It seems like when you add a list to your study lineup, finish the list, but later add more words to that list, it doesn't notice that you did that and consequently doesn't add it back into to your study list. I was wondering if there are any plans to make this possible.

Because I'll often make a list with several sections, then start studying it immediately, planning to do the other parts later, but then I'll finish studying it before I do that.

I guess my main point is, Skritter seems to get really stubborn about reviving already "finished" lists. Can this be changed?

Yep, that's a small part of my current big project on the docket. It's been pushed off a bit because setting up volunteers to work on foreign language definitions has taken most of my time lately, but all the list updates are still coming up in the new future.

On a similar note, I recently added a section to a completed list and then set the section to "Add" starting at the first section. I was suddenly presented with about 200 items for review and many of the words were at 300% due as I hadn't been studying or reviewing them, even though the list was set to review!
I'm slowly working my way through the sections so that I can get to the end where the new words are and it's been hard work as all of these long forgotten words are coming up for review. Don't get me wrong, I know that I need to review these words, but I thought that I should have been reviewing them for the last few months after I completed the list.

Is this another bug that needs to be looked at?

Hi Scott,
when working on lists, I have a few suggestions, which you might want to consider:
- once a list is under "study", a change to the list (add, delete, update) should automatically also go to the my word list.
- possibility to change the name tag of a section, not only the description of the whole list.
- divide a section into sub-sections, this would give one the opportunity, to have a better logical (tree) structure of the list and keep the number of lists under control.
- Mark a section or a sub-section for "study", so that one does not have necessarily to study a complete list, but only those parts, one is interested in.
- Merge/import lists, so that I can have an own list, e.g. on food items, where I initially import existing list(s) and then expand, without impacting the original list. This can be done today by export-import, but to have such an import-merge function, would make it easier.
- when publishing a list, one should have the possibility to publish it as "read-only" or "read-edit", so that different people can work on the same list, this would avoid numerous different lists on the same theme, e.g. food items.
- when importing a list, would be cool, if Skritter would separate the list into 200 items sections automatically instead of having this to be done manually.
- update existing lists: I use a lot Pleco for looking up unknown characters / words. So my lists in Pleco are always expanding over time. Would be great, if I could import again such a list to skritter and tell it, to add the changes to an existing list, instead of importing the whole list again.
- when a "share as correction" item is accepted, it should automatically be deleted as user-specific, in order to keep the number of user specific definitions small (might be, this is the case already today, but I don't know, so I just mention it).
- Manage, what to study from an existing list or all lists: being able to tick read-write-tone-definition individually on a list or all list level and then skritter changes the study mode of all items in this list. I think, this subject came up already quite often on the forum.
- Set priority for adding words from a list: I am studying the 3000 most commonly used characters as well as some course book lists. If I could put e.g. a 3 to a course book list, meaning, once adding from this list, Skritter would add 3 items in a row from this list and as such study this much faster compared to another list, which has only a 1.
- Single character study mode. I had brought this up earlier already in another context, but was rejected. My weakest point is character definitions. Would be really great, if I could study every day for some time only characters, in order to increase my retention rate to the same level as my word retention rate, which is quite OK already. I have this already for quite a long time, but even not adding words for some month increased my retention rate on character definitions by less than 0.5%. I should increase it by more than 5%.
This is my "Christmas list" of features for lists.

@HappyBlue: Hmm, if I could get more information I can better track this bug down. You're right, it probably shouldn't happen. Had you deleted any words from this list previously, or changed your parts settings much previously? The only way that it would happen when it should happen, is if you weren't studying that list (if you were only studying one list at a time rather than studying everything) or if you disabled parts for study and then enabled them again, or switched between simplified and traditional. If it's none of these things, let me know any other info for how you got to that point and I'll see if I can reproduce it.

@Roland: With the new system, adding and removing words or sections from lists will update your studies. There will no longer be a distinction between deleting from a list and deleting from my words. You delete words from a list to remove them from my words.

You can change the name of a section now. Click 'edit sections' above the list of sections in the contents tab of the list page.

Sub-sections are probably not going to happen; it's a small upgrade and not something we get a lot of requests for, but it would be fairly complicated to implement and debug.

You can currently study a single section, by scrolling down to the bottom of the page and clicking the green 'study section' button. Not the same as marking, but it does allow you to focus on that section.

For merging, importing lists, yes you can use the export-import method. You can also use the remix feature. That allows you to make a copy of any given list, even one you don't control, and then edit the copy. This is probably easier than exporting, editing. If you're merging two lists, I'd say remix the larger one and use the standard editing tools to merge in the other's words how you want.

That's an interesting idea about giving others control to edit a list, and would not be that difficult to implement, and could be a cool way to collaborate within the community. I'll add that to my list of list upgrades.

Hmm, I'm unsure about the auto separating into groups of 200 items. I'm not sure how it would work exactly. Perhaps we could have it recognize when there are more than 200 items in the list (which it currently prevents) then ask if you want to put the remainder into new sections at the end of the list. What do you think of that?

Updating existing lists the way you describe would be tricky to set up simply, both in terms of the backend and the frontend. The only way I could see it working is if we were to do it on a case by case basis, where Skritter can hook up with another program's API and update it accordingly, like what it does now with ChinesePod user labels. Even then it would be very complicated. I think we'll have to pass on this for now at least.

When someone makes a change to the definition, we're assuming that what they put in is exactly what they want. We'd rather let them keep their definition static than presume they want us to change it after they manually put their own version in. Don't worry, user specific definitions are a drop in the storage bucket; by far the largest slice of data is all the data on how well the items themselves are known and their histories.

I think it's been mentioned a few times as well, being able to choose parts for individual lists. Maybe later. Again, we have to work to keep things simple and so whatever we accept we should be fairly sure will be worth the effort and the complexity. Every layer of options and preferences makes using and working on any given project harder to do.

Right now you can have some control like that by shifting lists between the adding and reviewing states. Not as finegrain control as a priority system would have, but again, complexity when it's really warrented.

What about building a list of characters you want to study? You can export all the characters that you're studying, put them into a list, and study that list with definitions only study on. You could also use stars to mark characters you want to work on more. Also, in general the SRS should put more focus on the things you need to study itself, and letting it schedule these things will be more efficient than trying to manage it yourself. The things you get wrong are what you spend the most time on. I would rather tweak the SRS and improve that than build a system that people would have to manage themselves. The goal is to have Skritter do the managing as much as possible, so that more time can be spent learning than organizing.

I look forward to hearing your thoughts! This is what we do amongst us three all the time by the way, so I don't want to discourage you. We discuss thoroughly all the large changes we make to the site.

"Perhaps we could have it recognize when there are more than 200 items in the list (which it currently prevents) then ask if you want to put the remainder into new sections at the end of the list. What do you think of that? "
Sounds great to me!