I used Skritter for learning Japanese characters using the Heisig method about a year ago. But I had to stop my subscription because I was having trouble with the SRS algorithm. From what I read, the interval should either go up 2 or 3 times if you get the character correct. What was happening was that it was jumping to over 5 years for many characters after a couple of weeks. It became totally unusable. I would like to wipe my account and try again but I wanted to know if there was a way to avoid this rapid fast tracking for the characters? I saw in another post that if you get the character wrong in the first attempt, it can avoid this happening but is this a fact? I would like to re-subscribe again but I want to be sure on how it will work first. Thanks.

There's a good write-up on Skritter's scheduling algorithm here:

http://www.skritter.com/faq#scheduling

If you mark a character wrong the first time, it's scheduled 10 minutes in the future. If you mark it right, then it's scheduled 1 week in the future. The following reviews are multiply those time frames.

The first time I'm prompted for a character, I consider Skritter to be asking me "Do you already know this character really well?" If i just studied this character, and that's the only reason I can recall it, then I answer 'no'. In practice, I just mark all new characters wrong, and let the scheduling sort it out,

I understand that part of it. But something was fast tracking the characters and spacing them out over 5 years after about a month. This is the part I am confused about and I want to make sure doesn't happen again. I want it to work like what is described in the faq you mentioned.

Possibly a bug? Unless Heisig working really really well for you...

Not to hijack the thread but the question of whether to default a new word to "wrong" comes up for time to time.

I only wonder about this because I study both simplified and traditional and Skritter always seves up simplified first. So always have to remember to notice that it's a new word when first presented in traditional form, and deliberately mark it wrong. (Since trad is what I think of as my "primary")

Is this the best place to get a developer to answer my original question or should I e-mail them directly?

I find it's usually quickest to use the contact form to reach the developers.

Two factors are at play. When you get something correct, the interval is based on when you last saw something in Skritter, not on what the scheduled interval was. So if you haven't seen something for a year (because you took a break from Skritter), but then you remember it the first time Skritter asked you, Skritter thinks, "Whoa, you remembered it after a year–guess you know this one pretty well."

The other factor is that if you always get an item correct, then the intervals begin to multiply much faster. This is so that you can start using Skritter without worrying too much about adding words you already know, since they'll quickly be out of your way.

If you are very concerned about making sure every item is studied several times in Skritter, then yeah, lechuan's suggestion is a good way to do that. For most users, though, the reduced review load from these two factors is more efficient.

It doesn't work quite right if you are studying similar items and get your memory jogged by the first version of it, which is why we have a lot of spacing logic to prevent those prompts from clumping together too much. When that doesn't work, though, the idea is that pushing one of the items back because you got it right incorrectly isn't the worst thing that could happen, as the similar items will most likely finally be spaced out from each other then.