Looks like the Great Firewall or something like it is preventing you from completely loading www.skritter.com because it is hosted on Google App Engine, which is periodically blocked. Try instead our mirror:

legacy.skritter.cn

This might also be caused by an internet filter, such as SafeEyes. If you have such a filter installed, try adding appspot.com to the list of allowed domains.

Small issue with sections

PlutonB   July 14th, 2009 2:26a.m.

I thought I'd use different sections for the chapters in RTH to find the characters easier when needed. But when practicing it constantly displays the section added last all the time along with the list name (Like "RTH 6"), no matter what character is displayed. Bug or feature I don't understand?

nick   July 14th, 2009 8:52a.m.

The list and section shown on the practice page should correspond to where you first added the character that's being prompted.

You're saying that the section is always the same, even when prompting for characters that aren't in that section? Or maybe I misread.

scott   July 14th, 2009 9:16a.m.

Are you looking below the practice area, where it lists all the lists you have activated? That shows where in the lists you are currently adding from. If you set your list back to an earlier section, it will skip past the words that have already been added when it tries to add more words. Lists are only used to add words from, not to directly determine what you are studying. When studying, you always study everything that has been added before, minus whatever you specifically delete.

The upper left corner should show the first list/section the word you are currently studying was added from. This works correctly?

PlutonB   July 15th, 2009 2:11a.m.

I refer to the upper left part where the list name and section is displayed. In my case it says

RTH
7

no matter what hanzi I'm rehearsing. Section 7 was the last added section. Before I created this section yesterday it said RTH 6 for all characters instead.

It's not a big deal anyway, since I can search my excel file with the pinyin when needed, but if it really is a bug maybe it's something to fix when more pressing matters are done.

scott   July 15th, 2009 11:17a.m.

Hmm, I think I may have figured out what happened.

The system keeps track of the index of the section you added from. So say you have a single section list. You add words from it, and it remembers you added words from the 'first' section in that list. Now if you edit that list, inserting a new section into the beginning, the section that was previously first is now second, and the system thinks you added those previously added words to the new section, even though you added the words from what is now the second section. It only knows you added the words from whatever is the first section of the list.

It appears you kept adding new sections to the beginning of your list, and adding from them, so all the items are pointed at whatever is the first section of that list at any given time, because when they were added the section they were added from *was* the first section. Does that make sense?

To make this not happen, when you're editing a list you have previously added from, try not to delete or add any sections in the middle or beginning. Just add more sections to the end, or add or remove words to existing sections. That would seem to be more logical to do in your case; then the list sections would be ordered the same way the book is ordered.

The alternative is to have the words point directly at the section, but in that case any changes to the lists will result in you not having any section information. So if it were to be done that way, in that scenario you'd have no section information, rather than wrong section information, even if you did only add to the end of the list.

I suppose a second alternative would be to try and have a smart system keep track of these things, when you delete a section, add a section, move them around, and make sure all the items still point to them. This would take quite a bit of time though, and would probably still fail when certain things are done. And since this problem only comes up when people are both editing and adding from a list at the same time, which can't be done with published or textbook lists, I'm going to let the current system be, for now at least.

Tell you what you can do in the interim though. I've made a tweak so that if you delete words from a list, they lose their current list and section information. So here's what you can do:

1. Rearrange the sections of your list however you want them to be from now on. I'd suggest reversing their current order, and deleting the extra 4th section you've got.
2. Go to the delete tab of that list and delete everything, including characters, from that list. Don't worry, your progress will still be there. Don't confuse this with the 'Delete All' tab in your vocabulary options page; that will actually remove everything, including your progress.
3. Add from the beginning of the list onward. This won't take long; you'll already have started learning most of them so it will just skip right through to the end or until it finds something you haven't learned. The items that have been added back should associate with their appropriate sections now, while maintaining your progress.
4. From then on, only add new sections to the end of the list rather than the beginning, or you'll have to repeat these steps.

Whew, a long post for such a (hopefully) rare bug. I hope that explains everything, though, so you can avoid this problem in the future.

PlutonB   July 23rd, 2009 9:02a.m.

Thanks for the help! I think I must have done something wrong during the process though, the old hanzi I had before the rearrangement have no section displayed now, but the new ones I add now display the correct section. Anyway, that's enough for me.

This forum is now read only. Please go to Skritter Discourse Forum instead to start a new conversation!