One of the alpha testers brought up an interesting suggestion for the mnemonics / custom notes feature that's in testing right now and I wanted to ask for your input.

Currently, the mnemonics work such that you can toggle "shared" on and off every time you edit a mnemonic (it's a checkbox next to the edit field that comes up). This controls whether other people can see and adopt your mnemonic or note.

The suggestion is to just make it a preference whether mnemonics you create are shared or private, with the idea that perhaps people would either want all their mnemonics / notes to be public, or all private, rather than needing fine-grained control over it. Then we could remove the checkbox and simplify the interface.

What do y'all think? Do you want to be able to toggle sharing on and off for each word, or would a general preference suffice?

I know I'd probably stick mostly to private mnemonics, since I make a lot of mine related to people I know, but I might want to share for a specific character if I thought my idea might be particularly helpful to someone.

Overall, though, I think the best mnemonics have some personal connection, so I don't anticipate actually wanting to use mnemonics shared by others. (I abandoned Heisig for this reason, as well)

I do have a couple of questions, though:

This one may be obvious - there will be a hide/show feature for notes, just like you've added for hiding the pinyin, right?

If a character appears in multiple compounds, will the mnemonics stay consistent? And will they automatically show up in both reading and writing, or do those need to be added separately?

Will there be notes available for word readings as well? (as opposed to individual characters) This is where I'd love to be able to input sample sentences from my vocab sources.

Thanks for working to get this feature out - really looking forward to it!

They don't appear until you've completed the prompt, unless you click to show early, like with the hidden pinyins.

The mnemonics are tied to the character or word, not to the part (writing, tone, reading, or definition). So if your note for 碧 is "King Whiterock likes green jade", you'll see that whenever you study "碧". You could also have one for 雪碧 that could say "King Whiterock drinks Sprite in the snow" which would show up when you studied 雪碧. Or your note could be more like "我受不了喝雪碧".

I'm definitely happy with the choice: without I'd probably default to off, rather than sharing 80% of stuff which I do at the moment.

I'd prefer to (de)activate sharing for individual entries.

[1.] Many users would turn sharing completely off, not realizing how useful even small contributions could be (inefficient prisoners dilemma).

[2.] A considerable proportion of my mnemonics is based on linkages that cannot possibly be grasped by outsiders. However, I'd be happy to contribute all the other mnemonics.
Separating between these two categories requires the option to activate mnemonics individually.

... 就这样吧

I also would probably default to making them all private, only because I probably wouldn't use it in quite the same way other people do...

The best mnemonic for me would be to simply throw some sample sentences in there. I find once I have used the word in context a few times its much easier to remember. Especially if the word is in a sentence from one of my songs on my iPhone.

You could always set the preference as a default and then leave a check box for altering it when they wanted to.

I personally think that mnemonics are too personal to share. I said on a different thread that I don't use them much, but my old ones, and the ones I have heard from other people, are all far too personal to be of use to someone else.

1)I remember one reminding a woman of her sitting on the beach sipping a maitai. (sp?)

2)One was a small paragraph about a satellite dish on a restaurant involving....

Sounds like there is a good mix. Each side has their reasons.

Why not have the user choose if their new mnemonics default to shared or private? This way, those users who like more universal mnemonics aren't punished each time with an extra step and everyone else doesn't have to worry about accidentally sharing something which won't make sense for anyone else.

The only catch is I think nick is trying to simply the amount of things you see on the screen. Perhaps the settings page could have options

1) mnemonics always public
2) mnemonics always private
3) mnemonics public/private tick box

Sounds like individual control is warranted after all. I've found some other ways to simplify this process (removed 2 buttons!), so hopefully it won't be too busy. I'll just have it remember what your last public/private choice was and skip the explicit preference.