Hi, folks,

Sorry to be going on about this, but I'm still a bit perplexed by the strangely erratic behavious of the scheduling of due items.

I was practising this afternoon, and when I finished, and refreshed the Skritter front page, I was told there were about 350 items waiting attention. Later, I came back to Skritter, and there were only 230 items awaiting attention, despite having done nothing in the time in-between other than wander around in the sun and go and visit a friend to eat curry.

I'd love it if wandering around in the sun and eating curry with friends really could help me learn 汉字, but I think that this is unlikely. So it seems like there is still something a bit buggy in the scheduling.

All the best,
Will

Yes, the Genius is still unfixed. I spent a day last week trying to fix it when I got back, and confirmed a bug that where it doesn't always load all the words properly. But as soon as I went to investigate more, without changing anything, the bug disappeared and wouldn't come back. It's a tough one!

I will muster the effort to assail it once more in the next couple weeks, but there is much that needs doing. Thanks for your patience on this one; I'll let you know if I resolve anything.

I have anothere question about this. I did check my list with "learnd" words and tones and did find several that will be checked the next time in 4 years. I have just spend 5 seconds on them so why 4 years on them? Other with similar time spend and difficulty level will be tested in just a few hours. What is triggering this long time? Also, is it possible to get them to come back sooner? I would love to be able to mark words for new review. E.g. mark a list or all words or just a few words for a new review.

Mandarinboy, those are probably tones that you've gotten right a few times. I checked one of them for you, 很, which you've seen on 1-24, 3-10, and 6-11.

I'm not sure what happened on 1-24, 'cause the scheduling was different back then, but it doesn't seem to have done anything, so ignore it. Or maybe it was deleted at some point.

When you got it right on 3-10, Skritter thought it was the first time you'd seen it. Skritter wasn't sure, but guessed that you'd known it from before, so scheduled it for a week.

Then you took a break from Skritter, I guess, and didn't study it again for three months. Because you remembered it after three weeks, Skritter guessed that you knew it much better than it had guessed, and scheduled it for four years. Seems high, but then again, do you think you'll forget the tone of 很 in four years?

The same thing will have happened to other items you got right after such a long break: Skritter will have guessed that you must have known them really well if you remembered them without practice, so you won't see them for a long time.

Let me know if I'm not making sense.

Being able to manually adjust the scheduling for items that you'd like to study sooner (or ignore) is on the list, too, so if Skritter gets the wrong idea or you realize that you've forgotten something while trying to recall it outside of Skritter, you can reset it.

What happens if you just happen to (half) guess lucky a few times? Based on two occurrences to assume something's right for three years does seems quite a lot.

I try to avoid guessing because of this, particularly on the tones. I don't want Skritter pushing something far out into the future because of a few lucky guesses. If I'm not sure about the tone, I'll mark it wrong. This works for me; your mileage may vary, of course.

Is there a way to 'test everything' (or a subset) or mark certian characters/tones for immediate scheduling? This would be useful both for making sure that you actually know everything still and also for studying for offline tests.

That would be the upcoming cram mode. It will allow you to choose a subset of characters and study them by themselves. Right now the closest thing we have to that is the scratchpad, although using that doesn't have any effect on your stats. A lot of people have been asking for this, though, so I'm going to try and move it up on the schedule as far ahead as I can. Hopefully won't take too long!

another issue I see is that in reality a lot of times it hasn't really been "3 weeks" or "x days" since you last saw a character. For example if you are studying in a class or live in China you probably see some characters in day to day life, so if my chinese friend just reminded me the day before that "很" was 3rd tone and so I wrote it correctly after "3 weeks" of not studying, it doesn't really represent a lasting knowledge that is virtually impossible to forget.

On the other hand it is difficult/impossible to know about anything outside of Skritter practice, so I'm not sure how this could be made any better. hmmmm.....

You're right that there's nothing very much to be done about seeing specific items outside of Skritter, Hobbes828. It shouldn't be too much of a problem, though, because unless you're reminded repeatedly, the scheduling will correct itself after the next interval.

(If you are reminded repeatedly, then you don't need to be studying that word very much in Skritter anyway.)