I was thinking about the new practice page (where you can select various lists to study) and one thing that would be cool would be to see the "items due" broken down by the list that they came from, so we could see how much work we have to do on each list.

Something like

List Name - Items Due Now
Everything - 1,234
Profanity - 567
Catholicism - 89
etc.

Even better if it would show the percentage of the items from that list that were due; that is, if I've added 12 items from a certain list and 6 are due, it could show 50%.

You'd need to include all the lists that have been studied, not just the recent ones; not sure if that's practical or not.

James

Going on from that, perhaps an option to rank lists by most reviews needed...

Yes, that would be great. I think one possible use of this would be to give you guidance on which lists you might want to focus on.

Another useful statistic would be your progress through the list (currently visible only through the 'active lists' window). Then maybe the 'active lists' window could disappear or merge with the vocab page where you select lists to add from.

James

hm. Actually on second thoughts my point is probably redundant in a SRS system.

Just been using the individual lists now, I'm wondering if the propensity for reviews need to be different from studying everything.

It just went ahead and added 12 or so new words without going back and reviewing them, even with lowering my word adding frequency in options...

But as you say, amount of list known would be nice. I'd like to see that on all lists though - eg, so I can take a look at the various published lists and see how much of it I already know. Especially useful for HSK lists!

Another thing that would be nice for the practice page is an estimate of the amount time it'll take you to get through the number of reviews you have coming up each day in the coming week. That way you can look at the week and say, I'll need about 15 minutes each day to stay on top of my items. If I have more time than that, I should feel free to add, if not, adding probably isn't a good idea.

The time estimate could be on something as simple as a skritter-wide average over all review types or as complicated as a detailed estimate for you based on your speed and the types of reviews coming up.

I sorta have an estimate for myself, but it seems like something that should be pretty easy for skritter to guess at.

Also a total where it says items coming due next week would be good - e.g. 200 items coming due next week. Otherwise you have to add up the numbers yourself.

It's actually pretty expensive (slow) to calculate per-list item review counts like that, so unless it were really useful, I'd hesitate on that. This difficulty in calculating review counts also makes it hard to do some of the things suggested in this thread.

The time estimates would definitely have to be per-user; people practice at hugely different speeds. I can think of some good ways to do this. It would probably not be a very good estimate with respect to the future items due, since that'll increase a lot as you add new words and review. Rather, I'd apply it to the current number of items due.

I've added the total future item count for the week to the label, since that's free.

I'm starting to sense a big problem with this design, which is that it gives far too much emphasis to studying individual lists. In almost all cases, it would be better to study everything and potentially just add from one list. Most of the time, if you just do reviews from one list, you're putting yourself on the fast track to a heaping review pile, which is inefficient and often demoralizing. And adding can happen too early. Why wouldn't you want to do all your reviews together, unless you had some really specialized lists that you wanted to study in a different way?

Really, we want you to be studying everything unless you have a test or you want to study only writings for just your Heisig list, for example. Or maybe section/scratchpad if you really want to drill.

Gotta think more about this. Perhaps those who really like the list practice can explain other important use cases for it.

I would tend to agree with you there..

I guess some people might like to repeatedly focus on a new list, as opposed to a more gradual SRS thing. Even if inefficient...

Tests I can see it being useful though. Also, I've added some words from books, useful to review those after going through the book, perhaps.

I find it very motivating to plow through a list and see myself progressing. Otherwise the studying experience is fairly static.

I think at one point you were talking about making Skritter like an addictive video game where you learn hanzi. Addictive games usually have a variable reward schedule to keep you coming back for your positive stimulus.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinforcement#Effects_of_different_types_of_simple_schedules

For me the positive stimuli are a) getting a hard one right after struggling with it b) finishing a list or a section c) hitting a milestone on the progress page.

I only study specific lists when I'm all caught up with my reviews and want to add a bunch of new items. Then I make sure to study the "everything" list so I don't fall too far behind.

James

Personally, I prefer to just study everything. If, as Nick said, this is perhaps the most efficient way to study for our overall learning, perhaps a button could be added to the first page that simply said practice everything so that people would see that first and be encouraged to do that unless they have specific reasons to focus on the lists. This way you would only see the lists separately if you chose to study that way. Although I like the new practice page set up, I have found that more and more I just want to skip the lists page and get into practicing everything.

James,

Why couldn't that be accomplished by adding from only one list while still studying everything?

I know what you mean--I love to burn through homemade lists, especially the queue--but I wouldn't want to stop reviewing my other items.

I find the practice lists very useful when I want to prepare for a class that uses a specific textbook. Especially if I have a large everything review queue, I can make sure I've reviewed all the words for the textbook before class (all items due for review in that list, not all possible items in the list), and then go back to everything.

Sometimes I also like just focusing on the vocab for a book while adding from that book, instead of being distracted by relatively unrelated words and chars. For me, this doesn't work well if I don't have many due for review in that list, though sometimes it's also nice to learn several very quickly without much review, and then go back to everything. Though even this may change once I get Pronunciation added for all my lists.

@murrayjames: If you're studying everything, you have other unrelated stuff coming up for review. That is good for overall retention, but makes your progress through a list slower than if you practiced *only* characters/words from that list (assuming the list has some kind of coherent theme, like radicals or food or whatever).

I second the idea for adding a estimated time as it can be really motivating.

When I'm using Anki, and there are lots of cards up for review, seeing how many cards I have to do doesn't always inspire me to start getting through them. But when I take a look at the estimated time, it makes it seem much easier, and I'm usually far more keen to get going.

As for how to do it, I think Anki's way is pretty good. Its calculated on a daily basis, and is usually not a bad judge of how long it will take.

I really like the practice/add from a list feature when using it with a class. If I'm behind in general reviews but still want to learn the vocab for a class I can do so (and same with reviews).

Like James said as well, it's also very motivating; when I study from a couple different lists and then my general review queue it seems like three separate practice sessions and I find I have a greater attention span.

Focusing on words you are about to read or that pertain to a specific book (e.g. one from the Hanyu Feng series with an included vocab list) makes reading that much more enjoyable and since one plans to read the book, they will be studying those characters anyways; by studying them in Skritter as a list first they are doing so more efficiently and making the reading more enjoyable (by avoiding many of the the annoying dictionary look-ups).

I must admit that I have been surprised at just how much I like the study-a-list feature.