Okay, so I'm not quite sure what I'm doing here. I'm trying to learn from Basic Kanji Book, but what I'm getting asked to write out is a bit weird.

Lesson 1 kanji are: 日　月　木　山　川　田　人　口　車　門

One of the words you're eventually told to write in the book is 電車, where they'll give you 電 and provide a box for 車.

How come on Skritter, I have to write 電 as well?

I know the obvious response is going to be "Well, you have to learn it eventually anyway, so quit moaning." Let's keep that aside for a moment. I know those kanji anyway. I'm thinking more in terms of "Hey, I might want to show this to others who never did kanji before".

IIRC, the point of Basic Kanji Book is to introduce kanji by coaxing students with easy ones and then gradually turning the difficulty dial all the way to 11. On Skritter, it seems to be more like a roller-coaster ride, with easy and hard kanji being mixed about.

I thought the entire point of the provided vocabulary lists was to follow the book?

How does all of this relate to http://www.skritter.com/faq#why_no_kanji by the way? I have "Study All Kanji in Lists" turned off. From what I understand, if I turn that ON, I should get the above behavior, and if I turn it OFF, I should only be tested on the ten kanji I listed at the beginning.

Can someone shed some light on this?

Hmm, it looks like then I didn't import the book correctly. I'll put it on my list to make a new list which follows the list better. Right now, basically if you're supposed to learn the kanji in any of the given word, then all the kanji for that word is learned. But for those where you're not supposed to learn any of the kanji, then the kanji are not learned.

So in response to your second question, you can see the difference that setting makes here:

http://www.skritter.com/vocab/listsect?list=21865809&sect=0

It shows on the left column which words you're to learn the writings for. If it's missing the "W", then you won't learn the writing for that one. Checking the raw data against the list itself again... I'm not seeing the pattern. I think this list simply needs to be put in again.

I'll let you know when this gets done!

Hi!

Thanks for your response and for explaining how that setting works.

So it's either all or nothing -- no partial writing practice -- in the Flash applet? If so, the lists are (probably) correct as far as every writing exercise in the book being a writing exercise here.

If you look at my account (and ignore that I've yet to purchase a subscription :), you'll see what institution I'm studying at from the email address. My "secret" plan was to get more people hooked on using this site so the institution buys that site-license thing where they pay for subscriptions. That's mainly why I was asking.

Yeah, it tends to be all or nothing because that's simpler to do. Textbooks, particularly Japanese ones, tend to do weird things like this in an effort to make learning the language not so ominous and it's hard to make a simple system that works with all their creative strategies but also plays nice with our progress and list systems (what happens for example, when you start learning both kanji in a word, after only studying the word with one of them? Does your progress reset? Are they treated as separate words you learn or the same one?). It would probably be good to make an exception for this case though; I'll see what I can do.

And thanks very much for encouraging your teachers to purchase Skritter! This is how a lot of teachers learn about Skritter, actually, and we really appreciate it when you spread the word. I'll keep you informed of any changes I make so you can go ahead with your "secret" plan :)

Two more things I'm wondering about right now

1) When am I done for the day? Once Anki runs out of cards to show me, it says I'm finished for now. What's Skritter's equivalent?

I set "Section Movement" to "Stop adding on complete" and "Add Word Frequency" to "Slow" to get the most Anki-like environment. Given that, can I now stop for the day once Skritter fills my "to review" list with new words?

I found that if I "overstudy" by not stopping, words get huge delays of several days. I assume that's because Skritter thinks I really know them, when I'm actually just answering them over and over rapidly.

For now I'm going to play it safe and start over; with 31 words I need to know for next week's kanji test, that isn't going to kill me.

2) When I punched in my credit card details, I didn't get asked for the "Verified by Visa" security code thing my bank forced upon me a few years ago. If Skritter fails to bill me because of this, what happens?

Normally you're supposed to stop when the number of items due approaches 0 (mine usually hovers around 1 or 2).
Another way is to look at how due a word is (which you can see under the definiton):
e.g. studied 7 wks ago: due (113%)

When the percentage drops to 99/98 it's a good time to stop.

What inkubus said. Also, we'll be making a goal mode soon, which will work a little more like Anki. Basically, though, study for as long as you can/feel like. The more you study, the more Skritter will add (if you're adding automatically). It tries to adjust based on how much you study, basically, and how well you know the things you're already studying, so you go as fast as you want, but you don't get too overwhelmed.

If your credit card is declined, you can enter your full details here:

https://www.skritter.com/account/billing/subscribe?all_fields=true

Don't worry, your account won't be deleted or anything. We hold onto account data indefinitely, and you can continue to study while expired anyway. You just won't be able to add more words if you're not paying.

I never even saw that percentage until you mentioned it. :O

I'll go with items due approaching 0; seems easiest since it's at the top.

Eccentric flavor is awesome btw. Smiling while studying kanji... who'd have thought that'd ever happen. :>

Edit: Scott's post sneaked in while I was submitting mine. Thanks for the extra info and that link; I'll keep it in mind.

Looking at the percentage is probably more reliable than the words to review bar. The bar tends to get... a little off sometimes. It tries to keep track of new words arriving for study as well and sometimes miscalculates. Nick is going to work on it and get it to be accurate someday though! For now though... iphone app!

Here's another weirdism in the BKB list: 御金 instead of お金.

I've decided to roll my own list manually since there were also one or two missing words here and there. Not blaming anyone on the Skritter team for that though; all available lists on the Internet are missing the odd word here and there, it seems.

Too bad you can't publish lists in progress here. I was thinking about pushing out weekly updates, but that doesn't work. Oh well, look forward to it being published around... whenever our class is through both volumes of the book. :]

Oh you'll be able to edit published lists in the very, very near future.

Neat :]

Let me know when and I'll start publishing my list.

Keep an eye on the blog; we'll announce it when it's in beta testing.

So I decided to click on the Publish button today out of curiosity and behold... it's different on the Beta site. The list is published now and it looks like I can still edit it.

Awesome! :D

The list title/description editor is broken in IE9 btw. It does work on the stable site though.

I use IE9 because of the Wacom pressure plug-in.

Thanks for the report! I'll work on getting that fixed beta side.

One more bug: pasting multiple words in is also broken in IE9, but works in other browsers.

And an update to the previous bug: the description editor is apparently broken in all browsers on the beta site.

No need to prioritize them though. Once you know the workarounds, it's simple enough. :>