Looks like the Great Firewall or something like it is preventing you from completely loading www.skritter.com because it is hosted on Google App Engine, which is periodically blocked. Try instead our mirror:

legacy.skritter.cn

This might also be caused by an internet filter, such as SafeEyes. If you have such a filter installed, try adding appspot.com to the list of allowed domains.

How the words are added (just curious)

breakphreak   January 29th, 2011 6:35p.m.

Hey there!

Just curious about how the new words are added to the learning set (my words).

Say, if I have only one list - then the simple characters/words are added first?

And if I've got more then one vocal list to add from - how does it happen.

I find the algorithm quite handy, just asking. If it's kinda know-how or something - please keep it and I apologize.

nick   January 29th, 2011 7:38p.m.

Let's say you're adding automatically at normal speed (the default). If you are adding from one list, then as you get your due reviews done and the readiness percentage of your most due item drops toward 100%, then you'll start to see new words added from your list, with more words being added the longer you practice and the less due your reviews are. The words are added in the same order they appear in the list.

If you add from more than one list, each list takes turns when it's time to add a word. If you've got items in the queue, it takes its turn, too.

If you change the automatic adding to "fast", you'll see the new items start a little earlier, before you're done with your current reviews.

If you change it to "slow", you'll finish all your reviews and then start clearing future reviews which are almost due before it'll start to add new words.

If you set word adding to manual only, then no words will be added unless you click the manual add word button (the green plus on the study page next to the added bar). When you click it, one word will be added from one of your lists (with lists taking turns as usual). You can also click this button with adding setting to automatic, too, for extra control.

If you set adding to automatically (slow), and click the manual add button whenever you get bored, it'll give you the most control with the least risk of being overwhelmed by reviews.

It's always a good idea to keep plenty of extra words in My Lists set to Adding Words From, because then you'll never run into the situation where you want to keep Skrittering and want to do new words, but haven't got any left selected to learn. The usual mistake here is to go and find some big list of words you don't have any context for and add those. But words which you have no personal experience with outside of Skritter are the hardest to learn and use. Much better to adjust your routine to try reading simple things in Chinese more until you are seeing plenty of unknown words that you can profitably learn in Skritter.

Hope this gives a good overview of how word adding works. Am I missing anything?

breakphreak   January 30th, 2011 3:35a.m.

Oh, thanks a lot for an exhaustive explanation.

Now I understood the reason why in some lists the words are added kinda "not sequentially", that's because they were already added from the other lists.

KISS wins again :) and I use "automatically (slow)".

Just one short if I may please: the left (green bar) displays how many characters are left to review. The right (blue bar) displays the amount of new characters that were extracted from the lists and were not yet displayed to me for the first time yet?

nick   January 30th, 2011 7:04a.m.

The left (blue) bar displays how many items are left to review. One character or word might have one item due, or it might have multiple items due.

The right (green) bar displays how many items have been added today. They will usually show up in the bar before you see them, but they don't leave the bar when you see them. Sometimes you can have items added one day that you don't see, and they can show up in the green bar the next day when you do see them.

This forum is now read only. Please go to Skritter Discourse Forum instead to start a new conversation!