It would be really great if the vocabulary tab had a "view all my lists" section where I could see all lists from which I'm currently adding words (or from which I've added words but am no longer either because the list is finished or because I've paused it) whether they are textbook, custom (created by me or someone else), or ChinesePod (mine or shared). Right now I have to hunt through many lists of lists trying to remember which ones I may have active. I realize that the practice tab now sort of has this functionality (recently studied lists), but it is limited. The table I envision would show lists, status (adding words, completed, paused), pause/resume button, remove all button, and maybe when I started studying the list and when the most recent word was added. It would be sortable by list name, status and dates.

On the practice page, just click on the "active lists" button.

Thanks!

Seems like it would make a lot of sense to have a way to access this from the vocab page, too.

The list of lists on the practice navigation page is actually intended for this, though it's not got as much data or sorting functionality as you would like. But I made it so that you can view all lists that are active or have ever been active that have not been removed. If you've got a lot, you'll need to click to show more, but it will eventually show all of them.

Will consider having a separate page with the functionality you describe; we want to balance with keeping things simple though!

Oddly, just at the moment the 'get more' link on the list on the practice page is missing on mine at the moment.

For what it's worth, to me it would be much more intuitive to go to the vocab page to manipulate what words I'm studying (at least for regular, on-going practice). It's nice to have on the practice page too - that's especially handy for when I want to do something different for this session only. When I'm doing longer-range planning of what I want to focus on, though, it would be really nice to be able to do from the vocab page where I could easily tie in lists from all sources. The most common time when I want to change which lists are active/paused is when I've just added new lists (which, obviously, I do from the vocab page).

Oops. I take it back. The 'get more' link isn't missing - I've just reduced the number of active lists below 5 so it's not needed.

The list-of-lists is still not quite doing it for me, though. The problem is that if I want to shift focus for a while I lose track of lists I started but haven't yet finished. I would really like to be able to pause adding words but keep the list on my list-of-lists so I remember to go back to it when I have time. This happens pretty often for me. I go through periods of practicing on my own interspersed with periods of studying with a tutor. When I'm studying with a tutor I generally want to focus on new words from whatever source material I'm studying with her. I still want to use the 'practice everything' functionality rather than cramming so that I don't forget words I've already learned, but I only want to add new words from specific lists. When I am working independently I tend to want to add words from a wide variety of sources. When I resume independent study after a period of working with a tutor it isn't always easy to remember what lists I'd been working from. It would be nice to have a distinction between paused and removed. I realize that there is a 'pause' button on the list that comes up when I click 'active lists' from the practice session, but I don't really understand what it does. The system continued to add new words from lists that I'd paused so it doesn't seem to do what I'd expect (stop adding from that list).

I do what you do but I achieve it differently, this is what works for me.

1) In account setings swich your add new word frequency to "almost never".
2) Study down your "Practice everything" que to almost nothing
3) Cram the particular list/data source you wish to get new words from.

I love working like this as it means I can have a review session, then a new word session if and only if my brain feels up to taking in some new characters. While doing practice everything I am not always awake or energetic enough to take new characters.

Well, pausing a list does in fact pause adding. I haven't heard that it's broken though, and I haven't changed how it works in a while. I did a quick test locally and it works the way it should.

Keep in mind also that (currently) you can't pause your queue, so if you've got words there they will always be added.

Also, adding and seeing the added words is a little disjointed. So if a word is added, it doesn't show up for study for a few prompts, so you can pause a list and still see a word or two added shortly after. Could this be what is happening?

In general, we've found that people have a difficulty associating the lists with practice, when they first arrive. So we put this functionality on the practice navigation page so that it could be more clear how choosing a list affects your practice. Since what you describe is so close to what we have there, I would want to keep out redundancies if we can.

Sounds like for now at least, the active lists list in the practice page is what will help you the most. It doesn't show lists that have been finished adding from, so if you want to see what there is to finish adding from that's the best place to look.

We just finished this last round of vocabulary management tweaking but there's always more to do, so we'll see what we can do in the next round of tweaking.