This has been brought up before but I don't recall the resolution. I recently modified a mnemonic of Byzanti's for 场合 as I wanted to flesh it out a little and add the bold/italic formatting I prefer. However, I feel I'm stealing his glory somewhat; I think I would get a little annoyed myself if other people copied and modified my mnemonics without giving me some kind of credit. If I put "(Byzanti)" at the end, that would be one way to retain the attribution, and I have seen a couple of mnemonics that already do this, but I'm not sure if people think that this is a good idea. Maybe it's too much text? Maybe there's a better way to handle it? Or, if it's a good idea, maybe it should happen automatically?

James

hey, I just did something similar (but the contrary - I like to shorten them as much as possible. I added the original author's name in parenthesis at the end. Anyway, since the idea is to learn Chinese and not to compete about who's the best mnemonics guy, maybe we could just forget about 'copyright' issues. Edit it, post it, and if someone likes it, they'll take it. I at least, don't give a rat's ass who uses MY ideas once they're in the public domain.

Ditto from me. I feel guilty when I copy an idea or phrase and have refrained from copy/editing in cases where it is just a formatting/style I'd prefer. I think extending the text for an attribution would be too wordy but I don't have a better idea.

I think this one is a good example, for deng3 - to wait, rank, etc.

The original was brilliant, but too cumbersome. I use this one, I hope the original author doesn't mind:

Wait while I create China, some bamboo, some buddhist temples. Thanks for waiting let's work on our handicap.

oh,yes, and by the way, I didn't really notice who wrote the abridged version anyway!

I've stolen and added some bold/italics to a few, but I've tried to unshare those as much as possible. I guess it would be hard to track modifications and give credit to the correct people without going on the honour system.

Hi folks.

I have been using, modifying and writing mnemonics willy nilly since this utility went live.

I don't want to steal credit from where it is due, but who is to say the original contributor to Skritter is actually the original author of the mnemonic 'in the world' so to speak?

Anyway as Miles said, the whole point of this idea was to share our collective Chinese learning wealth, not to compete for best mnemonic writer, right?

Just to clarify, my concern is courtesy, not the competition. I don't even remember when the mnemonic competition ends and am not actually that interested in it. I just want to make sure I'm not annoying people by making it look like I came up with something I didn't.

Right now I am leaning towards putting (Byzanti) at the end, but would like to hear what others think...

James

I would say don't credit the "author" you borrowed them from. Then it will list you and another person which will just add to the amount of clutter on the practice page.

If I modify, I don't share. Simple as that for me.

Heh, it doesn't bother me what people do to my mnemonics. If I take someone else's and make a only slight change though, I - like FatDragon above - usually just don't share it. There's something said for improved mnemonics though, and those should be shared.

I say let the system take care of it. People should be able to do whatever they want/can using what the application itself supports.

ie instead of trying to bend the system to work how you feel it should, it should be left to the system.

@FatDragon, @Byzanti -what would you do if you made a substantial change and thought the change might be of use to others?

Another possibility would be for the Skritter Gods to add "date created/modified" fields to the mnemonics, if they're willing. Then we'd be able to see who was first and there wouldn't be any need to worry about giving attribution.

James

I think if you have created a mnemonic and ticked the shared box you have willingly submitted that mnemonic to the public domain, and that's the way I have been treating them.

How can it be judged if a mnemonic has been 'improved' or not? It's too subjective when everybody has their own system, preferences and idiosyncrasies.

The date created / modified idea might be good though.

By all means, just share it!

I think there is a time and place for such unreserved politeness, but I'm not sure it's here..

OK, great, just wanted to be sure...

Looks like it's been figured out pretty well. I think the way that the system rates mnemonics (a flavor of popularity / age) will help determine what's most useful to people in terms of attributions and edits, too.

If two mnemonics have the same points, then the least-recently-updated will be below the newer one, so that's one way you can sometimes tell which came first.

By the way, how is the "3 points = public" filter rule working out now that there're more mnemonics in the system?

Nick - You have been busy with forum questions lately (thanks) and I hope it's an indication that you're less swamped, feeling better and generally back to normal.

I have found the mnemonics quite useful. I have realized that from time to time simply creating a mnemonic - spending time to consider the components and work through a concise phrasing is enough for me to learn the character. I sometimes write the mnemonic and never use it.

I think that tells me to slow down; the pace of pencil and paper has advantages. Skritter helps me to practice efficiently, to go through a big pile of characters and to exercise my writing frequently - and I am grateful for this tool. For those endlessly troublesome characters/words, though, taking more time is helpful.

When I have more time (?) I want to create more Chinese sentences to use for the words. It makes sense to me to have mnemonics for the individual characters and context-creating or grammar-specific sentences for the words. Presumably the actual writing of the characters is already learned but I want to work on broader skills with such sentences. I have seen a few such sentences out there and I hope for more because I know I can learn from others.

AS to your specific questions/comments. Okay about no set style... it seems to be working out with some consistency, some individuality. I like the italic/ bold system and concise phrases. Others' mini stories and funny scenes make me smile.

I appreciate the lack of selfishness here - the willingness to share mnemonics and not care about attribution. Anyone can take my sparse ones and edit away.

I am not a fan of the 3 votes = public scheme because I want to choose my own. When it is unwanted it is just clutter to me. Therefore I'd like a way to get rid of such a voted-in mnemonic. Also to delete my own.

I'm feeling better but still slow 'n sleepy. Trying to get caught up on the feedback if nothing else.

Your experience agrees with the theory: most of the items take little time, but a few of them resist memorization and soak up a lot of the practice, so on those few tough items, it's worthwhile to spend time coming up with a solid memorization strategy for them rather than just keep spending a ton of time on them.

Is the system working out such that you can easily see what mnemonics are there and choose one when there isn't a defaulted one yet? The "add char mnemonic (2)" isn't very prominent, so I'm not sure if it's clear whether there's goodies to be selected.

@nick - I'm definitely happy with the way the mnemonics work now.

@sarac The combination of Skritter with sentence practice is awesome. I mostly use Anki for sentences myself but it could be pretty much any way of studying sentences; the key is that you learn the individual words and characters and then learn a sentence that puts them together. At the moment Skritter's database seems mostly oriented on individual characters and short words but I have jammed a lot of longer phrases into my queue and it does work pretty well for that.

When in China, do as the Chinese do. Plagiarize copiously but never attribute :-O

I like being able to create and select other people's mnemonics.



I REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY hate seeing other peoples mnemonics by default when I have none. Now that the three strikes and its public is getting more votes, I'm spending lots more time erasing mnemonics that show up, especially anything with boldface and anything weird.

On top of that, I'm often seeing mnemonics that I have overwritten with blank text later getting filled in with other people's mnemonics again. I don't know if this is a result of newer votes causing default mnemonics to repopulate and erase my blank override.

When I run across a difficult word, I have no problems with clicking on a link to see what mnemonics other people have come up with. This is no different than clicking on a link to see what definitions any usages nciku has. But the dictionary lookups are hidden in a popup - why can't mnemonics be hidden as well?

The big problem I have with mnemonics is that they are distracting as all hell. Remember when people complained about random movie quotes being distracting? This is a hundred times worse! Why? Because more often than not, they have one or two words that might have some relevance to the word you are trying to learn or have already learned in a different manner. So now you have to read it and then filter it out as "oh, this is irrelevant junk to me". Add on top of that italics, boldface, hyperlinks, pictures and now the mnemonics are visually overwhelming the definitions.

What's more important - mnemonics or definitions? In the short term mnemonics get you over an initial association hump, but definitions are what count in the long term. I actively erase even my own mnemonics when they have served their purpose because I need to focus on word meaning.

I am also disliking the components more and more, for the same reason that they are visually distracting. Both because they are pictographs and because of the multiple lines of colored pinyin text for what may be many components. I lump this into memorization aids much as I would the dictionary lookups. I don't see why these can't go on a popup as well.

@klutz14159 Hmmm, I really like the formatting and have been adding it to the mnemonics that I like. I wonder if it'd be possible to come up with a custom stylesheet that would strip out that formatting for those who don't like it?

Hmm, there shouldn't be any mnemonics showing up for a character after you delete all the text out of one. I see that there is a bug, though. I will attempt to fix it.

That's a good idea, jww1066. klutz14159, here are the stylesheet rules you would need to apply:

#word_mnem b, word#mnem em, #char_mnem b, #char_mnem em
{
font-style: normal; font-weight: normal;
}

You could also hide the decomps:

.prompt #decomp { display: none; }

Applying custom stylesheets is not too difficult, depending on which browser you use. If you try it out, let us know how it goes and if it salves these frustrations. It might be the case we can come up with some better formatting that minimizes the distractions while still keeping a unified display. I'd be hesitant to create a preference to hide these things, though, especially when I've really only heard positive feedback about them being there.

Others' thoughts on the 3-shared filter?

I tried out the custom user stylesheet. I ended up just hiding the mnemonics altogether since it was still too distracting to see other people's mnemonics. This kind of sucks since I can no longer see my own mnemonics, but other people's 3 vote mnemonics far outnumber the number of mnemonics I use, so I have to go with the lesser of two evils.

I don't really mind them showing up but i have been losing time because of deletion and selecting mnemonics though. Maybe buttons for "see all" and "delete" (or "none"), but outside of the textbox so you save a click?

People that are distracted by the mnemonics and decomps, is it because you think there is too much info on the page or because it is irrelevant for your study and your vision get drawn to it? I guess the last one applied for the quotes. It happens to me as wel, but I think only when I am not very concentrated to begin with. When I am focused I fly over my reviews and am actually happy when something distracts me for a moment. I often put music or even spoken stuff on while skrittering.

@Klutz: it sucks that you delete mnemonics and they come back, i didn't have that experience, or didn't notice. I don't agree with your "the definition is all that matters" statement though. For me, and i think for many people, the mnemonics and decomps are meant to help us remember how to write the character, skritter is primarily a writing tool after all. I can understand that some people would like to have less information for distraction reasons. Nevertheless, my vote goes to: the more information the better.

about attributions: in my opinion if you improve (or change) a mnemonic, even just layout wise, it is yours. I don't think we should waste our times caring about giving credit to the right guy. these aren't the mnemonic olympics. For me the whole scoring system is useless anyway, except maybe to select the default one. However, what is best for 90 percent of skritterers is not necessarily best for me/you.

I don't like the mnemonics appearing when I haven't clicked on them - I assume they're the 3-votes ones.

There's another problem with modifying mnemonics and relisting, and that is that there will soon be too many options to bother reading them. I would say we probably don't want more than half-a-dozen choices (preferably less), but only if they are all significantly different.

When people add improvements to my mnemonics, that is a good thing, (and I'm not bothered about the competition), but it does make me a bit grumpy when they only change the formatting.

Rachael.

Another thought: Supposing I created a beautiful mnemonic, and several people each modified it a bit, and others voted, then the votes for the single idea would be diluted among all the variations and the beautiful idea might not come out as the most popular, so would not be shown by default. That would be a pity.
Rachael.

true, but when I need a mnemonic for a character I always look at the list first though (even when I want to write one myself), I don't just fall for the default one. However, you are right, if there are too many options, people might lose interest in reading them all. But the chances to miss the 'perfect' mnemonic seem ignorable to me. I mean we are studying chinese, we should all be people with some imagination...hehe