum information principle is my favorite.

http://www.supermemo.com/articles/20rules.htm

SRS for me is the same as my low carbohydrate diet. People ask me how I lost a bunch of weight. People ask me how I've learned Japanese.

I tell them. They shrug their shoulders, and then they make a lame excuse about why what I did could never possibly work for them. Then they go on about how they wish they could learn a language or they wish they could lose weight. Sometimes they even argue with me! They look at my current physique compared to the fat guy I used to be. They see how far my Japanese has progressed. They argue with me.

The thing I've realized about other people, even myself too sometimes, is that the things we say we want to do are not the things we actually want to do. The proof is in our actions. I said I wanted to learn to play the guitar when I was a teenager. I bought a cheap guitar. I had ample opportunity to practice. I didn't.

I guess I didn't want to learn to play guitar as much as I thought I did. I had to admit that to myself, and move on. A lot of people don't learn this lesson about themselves. They don't move on. They don't admit that they don't actually want to do the things they say they want to do. This is the kind of thing that creates regret later on in life.

I don't consider SRS a secret. I tell anyone who might be interested about it. SRS remains unpopular because it requires consistent effort every day. That's a dealbreaker for a lot of people.

Zgarbas Wrote:I don't think it's a matter of not wanting to learn. Some of the people I talked about SRS with actually reached a fairly decent (by common standards, at least; n3 in 3 years) level in Japanese without it, involving hours of rote memorization and all that. It can be done like that too. That makes it even more confusing as to why they wouldn't just try to make it easy for themselves, though =/.

I don't think it's that unusual to achieve a decent level of Japanese (as you defined it) without SRS. I did several years ago before I knew that SRS existed, and as far as I know, none of the people I knew in Japan who also had decent or higher levels used it either, but maybe some of them were keeping it a secret. I can't speak for the others but I doubt if I personally would've achieved that much without actually having lived in Japan though. Btw, I didn't really feel like I was spending hours on rote memorization at the time.

But with that said, I think SRS is great and I definitely use it now! I have told a few people about it when they ask about studying, and they did seem interested. I don't know if they followed though though or not.

Zgarbas Wrote:I'm not really sure if you're a troll or just someone who can't express himself without sounding like one. Please try to be less aggressive and show a bit of politeness.

I would feel better if you said this without the scary red quotes (that are associated with moderators). Undoubtedly, financialwar was out of line, but not out-of-line in such a way that serious repercussions are in order. He was just a bit rude.

You can remind people that they are out of line without bringing up the fact that you are a moderator and there is a power relationship here--and that if you wanted to you could use some sort of punishment. I've always though that red text is used most effectively when limited to a last resort before punishment.

Constantly seeing the red text of a moderator is a major forum turn off for me. Even when Fabrice was around way more often than now he very very rarely would do something like this, and I rather liked his style. This forum self-regulates pretty well; people had already let financial know that he was being out of line.

Of course, I don't mean to overstep my position. Forum members decided that you would be a good moderator; not only do I respect the decision of others, but I was also in agreement myself. So rather than telling you how you should moderate (and maybe it's just that I have issues with authority), I am just letting you know that this kind of thing gives me an icky feeling.

LOL, I never intended to start a flame or anything. So the first thing I'd like to do is to apologize to everyone here.

Maybe he didn't understand my point, maybe he was a bit rude, I don't know... but I took no offense (personal or else) because of finacialwar's comment. I know my English is not perfect, although a more constructive comment (for instance, a private message pointing my grammatical mistakes) would've been much appreciated ;-).

About the "logic" matters, I was really curious, because that was said to me once before, some years ago, when I failed a French written exam (B1 level). Honestly, my exam didn't deserve to pass, but I strongly disagreed about the reasons, especially when I was told "there's no way to understand your ideas". To date, I kept firmly believing that was indeed the case: there was no way FOR HER BRAIN to even grasp my ideas :*). Another person telling me the same, though, made me begin to think I really had a problem.

Luckily, I'm relieved now :-P.

faneca Wrote:

financialwar Wrote:you need to improve your English and your logic.

It was a fast post, but I agree I need to improve my English. What about my logic, though? You'll have to explain that one a little better...

financialwar Wrote:

faneca Wrote:"Usually, some hours of trial and error will save you from five minutes of reading docs"

Grammatical errors apart (which I'm not sure I'm seeing here, maybe the "from" should be left out? perhaps it doesn't sound natural? help is welcome), that's exactly what I meant (if only I coined myself such a brilliant expression of cynicism...)

Let me explain better what I was trying to say (at that point, we were talking about people who ask about Anki and *do* have a genuine interest on the answer -- the N3 type). I'll do it by example. Let's start with a realization of that previous idiom:

Example 1:
Paul wants to fine-tune a new machine. He knows he should spend ten minutes reading the manual (so it should be straightforward afterwards), but instead he decides to proceed directly through trial and error to do a smaller effort. Two hours later, he's finished.

Example 2:
N3 student is looking for a better way to study Japanese. He's told about SRS, but he finally resolves it isn't worth it (meaning he thinks he'll advance faster by not wasting time SRS'ing).

Example 3:
I write a fast post to talk about this particular, common human behavior, not caring about orthography, grammar or any other type of correctness, because I think it will suffice and then I'll return faster to my daily kanji review. Instead, I start a flame war and need two additional posts to explain myself and apologize.

As I said, when this behavior amazes me the most is when I find it happening to myself .

Setting aside those who ask about Anki (or a low carbohydrate diet) but don't give a 堰 about it (even when they think they do), there's a good share of people who'd really become addicted to SRS. It's just they'll never brake that invisible entrance barrier, an inner voice which tells them the techniques that SRS freak uses will be just a big waste of time for them. At least that's my opinion. Thoughts?

BTW I'd also like to hear from people who successfully used SRS for science studying.

[Zgarbas]

Tzadeck Wrote:

Zgarbas Wrote:I'm not really sure if you're a troll or just someone who can't express himself without sounding like one. Please try to be less aggressive and show a bit of politeness.

I would feel better if you said this without the scary red quotes (that are associated with moderators). Undoubtedly, financialwar was out of line, but not out-of-line in such a way that serious repercussions are in order. He was just a bit rude.

You can remind people that they are out of line without bringing up the fact that you are a moderator and there is a power relationship here--and that if you wanted to you could use some sort of punishment. I've always though that red text is used most effectively when limited to a last resort before punishment.

Constantly seeing the red text of a moderator is a major forum turn off for me. Even when Fabrice was around way more often than now he very very rarely would do something like this, and I rather liked his style. This forum self-regulates pretty well; people had already let financial know that he was being out of line.

Of course, I don't mean to overstep my position. Forum members decided that you would be a good moderator; not only do I respect the decision of others, but I was also in agreement myself. So rather than telling you how you should moderate (and maybe it's just that I have issues with authority), I am just letting you know that this kind of thing gives me an icky feeling.

Ah, it's no problem. I like to be given feedback . Feel free to do so whenever you think it's necessary.

I use the red text when giving moderator warnings since it's easy to spot, so if someone just sees modified/quickly browses the page they would be quick to see it (maybe I should use green for a less-threatening version?). I could just use e-mails but I think they're intrusive. (I do use the occasional e-mail to explain why I deleted a post, though), and not everyone reads their e-mails anyway. Aside from that, I've seen the red text when moderating/black when being yourself"" thing on many forums, so I guess I just thought it normal to adopt that attitude.

The thing is that I've received many reports regarding this guy, as well as given him an official warning for an insult. I don't like outright banning people from the get-go, and since this forum doesn't have a warning feature I have to let them know they're just being warned somehow. Technically, he's just being rude this one time(happens to the best of us). Practically, he's been rude/too blunt on many topics, with few posts where he is not so. I'm just encouraging a change in attitude =), and since he continued being rude/too blunt even after people pointed out that he was being so I thought a more "official" encouragement was necessary.

@faneca, don't worry, you didn't start a flame war . I'm sorry if you got that impression.

Zgarbas Wrote:The thing is that I've received many reports regarding this guy, as well as given him an official warning for an insult. I don't like outright banning people from the get-go, and since this forum doesn't have a warning feature I have to let them know they're just being warned somehow. Technically, he's just being rude this one time(happens to the best of us). Practically, he's been rude/too blunt on many topics, with few posts where he is not so. I'm just encouraging a change in attitude =), and since he continued being rude/too blunt even after people pointed out that he was being so I thought a more "official" encouragement was necessary.

Ah, okay, I see. I didn't realize he had been reported before or had a history of this. That makes the red text seem appropriate.

But yeah, in general that red moderator text is off-putting to me, though I'm not sure how others feel.

Anyway, thanks for taking my suggestion seriously and earnestly

Back when I used to think SRS was brilliant I told anyone I thought might be interested, but I don't think anyone ever started using it.

Tzadeck Wrote:Ah, okay, I see. I didn't realize he had been reported before or had a history of this. That makes the red text seem appropriate.

But yeah, in general that red moderator text is off-putting to me, though I'm not sure how others feel.

Having seen the previous posts by Financial war I thought the red text was perfectly appropriate, but I can see how it might seem over the top if you didn't know about them. I think maybe the lesson here isn't that she should avoid moderator text, but rather that it needs to be clear when a warning is the result of a string of inappropriate comments and not just the most recent one.

I see FinancialWar posting a lot, he's generally pretty rude from what I've seen.

Warning taken.

you can't pull any punches in a war.

faneca Wrote:"Usually, some hours of trial and error will save you from five minutes of reading docs"

What a great quote. It goes along with people that will waste enormous amounts of time to keep from doing activities that would take 5 minutes (supervisors deal with this a lot).

I don't consider SRS a secret. I consider it as great results that require effort. As such, people will avoid it even though it brings results. Decided a while ago that I'll tell people about it and show them how it works and not worry after that. Someone that's interested will keep at it.

I think if humanity discovered a way to live forever that involved effort, people would still die :-).

I tell a lot of people about SRS too. When I was successful at science fairs, I also told people how I did it and even have posts on the internet. I doubt that many people followed my advice because it takes effort.

I've seen people be secretive/rude when I ask them how they accomplished something. I always laugh because they don't seem to realize that maybe only 1% would actually copy their methods. Is that really so much competition? In fact, if you tell someone exactly how to achieve something, and they still don't do it, that should make you feel pretty awesome about yourself! Even with knowledge about the "secret," most others still couldn't achieve what you did. I think sharing is nice, especially when it involves effort and isn't a magic trick.

I have the opposite view of SRS. I introduce it to anyone I think might benefit from it, including running training groups at my university during my undergrad. I'm helping some school teachers I know integrate it into their classes - not to force students to use it, but to make them aware of the tools available so they can make use of them if they like. It might save people huge amounts of effort and help them achieve more than they otherwise would.

Why would anyone want to keep it to themselves?

Blahah Wrote:Why would anyone want to keep it to themselves?

To charge for it? :-p

Blahah Wrote:Why would anyone want to keep it to themselves?

lol, a lot of you here would not make very good businessman or military officer. Your demise will be your lose lips. One shouldn't tell people their method regardless whether you think they will implement it or not. You only going to make your competition more competitive.

And most of you say that, people don't seem to follow Anki even after tell them about it, I think maybe, just maybe that they are smarter than you in keep secrets. They are secretly studying with Anki and pretending to be lazy, and boom one day you are no longer the best in your Japanese class.