Hi,
a long time ago, I started studying both simplified and traditional characters. Since I've moved to Taiwan, I didn't really care about the simplified characters, so I removed them from my studies. Can I reset the progress I made on the simplified so that I get the real number of words I learned? If I ban a word, does the progress still appear in the statistics?

Currently, the only way to do that would be to either nuke, or to get the simplified items wrong enough so that they fall below 12 hours. You probably don't want to do either of those things, unfortunately.

Sorry--the conflation of simplified and traditional characters like this in the progress statistics is a limitation of the system that we made in order to keep things manageable on our end.

Hm, OK. If I get all those words wrong on purpose, does it affect my overall retention rate?

Yes, it would, unfortunately.

I see :(
But does it change the time each word is due?
What is the difference between banned words and removed words, anyway?

Removed words aren't being studied but could be added back if they come up in a list you're adding from.

Banned words will never be studied or added from a list again unless they are unbanned.

OK, then please take this as a suggestion:
How about treating banned words as if they've never been added (or at least leave this treatment as an option)?

They are treated that way, in that they are never studied again. Or do you mean in terms of progress, having their progress wiped and adjusting your progress stats accordingly? That wouldn't be possible, or at least it wouldn't be worth the development time in making that work, because progress is stored as it goes along, and changing your progress history retroactively would be very complicated and super bug prone. And furthermore, in general we'd like banning and unbanning be exactly opposite actions, such that if you ban and then unban something, the system will look the same as if you'd done nothing at all. Does that make sense? Or am I misunderstanding your suggestion?

I mean we could have the option to "forget" them, but without affecting the retention rate. I don't mind if the progress history remains, but I want to reduce my stats.
Apparently, I can read about 1600 words but I can write nearly 1900 (which doesn't make much sense) because I've learned some simplified characters. Now I don't want them to be taken into account. I don't mind if the graph suddenly plummets to ~1600 words, but I don't want my retention rate to be affected. How does this sound?

We're not really keen on giving that sort of micro-managing control for the SRS. It's added complexity that shouldn't be necessary, really. And the stats that are recorded are not 100% accurate either so you should take them with a grain of salt.

I was thinking, actually, that it would be good to do a report someday that goes through all your current data directly and gives you more detailed information on the status of everything, including simplified vs traditional numbers. Not happening soon, but it sounds like that would better suit your needs, because the numbers would be current and completely accurate, whereas the way you're suggesting wouldn't be accurate either. The only other way to get the numbers you would want would be to completely wipe your account and start again without learning any traditional words. What do you think?

@Scott that report would be very useful for those of us who study both traditional and simplified. I'm still unclear on what my numbers on the progress page really mean.

I kinda thought about nuking and starting over, but I guess keeping the progress is more important for me at the moment.
The idea about the report sounds awesome! Looking forward to seeing it :)
Until then, I'll just look at the number of the definitions learned. Should be close enough.
Thanks!