1. I just tried the technique that Nick was talking about where he turned off practicing everything but readings, went through his "due" items, then changed it to practice only writings and went through again. I think this is a big improvement over switching back and forth, but am a little nervous about what would happen if a new word was added from my queue or from my active lists when I had only readings enabled (for example). Would that new word be in my active items only with its reading? Or would its definition and writing also be added when I later turned those parts on?

2. When I enter pinyin in the reading prompt and hit "enter", the text input field stays enabled, so I can still type into it. Then if I type something else and hit enter, it looks like Skritter re-checks my pinyin against what it's supposed to be and changes the item from correct to incorrect or vice versa. Does this second attempt count at all? If so I have some mistaken values in my history (items I got right, then typed some extra garbage and hit "enter", which got marked wrong). Maybe the text field should be disabled once you hit "enter"?

3. Did you guys just add the pinyin for the component breakdown, or did I just not notice it before? Anyway, it's very helpful.

Keep up the awesome work...

James

yeah i have been doing writing only for a while. to do tones and defns i then use the number pad on the keyboard and blast through that pretty quick. the advantage is that you don't have to think what sort of question you are looking at.

now i am trying writing without being able to see the side panel - gotta listen carefully to tone and sound. there is no audio repeat button, which would be good for this!

ignore the comment on audio repeat lol

Nick's away right now so I'll leave him to answer the second question. For the first question though, your fears are not misguided! If you add a word while you have a part or two disabled, it will add only the parts that are enabled, and it won't add the others for that word, even after you have re-enabled study for those parts.

To fix this, we're planning to make it so that you can choose to study a subset of parts from the practice nav page, which will automatically turn off adding of any kind. Nick and I came up with the idea and talked about it a while ago but we haven't gotten around yet to making that feature. It's on the docket though!

@nick - Thanks, I was afraid of that. The solution sounds good, though.

Might I suggest a new page/button somewhere under vocabulary where you are able to fill in the missing tones/definitions/writings whatever (selectable) for everything you are currently studying and be somewhat selective about it?

Yeah that's a good idea. I seem to have some major gaps myself and was planning on going through an export file to try to figure out why.

P.S. The main problem for me is that I add a lot of stuff through the queue; once it's added and studied, there's no further record of it. It's not like a list where you can simply go back through the list and add the missing parts. I thought that at one point there was a plan to make the queue more like a list, no?

James

@scott another minor issue: if I go to http://www.skritter.com/vocab/customlists and click on "Your Lists" the "changed" date for my "queue items" list is incorrect. I changed it today but it says it was last changed 05/13.

Here's the list: http://www.skritter.com/vocab/list?list=agVza3JpdHIWCxINVm9jYWJMaXN0SW5mbxjQyqkQDA

I am now trying to make sure I add all my queue items to a custom list so I can go back and re-add parts later if need be. Also it gives me an idea of how far I am from finishing my queue (it had 700+ items at one point, yikes).

@skritterjohan: Could do that on a list by list basis, probably. Something like a popup that would gradually download all the list and progress data and show you how many words you know, how many words you don't know, and how many words you haven't added yet, and for which parts. Would be too server intensive to do that for every active list, though (it would already be pretty intensive to do that for a large single list).

@James: Yes, there is still the plan to make the queue more like a list with the ability to view all words that have been added to it. We've gotten rather far behind on bug fixes and many other things though, so I've been unable to start that project so far. It's still on my big list of things to do.

Ah, bug with the updating of the changed value. Fixed it!

About the changed date bug for custom lists... Mine's still not right. I'm using the latest Firefox.

The bug fix only made it so that from now on when you change a list it will record it properly. We don't have any way to fix dates that should have updated before, unfortunately.

Your original second question, about the pinyin regrading: it works just like a tone prompt in that the most recently submitted answer is taken. This is so if you made a typo, you can just fix it and have it graded as you originally intended. It seemed like the most natural solution to me, but apparently our intuitions differ. I haven't heard anything else about what is expected to happen after the first text submission, though.

So yeah, you will have had some prompts marked wrong erroneously because of the extra junk + enter you mentioned. Sorry about that!

The pinyin for the components in the breakdown has always been there.