Hey, I haven't been in the habit of going to the forum, but if anyone responsible for overseeing skittering is reading, the changed organization structure doesn't work as well as the way you had it before. It is harder to get to a specific section of a custom list to study it. In addition, the line which appears before I study a custom list "not as efficient in the long term" is just annoying and not helpful at all. I don't want to see the way I am studying disparaged every time I go to study.

Please get rid of this and change your structure back so I can more quickly get to things, it seems you've added a step.

I agree they shouldn't punish people for wanting to cram for a test, but I also see the value of funneling everyone to the best way to learn the language as a whole, focusing on long term language learners rather than get me a C and I'm gone students.

I've used the 'study everything' method on Skritter for the last two years and have progressed in Chinese faster than anyone said possible.

I'm actually not studying Chinese for a test (I'm currently a law student, though I took Chinese courses as an undergraduate, and sadly didn't have skritter then), though I do like working on specific vocabulary.

I have two times I cram a list or section, to review for a test or to add a bunch of new vocabulary at once. On the other hand, I use the everything function to sort through the thousands of characters and words in my account and give me the ones I need now.

Do you only cram lists or use a combination of studying everything sometimes and specific lists other times?

@Thomas You've been using the site for 2 years? I thought it's only been up for about a year and a half.

Anyway, good job on your progress. May I ask where you get your vocab words from, mainly ? I've been using Chinesepod, but sometimes I think they're rubbish

Maybe I'm wrong, but think it will be two years in the next few months. Seems like I used for about 4 months before kicking the habit, nuking my account, and travelling China for a summer. I remember my cravings that summer, hopelessly trying to hack net-bar computers to let me install a newer, Skritter friendly browser. I'm sure they're all still running ei6 today.

The service started in beta in 2008 and was launched in April 2009. -wikipedia

I don't think I started before Chinese new years in 2009. How many people that started in 2008 are still pounding out their items due?

You can see when you subscribed if you go to "account". I subscribed in February 2009 so I think I started in late 2008 or maybe January 2009.

Nice, I started February 28, 2009, but I think my friend introduced us at the end of 2008. Wouldn't want to imagine my life today without Skritter! : )

Also, it needs to inform you of how many words are on your list without you having to leave it to go check, and tell you when you have exceeded the 200 you can save per list right away instead of waiting until you actually try to save it (and then not telling you how far you are over).


I seem to recall it did something like that. . . the changes to the organization of the site seem to have made it of lower quality.

Also, though issues of this nature aren't new, when I add a new definition, it should not later show the definition as blank when I add the same word and then tell me there is already a definition when I try to add one, it should show it and then let me edit and change it easily if I want to.

So demanding!
While we're at it, I'd love it if the Queue didn't erase incomplete entries (which were pasted in delimited form, en masse) once you press the "Add Words to Queue" buttom.

@ibperry

You can’t please everyone, unfortunately. If you read old forum posts they are riddled with people complaining about changes to Skritter. Same thing occurs every time there is a change on Facebook. I don’t think it’s disparaging or disdainful: I think it’s progress.

@Thomas

How fast have you progressed? Spaced repetition might be the most efficient way of studying, but nothing can beat the effectiveness of full immersion. You can learn a lot in two years if you practice all the time.

BTW: I started in early 2009 – with multiple accounts, don’t remember the reason why – and do my forum posting on this one.

Well, I came from not knowing anything to reading novels and starting a graduate program in a science I've never studied before in two years and a few months. Although not what I was hoping for, I also scored a high level 5 on the HSK this November.

I wouldn't call my first two years immersion, I was working, talking, and thinking English for 8 hours a day. I credit a few extended vacations fully immersed with the fluency I gained my first two years. I hope you're right, icecream, that my continuous full immersion now will help me progress like nothing before.

Like I said before, I wouldn't be anywhere near where I am now without the 300 hours I've spent skrittering.

@ibperry: In the old way, many new users found the study of sections without even realizing that you could study whole lists or all lists together, so we decided it would be good to emphasize these other modes instead, and to make sure that people know that it's not recommended, since it doesn't use the full power of Skritter's scheduling system.

If you study the list as a whole, you should be able to get to the list fairly quickly from the study page though. Another thing is if you find yourself studying a single section over and over, you can bookmark that page.

That's a good point though about the over-200 limit notice. I'll put that on my to do list because that would be helpful.

I'm not sure what you mean about the definition. Could you go over in more detail what steps you take? Once you set a definition for a word that didn't have one before, it should update the list to show the new definition.

@Bohan, Thomas, jww: We graduated from Oberlin College in May 2008, started working on the site right away. Launched beta in September, though we didn't start getting many users until December. We started charging in May of 2009. You can see what dates you yourself arrived on the account page.

@mikethatguy: That change shouldn't be hard to make. It goes on the list!

Sometimes it seems like it doesn't show. Or at least, it has "add definition" and then tells me I can't add a definition.


Also, I am a little unclear on how to edit a definition I've added (this usually comes up when I acidentally copy part of one for a word currently undefined here from another dictionary and need to go back and copy the whole thing, or when I add the pronunciation as the definition etc.), what to me seems the intuitive way to do it leads to a message that I already have a definition for that word, apparently without any re-direction to where I might edit it--I have done that before, but when on the "add words" page, doing what seems the obvious thing to edit it doesn't work.

Only sometimes? Does it seem like the definition sticks sometimes but not other times?

I tested real quick, entering a fake word into the system and adding, removing, and re-adding a definition and it seemed to stick. Basically I see the 'add definition' box, click it, enter the definition, then it closes and the 'add definition' box is replaced with the definition I just put in. Where in this process does it go differently for you?

Also, which page do you mean by the "add words" page?

If you ever need to change a definition for yourself, though, you can always do that from the word popup. Wherever you can click the word, in lists or on the practice page for example, you can get that popup and do several word specific things there.