Tzadeck wrote:

I like that people are saying that the review process has changed and has not been explained.  It's like that one old teacher you have that just cannot use a VCR, so he has to get the school IT guy to come every time he wants to play a video in class.  The students' reactions are completely appropriate in this situation, "Dude, play around with a VCR for 5 minutes sometime and figure it out for yourself."

Exactly. Some people (such as my parents) will not even try to figure something out, afraid that it will explode if they touch the wrong thing. If you don't know what the two review "buttons" do, try pressing them. The worst that could happen is you accidentally review something.

This is somewhat appropriate: http://xkcd.com/627/

Loving the new site so far, reviews are much faster which makes thing go along better.

I echo the complaints of others about the restudy/learned list.

The "restudy" and "relearned" thing, this is just confusing....really, do card in the learned list expire, or do we review them from it as soon as we add them? This is the biggest thing that has happened, I don't like it and it seems not many other people like it.

Wally, calm down, fabrice does a good job, your custom keywords were a dependency via a greasemonkey script.

meolox wrote:

The "restudy" and "relearned" thing, this is just confusing....really, do card in the learned list expire, or do we review them from it as soon as we add them?

Finally some backup has arrived! Thank you meolox for posting this, I was starting to feel so alone there.

I will state for the 3rd time just in case anyone doubts my lack of a sense of entitlement:
I love Fabrice and I love the site and I know it's FREE so I'm not complaining.

Jarvik7, thanks for your explanation of the name changes.
I took your advice and clicked the "clear" link next to "30 learned". The "30 learned" text and button disappeared. Not really sure where they went. I guess they went into the failed pile? Oh sorry, the "restudy" pile.

But those "learned" cards were not new. I had failed them before. So I'm having trouble understanding this concept:
"Restudy cards = failed pile. Learned cards = new pile"

Hmm, I'll play around with it some more.

It wasn't a quote so much as it was how you came across. I'm sure the temporary loss of custom keywords is inconvenient for you, but Fabrice isn't the one you should be complaining to, and not in that manner. If the flashcards are so critical that you can't go for a short time without them, you shouldn't be entrusting them to a third party in the first place. What if the site's host had a server crash, or Fabrice was hit by a bus and couldn't pay this month's bill, or your internet went down? This is one of the reasons I've been using Anki since I finished RTK1.

It is completely unrealistic to expect Fabrice to bother checking out the scripts. Every update to the site would require Fabrice to get approval from every script author. A good number of the authors are probably not going to be very prompt about updating their scripts for whatever site updates Fabrice has in the bag, and they'd have no real way of testing until the changes were public anyways. It would make it nearly impossible to do frequent site updates. The way it has always worked is that a site update is rolled out, and then the script makers update their scripts to compensate. Perhaps you don't realize quite how brittle greasemonkey scripts are. There is no way he could have updated the site without breaking the script.

Last edited by Jarvik7 (2009 November 02, 6:59 am)

Damn, 34 replies until there is an answer to the question in the beginning...
Come on, flame elsewhere! There was a reason for this thread, and if you can't use empathy once in your life, go ahead and leave this thread for answers, not to boost your ego "I've understood and you didn't, but I'm not gonna answer you till a while".
This forum was not meant to thank all day long Fabrice, isn't it ?
I've had my share of thanks for him. Now this thread is for help. And it wasn't either about scripts... So what's the point in flaming ?

I totally agree that the scripts are not made by Fabrice, but as a website programmer, he must have tested his new version before, so he could have at least told people that the site would not work for the scripts users. Everywhere on the net, this is the way it works for OS, websites, programs.
Sometimes, you can even go back to the last version in your preferences panels.

By the way, it is true some users don't use the forums at all.
And the only thing I saw yesterday was this : http://www.koohii.com/maintenance.html
Yes, I would have appreciate a warning before, so as to save my list of substitute words.
Maybe it is still somewhere on my computer, but come on, not everybody is a computer enthusiast. If you know where to find them, it's cool, I don't.

So if you want to praise the design of the new version (which is really nice), or the change of words to describe the parts of the interface (which I find confusing, and don't see the point in doing this), this is not the place to be.

I hope the user that wrote the substitute keywords and alter sequence will be able to come up with a new version that can work here.

Last edited by Komorebi (2009 November 02, 9:11 am)

Thank you Fabrice, it is very kind from you to tell us about this.
I feel a little relieved now

I also tried to reach Woelpad recently but as you put it, he seems away for a while.

This could be a nice idea to post a list of changes, thanks in advance.
It will help some of us to use this site more efficiently (or not get lost)
And even if I can't use the site for now, I can say the graphical changes are really nice.

Thanks for your reply !

Woelpad is alive and well   He said he may be able to update the scripts soon. Please also give HIM a little patience and some cheers. Thank you

After much digging around on the forums, I think I have pulled together the answer to questions I have been asking -- the fundamental difference in the study/review process:
There is now an extra review step in the user workflow, which is intended to improve the user's pass rate after the first interval.

I'll put all the details below in the hope of helping any others looking for the same information.

In this post Aboros identified IN DETAIL the issues with the new workflow and nomenclature, including the confusion between "learned" list and "restudy" list, and the extra review step that has been added to the user workflow.

aboros wrote:

So anyhow, after I click 'add to the restudied list' on a kanji page, I still have to 'Review' it from the 'Study' page before I can actually review it on the Review page.

http://forum.koohii.com/viewtopic.php?pid=56585#p56585

To which Fabrice replied here and described the extra review step in the user workflow.

ファブリス wrote:

Compared to before you now have an exra review. Before, the learned button would clear the kanji immediately. Now you must test those kanji once. The ones that pass, are cleared and into box 2 with the 3 day interval as before. The ones that didn't pass, stay in the "restudied list".

You can also just review the whole "restudy"/failed stack, and the kanji that pass are also cleared.

The "restudy" process could use improvement but it will probably stay like this for production. Overall I think it's better, allows for one extra review, and possibility to selectively restudy for those who have a large "failed" stack (eg. clear 5 off the stack each day).

http://forum.koohii.com/viewtopic.php?pid=56622#p56622

Then in a later reply we get some more details and a mention of what was the goal of this change in the workflow: To improve the user's pass rate after the first interval.

ファブリス wrote:

rswarsaw wrote:

Extra review on the failed page - so this is just an extra review that still puts all the learned kanji in box 2 once completed

Come to think of it, yes, it does reschedule the card like the Learned button used to. The test gives you an extra review though (and also it can be scheduled for +2 to +4 days, whereas I think the previous "Learned" button code used to set all cards to +3 days). Some users said the Learned button interval was too long for them. This doesn't reduce it, but the extra review should help to improve the pass rate after the first interval.

http://forum.koohii.com/viewtopic.php?pid=57333#p57333

Also, earlier in this thread I was advised by a well-meaning member to try clicking the "clear" link to see what it does. Well, I tried it and I regret it, because I then had to go back and click the "learned" button for each of those 30 kanji that were cleared out of the "step up" pile. So be careful of the clear link when you have lots of cards in that "learned" stack.

DavidZ wrote:

It says "30 learned" and "40 to restudy".
So my question is what's the difference between a "learned" card and a "restudy" card? And what does clicking the "clear" link do ?

I admit it is not as self-explanative as it could be.

The major difference, come to think of it, is that you must re-review the cards before they re-enter the review cycle.

So basically the big change is that you now have an intermediate step :
- when you "relearn" a card (the button in the story area), it will go onto a tremporary "restudy" pile, which you have 30 of them on that screenshot
- this pile will be forgotten by the site eventually, but at this stage this is really just a selection of cards, there is no review status change
- now you have the possiblity to review this pile, and see if you properly re-learned them, you are taken to the regular review mode, with just THOSE cards. If you pass them, they will re-enter the review cycle just like they used to, but if you fail, they will remain there.
- now you can clear the pile, in effect just clear the "restudy" selection, nothing happens to your cards
- or.. you can add some more relearend kanji, along with those you failed previously, rinse-repeat
- or.. you can clear the thing and work on OTHER kanji, because you just dont like those

Essentially this gives you an extra review compared to the previous implementation.

But to be honest, if this was implemented like this from the beginning, I feel it would be the right way to do it. In other words, why would we get rid of the extra review now? Restudy cards need your attention so hopefully this is an improvement, not a feature downgrade.

Still, the UI was done in a hurry, and I agree the workflow for adding and reviewing new cards needs to be improved.

With all that said, the test site was announced publically and has been there for a ridiculously long time. Those that have posted in the "Refactored" site thread have had the chance to post suggestions and about half of those have been implemented since.

Komorebi wrote:

Damn, 34 replies until there is an answer to the question in the beginning...
Come on, flame elsewhere! There was a reason for this thread, and if you can't use empathy once in your life, go ahead and leave this thread for answers, not to boost your ego "I've understood and you didn't, but I'm not gonna answer you till a while".

Yes! Can I get a witness!
And I find it deliciously ironic that this empathy that you mention is shown to be quite relevant to second language learning -- as discussed over here: http://forum.koohii.com/viewtopic.php?id=3890&p=1

"Valeant benefici, poenas dent malefici"
Now back to studying!

aboros wrote:

フアブリス, The link on the home page to Trinity forum discussion goes to paypal.  Is this intentional?

Lol, no, see this post. I'm relieved www.x.com wasn't some porn site though

Wow and I'm right on time! If I read the date in US this PayPalX thing is revealed tiomorrow? I have no idea what it is. I just often used placeholder link like xyz.com that I have to replace later.

Woelpad's scripts are back, and the "substitute keyword" function seems to be working fine.
That's awesome !!
Many thanks Woelpad for your support.