in another forum post today Nick asked another user if he or she ever used the delete function, and that reminded me of something I've been thinking about...

I did start deleting words that I found were too easy, but then I thought, "isn't this going to potentially decrease the number of characters I know on my learning stats page?"

Of course, it's just symbolic, but I liked arriving at the milestones of 1000 characters learned, of 2000 characters learned... and, now, aiming for 3000.

If I keep deleting words I know too well, won't I eventually just end up with a few dozen (really difficult) characters "learned"? (is my understanding of the learning stats system accurate?)

So, instead of deleting words from my list, I've started to just use the green arrow to advance to the next word.

心有余而力不足

It doesn't decrease your stats, or even delete the word, actually. It just makes it so that it can't come up again by itself until you readd it from somewhere else. It saves your progress on it.

Also, I don't mean to delete words you know really well--those will automatically come up very infrequently anyway. I'm just talking about words that are wasting your time, that you don't want to take the time to learn.

For words that you know well, press '4' and give them a big kick into the future. It's even more powerful than just skipping them (which is only a normal correct grade of '3').

@nick

thanks for your explanations.

I tried our your tip... kept pressing '4' but it wouldn't advance to the next word... until I figured out you still have to press the 'next' arrow.

So I think I understand now.

or '4' then 'space' (=next arrow, 3 by default unless you grade first) which is usually faster.