As part of this suite of changes Scott's cooked up for the queue replacement and editable published lists and a few other things, we're moving away from "Remove from My Words" and adding a "Ban from My Words" feature. The way this works is that instead of just removing the word now, and then it possibly being added again, it will remove it and keep it out until you unban it (which you can do from the Banned Words page inside My Words). So you don't have to worry about it coming back in some other list.

The question we have for you is about a related feature we're thinking of adding, "Skip in This List". What this would allow you to do is to say, "I don't want to study this word from this list, but if it comes up in some other list, then sure, I'll study it." If you were doing this from outside the context of a list, like in the word popup while studying, you would have the option of skipping the word in all lists which it has been added from. So it would remove it from My Words, but you would get it back if you encountered it in a new list.

The reason we were thinking of two is because we wondered whether Skritterers will frequently want a way to say, "No, don't study this right now" instead of "Don't study this ever (until I manually unban it)." I thought I might use that, but we weren't sure whether others would.

We're going to add Banning either way. We don't want to add Skipping if it's not going to be useful to most Skritterers, since it adds complexity. The question to you is this:

Do you want Skipping, too, or would Banning do it for you?

I'm trying to think of a case where I would ban a word and then want to study it later. I don't think I've ever wanted to do that.

For me Skipping seems pretty handy, because I got Chinese classes and in the future there's a good chance I'll have to study a banned word for a next day's class.

But at the same time I'll make the lists myself and maybe it then automatically un-bans the words, if we add them ourselves?

I am not sure I would use skip that much, however, conceptually, I like the idea of keeping a way of removing words from the list without saying "I never want to study this". If skip is not there then the current behavior of just removing an item will be lost.

The issue is that, without skip, words that you may want to study later get lost in a long list of banned words.

I will probably ban things like people's names in textbooks. I might skip complex multi-character words or idioms until i have studied the individual characters.

Would you be able to select a previously studied list with skipped words and then re-study the list to add those skipped words? Would the list just be shown as 'Finished'?.

I like the "Skip in this list" concept. I don't really like the idea of banning because I would probably forget that I had banned certain words if I decide to put them in a list later.

I mean, how many times could we possibly study a list with that word, and even if it was several times, would the occurrence really be frequent enough that simply "Skip in this list" would become tedious? I don't think so, personally.

And skip basically already exists. If you press the next arrow, it just marks it correct, right? I assume this is what the skip would be for? To avoid writing annoying characters that come up so often they need no studying, like 御? If you mean to skip words that are too complicated for now, I think "skip in this list" would be sufficient for most people.

Sounds like a good feature for list management. As long as there is a difference beween deleting a word and banning it, then that's fine.

In the past when I've removed a word it's because I was having a hard time with it then, and would want to add it later (this is deletion from practice). I don't use lists myself any more, but I can see how skipping an item in one list would be as useful as banning - if not more. Both could be merged into one tool.

It would also make sense if words added directly to the queue weren't affected by any previous bans.

If I did ban a word, I would want to be alerted that it will not appear as I begin a new list - I wouldn't want to have to compare my banned list and a new list to see if I would be 'missing' any words, especially if it was a test list.

@Elwin: Whenever you see a word that is banned in a list, it will be marked so. So if you ban a word in one list, then you're making or you're looking at another list you're going to add, you'll see that it's banned there as well, and can unban it if you wish. You'll only see this in view mode though, not while you're actively editing a list.

@NickC: For both banned and skipped settings, they will prevent the study of words no matter how many times you go over the list, adding from it. And in fact, it's set up to automatically 'unfinish' a list if you choose to unskip or unban a word, so that basically you don't have to do the sort of manual go back and re-add and re-delete that you have to do now. Your skip/unban settings directly affect what you are studying, so that at any time a list is finished, you are studying exactly those words in the list that are not banned or skipped for that list. This goes for adding new words to a list as well.

@Lawnmower16: While creating new lists you'll be able to see what words are banned, so you can unban them if you wish. And skip wouldn't work the way you describe, really. Clicking 'next' keeps the word in your studies, 'skip' would keep it from ever showing up in your studies as long as it's not being studied from some other list.

@Byzanti: Banning (and maybe skipping) are going to replace the deleting function. Basically these delete the words from studies if they're already added and also prohibit them from being added in the future, but skipping works on a list level (don't ever study this word as part of this list) and banning works on the overall level (don't ever study this no matter what list it's being added from). And the queue is being gotten rid of, and instead you'll be able to add words to any list you wish. That's a good point though, I should make it so that when you add a word to a list, it checks to see if it's banned there already...

@ali: Once you create a list, the way it's currently built, you can just look at the new list to see any that are banned, they'll be labeled so. Perhaps it would be good to have some sort of alert for when you save a list, letting you know that some words are banned.

Also, reading these posts I had another idea. What if, when adding from a list, the system alerts you when it doesn't add a certain word because it is banned? That way you're notified and you'll be aware that a word is banned.

It sounds like the main concern about the banned feature is making sure words don't get skipped over without your knowledge, which banned has the possibility of doing. With notifications that you skipped over a banned word during study, and notifications when you add banned words to a list, would those fears be alleviated?

@Scott, yes I think these notifications are needed to make it a complete and nice function overall.

@Scott: I think after your explanation of how banning words will work, there really is no reason to offer a skip word function... when I want to add a list and don't want to include some words I can ban them, then, when I choose to study another list it will be clear which words are banned and I can re-assess them and decide to study them or not at that time.

With a notification, would it be clear to the user what they needed to do to override the ban? Maybe the notification could have a link to the banned word page?

I think it would be good to have the functionality of both the skip and ban options.

@Scott: Notifications, I agree, would definitely offset any problems the ban may cause.

I don't think the ban could replace the skip though. They work for two different realms, I think.

So there will no longer be a delete option? I mainly use this to remove words I'm annoyed with learning, usually because I don't have enough context for a given word or character. I wouldn't want it to be banned forever in case I add it again in the future with more context. I really just want something to say I don't want to study this now. This sounds a bit like skip, but I'm not sure? It's pretty much just how delete works now.

Scott - your last paragraph makes sense to me. I'm not clear though if banning can be used to remove words already learned.

Thanks for all the feedback guys. Nick, Scott, and I talked this over earlier today and came to several conclusions:

1) The skip functionality does seem to be valuable
2) The ban functionality would be an acceptable substitute in some cases
3) Notifications of banned words would considerably diminish the problems with the ban approach

Since the ban functionality would be easier for us to implement (both on the backend and on the frontend), we are planning to implement it first, let people give it a whirl, and keep a close eye on the possible need to restore the skip functionality.

For me these options are not very important, I´m slightly concerned of making too much features (I confess being tempted in this when I was responsible of certain public system in my working life). Most important are the very basic things running smoothly. The only feature not existing I have been waiting is the possibility to clear my items offline.

Saying this I admit that I like many non-key features.

I use the delete option in the same way that jcardenio does.

I don´t quite understand in what situations the banning function would be better than a skip. Can someone give an example?

StEskil, we needed to make this change because with the way that Scott's updating the core feature of editing lists, we can't keep Remove from My Words around--the lists are going to be smarter about which words you have and haven't added so that we can be better about turning parts on and off and editing lists that people are studying from. So we need to make a new way to remove words that can keep them removed even when the list goes over itself to look for missing words.

Tove, banning would be more useful than skip in a few cases:

1) Some totally useless word that you would possibly see again in another list. (Maybe it's really rare, or maybe you already have a longer word containing it, or it's a longer phrase where you already know all the component words.)

2) A word that's too easy and you don't want to waste time studying in Skritter.

3) A word that's slightly useful, but is really hard for you to learn and is taking a ton of time.

In these three cases, you would want to just get rid of the word and not have to worry about it coming back at you if you ran across it in a new list.