Hi All,
I am a longtime user of Skritter, but have recently gotten more consistent with how I use the app, and generally making more of an effort to structure my Chinese learning. I have a few questions/suggestions for the iOS app (currently using 3.4.7 (300407)).
Turning off auto-advance for the last card of a Due Cards review
I have auto-advance turned on, which is great, except that whenever I complete the last card due in a review, the progress automatically closes the review and brings me to the summary results screen, so I am unable to modify the last cardās result if it is incorrect. Not a huge deal, but can get to be a pain if I am systematically working through smaller decks.
Different tones accepted for characters within words
I have noticed this occurring a few times where if a character within a multi-character word has different possible tonal declinations, they are all accepted when reviewing the wordās tones. I donāt think this should be the case, as even the tonal version of the word that is revealed will indicate a different tone than the one I will have put in (although the character does have the possible declination that I have entered). Does this make sense? I apologize for the lack of clarity here
Occasionally getting different cards for the same character/word
This one is pretty straightforward. Iām wondering if this is a resolution issue within the app, or if the fault lies with the user importing different decks/cards/etc? To be clear, I see both repeated cards with different definitions, and with the same definition, just worded differently.
Weird empty squares occasionally appearing in character/word definitions
Iāve attached a screenshot to help explain this one. Not a particular bother, but just something I wanted to note.
Difficulty recognizing strokes
When writing in the app, there are two strokes in particular that Skritter has a lot of trouble recognizing: the second stroke of åæ, and the first stroke of å°ø. These are particularly troublesome when they are an element of a character such as ę or ęæ.
Decks
- This may be my own incompetence, but I cannot, for the life of me, understand how to bring in new decks from either the browse tab or the featured tab. In the legacy app, I could just add decks to my collection and decide whether to add from those to my review queue. Iāve read the explainers and watch the video, but they only show how to copy a deck. I donāt want to copy a deck, I just want to add the deck as is, quickly accessible from the My Library tab, with the cover and video link (if available).
- I would like to be able to delete decks from the iOS app, I donāt currently seem to be able to.
- I donāt seem to be able to import vocabā lists from Pleco like I used to on the legacy app, has this feature been terminated?
- I would love to see a feature where users are able to better categorize their decks of cards. For instance, by creating sub-groups.
Progress (BETA)
I do no understand this page, and far preferred what was available on the legacy app.
- I donāt understand why Characters Learned and Words Learned under the All Time tab keep going up and down. Shouldnāt it only go up?
- The up and down movement of Characters Learned & Words Learned in the Today tab is even more significant and also perplexing.
- Activity Feed, is, in my humble opinion, completely useless in this current state, and brings me nothing as a user.
- I wonāt beat a dead horse on progress stats, as Iāve seen this discussed elsewhere on the forum, but boy do we need those words/character progress charts on the app. In my mind, this is one of the biggest problems the app currently has.
Advanced SRS Grading
This one is my fault because I just went ahead and turned on Advanced Grading when I switched to the new app, but is there guidance on what each of the grades actually mean? How does the algorithm interpret āhardā? Iāve noticed I can enter something as āHard,ā and the Review Report will show a 100% success rate. I ask because I want to make sure Iām using the app correctly instead of generating false positives or negatives in my learning by tinkering with it too much. For example, Iāve recently cut way back on the my use of āeasy,ā because I was being too generous with it, and that has completely changed how much Iām seeing certain cards. (This feels dumb reading back on it, but at scale the result is staggering).
- On the UI front, I would love to have word-level grading be a little larger. It is difficult to reach and tap in time when moving with a quick auto-advance speed.
Too Many Due Cards
This is again a problem of my own making, but from a stack of 1300 characters and 1500 words, Iām seeing some 500-800 due cards being added per night. How can I work through this? I have seen Skritter staff respond to a similar question in numerous instances elsewhere and watched the video, but these only address how to get to zero Due Cards. Even once I get to zero, which should be soon, I wonāt always have multiple (Skritter) hours per day to zero an 800-count daily stack.
So my question is this: if I zero the stack enough, will the rate of added characters/words slow? In other words, do I just not know my current cards (which have been added in very irregular fashion throughout an extended period of time) well enough to slow the rate of addition?
Gamification?
Iāve seen this elsewhere on the forum in threads from 2015 and 2018, but I would love to see some gamification incorporated in coming releases. Particularly enjoy the ability to compare stats with friends, issue challenges (ie: time attack on a particular list, cards learned over a set time, etc), earn badges for regular useā¦
Four Body Problem
Ultimately, this has been mentioned in this thread and elsewhere, but I would really like to see standardization of the functionality along both the legacy-beta axis, and the website-app axis. I would never use the website if I could do everything from my phone, and itās frustrating to look for features through different platforms AND versions.
Anyway, thatās all for now, thank you for making it this far. I appreciate all the hard work Iām seeing done on the app, and also that the team at Skritter is very responsive to user feedback! I hope none of this feedback comes off as nasty, Iām only harsh because I care.
