I've been studying characters on Skritter so far (常用 in five weeks woo!), and only characters. However, to report a character (鬲), I attempted to use scratchpad, which added some words to my list. I don't really want them there. It's not that I want to ban them. I want to get rid of them (there are four of them). Is there a way to do this?

Also: I accidenta-went back a page while typing this, and when I went forward, I didn't lose all my progress. So kudos to who designed this input system. You're a boss.

If you mean, remove words that you have already started studying, then you will have to ban them.

However, for words in a list that are yet to be added, if you want to remove a word from a list without banning it, you can click 'edit this section' in the top right of a section, then click the x beside the words you want to remove. Then click save at the bottom.

Okay, that's frustrating. Thank you

Oh, if you want to remove a whole list, you can do that by clicking on the 'x' on the study page.

You can do the same for individual sections by mucking around in the list itself, by changing which sections you're studying.

Then, for me the question remains: how to remove words from the Ban list....forever....I added some archaic words, that I tried for sometime, but I don't want them anymore. Ofcourse, I banned them, but now they are just hanging around in my ban list...I don't want them anywhere anymore...

I don't like the new ban system all that much either. I think the old system, or something like it, should be re-implemented. I, too, would like to remove some words from study that I don't think are all that useful to me right now, but I don't want to ban them forever.

I agree...the whole idea doesn't make sense IMO. Surely there is a distinction to be made between words you temporarily don't want to study and ones you never want to see again

Full-throated agreement from me. As far as I'm concerned the new list system that caused so much consternation a few months ago remains broken until this is issue is taken care of.

I like the new system. Maintaining your list of banned words doesn't seem too onerous for me. When you decide that something is worth learning, simply unban it. What's the big deal? Reviewing your banned list every few months seems more than sufficient.

If you're the author of the word list (or if you've remixed it) you can also just remove the word from that list. (Unless I'm mistaken.)

I admit it's a bit weird when scratchpad adds a word to your studying without adding it to a list, but this sounds like a minor bug, not a fundamental problem with the list system. I have a related situation wherein I studied my starred words which contained a word from before I nuked my account. Now that word appears in my study without being in any list. However, these sorts of problems will be so rare that manually handling them with the banned list is totally feasible.

The issue of the starred word list and scratchpad adding in words that aren't technically part of any list and so shouldn't be studied is a bug. That shouldn't be hard to fix. I'll add that to the list. In the meanwhile, weirdesky, if you need to study a word to investigate it but not add it to your studies, turn progress tracking off when using the scratchpad. DS is right, it's a bug, unrelated to whether the current list system is good or not, but still you shouldn't have to take extra steps to deal with that inconvenience.

@ewoutkramer: Why do you need to clear the ban list? If you never plan on studying those words, then letting the system know that does no harm. Alternatively you could remove the words from the list you added them from, and then unban them. As long as they're not in a list you're studying, they shouldn't come up.

@Antimacassar and @GrandPoohBah: When would you want words to be added back again, exactly? How long is temporary? We believe that:

1. They shouldn't be added back when you're doing something else entirely

Banning prevents that now, but before the system would just add everything back you had previously carefully removed if you go through a list again for whatever reason

2. It should allow for adding back words you removed before when you explicitly say so

Unbanning does this, and happens immediately, whereas before you would have had to either add the list again or add the word to the queue to be added later

So if, hypothetically, you were to mark a word for temporary removal, in what exact programmable scenario should the system, automatically and without your permission, add the word back? When should the system know to override your old preference not to study something you've seen? That's the problem. It never did that before, it just added the word back whenever it could, despite what you had done before, and that would often be at a time completely out of your control.

Here's one possibility: ban a word only for a given list, but not for other lists. Or in other words, have the system 'skip' a word in a list, but let it still add and study that word when it shows up in *other* lists. That way you can leave open the possibility of automatically adding the word if it comes from some other source. But you still would have to explicitly tell the system to unskip the word if you want to study it as part of that list. This would effectively allow you to 'remove' a word from a list, whether you can edit it or not.

Here's another possibility: have the system tell you when a word was passed because it was banned. Then it still asks for your permission, but it doesn't skip over the banned word silently at least.

Does anyone have any other ideas what 'temporarily' could mean exactly?

"Here's one possibility: ban a word only for a given list, but not for other lists. Or in other words, have the system 'skip' a word in a list, but let it still add and study that word when it shows up in *other* lists. That way you can leave open the possibility of automatically adding the word if it comes from some other source. But you still would have to explicitly tell the system to unskip the word if you want to study it as part of that list. This would effectively allow you to 'remove' a word from a list, whether you can edit it or not."

I request this. My objection to the banning system is that I have a lot of words that I've added from extra-curricular lists or from just having added it to the queue because I saw it somewhere and thought it looked fun. Often, if I find it's giving me difficulty, I'd like to say "this is more trouble than it's worth" and stop studying it for then. But if that same word were to come up in a later chapter of my TEXTBOOK, that would really change the calculus of "more trouble than it's worth;" I'd want to sweat it out and learn it then, and wouldn't want Skritter to skip it. As a result of the fear that Skritter will skip it later when it might be important, I ban almost nothing, and waste time studying things I really shouldn't bother with.

I don't like the "have the system tell you" solution for two reasons. One, I think that the notice would either be too small or too large (I know, go ahead, laugh). If it were small (like the current "adding words from such-and-such a list" notification when words get automatically added) I would probably tune it out just like I do that notification. If it were large enough not to be tune out, it would almost axiomatically be large enough to be distracting.

Second, no matter how effectively the notification is designed, because I tend to get in the zone when studying, I would always be concerned that I would miss it, and that prospective concern would cause me to forbear from banning a word I otherwise would. There are, in effect, two evils with the current system: one, a banned word gets skipped on an important list; and two, the fear of evil one causes me to waste time studying words I would otherwise want to ban. A notification might go a long way towards curing evil one, but--for me, at least--wouldn't help evil two.

I would much prefer the system that lets me stop studying a word in the context I'm currently struggling with in the sure and certain knowledge that it will come up automatically if it arises in some other context.

Sorry for the preachiness of the above; it occurred to me that faced with the two choices, namely,

1. Design a popup whenever a word is skipped and be done with it; or

2. Design a semi-comprehensible user interface for the "ban for this list only" function; write the function; field dozens of emails from users asking "WTF does 'ban for this list only' mean?!";

I know which one would be more tempting to me if it were my job to do it. I thought I'd try to advance the most vigorous argument I could think of for why doing it the other way is worth it.

Actually, I completely agree with you about the notification system idea. It would be clutter on the study page, or wherever else we could possibly put it, and distracting, or not distracting enough, etc. I was just throwing it out there as an example of a solution that could actually be implemented, as opposed to returning to the old way where adding back removed words happened when you didn't want them to, and it was hard to add them back on purpose. Also, it was to get a better sense of why exactly the current system is lacking, which your detailed response helped clarify for me, thanks.

Aside from possibly banning a word that you'll need from another list later and not realizing it, is there any other reason you wouldn't want to ban something? Or is that pretty much your only concern? Any other scenarios like that would be helpful in coming up with a solution. Otherwise we'll end up solving the wrong problem.

If I'm biased, it's toward not doing anything :) But really the top priority is making the system be the best it can be, given the time we have to make it happen. So let's brainstorm ideas and consider what would be better, going for simple and effective solutions.

Here's another one: what if when you start studying a new section, you get an email letting you know what words are banned? Or when you first start studying a new list? That's probably infeasible and inelegant too, like the notification system, but it's just an idea to ponder when coming up with a better one.

I just want to answer this question:

"@Antimacassar and @GrandPoohBah: When would you want words to be added back again, exactly? How long is temporary?"

The reason I would rather than words be banned temporarily is because sometimes legitimate, useful words come up in a vocab list for a textbook that I'm studying in class, but we hardly, if ever, use these words in class. I simply lack context for these words, since I rarely see them outside of skritter. I would rather push learning these words back until later, when they come up again, than struggle to remember them without seeing them in context. However, if I ban such words, then if I forget or don't notice that they're banned, then they won't be re-added automatically if they come up again.

I agree with the sentiments of dbkluck:
"I request this. My objection to the banning system is that I have a lot of words that I've added from extra-curricular lists or from just having added it to the queue because I saw it somewhere and thought it looked fun. Often, if I find it's giving me difficulty, I'd like to say "this is more trouble than it's worth" and stop studying it for then. But if that same word were to come up in a later chapter of my TEXTBOOK, that would really change the calculus of "more trouble than it's worth;" I'd want to sweat it out and learn it then, and wouldn't want Skritter to skip it. As a result of the fear that Skritter will skip it later when it might be important, I ban almost nothing, and waste time studying things I really shouldn't bother with."
I think that's a good way of expressing my feelings.

I stand by my point that there is a distinction between words that you temporarily want to ban and ones you never want to study again.

Although I have personally needed to do it, I can see why you might want to remove a word from study for a short period of time and by banning it you will not go back to square one when you reintroduce it, I can see how that is useful. However, let me give you an example. I recently studied the Chinese subtitle word list which contains a lot of foreign names (安娜,威廉 etc.). Now I never wanted to study these words and I would be happy never to see them again. The only reason I did study them was because they were on the list and if I had been able to I wouldn't have studied them in the first place. I have no need to go back to them. I never want to see them again. You get the point right? :-p

So I'm just saying that you are mixing up two things. Although it doesn't really bother me the fact remains that if I had some words that I temporarily wanted to ban they would be mixed up with those other words that I want to delete permanently. If your list of banned words is relatively small I guess it's not a huge problem, but if it gets big this surely would become a bit annoying since you would have to constantly look for the ones you wanted to restudy in between the ones you wanted to delete.

@Scott I never realized that I could remove words from my studies by removing them from the original lists they came from....I always assumed that once a word was learned, it was copied from the original lists into some magical collection of "my studied words", so removing them from the original list wouldn't make any difference.

@GrandPoohBlah: Okay, so the idea of letting you skip a word in just one list would cover your needs. You want them to be added back 'when they come up again', ie when they show up in some other list you're studying.

@Antimacassar: The example you give is for words you never want to study, so banning is appropriate there. But do you have an example of when banning wouldn't work for you, and when exactly you would want the words added again? I understand you want a distinction between temporary and permanent removal, but what I want to know is how would the system know how long 'temporary' means? It can't just guess, or happen kind of randomly beyond your control like before; it needs to be given specific instructions for the sake of consistency and clarity. Here are some possibilities:

- After a certain time, such as a few months after you temporarily ban them
- When they show up on another list that you're adding from (the idea that GrandPoohBlah and dbkluck like)
- Have a separate category of banned words that behave exactly the same, but they are considered 'temporary', so you yourself can organize banned words into these two groups so you don't have to search through 'permanent' ones to get to the 'temporary' ones.

@ewoutkramer: The system used to work like that, but with the list overhaul, what is in your lists is much more strongly coupled to what you're studying. In the absence of bugs (like the one which started this thread) you will only ever study words that are in the lists you are studying. If you stop studying a list, you stop studying its words. If a word is removed from a list, and you're not studying it in any other list, you no longer study that word.

If someone just wants to skip a word when it occurs in a particular list, why not just remix the list so that you're the author, and then remove the offending word from the list in question? Many of the examples described above seem to be from people adding random words to their study, so these users are probably already the authors of the relevant lists.

@Dependable Skeleton: That doesn't always work. For instance, I'm trying to compile a list for the textbook I'm studying, and I can't have it both be accurate and only include the words that I want to study, unless I start maintaining two lists, which is more trouble than it's worth just for the sake of a handful of words that I want to skip over.

Furthermore, if you're studying a remix of somebody else's list and their original list changes, the changes won't be reflected in your list. That's what's nice about the new system, but remixing a list removes that advantage.

Basically what it comes down to is that there are some lists that I am comfortable removing words from (e.g., my own personal miscellaneous list), while there are other lists that I cannot or am not comfortable removing words from (such as official textbook lists, or lists published and updated by other users). If I am studying the latter kind of list and there is a word that I want to skip over, I can't simply remove it from the list.