When I run into a character with only one mnemonic, there doesn't seem to be a way to hide that mnemonic. That is, if there were two mnemonics, I could choose between them, but once there's one there's no way to go back to "no mnemonic". Since some of the mnemonics that are in the system are kind of weird and idiosyncratic, I'd like to have the option to choose "no mnemonic" for a specific character.

This is particularly annoying when I come across a character that I already know and for which someone has added a mnemonic recently - some of them are very long and strange, and serve only as a distraction.

I suppose I could add my own mnemonics for those characters but as I said this is mostly for characters I already know and don't need mnemonics for.

For now, you can delete all the text out of the mnemonic. Later we will need a better solution, like an "X" button.

Another proposal is to limit auto-display of mnemonics to those who have at least two points (so someone else would have had to choose that mnemonic for it to automatically show, and if there were any others with higher points, they'd show instead). I'm not sure that will work for right now, since there are few alpha testers and few mnemonics, but that could be an effective filter once the system gets a bit more satured.

I'm currently adding in code to display how many total shared mnemonics there are for a word, so you won't need to try to click the button to know that.

OK fair enough.

There are also some mnemonics that give the entire etymology of the character so as soon as you see the mnemonic you know all of its components. To me that's cheating! All you need to do then is arrange the components in order.

James

I think giving the entire breakdown is good; you don't see the mnemonic until after you have written the Kanji.

If you click "show mnemonic" it shows the mnemonic which is intended to be a hint. If it tells you the component breakdown that's not a hint, it's a spoiler.

James

Am I only one who does not use mnemonics at all? IMHO it's like a sleeping pills. Start use them and you always will need them. While I want characters to be stored in my mind in natural way - without this additional "layer". Let's not use diapers

The brain naturally works by creating connections. Consequently, it naturally creates linkages between different characters. Just by remembering that some strokes are not simply strokes but specific strokes or even parts of a radical you're already making use basic mnemonic techniques.

Everyone knows about the difficulty of differentiating two similar characters. This problem can be reduced and even turned into an advantage by remembering mnemonics, ideally radicals and other components. I agree, however, that most of these mnemonics are needed less once you have practised a character for an extended period of time. "Layers" are gradually removed and automatically replaced with the most efficient synaptic structure.

So you are actually saying the same thing, or do i misunderstand? You also talk about analysing characters component-wise, not about making up stories, what I think Rolands is referring to.

Anyway, what works for you, you should use. For me also the best mnemonics are plain and simply knowing the components and knowing 'why' a character is formed like that, for example phonetic part + meaning part, etc. Stuff like "water and counter top, think of taking a over the counter pill with water", does not work for me. But again, if it does for you, sweet.

"If you click "show mnemonic" it shows the mnemonic which is intended to be a hint. If it tells you the component breakdown that's not a hint, it's a spoiler.

James "

The way that 80% of my mnemonics work is that I represent radicals by characters or things, and then weave a very shot story connection. Sure, it's not clearly showing “the right hand part is 鬼 for ghost", but it basically tells me how to remember the character. So they are a lot more than hints. These incidentally, I don't share. Too personalised.

Another 15% of mnemonics are based on the general meaning of the component parts, but that's still a give away. I share these though.

Rolands: give it a shot, perhaps. It does help to begin with. And, for most of them, you forget the mnemonics over time as the character itself gets stuck in your memory.

Did I miss something or is mnemonic-using a "closed alpha"? I can't find anything to enable or disable mnemonics not to speak of configuring them - neither in the settings tab nor the general and/or language settings...

@凯 - AFAIK you just need to ask Nick.

@Byzanti - my objection is not to that kind of story, but to mnemonics that actually include the component characters as part of the text, e.g.

"弗 over 贝"

To me an ideal mnemonic is a story that incorporates hints about the components without showing any actual 汉字.

@Rolands - Mnemonics can be useful in the initial learning period. I've used them for a handful of difficult characters and haven't developed an addiction as far as I can tell. After a while the mnemonic is not necessary and you remember the character directly.

James

"Start use them and you always will need them. "

Obviously, the more characters you learn, the easier it is to remember new ones. So there is a point where you naturally stop relying on mnemonics as they become more trouble than they are worth.

I'll put you in there, Kai. It will turn on sometime today for you.

The mnemonics should be really easy to ignore once you don't need them any more. That's the theory, anyway. I can't find the post by John Pasden, but somewhere he says that his mnemonics faded away when he didn't need them any more. But here are some related posts on the subject:
http://www.sinosplice.com/life/archives/2008/06/30/ode-to-heisig-and-rtk
http://www.sinosplice.com/life/archives/2005/12/12/chinese-character-mnemonics
http://www.sinosplice.com/life/archives/2006/12/13/mandarin-tone-tricks

jww1066, I think there is room for both sorts of mnemonics, and you'll be able to pick which ones you want for each character you care about. (For those you don't care about, you don't have to click the "show mnemonic" bubble to get a hint.) In fact, there's probably room for people to put all sorts of stuff in there, not just mnemonics: whatever someone finds useful.

Thanks a lot for clarification (@James) and enabling (@Nick)!

@nick - maybe you put an update in without me seeing it, but now I don't see the "shared" button so can't select from the shared mnemonics. Also, the "shared" checkbox stays enabled even if I delete all the text - presumably this should only apply if the mnemonic is non-empty.

I am really not sure about this behavior of populating the mnemonics by default with the most popular shared mnemonic. Mnemonics are highly idiosyncratic; some of the ones that I've seen are weird, long, and very intrusive (stuff with dwarves and so on that will only make sense to someone who has studied with that set of idiosyncratic associations). I'm not convinced that choosing the most popular one is going to work, precisely because different students will prefer different styles.

I am spending a lot of time removing/altering mnemonics for characters that I don't really need to use mnemonics for. I am getting to the point where I kind of wonder if they are even worth all the trouble.

I would propose that the mnemonics NOT be populated by default with shared mnemonics. If the student wants to use a shared mnemonic for a character, he/she can go browse the existing shared ones and choose whichever one suits his/her style best.

James

yeah i second jww1066 proposal to by default NOT show the shared mnemonics even after finishing a character.

"If you click "show mnemonic" it shows the mnemonic which is intended to be a hint. If it tells you the component breakdown that's not a hint, it's a spoiler."

Can I gather from this that if you chose to view the mnemonic before finishing or even starting the character, you don't grade yourself wrong?

IF I use them, which i sometimes do although i am not a fan of them, I would grade myself wrong, but I use them as a middlepoint to remember the character. I mean I will try to remember the mnemonic and from there try to remember the character. Which is exactly the reason why i limit the use of them, it makes me remember more, if you don't remember the mnemonic there is no use, it will not be available to you in a real-world situation.

Yes I agree, please don't show shared ones by default. I love being able to make my own, but I haven't seen any others pop up that were useful. (In fact the ones I have seen so far seem to have no usefulness)

I broke the "see others" button, yeah. I was intending not to show it whenever there weren't any other things to choose from, but it has had the side-effect of not letting you vote for things or see who wrote them if the default is there. Perhaps I will keep the button but change the text to "see 0 others", "see more info", "see author"... hmm. Or, I could show the author of each mnemonic next to it in the prompt.

The "shared" checkbox would ideally be grayed out whenever there isn't any text in there, because it is not applied. It's a bit tricky to get all the states right with that inline editing thing. I will see what I can do.

I hear you guys on the not-sharing-by-default, but I want to give it a while longer before hiding them. I am hoping they will get more use and start to grow to the point of usefulness (via crowd filtering). I have seen a bunch of them already that were good and helped me on characters I'd struggled with. I do have more patience with the other ones, because I'm trying to evaluate the system, but it is still surely not too difficult to triple-click and press delete, at least for now?

@nick the problem with deleting is that this is extra work for many characters. I saw mnemonics for 一 for example and had to delete them for my own sanity. This is happening for many characters that I already know and don't need mnemonics for, so deleting them is just useless extra work for me (and anybody else in my situation). Maybe I'm pickier than you are but I have seen very, very few shared mnemonics that I would actually want to use.

As for crowd-filtering, I think you would get better filtering if you didn't show the shared mnemonics by default. Most people tend to leave the default option in place, even if it's not that good. If they instead have to select the shared mnemonic that they want to use, you will get much more reliable information about which mnemonics are actually useful.

@Nick It is surely not a big deal. I just thought it would be more logic that you only choose to get a mnemonic for characters you are struggling with, writing your own or picking a shared one which is both a little work. But I can accept there being a mnemonic even though they are no use. Some are even funny.

I see two possibilities, given Nick is fond of the idea of showing them.

1. A checkbox, where by default you see others mnemonics, but unticked you don't.
2. Make it so that only the most popular ones get shown (if selected by, at first, 3 people perhaps). That way, only the really good ones get shown, and there's less to remove.

talking about funny and elaborate mnemonics. while practicing the last half an hour, I've been getting two or three page long mnemonics, even for characters like 土, how much help do you need to remember that one???

I guess people are writing mnemonics in the single character spot, where they should be in the whole-word spot. I can't imagine scepters and kings and digging and whatnot are meant to help you remember earth.

【1. A checkbox, where by default you see others mnemonics, but unticked you don't.
2. Make it so that only the most popular ones get shown (if selected by, at first, 3 people perhaps). That way, only the really good ones get shown, and there's less to remove. 】

太赞了！

Okay, you guys are likely right. I'll set a default popularity threshold shortly and we'll see how that goes. I will, as you know, try to avoid a preference!

I briefly tried coding up a dimming of the shared checkbox when the textarea was empty, but it got too complicated. Hopefully it's not too confusing...

I've added the author tags for when it's someone else's mnemonic for now, and I put the shared button back, although I'm not sure how much sense it makes when there's just one.

@nick I'm still confused about the popularity rating. How does that work if the mnemonic is going to appear by default? That is, suppose we have a mnemonic "foo" and a mnemonic "bar". Initially only the original authors see "foo" and "bar". After a while, a couple of other people start using "foo" and it gets to the default popularity threshold, which we'll assume for the moment is 5. Now let's say that there are 30 other mnemonics users and they all start seeing "foo" because it's the most popular and has 5 votes. Does "foo" now jump to 35 votes? That hardly seems fair to "bar".

If on the other hand you count as a vote only an explicit switch to start using a mnemonic, nobody will ever vote for "foo", because they're already using it by default.

James

It would be the second case. I don't think it's a problem if few people vote for foo. Few people are going to vote for not-foo, too, so it's not too unbalanced. Plus, favoring the underdog a little is good, so that new and improved mnemonics have a chance.

I've also got a message at the top of the mnemonic list that says, "You're being shown the most popular mnemonic by default. Click one to select it as yours."

Hope that will work.

Any chance there is still a space in the club of mnemonics alpha testers?

Indeed there is! I've added you to the list; you'll probably start seeing these features later today.

Thanks for this. My first impression is that this is a good addition. Sometimes things tend to get a bit cluttered if you have for example a word with two or more characters.

As with the mnemonics I am not sure how strict by the book you want to keep this? For single characters I find it sometimes useful to also write down a hint telling me in which word it can be found. Strictly speaking this would probably not count as a mnemonic I guess?!

Whatever helps you, I think. You don't necessarily have to share these mnemonics, but if you think what you put in might be helpful to others, go ahead and share it. It prioritizes mnemonics based on how many people use it.

One thing I find rather annoying is when people use mnemonics from that are coded to a certain convention.

Check out 状 for example. Where someone apparently used the Alison Matthews system.

I actually used the same for a short while as well. My point is however that for people not familiar with the particular system/ convention these mnemonics are absolutely useless.

I propose that people who want to work with these mnemonics should not publicly share them.

I wonder how the prioritisation Scott mentioned works in this respect.

I use Heisig and add some German explanation. Most people won't find those helpful, but some will, and that's why I share almost all of them...

@wb I was just thinking about this yesterday when I ran across some German mnemonics... ideally Skritter would have definitions and mnemonics in all the languages of all its users, and would select the appropriate definitions/mnemonics based on the user's selected source language.

I have to say that after studying with mnemonics for a couple of weeks I am happy but not thrilled with them. They are helpful, but don't seem like a huge leap over simply studying the component breakdown.

However, Byzanti's Chinese example sentences look really useful.

I'm hoping you just mean the idea of cloze deletion sentences! I did have rather a lot in the mnemonics field to begin with, but I've pretty much now moved them all to the definitions field. Didn't think they'd be useful to others, and besides, it works best to see them with the definitions.

But, they are massively useful to help recall. I've gone down from an average of 400 words a day to 300, which is quite a relief, I can tell you. The other thing I'm finding really useful is pictures for common nouns. Definitely better than just words.

Another suggestion for mnemonics, which I've mentioned in the past, but it's worth mentioning again: other people's only show up automatically for new words.

Logic: you're likely to already know words previously added and wont need mnemonics -- and also they're not much trouble deleting this way.

I like the idea of only showing mnemonics automatically for new words too. There isn't really any reason to have all these new mnemonics for words I'm not having trouble with. If there is an old word I want help on, then I can go look for a mnemonic.

I'm gonna have to try the cloze deletion in the definition, that seems like it could be really helpful. It's too bad those can't be shared!

Aaah, mnemonics are automatic for new words... that clarifies things. And there are two fields to create/modify... yes, the newsletter stated that but I missed it. Thanks for the pointers, Byzanti.

Sarac, that was a mere suggestion, at the moment mnemonics are automatic for all words. Sorry for the confusion ;p.

After having played with the mnemonics for a while I think this is a major added value to skritter. Especially in combination of displaying radicals of individual characters. Love it!

I always liked the idea of working with mnemonics but found it too cumbersome to memorise them on top of all the other things one needs to retain when studying characters. With mnemonics being displayed along the characters makes it much easier to work with them actively.

Now it's up to us to complete them mnemonics :-)

Btw. I do not mind different languages. If I don't understand I can just ignore it or add my own.

While there are plenty of mnemonics that I don't understand (based on certain systems like Heisig or the Tuttle: Learning Chinese Characters one), I think it's good to have those shared. Remember that shared mnemonics are still in their infancy - in 6 months, every word is likely to have a fair selection - there might even be a good enough selection to justify creating mnemonic sets, wherein user input or a dedicated temp can file shared mnemonics into sets, so that anyone who wants to use all Heisig or Tuttle or German or etc. mnemonics will just have to select his or her set. For now, we're all stuck looking at some mnemonics that don't help us at all (or adding our own for those words), but give the system time to mature and grow before you reject it for its limitations.

I understand better now how the different mnemonics are shared for each character, so yes I agree with FatDragon no problem at all to share all mnemonics to have a nice selection.

There has been one latest change which I am not so happy with in this respect. It seems each character needs to get a mnemonic manually assigned first even though there might already be one in the data base from another user which is shared. Therefore one has to first choose one mnemonic from the list to be able to see it. I think it would be better if the most often used mnemonic is simply being displayed. If the user does not like it it is still possible to go to the list of mnemonics for that character and choose another one or add a new one.

They way it is now adds an additional step to the learning cycle which I find too interrupting.

Hannes, in the thread above we discuss why this was changed--in order to keep the default mnemonic quality higher, the default popularity threshold is now 3 votes. I am hoping that before too long, people will explicitly choose the mnemonics that are helpful to them, which will then share those useful ones by default. So perhaps if you give it some time, it'll start to be more useful this way?

Great idea. Sorry for coming in late to the game. I should have read the thread a bit more carefully.

Thanks for all the new improvements. They rock : )

One thing I don't like about using shared pneumonia is that it's just another thing to passively memorize, much like the definition of the word.

I find that the actual act of coming up with wild and crazy pneumonia is what really puts your brain into overdrive. The crazier the pneumonia, the faster the word gels into memory, and the sooner you get off your pneumatic crutch.

I've listened to some of those super memory courses and their common methodology is to combine wild and crazy with visceral imagery attached to what you want to remember.

If you accept someone else's pneumonia, you get none of these benefits, you just get a nasty cough that won't go away.

@klutz14159 I disagree. Byzanti's mnemonic for "horizontal" 横 is pretty compelling and, after seeing it a couple of times, I now know that character even though I've NEVER studied it.