How is Mnemosyne an improvement as a SRS over RevTK, please elaborate so I can decide whether I should make the switch as well, or not.

BTW, I dont recommend it for Shibo, who does well with paper flashcards.
I recommend only for those that have otherwise free time in front a pc.

Mnemosyne has a "categories" function, where you can do your reviews separatedly or together.

Last edited by mentat_kgs (2008 June 16, 8:19 am)

I did some huge amount of review today. Mnemosyne still doesnt know I know kanjis like day and moon ^_^

Iei, I'm saving sooo much more time on my reviews now. I only did 1 hour today and I estimate I've done about 150 kanjis, no swet.
I'm also following that other thread that says you have to remembre the kanji in the first 5 seconds or fail. If I was doing it here in RevTK, it would be soo much trouble. RevTK is too hard on failed kanji.

820 kanji to go. I did ~250 reviews today. There are 316 scheduled for tomorrow.

802 kanji to go. 358 scheduled for review tomorrow.

It apears there is an anki plugin to import data from RevTK. But well, I did it the hard way. And I'm still doing it. And I'm already saving time. It took me 7 days.

What I did:
I did the switch when I was around the kanji 1200. I started from scratch, but I went fast trougth the 1100 first ones by holding "enter" key (ehe, dirty trick).

I'm still having massive amounts of review everyday. But my schedule is getting lighter (in mnemosyne you can see the schedule for the next 7 days). Today it will be 358. Tonight, after my review (I need to get home to check mnemosyne), I'll post here my schedule for the week. The schedule changes depending if I fail or add new kanji, but it is for sure getting lighter.

If you wanna follow me, you can wait for another week to see if my reviews will really drop. I only started adding new kanji in the last 2 days, before that I was working on what I call new old kanji (aka the failed ones).

I already have the feel that the switch is helping me, but I still cannot back it up with numbers.

I just added a few new cards. 779 to go. With that, 215 to review tomorrow.

32 failed of 215. 85% recall

It is!
Is it bothering you?

mentat_kgs wrote:

It is!
Is it bothering you?

It's not a matter of bothering, but of using the right media. It's great that you are recording your progress and sharing it with others, but probably a real blog would be better for you and the other users of this forum. An internet forum is defined as a place for many people to hold discussions, not for one person updating his personal progress.
I hope I didn't sound too aggressive

roderik wrote:

I do not consider threads as these as an annoyance of any kind, for if I don't want to read them, I just skip them.

Certainly true, and don't think anyone would be truly annoyed if this thread went on. I just think it would be a little bit easier for other users to just navigate through real forum threads (as opposed to "personal" ones).
But, even more important, Mentat would really benefit much more from a real blog, full of apposite features (rss, links, trackback, profile page, ecc) instead of a simple thread.

Anyway, that was just a personal suggestion. I don't reckon this as a very important issue.

Yo, I could make a blog, but then I wouldn't get such great feedback ^_^.

I started this thread because I wanned people commenting on what I was doing. Thats because I was doing really bad. It was the people here in this forum helped me to get out of mud.
Tks again, people.

I continued this thread, and RevTK, because those people were cheering on me.

Now I think of this thread as the first document that shows someone getting out from the muddiest part of RTK (I hope that mas the muddiest part) and finishing it (ow yeah babe). Step by step.

How can I rename this topic? When ended it should be named: "How to finish RTK, day by day"

Roderik, about mnemosyne. I did not put the "learned" kanji out of rotation. The huge reviews of 300+ kanji where these old kanji I already knew.  You can say that I almost started from scratch, but today (allmost 2 weeks after the switch) they do not show up much anymore.
You can see it in my schedule for the week: 126, 88, 52, 38, 59, 55, 67

Still, I'm happy I switched because now it is easier for me to review the failed kanjis.

Mnemosyne works like this:
- It doesnt show any stacks.
- It just shows a kanji and you grade it from 0 to 5 (But I only use 4 and 0 to my grades because I'm lazy).
- First he shows the "scheduled" kanjis for the day. When you start it schedule is 0. As you progress it builds a schedule for you.
- After showing the "scheduled" kanjis, it shows failed kanji in packs of 5. Only after passing these 5 kanjis it'll show the next 5. This is great for me because using RevTK I was screwing up with the first reviews. Mnemosyne doest allow me to screw up with the first reviews.
- After showing the "failed" kanji, it shows the new kanji, also in packs of 5, the same way as the failed ones.

The first reviews are crucial to actually learn the kanji. I found out the hard way that you can only memorize what you have already learned. Mnemosyne enforces I take more care in the beginning, so it is easier to notice I have a crappy story as soon as possible. With RevTK I was taking 3 days to notice that.

As for learning new kanji, RevTK is a big help. I still use RevTK to create my stories. The feature of sharing your stories is simply overpowering.
I do not plan to abandon RevTK until I finish RTK. I just wont use it as my SRS.

Last edited by mentat_kgs (2008 June 26, 5:34 pm)