Wondering what the "official" advice is on this. Perhaps I should just wait until it turns red / X, or should I be super-strict? Or no opinion?

Good question Ximeng, and I'm pretty sure Nick will want to weigh in on this one since he has more experience learning than do I, but I try to keep myself on the straight and narrow by marking myself incorrect. However, the "official" advice is that you should mark it based on your best perception of your understanding. The spaced repetition algorithm will work best if you are 100% altruistic when marking characters right or wrong. Normally it takes me a few hints to remember, that's why I frequently leave it incorrect, but there are definitely times when I see one horizontal stroke and suddenly remember a complex character and in those cases, I mark it correct.

Part of the problem is knowing what is right - is it right if I get the character after seeing one stroke move in a direction I only half-expected, or if I half-knew the character and got it after 10 seconds. I think what I'm doing now is probably close to what you suggest. Maybe Skritter should be a bit stricter on marking characters wrong when you get suggestions, or maybe as you repeat the character you'll get smoother anyway so it doesn't make a difference so long as you get there in the end.

And if I can get the stroke order wrong, but knew all the strokes? I'll give it to me.

It's really up to you. Discard any moral implications of "right" and "wrong" -- it's more like, "Do I want to see this in twice-as-long an interval, or start over on it and see it again very soon?"

The first option will probably be more efficient, but you won't know the characters you know as well, which may be more frustrating sometimes. The second option will take longer, but you'll have less characters you aren't firm on. Do the thing that's most satisfying to you.

I wouldn't mark myself wrong because of stroke order; stroke order gets figured out naturally before too long.

Soon, Skritter will be smarter about how well you probably know things, and won't reset longer-term characters to really short intervals when you mark them wrong. Until then, though, "incorrect" = "start over." So if you don't want to start over on a character, don't mark it wrong.

That said, ZachH, who has studied the most with Skritter, recommends marking it wrong if you don't think of the character in 5 seconds, for truly solid knowledge.

Skritter will be a lot smarter about right/wrong once component-based recognition is in, because it'll give you a lot less hints. That's a ways off, though.

I was wondering whether incorrect=start over. At the moment I'm erring on the side of strictness, thinking the extra practice won't hurt. Outside of Skritter I practise a little bit of hand-writing of characters, and there I copy out words 20 times, which would I guess take me from nothing to knowing a character pretty well if it were in Skritter.

Thinking about this and trying to work out how Skritter works made me want an area chart or histogram listing how many characters were due for review in a particular time period, e.g. how many are ready, how many due in an hour, how many due in a week etc. Some kind of zoom could be cool to see the actual characters in each bucket :P And live updates so you can see which review bucket a character goes when you get it right or wrong :)

Exactly, it is not easy to evaluate yourself but i think a computer will never be able to understand yourself as well as you do. We are here to learn not to make some program think we are smart. Then again the 'start-overs' can sometimes seem like too much of a punishment. In the end it is all up to ourselves. Maybe some electric shocks if you get it wrong would speed up the progress haha

Yes. The way I look at it is this.
"If I can't remember it after 5 seconds now, will I be able to remember it at all in 2 months?"

If you don't know it well enough to see it visually in your mind and start writing after 5 seconds you WILL forget it in the near future. Might as well relearn it to perfection sooner rather than later.



For Stroke Order, it depends on severity, but probably incorrect. The most efficient form of character memorization is remembering the order of the different strokes, rather than only the overall shape of the character. If you only remember the shape you WILL forget the character.
It is like memorizing how to spell a word backwards, it looks the same at the end but thats not how you learn to spell.

Ximeng, that histogram idea sounds really cool, so I've put it in the to-do list under the "would be really cool" section.

We may be able to do something sooner about showing you how long characters will be scheduled for after each review.