Show HN: MDAnki – convert Markdown to Anki cards • Hacker News Board

Re: Show HN: MDAnki – convert Markdown to Anki cards

#71

Post by banana_maker » Sat, Feb 22, 2020, 6:10 PM UTC

kazinator wrote: post #60

banana_maker wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> with sheer persistence, I busted through leeches. Thats totally fine too, it’s just that energy could’ve been dedicated to other cards where there isn’t an issue. I also power through some of these occasionally if I don’t feel like busting out pen and paper, etc. > given enough time, cards you know well will turn into leeches, Yeah this is an issue. Particularly if you keep periodically doing Anki, with just enough…

> could’ve been dedicated to other cards where there isn’t an issue Nope! It doesn't work that way; each card is scheduled independently of others. You're not going to see other cards less due to seeing one card more. Busting through leeches just adds to the workload; you still spend all the same time on the other cards. (Even if you set daily limits on reviews, that just causes a backlog.)

I was referring to the mental energy spent on busting through that leech, not anki's system.

Re: Show HN: MDAnki – convert Markdown to Anki cards

#72

Post by andrewzah » Sat, Feb 22, 2020, 6:13 PM UTC

kazinator wrote: post #55

banana_maker wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The default leech threshold for Anki is 8. (You have to fail recall 8 times after graduating a card from new status). I recommend lowering this to 4. If you keep on failing to memorize a card, then you should suspend or delete it. I know this sounds crazy, but you end up wasting so much energy on those cards; energy that you could have spent on memorizing characters that you don't struggle with. When you do anki for…

I developed an application for Kanji learning called Tankan. http://www.kylheku.com/tankan/ It's a proprietary, closed-source program for Windows that runs as a web service on localhost, using your browser for UI. It's specialized for learning Kanji meanings and readings, nothing else. You can't use it for Japanese vocab, you can't use it for Russian, or for memorizing capital cities or dog breeds. It does one thing,…

Any chance of releasing this for other systems? I only use mac and linux, but am interested in checking this out.

> There is none of that "Anki tyranny"

Anki isn't really tyrannical, it just has some defaults that aren't good in my opinion. If you lapse on a word, it's likely that the interval -should- be reduced a bit.

Re: Show HN: MDAnki – convert Markdown to Anki cards

#73

Post by banana_maker » Sat, Feb 22, 2020, 6:20 PM UTC

Al-Khwarizmi wrote: post #69

banana_maker wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's kind of well known that anki has some seriously bad defaults for long term studying. Not to plug myself but I've written about this at length. [0] There are a few big issues, but the easiest one to fix is the reset interval. When you forget a word that you're reviewing (that is, when you hit "Again"), anki resets the interval to 0%, as if it were a totally new card. This is bad for 2 reasons. 1) A lapse is not t…

It's a pity that they don't pay more attention to the defaults. I have been using Anki for Chinese with a premade deck (Spoonfed Chinese, if anyone is curious) for around 1.5 years and reviewing time has crept up too much. I have lowered the number of new cards per day several times (started at 20, now at 12, thinking about going to 10) but I am very averse to change the rest of the defaults since they are very techn…

> I trust the Anki devs to have more data on, e.g., the typical rate at which we forget things than I, a random language learner, can have; what do I know about that?

IIRC the anki defaults seem to be geared more for short term, dense studying (like for tests). In those situations you would want a lapse to reset the interval to 0.

For longer term learning, you ideally want an 80-90% recall rate. [0] In my post on anki I have two studies that look at the effects of longer intervals on learning. [1]

[0]: https://eshapard.github.io/anki/target-an-80-90-percent-succ...

[1]: https://andrewzah.com/posts/better-anki-usage-guide-2019/#re...

Re: Show HN: MDAnki – convert Markdown to Anki cards

#74

Post by dot1x » Mon, Feb 24, 2020, 3:34 PM UTC

troydavis wrote: post #20

knubie wrote: post #4

If this interests you I built an entire SRS app around this idea: https://mochi.cards/

I just signed up as a paying customer about 3 hours before this HN thread. Mochi has been fantastic so far - it has most (all?) of the power of Anki, but a much more thoughtful UI. Although Mochi imported my Anki decks seamlessly, I prefer Mochi’s native Markdown support. Thanks for making it!

It has no addons. Also, its algorithm seem very... crude.