Imho there should be a button to pause the current practice..
nothing fancy, just stop the timer.
so when you get interrupted during your practice the time spent on that character does not show up faulty in the vocab list.

I think it auto stops at 30secs anyway, so no big deal...

I know, right? Those Skritter guys must be scummy wastrels to not have a pause button!

It's been on my list forever, but instead of a pause button, what's really needed is better AFK tracking, so that Skritter can pause automatically for you. I need to up the priority on that on my list so it gets done.

I'm a little unclear on what the purpose of a pause button would be. Even if you got interrupted it would stop at 30 seconds for writing a character (like Byzanti mentioned) and 15 seconds for tone practice.

How could you perfect AFK tracking to do better than that? With a 30 second cap it would be impossible to decipher between seconds the user is thinking and seconds they are physically away from the keyboard. Unless you are planning to connect Skritter with the users webcam and check for thermal activity around the computer haha. Am I missing something here?

It could never be perfect, but it could be pretty good. I could track when you switch focus away to another window or browser tab. I could reset the time to near zero if you started writing something after not having activity for 20 or 10 seconds, because I'd guess that you weren't really thinking for that long without moving your cursor.

A bunch of little heuristics like that ought to satisfy largely. I want something better than the current system because I don't like seeing even 30 seconds accumulate on an easy character that I just happen to get interrupted at.

exactly! :D
How can these people at work dare to interrupt my skritter sessions.

Reset the timer after 20 or 10 seconds? Did you mean minutes? I will occasionally spend that long in seconds writing on my hand before making my attempt on Skritter (keeps me from "guessing" with random strokes).

I figured you'd mention something involving the active window. But that becomes more difficult when you take multiple monitors into account. I switch between windows all the time while using Skritter (especially at work). I will typically switch windows when I am fairly certainly I know the answer, but need to think through it. So if you did it based on active window then I would return and write my answer in 2 seconds when it should be counted as 30 seconds because I took time thinking about it.

If the # seconds per character was more accurate I guess you could factor more of it into the SRS algorithm and show characters that take longer to write more often (of course accomodating for number of strokes).

On the other hand I sometimes feel even 4-5 seconds of thinking time on a character is too much and I should just mark it wrong and not waste time trying to remember. On the other hand, I feel I am sometimes unable to actually learn a character if I do not get it right just that one time after thinking 10-20 seconds.

Not sure what I'm saying just thinking out loud :)

I'm not sure I even understand the issue, but I do sometimes spend a very long time remembering a character, and if I get it perfectly right I mark it as right. I think that the process helps me to remember better in the future. I don't want to feel that I am racing to beat a clock, nor would I feel cheated if Skritter mistakenly thought I was trying to remember for 30 seconds instead of answering the phone or some such.

Does Skritter judge a character written in 10 seconds to have been better learned that a character written in 20 seconds? What, if anything, is the penalty for slowness, other than the opportunity cost of not having reviewed more characters?

The only need I could see for improving the current timing system would be if you wanted to make a rewards system more accurate by keeping a closer eye on the user. How many times do people really just walk away from Skritter per item studied? I am willing to bet that number is fairly low and if they really knew the item well then it wouldn't matter if it popped up again slightly earlier.

I don't know how Skritter factors in the response time or how waiting 30 second to answer it effects the queue. But I'd much rather an item I really knew be counted as 30 seconds and repeated sooner than an item I didn't know as well counted for less time because I was switching between tabs.

If it's really a serious issue then you could just add a reset button for the current item's time. This would make more sense, because generally when you're interrupted you wouldn't have time to press a pause button. This would also leave it as an option to the user, just like your grading system.

We keep track of thinking time and time spent, but we don't use it in scheduling currently. After we do some analysis of the data, if it's a reliable factor, we could use it. Right now, I want to improve it to make the statistics more accurate. I hate gathering data that I know has fixable sources of significant error in it.

mcfarljw, I could up the threshold, but it should be something short. I don't mind being wrong sometimes in strange cases like writing on your hand for a long time or switching windows while still looking at Skritter and writing on your hand. Everyone else I've seen use Skritter gets hit by the 30-second "wasn't actually using it" thing far more frequently, though. And there have been a lot of requests for a pause button, which indicates the same problem.

No pause or reset time button! Manual control is a distraction. Automatic timing can work great; you will see.

I might be in the minority but my timing issue (if I care enough to call it that) was brought up before. That is, I'll finish a character and then look at it for a second or two to try and burn it in my memory or erase and rewrite once or twice if I couldn't get it without the show prompt but none of this counts as Skritter practice time.

Like I say, this isn't a big deal - the timing is a rough guide to show me how much I've been practicing so as long as it's order-of-magnitude correct it's not really a priority for me.

Yeah, I tend to feel more shortchanged on time than anything. Would be nice if stuff like time spent after/inbetween characters could be counted more since that can add up...and it'd be nice if I'm sitting down for a couple hours in a row to see that fully reflected. Not a big deal for me though and I would rather see other features worked on first.

I have this on my list to address at the same time. I am not exactly sure how it's going to work, but it will work better and give you more time for after you've answered a character.