When you write a word, the single characters of that word will also get pushed back the list so you don't have to write them to often.

Is there any possibility that this could also work the other way around. For example, if a word has two characters in it, both those characters where practised earlier, either in other words or by themselves, so the system reschedules the writing of this word for a later date.

This way you could spend more time practising the characters that you don't know how to write yet.

I would like to do this, but because it takes a while to search for words containing characters you just practiced, it's not efficient to do this quickly. The client does this a little bit, but it doesn't go overboard with it, as it doesn't want to get out of sync with the server.

There is a new persistent connection feature of App Engine that would make this a lot easier, so eventually I might rework the system a bit to allow cool things like this to happen, but it'd be a big change, so it won't happen soon.

As long as it's an option. Since I use Skritter mainly for vocab (through writing characters), the current scheduling suits.

As long as a change like that wouldn't effect the definitions portion, it might be useful. If it affected the definitions portion, I would want an off switch.

I would just want it to affect the writing of the characters, as that's the only part that stays the same. Definition, tone and pronunciation can all change depending on how you put the characters together, so it wouldn't make sense to touch those.

If we're talking about a significant delay, I think I would be against it because a lot of my words are made up of well-known characters and I still often get them wrong, not because I don't know how to write the individual characters, but because I write the wrong character. I am not so concerned about the writing per se as the knowledge of which character to write.

It wouldn't be a significant delay, just a small spacing effect, because you'd have just seen it. But I wouldn't worry about it now anyway.

Agree with James's opinion on this one...

I just find it a bit annoying when I sometimes have to write the same character 5 times in 10 minutes. It would be sweet if common characters got pushed back a little every time you wrote them. It would probably save me about an hour a day. It wont affect the definition flashcards so you can still practice that as before.

And jww1066, study the unihan definition of single characters, skritter shows you the individual character definition so if you know it you will know which character you should write.

Nick, if this is too hard to do right away, another thing that would help is if I could manually add time to a word. I often look at words that I've added before and see that it's up for review in a little while, I would like the option to push that word forward without having to write it again. Like a add time button.

I'm also with James here, I'd rather not see any change away from the current scheduling. I understand YouJing's point about not wanting to be stuck writing the same characters over and over, but when they start showing up in a bunch of words you don't know, writing those characters isn't such a big deal.

Particularly since I started using Hidden Pinyin a couple months ago I've used the writing portion to test my recollection of more than just how the characters are written, but testing that I know which characters are in the word as well - if I know the characters, I mark them as known, while often independently marking the word as unknown. If seeing an individual character often pushed back the words it's in, it would severely mess up my study. Not least because one of my main lists is organized largely by individual characters occurring in words, so I often get a lot of words with the same character in a short time.

@YouJing - Since I haven't seen you posting around here until recently, and you seem to be running into the same characters with heavy frequency by the fact that you consider this an issue, I'm going to guess that you're pretty new to Skritter - I think you'll find that as your vocabulary grows wider (at least to Skritter's knowledge, it can only schedule based on what it knows about your knowledge, after all). In the meantime, some people like to save time by marking known characters correct without actually writing them, so you might try that in the meantime if you're feeling bogged down by overexposure to known characters.

@YouJing - Sorry, I didn't make myself clear. Here's an example. I am currently studying the word 继续; I know how to write both of the characters, but for some reason I keep thinking that the first character is 进.

I agree with FatDragon, the best way to handle it is probably to mark the character as known if you're sure you know it. I would probably hit "Show" to be sure and then mark it as known.

James

I've been on skitter for some two months now, and according to skitter I've practised a little over 3000 words. I don't feel that keeping adding words is going to make this less of a problem. When you know 3000+ characters, the majority of the vocabulary you add to skitter is going to be characters that you already know how to write.

So I see this as a problem that is going to get bigger and bigger the more I study. I would just want it to push them back a little bit, or maybe rearrange the queue so you wouldn't have to write the same character every few minutes.

@ jww1066: Are you using hidden pin-yin? Cause those two characters are not pronounced in the same way, one is ji and one is jin. The pin-yin and the unihan definition should be enough to point you in the right way.

Cheers

The problem only gets worse and worse the further you go. When I was studying 简称 and Chinese geography I was adding new characters at a fairly decent clip. Now it has slowed to a trickle, though. I get maybe 2 new characters for every 100 words I add.

After a certain point, a person might be better off just adding a "4000 most common characters" list to write and then have Skritter serve as a flash card program for all of your words.

One thing I do is I just say what the characters are and then move on. For example, for the word 地方： 地位的地and方向的方. I then just double tap the space bar. That doesn't really solve the problem, though. It just speeds it up a bit.

My advice for anybody who complains about Skritter is the same: suck it up!

Your complaint is the same as somebody complaining that they use the same letters over and over again when writing sentences and want to see the letter "z" and "x" more often. Sure, go ahead, write about zebras and zucchini while playing a xylophone but remember that it's not very useful unless you really like unrealistic sentence structure.

@icecream I disagree about the "suck it up" part. I am a computer programmer and a lot of constructive feedback comes from people with complaints. Many of the features that make Skritter so useful were created based on user feedback.

@YouJing True in that one case, showing pinyin would help, but it's not true in general, as Chinese is chock full of homophones. But I think this argument is moot, as it sounds like Nick is only going to make this move things a little ahead, which I'm fine with. In the meantime you can deal with this just by hitting the space bar when you're sure you know the character.

James

For some reason hitting the space bar feels like cheating :P

@ icecream, how is that the same? Do you use skritter to practise sentence structure or do you use it to learn more characters? And how is the roman alphabet anything like Chinese characters?

How do you reckon things get better? Because people criticise and scrutinize or because people "suck it up"?

"If I'd asked my customers what they wanted, they'd have said a faster horse."

Henry Ford

It's not just you: EVERYBODY seems to have ideas on how to make Skritter better. Unfortunately most of them are stupid or distracting or technologically difficult. And, to top it off, they clutter up the forums. Your suggestion falls under the realm of naivety or laziness. You’ve been doing this for 2 months; many posters have been doing this for 2 + years. If this really was a problem – Hint: it’s not – then somebody would have mentioned it before.

Don’t get me wrong: I thought the same way when I first started. I only wanted new characters. However, I eventually – after a bunch of flittering – came to the conclusion that context was crucial. You really do need all that repetition. I started seeing certain radicals turn up in patterns and was able to start intuiting the meaning of words based on the composition of the characters sans definitions.

Radicals are a lot like roman letters

I use Skritter to learn characters with the concomitant benefit of learning how to, slowly, read. You need to formally study grammar if you want to create a natural sounding sentence.

@ youjing - Yah it may feel like cheating, but suck it up :) Cheat a little :)

@ Icecream - Umm.... Huh? Sorry but you aren't even making sense to me here. You can disagree and say it is a bad idea, but you are attempting to make it sound like a moronic idea. It isn't. Even Nick acknowledged:

"I would like to do this, but because it takes a while to search for words containing characters you just practiced, it's not efficient to do this quickly. The client does this a little bit, but it doesn't go overboard with it, as it doesn't want to get out of sync with the server.

There is a new persistent connection feature of App Engine that would make this a lot easier, so eventually I might rework the system a bit to allow cool things like this to happen, but it'd be a big change, so it won't happen soon."

You wrote, "Your suggestion falls under the realm of naivety or laziness. You’ve been doing this for 2 months; many posters have been doing this for 2 + years. If this really was a problem – Hint: it’s not – then somebody would have mentioned it before. "

Huh? His idea isn't bad. First of all, did you notice he said 3k words? This guy isn't a newbie. He can probably talk circles around quite a few of the people on this thread. Second of all, I second his idea. I have been using Skritter for 10 months. I have been studying insanely intensely (from 4-10 hours a day) for 2 years now. If you call me lazy or state that I lack any real knowledge about studying Chinese, then I would LOVE to hear your criterion. Lastly, just because something hasn't been brought up before doesn't inherently mean it is a bad idea or that there isn't a problem. It just means it was an idea/problem that hasn't been voiced until now.

The idea is technologically inadvisable at this point. Fine. That is a valid argument against it. You argument...

I also have to say I don't really like the hostility in this thread. Can we please have a conversation without needlessly provoking people with words like "stupid", "naive" or "lazy"?

+1 @ James

YouJing, we all really like Skritter and get concerned when there's an idea that might adversely affect how we've been using it. Despite the hostility, there's also some sense too.

One thing I will say is, that if you really want to understand where we'll all coming from, you'd want hidden pinyin on (I'm guessing it's not on at the moment, sorry if wrong). You're no longer just testing your writing of characters, but additionally your recall of words. Skritter really shines here.

@YouJing If you are very comfortable with the characters in a word, why not mark it a 4 (too easy) or turn off writing for that word? You can turn off writing from the magnifying glass pop-up. I use Chinese most of the day and find myself getting ahead of where Skritter thinks I should be because I see the common stuff several times a day and 4's seem to do a pretty good job fixing the problem.

I imagine you have a lot of reviews every day with that many words and characters in your rotation in only a few months. Keep getting things right and hitting 4's when it's too easy and you'll soon be where you want, with most of those easy words scheduled for months or years in the future.

Another idea is when you add a word and know the characters, start off by marking it a 4. This way the system will schedule those words weeks out right off the bat.

Dang, 3,000 words in 2 months? I've been here for several months and I'm barely over half that, and I came into Skritter knowing quite a bit already... You must be putting in some serious hours...

I would think that as you broaden your vocabulary and increased your character count, you'd see most individual characters less often because there would be more different characters to spread them out, so most characters you see would still be valuable to review.

Personally, it remains that I consider myself better off with those characters coming up as often as they need to - I use writing as a reverse definition for words - if I have to look at the pinyin I mark myself down, and then if I have to show a character it's an automatic 1, so repeating the characters within the words doesn't feel like a problem to me. That's just me, though.

When you write a character that is part of a word, skritter will push that character back so you don't have to write it again, I believe most people agree with this. What I was asking was if it's possible to make this go both ways, mainly so you won't have to write the same characters many times in a row, I do think most people will agree that it will be better practise if the prompts are at least a few hours apart.

Some people here seem to think that I want the words to disappear, I don't, if I did I would turn them off. And I do use the easy button if I know a character when adding it. But if skritter could do this automatic then that means that there would be less manual tasks to perform, thus saving time. If you think this is stupid than I don't understand what you are doing with a computer in the first place, is cutting down on menial manual tasks not the sole reason for developing computers in the first place?

And icecream, I would love to hear your theory on how radicals is a lot like the Roman alphabet.

@west316
Unless he has years of prior experience, he's a newbie. I think his claim of 3000 words is grossly inflated. You can't learn that much that quick without being some sort of prodigy or have a natural gift with languages.

Back to the original point: I feel the opposite. I wish I would see the same characters over and over again in different words. Visual alliteration is amazingly powerful. One of my favorite Japanese games -- 塊魂 -- uses this technique and I try to do the same in my writing.

Radicals are a lot like suffixes.

Icecream, give me your email and I'll send you a screenshot of my progress page. I'm not in the habit of exaggerating. And why would I? So you guys will think that I'm cooler?
I don't use Skritter to make you think that I'm cool, and I certainly don not post in the forums because I want you to think I'm cool.

And please explain to me how radicals are a lot like suffixes, and then explain to me how the Roman alphabet is a lot like suffixes. Because they are the same right?

I'm looking forward to hearing more about your theory on radicals.

"And why would I? So you guys will think that I'm cooler?"
Obviously.

I wasn't being entirely consistent -- that I agree with you on -- when I compared radicals to the alphabet and suffixes. It's hard to translate certain ideas when the concepts don't entirely overlap.

Basically I view it like this: radicals encode certain kinds of meaning that is somewhat consistent when you see them in separate words.
The radical wood, for example, is in both bed and chair. I read it as a bed and chair both are made of wood and that's how I remember them.
wood = 木
bed = 床
chair = 椅

Suffixes do the same thing: they encode meaning that is consistent throughout words.

Prefix
Preempt
Preview

The suffix 'pre', generally, means before.

You can also view the 216 radicals as being similar to the 26 letters in the alphabet as they are both building blocks needed to create complex words.

Granted, both analogies are slightly flawed -- language is still a blunt tool -- if you take either position to the extreme.

@ Icecream - Sorry, but a small logic error on your part. You assumed he LEARNED those three thousand words in those months. Odds are, he already knew them and is uploading them to his account to practice. If you read my progress page it looks like I learned in five months... a lot of words. Lets just leave it at that.

Look, each stage of a students life makes him/her crave a different learning environment. For me, my ideal Skritter has become this:

1) I want a huge definitions section that is in essence a flashcard database of all of my words.

2) When I am given a writing prompt, it is just a character. HOWEVER instead of a sentence that doesn't work and an insanely long string of English translations, that are questionable at best, I want only a hand full of example words. For example, for the character 理 you could see 整_ 道_ _论. A basic English definition along with that is fine, but not required.

3) Tone practice would stay the same.

I would load the most common 4k characters to the writing section and would keep my vocabulary the same for the definitions part. That would save me soooooo much time that it would be incredible. The problem is that a beginner couldn't use that system. That is an upper-intermediate to advanced user's desire. Byzanti said that YouJing should try to see things from the perception of everyone else. What I am saying is that the Skritter gods have to do what is best for the most customers, but YouJing's point of view is very valid for some of us.

@icecream I think you're on the right track with the radicals. The other piece of the puzzle is appropriate use of mnemonics to reinforce the meanings of radicals and characters that are embedded in other characters. For example, when you study 椅 you can use a mnemonic that references 木 and 奇 and so reinforces your memories of the meaning of those two components.

The only semi-minor problem is that there are commmon components that aren't radicals, and there are some radicals that aren't used much at all (龠 for example, which seems to be used in very few other characters).

YouJing you said "Some people here seem to think that I..." I assume you're referring to me giving simple advice on how to use the current system better. If I thought you were the only person to use this information, I wouldn't have shared it (I'm not too fond of your bashing habits), I wanted to remind any users who don't currently use those systems of their existence because they work great for me.

I agree for making Skritter better and saving users time, but I also think there are 100 more important, more global solutions for them to work on now, as I think some earlier comments attempted to mention. Thanks for sharing this idea, have any others?

@ Thomas, if I wanted to single out you I would have said, "Thomas seems to think", I'm sorry if you found my comment "bashing", not my intention.
And for me right now repetitive writing of the same characters is the biggest problem, otherwise I wouldn't have brought it up.

An example, I got both the characters for 幽默 with maybe 3 minutes apart, and then a minute or so later I got the whole word. I would prefer if Skritter waited at least an hour to show me 幽默 if I got both of the separate writing prompts right.

I'm quite surprised how this thread turned out, people seem to think change is bad and that I come to take your beloved Skritter away. icecream even goes as far as personal insults. Not OK in my book.

What is your problem anyway? And where do you get of labelling me as a "newbie" and "naive and lazy". How good is your Chinese anyway? I would guess not that good by the way you're talking.

@west316, your idea is really good. That would help me too. Just practise writing on a character basis and use the definition, pin-yin and tone prompts for all the words. Brilliant.

The problem with pushing words back a couple hours when their characters are shown is that most of us don't put in enough time on Skritter for it to be practical - I've added half a dozen words with the character 实 in them recently, and each one has a different meaning. If seeing one of them pushed back the others, it would mean I only saw one or two of them a day, which would severely impair my study.

However, I definitely get the issue with a character showing up and then a word using it showing up shortly thereafter - it's so common, in fact, that I think it must be programmed to work that way in certain situations. It doesn't bother me that much, but it does put me in a grading pickle from time to time.

Incidentally, how did you manage to get so many words in such a short time? Putting stuff you already knew into Skritter? Pure man hours? Brutally efficient study habits and a mind like an adamantium trap? I'm curious because, if it's not one of the first two, you might have some good pointers to share with the rest of us.

I would only want skitter to push words forward if you wrote both those characters before. And I only wanted it to affect the writing part.

The system that west316 described in his post is probably a much better solution, it would solve all these problems and would significantly speed up my studies. But maybe he's right, that's not good for a person that's just starting out.

Some of it I knew from before, a lot is new, and it's mad hours. When I started I could sit from morning till night. I tend to get quite focused when I start something. But it goes in periods, I'll Skritter all day for a couple of weeks and then I have to do something else for a couple of days. Right now I'm playing Mafia II for example and have been neglecting my Skritter a bit. (I have 1700 reviews due now :P)

And fat dragon, do you know what the street-sign in your avatar stands for? I always see it on the streets and it always puzzles me. My best guess so far, "No explosions on the roof of your car on this street" :P

@all seeing the topic problem...

Do your lists have many of the same words/characters in a row? Maybe they are getting graded the same and get stuck on the same review schedule cycle.

Do you have the 'also add characters when adding words' function turned on in your account > language settings? Maybe there is a simple tweak of that system in order, spreading scheduling the characters away from the words from the start?

Repetition of similar characters is a helpful crutch to some, but Skritter is about spaced repetition and will not work correctly with items too close together. On the other hand, we can't be pushing scheduling around too much or we'll mess up the spaced repetition we're looking for. Lets look for the root of the problem instead of treating the symptoms.

All day? o.O

That's madness...

I guess it gets the job done, but I can only put in a couple hours studying characters at any time without going a bit stir-crazy, and I don't usually have that much time anyways with my current job.

I was told it's a variant of the "no honking" signs you see around China (not that most of them do much good). The thing that really tickled me about it, aside from it being the first such sign I had noticed, was that it was right at the entrance to the embassy district in Beijing. I felt like it was pretty hilarious placement for such a foolishly-designed sign: "No car bombs in the embassy district, please!"

I know, my girlfriend keeps telling me, haha.

A couple of hours is already a lot. I'm probably going to have to come down to an hour or two during Christmas, going home for the holidays.

Yeah, your right, I've also only seen it in the embassy district. It's hilarious, haha. Best street-sign ever.


@ Thomas, I know there's no getting away from having the same characters reaper in new words. Right now, especially for chengyus, if they contain only one character that I don't know, I mark it as correct. This way I will only get reviews for the writing for the individual character. I guess this is kind of a solution.

And for the spacing, you're completely right that it would be a problem if it spaced them too far. Maybe there is a good amount, even 10 minutes would help, but that might still screw it up for some people.

@YouJing
"What is your problem anyway? And where do you get of labelling me as a "newbie" and "naive and lazy". How good is your Chinese anyway? I would guess not that good by the way you're talking."

You have grammatical or spelling errors in almost every one of your posts. Hence I thought you were lazy.

Your marathon Skritter sessions might be fun but the name of the game here is spaced repetition.

I know enough Chinese -- after years of intermittent study -- to know that you can't quantify it with a number on Skritter.

This thread makes me sad...

YouJing - Good luck with your studies. :) My brain is like cheesecloth. Haha. Anyway, I've been studying two months and have a grand total of 224 characters under my belt and 150 words... but that's just how I learn (although I'm pretty amazed that I've managed to pick up that much!!!!). I'd love to be able to pick things up faster!

I guess when you have a 2000+ word list it would get a bit tiresome to see the same characters popping up repeatedly, especially when you have so much more to review.

I think Skritter is pretty awesome just the way it is but as with any system there is always room for improvement.

Happy Holidays everyone!!!! 圣诞快乐!

@ icecream, I saw you other post, the one Nick deleted.
I feel sorry for you.

I never understood people that feel the need to fight on-line, is it because you don't have the guts to stand up for yourself in real life?

And my English, yeah, I'm sure it's horrible as it is my second language. I barley make myself understood right.

Again you fail to make sense or to be constructive in any way. Just loud and intrusive.

Just because something works for you doesn't mean it works for everybody else. Same with my study methods, I'm sure they don't work for everybody else. But unlike you I'm not trying to tell people how to study "the right way".

Have you ever even spoken Chinese to a Chinese person or been outside of your own country?

@nickybr38

The beginning is the hardest part - you'll find that as you study and learn more, there will be more and more overlap of radicals and character components, and your general writing practice will make learning faster and easier, though it'll balance out on the other side with a broader pool of things to study and maintain.

@YouJing

I'm a high testosterone male. I'm a wrestling coach. I "fight" everyday. You're missing the point.

If you would have read some old forum posts you would have known that I have lived in many foreign countries -- Turkey, Thailand, Germany and Australia. I went to school in Hawaii where almost everyone is Asian. I am no stranger to foreign languages.

One last try...

I like the old ways.
I like how the same characters come up repeatedly. (title of this thread).
I don't like your ideas or your methods.

So you wanted henry ford to ask the customer and give them a faster horse, is that what you are saying? Because change is bad right?

I don't even think that you know what it is that I want.

I think this thread has come to as much understanding as it's going to produce. I can connect you guys via email if you want to keep discussing this, but please don't post any more on this one.

@ icecream & YouJing - Alright, terrific, you guys disagree. You've both taken your shots, now if you keep addressing each other the ugliness that's been going on here will continue, so please just leave it alone already. It's cluttering up what is otherwise a pretty good thread with interesting information, suggestions, and discussion.

I agree. I have no interest in continuing this.

I know this thread has been brought to a close but I just wanted to comment on FatDragon's avatar... It is my understanding that it means no vehicles carrying flammable/dangerous goods. It is commonly seen at the entrance to bridges and tunnels here in Shanghai. That was the answer I gave on my Chinese driving test last year.