As I use Skritter more and more, I'm starting to use the stroke recognition less. I'm skipping (->) through more characters when I'm confident of how to write them, and when I think I'm sure I click 示 to show the phantom, then mark myself right if it matches what's in my head before going on.

Some ideas that would help this way of working are:

* Showing the items you've skipped through briefly (or on the side) so you don't accidentally skip one that you 以为你写对了

* Showing the meaning when you show the phantom with 示 (rather than having to write the whole character out)

* Have a one click way to skip and mark right after showing a phantom

* Practising the single characters from words that you're getting wrong more, rather than just the words

* Sometimes for words only testing the character you got wrong. For example for 肯定, maybe you got the 肯 wrong once, but you tend to get the 定 right. It would be good to be prompted with _ 定 rather than _ _ and only have to fill in one blank

Hello Ximeng,

Be careful to not forget that to recognize/understand a characters and to know how to write it is two radically differents processes (in our brain)

You definitely know if you can write a characters only after you actually wrote it ! You already found out how easy is to forget how to write a characters (even the most easy/common one!), so I recommend all of you to not skip too much !

The first two will come in when I implement the extra indicators and controls on the prompt interface; that's going to be sweet. I'll think about the third one then, too.

The last two was how we originally had it. Then we changed it dramatically to emphasize whole words over characters. I think when I implement the other pieces, we may be going a little bit back toward character-specific review (but only for characters you've individually added--if they're added as part of a word, they might not get studied on their own, or at most emphasized on their own).

Tortue, it's true that it's easy to forget something you think you know unless you write it. However, Skritter can probably be pretty smart about skipping characters with all the information it has on how likely they are to be forgotten. So there's definitely room for improvement there.

Nick - thanks for the response, and I'm looking forward to the imminent sweetness. I'm not sure how to implement number 3 exactly, but with people doing 1000s of character repetitions small increases in speed can have a big impact (assuming they don't affect recall).

I agree in general word practise is good and should be emphasised. I remember thinking how good this was when you made the change. Also I think implementing the first two items would speed up word practise, so make the final two less important. Fill in the blank style practice and practising individual characters occasionally will help add a little variety to practice sessions as well as speeding things up. Variety is good, keeps things interesting and keeps me practising. It looks like a win to me, even if only a small one.

Tortue: I agree reading and writing are very different processes. When I skip characters I skip them because I know them without writing. I know I can write 定 without needing to write it. My tactic for this is to in my head trace out a character stroke by stroke, and if I can't do that 100% smoothly, then write it out.

I also sometimes write a character I know just from habit. Writing out characters with many strokes can take a lot of time, and I prefer to skip rather than 50%-brain-usingly writing it on autopilot. I think this can actually make you recall more actively - you need to think about whether you're really confident for a character, without the benefit of seeing the strokes snapping into place in front of you. In fact I was previously all for writing characters out each time, even when I saw people on the forums suggest skipping through them, but now think maybe writing out can be lazy when you actually know how to write a character. Bottom line, I think skipping can be good, but am still experimenting to find the best way to do it.

One way to do the "correct and next" combo would be to use SuperMemo/Anki/Mnemosyne-style keyboard shortcuts for how well you know an item. They use conventions like:

0: don't know it (interval way too long)
1: made a mistake (interval too long)
2: got it, but difficult (interval a bit long)
3: got it (interval about right)
4: too easy (interval too short)

So instead of Skritter's current "correct/incorrect" scheduling, we could let you input your knowledge level, if you want. Skritter's current "incorrect" would correspond to 0, "correct" would correspond to 3. This would make scheduling more precise.

I'm imagining that most users wouldn't use this most of the time (it takes more work), but it'd come in handy sometimes. We've been planning on doing it for a while, and perhaps we can do it when we do the rest of the new prompt stuff. Or perhaps we'll just do it later.

I would definitely love to be able to use a 0-4 rating system. As far as it being extra work, maybe it would be at first, but now when I use Anki, it's second nature. And it has the potential to significantly increase the efficiency of my studies.

I'm with Comos, I'd like this. It would be nice if there was a mouse way to do it to stop me reaching for the keyboard after each one tho.

Oh and 0 isn't next to the others on the keyboard. Maybe 1 to 5 would be better.

Those keys probably won't make sense because they're already used to indicate tones. Perhaps the QWERT keys? I'm not sure we'll have 5 levels, perhaps only 4.

hmmm, shouldn't skritter be able to figure that one out? I mean if it takes me 2 seconds to finish a character, it might be because i know it. If it takes me 20 seconds, I'm guessing around...

That's actually something we've been thinking about potentially. In fact we've been storing the information for how long it takes the user to start practicing for every review since we started, but we haven't analysed it yet to see if it's a good indicator (though certainly by now we should have enough data...). If it is a good indicator, we'll work it into the scheduling system.

And yeah, we do want to have the system do as much of the figuring out as possible, to make it that much more streamlined. But it would be more accurate scheduling if you gave it more accurate data. So I imagine we'd have it working the way it's working now by default, and then those that want to be more hands on could use this rating system.

I was wondering why it stored the time taken, and whether or not that data was being used.

The only problem I have with that method (because otherwise it seems awesome), is that I (too) often take breaks or look at other tabs while a character is going, and therefore it would not be an amazingly accurate indicator of whether I did it quickly or not.

It'll be made smarter about tracking afk-ness and activity before we start using it for scheduling purposes. I think we can get it to be pretty clever about when you're actually practicing. (Right now it's not, but it's still on the list.)

Hmmm, analyzing time taken to write a character seems pretty questionable - many times, for instance, I might write a character quickly, but be unsure as I'm writing it if I remember it correctly. Also, there's some characters that I remember fairly well, but don't like writing, so I'll take a break from skritter while my frontal lobe gathers the strength to suck it up.

I've been skipping more and more :P that's a good thing I think, although I do sometimes go a bit fast and make mistakes. Skipping characters makes you think about whether you really know it, it seems to engage a slightly different part of the brain.

I've refined my Skrittering technique now. Right hand on trackpad, for writing characters. Left hand covers S, V and space, for quick double-check against phantom, mark correct, and skip to next. And for tones I use the numeric keys with the left hand. If I know a character it's good to be able to mark the writing correct almost as fast as I can go through tones. QWERT keys would fit nicely with this for how-well-do-you-know-it-ness.

you write on a trackpad? ow.

No wonder you want to skip as many characters as possible :)

What does everybody else use? I tried a mouse, but found it slower than the trackpad. It feels pretty quick on the trackpad. I don't have a drawing tablet to try.

For a complex character like 嚷 I can just about write it in under 15 seconds on the track pad. This is a lot slower than skipping it when I know it.

I use my laptop's touch pad. One nice thing about this is I can easily switch off hands to avoid overuse of one hand.

what kind of settings for touchpad? sensitivity? you click the button too or use a mode where first touch and hold is like click and hold?

When I try it is painful, making this squiggly marks that take forever... maybe my trackpad skills are just that far from leet :)

>>Practising the single characters from words that you're getting wrong more, rather than just the words

If it was up to me I would request the OPPOSITE of this.

@comos, ximeng
How could you say a laptop touchpad is faster for anything!? 嚷 definitely takes me less than 15 seconds with the mouse.
I agree with Hobbes, writing with a touchpad would be "ouch".

I just ran some tests and I write 嚷 in ~6.5 seconds with a Wacom, 7.5 with a mouse. (That's if I know it well, though). The mouse is way harder on my hand and not as fun, though.

Eh well maybe I'm just used to the trackpad. I don't use the button, just tap and hold very quickly time and again. Sensitivity probably maximum, dunno. It generally feels pretty comfortable. I'm quite tempted to get a wacom, especially seeing Nick's results. Not sure about the speed on a mouse, generally found it quite uncomfortable using a mouse, so prob didn't get up to speed.

Is there any way to practise a particular character again and again to get my speed up on it. Waiting for 嚷 to come up again might take a while.

I can't do left hand on the track pad, it's too slow compared to my right hand, so I just have to put up with the Skritter finger that develops after an hour or two of tapping.

Is anybody using a Wacom bamboo one tablet? Might be worth a punt for 35 GBP.

>>The mouse is way harder on my hand and not as fun, though.
Need more mouse sensitivity!
I have mine on max. Whenever I use Skritter on another machine it slows me down and hurts my wrist.

Wacom would be more fun for sure though!

yup my friend here in china just started using his wacom... jealous... but my brother has one at home that he doesn't use and I will pay him a visit in America to pillage I mean salvage I mean *borrow* it to try for a while.

So we can all agree tablets seem optimal... I'll try touchpad again sometime and fool around with settings see if I can get comfortable/fast, the click definitely is what made it not even worth considering before.

Anybody have a tablet PC (touchscreen?)?

Well, Hobbes828 and ZachH, I think my comfort with the touchpad might be specific to the touchpad on my Dell XPS laptop - it's a nice one. I've never messed with settings, and it's as easy as drawing the character with my index finger. I've tried using Skritter with my external Adesso keyboard with an integrated touchpad a couple of times, and that was absolutely miserable.