I apologize in advance if this issue has already been addressed, but have you guys considered allowing users to make multiple queues? For example, students may want to have a "main" queue that tracks their general progress, but then also be able to make a shorter list that they can use to practice with the night before a test etc.

It seems to me that this wouldn't be too hard to implement, but maybe it goes against the skritter ethos.

Keep up the great work!

When you say queue, do you mean the queue of words to study (so basically all the words you are studying) or do you mean the queue of words yet to be added to your studies? The latter is here:

http://www.skritter.com/vocabulary/lists#?list=Q

Hmm, there's a possible ambiguity of terminology here, might have to figure out a better way to name these things...

But I think what you're describing will be best addressed with the upcoming and improved cram mode. There used to be a cram mode but we didn't keep it during a transitional period a few months ago. It allowed you to choose a single section from a single list and just study that for as long as you like.

The new cram mode will allow you to select a subset of words and sections and study those exclusively. I'm thinking you'll also be able to save subsets for later use.

And yeah, it kind of does go against the ethos, but that won't stop us from making it. The main goal here is efficiency, and the most efficient thing to do is study the items that you haven't studied in a certain optimal amount of time (which hopefully is what our scheduler roughly approximates).

But there are also times you want to be able to have more control over your studies, at the expense of efficiency, for a variety of valid reasons, such as:

* Our system isn't perfect, and you might feel some words are studied less often than needed
* You might want to make sure you know a given set of words really well before a quiz or test
* Or you have a lot of trouble remembering a given word and you want to drill it

As long as you continue to mainly study the normal way, it should be fine.

This sounds like the Supermemo "review" process - you move a repetition forward in time (as you say, suboptimal interval) so as to cram for a test. I think the key is how the next repetition interval is calculated; you don't want to move it too far out.

Oh yeah, if you see an item early it is scheduled proportionally, so that if you see an item repeatedly it barely gets scheduled further forward at all from its last scheduled time. And conversely, if you get an item right after having not seen it longer than you were scheduled, the review time difference increases more than it would have.

What I think would be nice ( and hat I believe is the point 'toneandcolor' makes is that I would like to set aside all I've been working on for several weeks - just temporarily - and use a totally separate list of ( say 20 ) words and work on them for three days. There would be no desire to, nor need to, nor cause to obfuscate any of these 'new' words with data that might be accumulated about the old list. Then , in 3 days, ( after my midterm ) I could revert to my 'old' list , old data in tact, and pick up as if I hadn't stopped.
...almost as if I logged on under a new name and only stuck around for a short time.
I had thought that that is what 'cram' mode would look like. A short term effort like this needn't be convolved with the longer term learning. Any impact it had would be much like I had dropped out for a week, or spent time on a few special characters. Skritter seems to weather those storms without a problem.

I think that the way the scheduling works, not recording and recording your practice in cram mode would generally lead to the same thing. Except if you don't record it, when you go back to regular study it gives you all the things you've been practicing. Assuming you get all those right, they'll be bumped farther ahead (because you were 'late' getting to them) in roughly the same area if you had recorded all those early reviews while in cram mode. Would have to test it to make sure but that's how I believe it would work.

Thanks for the response. I guess I meant "list" instead of "queue". Yes, glr001 basically has the same idea - I want to be able to isolate a smaller list of words to study for a given period of time (for the HSK, for an interview I'm going to have on a particular topic etc.)

It sounds like the "cram" mode will make this possible. If so, I can't wait!