I would like to get feedback from Skritter users if they use memrise.com as well to practice characters?
How beneficial is to actually write characters for fixing them in memory ?

I'm not familiar with what memrise offers, but it seems to just be a flashcard system? If so, the two biggest benefits of Skritter relative to that would be a good, clean system for handwriting practice (where you don't need to buy endless sheets of character boxes) as well as great resources to integrate that studying with most common textbooks or online websites, thus reducing the time spent on backend 'flashcard management'.

Personally I find handwriting practice to be extremely beneficial, especially once you are deeper into your studies (thousands of characters); at that point the similarities increase and only sometime like memorizing strokes and orders (via handwriting) can cement the differences for me.

If I wasn't concerned about handwriting practice I would probably just use Anki or another similarly free alternative.

I'd say it depends on what you want to learn. Memrise is better than Anki for learning to read characters (because it gives you hints and learning tips as a beginner), but if you want to be able to write them, Skritter is far more efficient.

Also, I've only used memrise for 10 minutes. It's unclear what memrise does if you're not a beginner.

I had a quick look - the introduction didn't last long. As I understand it, it uses lengthy mnemonics for everything? By HSK5 level it would seem to me to be a dreadfully inefficient tactic. And what's the point of the multiple choice questions? If it does more than this, they should make a better intro...

From my point of view, going through the writing prompts on Skritter is beneficial even if you don't plan on learning to write (or even read).

As a long term memrise user, I'll weigh in. At it's heart, Memrise is based on spaced repetition software, but it also has three big advantages over competitors.

The first is it's presentation. This might not seem like much, but the visual stimulus of growing your garden of memories, mixed with a very attractive and intuitive interface, makes it addictive to use.

The second is it's mnemonics system. In a opensource/wikipedia like way, you get a variety of 'mems' from the community, pictures, phrases, short stories, or detailed background information. This means most words will have multiple mems, and one tends to be very strong (they're easy to browse through).

The third is the competitive element, with leaderboards not just for the community as a whole, but also the people you joined up at the same time as, and people you choose to 'friend'.

Finally the little details of the site are very good - I can't prove it, but I feel like their SRS algorithm is almost perfect - always presenting me with words just at the right times.

I've learnt 1500 words with it in the last 6 months, so it's been a useful complement to my other learning. I'm a big fan.

Of course it doesn't teach you to write, so Skritter remains the champion in that field.

Edit: @ Byzanti

The multiple choice questions are to ease you in - it's much easier to learn something if your memory is gently built up. So with a new word you start with an easy multiple choice, than a harder one, move onto typing the direct answer, and finally learn the pinyin with the same process.

The mmnemonics are purely optional, but I've always found them helpful. The mmnemonics often just remind you that of the components of a character with a short phrase - which seems like it would be great at any level.

Hope that helps :)

@Talafar Thanks for the inputs! I am pretty sure the mnemonic system of memrise must be way better that one in here as the whole idea of memrise is built around that.

@Catherine One can directly jump to levels like HSK 4-5 if one is not beginner.

Is there a way one can import mnemonics from memrise to skritter?

I am also a long term memrise user. For learning to read there is nothing better. The only thing I have found is the first step of learning the English meaning of characters is fairly easy. I have learnt about 2000 characters and it's amazing how quickly I can add new characters. At least 100 new characters a week. The only thing is the pinyin test is considerably more difficult and although I know the pinyin words, the tones are extremely difficult. I often have to turn off this test as I just get swamped with hundreds of reviews. I had been neglecting all other areas of my Chinese study and that's why I have started using skritter, mainly due to the fact my degree it has become more of a necessity to be able to write some characters. I had found Skritter before but the trial thing didn't entice me much, basically because I use a laptop and really didnt like using a touchpad to write. Recently I have been connecting my Ipad to my laptop and using that to use skritter and although it is not terribly smooth, it is much easier and when the app comes out, I think skritter will be a godsend for me learning to write. I have also found skritter helps me to learn tones fairly well with the tone test. So now I have the perfect resources, memrise for reading and skriter for writing. Just need something for speaking and listening.
I highly recommend Skritter, Memrise and Pleco.

@bjnsharp "Just need something for speaking and listening. "

italki.com for speaking, many Chinese TV series online for listening...

@bjnsharp xie xie!

I did use memrise as my first contact with chinese last December. It was great and fun, then I started to get annoyed about how slow it kept getting to now and then and some annoying bugs. Looking at forum threads, many questions and problem reports where unaddressed.

As mentioned mnemonics is great and especially when you get a list of similar characters which might confuse you, good stuff.
Just my personal thoughts, I have not used it for a couple of months now.
Basically you can say I abandoned it in favor for skritter as I thought that 'writing' the character might increase the chance to remember it, so got a bamboo pad too.
I think the skritter GUI 'looks' nicer too :)
Just my 1 SEK..

To the people who use this memeris - is there 1 place you can go? I'm just mucking round with it because it seems quit fun but I keep having to click between learning new words, reviewing old ones and I never really know exactly what I'm meant to be doing. It doesn't seem to want to tell me how long till I should review stuff. Anki or Skritter all just have a "go" type button where you review everything that's due and new stuff shows up along the way ... does memerise?

I'm another one who really likes Memrise, despite that Skritter is far better in almost every respect... other than encouraging and surfacing memes.

With the iOS app out, I'm now using Skritter almost exclusively but am super-thankful that Memrise drilled the habit into me of creating a story for each character. Makes memorization 100x easier, I'm definitely a believer.