I am having a couple of problems with the Japanese version of skritter. The first is that, every single time I log into my account, it automatically switches me back to Chinese, even though I am only studying Japanese. This is really annoying.
The second is that I have no idea what it means when my progress page tells me I have "learned" 250 characters. How does skritter define "learned"? How many times do I have to get a character right before it's considered to have been "learned"? It seems to me that this designation gets applied long before I have actually memorized the character to a sufficient degree to earn it.
The third is that I now have a little message telling me that my subscription has ended, and I'm not getting any new kanji added to my practice. I was under the impression that the Japanese part of this site was free. I checked the blog and the forum, but I saw no references to this having been changed. I'd like to know if this is a bug or if I really need to pay to keep practicing.
I really love the way this site works other than the first two issues, so I'd really like to be able to keep using it. It fills a big gap in my Japanese studies and is the best kanji-learning method I've found yet. :)

Hmm, that's pretty weird. Could you describe more in detail how that happens, like what url you're at when you log in? Do you use clickpass or a password? And what browser you're using? I'm not sure how to reproduce it.

Learned is (somewhat arbitrarily) defined as having a review interval of 12 hours or more. So if you can go at least 12 hours without writing it and then write it completely from memory, you've learned it, according to Skritter. Unfortunately it would be very difficult to retroactively change this value, so I hope this isn't too much of a big deal :) I do find though, it does a good job of showing how bad it is for my studies whenever I miss a day or two (the learned graph pretty much dips every time when I start up again).

And yes, part of launch was to start charging for Japanese the same as we already charge for Chinese (we launched Chinese last May). I've tweaked the blog post to be more explicit that we're starting to charge for Japanese, sorry that wasn't made clear!

Thanks! Glad you find it useful. Let us know if there's anything else on your mind for ways to make Japanese better, or if you run into any more problems.

Hi LuaiLashire, I'm not sure but it could be the default language under the "Account > Language" tab. I only use Chinese so I'm not sure if this is it - if this does fix it, great but it seems like maybe the design could be looked at. The Japanese version has 'launched' which means, unfortunately, it is no longer free. It seems that the question of what 'learned' means comes up a lot. Maybe a (*) and a short blub at the bottom is in order. "Learned" just means you got it right enough times that Skritter thinks you can go a while without needing to practice (I can't remember if it is half a day or a couple days). It is arbitrary but then again sometimes I forget how to write really common words...

Hi Scott,
I have had the issue while using Google Chrome, Safari, and Firefox, so it doesn't seem to be a browser issue.
What happens is that I log in with clickpass, using my google account, and when the page loads, it's already set to Chinese. This only happens when I log in- so if I change it, leave, and come back without needing to log in, it will stay set to Japanese. But as soon as I log out and back in, it does it again.

Thanks for the explanation of "learned", it does help. I understand that that would not be an easy thing to change. Maybe in the future you could add a feature that allows users to set the review interval for "learned" themselves. I'm not a programmer so I have no idea how hard that might be.

Also thanks for the clarification about paying. I'll scrounge up some money when I can. :)

2shanghai, I tried to find a "default language" setting under "account" but all I found was "language learning" which was set to Japanese. This setting is the one that switches when I log out and back in.

its not that hard once you work at it...
it may look like alot of chicken scratch at first ut its acually reall easy one you know katakana and hirigana^^

Aha, that's it; it's the clickpass handling logic. I've fixed it on this side; I'll upload it soon. Thanks for the bug report!

Given the way progress is stored, it would be really the hardest to change the definition of 'learned' once you've started measuring progress. We like to keep things generally simple when we can though, so probably best to keep it as something that doesn't have to be worried about.

As far as "learning" characters - I had an issue similar to yourself, and I resolved it mostly through self-grading; when I started using "3" only when I could have written the character freehand (since the handwriting recognition can be ... well, generous at times) - and then 2 for missing one stroke, and 1 for anything else - it matched up more closely with my definition of "learned"

Obviously, your mileage may vary, and I'm not saying my rubric is optimal for everyone. That said, I think that defining a somewhat strict set of criteria and grading yourself consistently based on that is the best way to use Skritter.