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Show HN: Make spaced-repetition flashcards

zorbi.cards

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Re: Show HN: Make spaced-repetition flashcards

#51

Post by adkadskhj »

biesnecker wrote: post #44

I’m very wary of putting my flashcards (about 25k in a bunch of decks stretching back nearly 20 years now) in something that either 1) I own fully (I’ve bought the software and it will work even if your company doesn’t); or 2) at least provide full-fidelity exports of not just the content but also the repetition history. It looks like a very well-done app and I agree that Anki can be clunky but I don’t worry about it…

Your 25k cards interest me. I've long hoped to merge the concepts of knowledge base and retention. I love knowledge bases, but i want them to aid and augment my natural retention.

Can you speak about how you use the 25k cards? Do you feel you retain them all?

At first glance i suspect you're using your 25k cards the way i envision my ideal knowledge base setup. A store of information which exceeds my brains capacity, but which i can choose a slice at which i want to transfer to my brain. Ie choose a deck of cards and working on that to transfer (learn) the material again.

Re: Show HN: Make spaced-repetition flashcards

#52

Post by Korpocalypse »

I tried it briefly: I really liked it at first but there is one critical flaw; you need to be able to do the flash cards in reverse. Knowing the definition of something by seeing the name is useful, but it's only half of the value of flashcards. I'll come back to it if they add the ability to study the cards seeing the definition side to quiz you on what the name of the concept is.

Re: Show HN: Make spaced-repetition flashcards

#53

Post by smoldesu »

This looks fine, but I legitimately have no interest in this if it isn't open-source. I know that sounds harsh, but I've gotten so tired of tools changing over time, slowly goading me into another subscription service that I desperately don't want.

I appreciate this tool being free at the moment (the world doesn't need another SAAS), but I've seen nothing on this page that really makes me want to use it. To me, I see a cloud-based Anki alternative with less control over your data/freedom.

Re: Show HN: Make spaced-repetition flashcards

#54

Post by chipuni »

adkadskhj wrote: post #51
biesnecker wrote: post #44

I’m very wary of putting my flashcards (about 25k in a bunch of decks stretching back nearly 20 years now) in something that either 1) I own fully (I’ve bought the software and it will work even if your company doesn’t); or 2) at least provide full-fidelity exports of not just the content but also the repetition history. It looks like a very well-done app and I agree that Anki can be clunky but I don’t worry about it…

Your 25k cards interest me. I've long hoped to merge the concepts of knowledge base and retention. I love knowledge bases, but i want them to aid and augment my natural retention. Can you speak about how you use the 25k cards? Do you feel you retain them all? At first glance i suspect you're using your 25k cards the way i envision my ideal knowledge base setup. A store of information which exceeds my brains capacity,…

I'm not the original poster, but I have 19,324 cards in my computer science deck and 3,632 in my Spanish deck... so our numbers are similar.

I use my decks to keep topics in mind for years until I choose to forget them. But these cards are things I always have memorized -- they're not something that I restudy when I need them.

25k cards hardly exceed your brain's capacity! That's about the same amount of information as 12,000 words in a second language -- plenty of people are bilingual.

Do I retain them all? Errrr... not really. My retention of cards I haven't seen for a while is about 85%. Further, 1,354 of the cards are "suspended" -- that is, I've gotten them wrong enough times that Anki won't show them to me again unless I un-suspend them.

The most important questions to ask any one who's using a flashcard system are:

- What do you get out of it? - What are your costs?

For me, I get years' worth of material I no longer need to look up and a good foundation in Spanish, even though I only travel every few years. But my costs are an hour a day, every day, trying to remember things that are just about to be forgotten.

Good luck!

Re: Show HN: Make spaced-repetition flashcards

#55

Post by chipuni »

ivanhoe wrote: post #45
biesnecker wrote: post #44

I’m very wary of putting my flashcards (about 25k in a bunch of decks stretching back nearly 20 years now) in something that either 1) I own fully (I’ve bought the software and it will work even if your company doesn’t); or 2) at least provide full-fidelity exports of not just the content but also the repetition history. It looks like a very well-done app and I agree that Anki can be clunky but I don’t worry about it…

I agree fully that export is a must for app like this. On the other note, your collection of flashcard sounds impressive, perhaps you could consider publishing those flashcards publicly on github or somewhere, and kill 2 birds with 1 stone: backup the flashcard and also share the knowledge?

I'm not the original poster, but I have more than 23k cards in Anki.

I would emphatically not want to publish my flashcards publicly. Many of them are internal to where I work, and simply aren't interesting outside my workspace.

(Does any one outside my company want to memorize the class names for the eight steps my company uses to do on-the-fly scoring of open opportunities? I didn't think so...)

Re: Show HN: Make spaced-repetition flashcards

#56

Post by ngokevin »

How have you found your initial few thousand users?

I've built my own sort of Anki/SRS app but specifically for language learning. Extra features like dictionary lookups and generated audio for each card. Not as super customizable as Anki, but many language learners arrive at similar configurations (e.g., Refold). I've seen more and more language learning apps are starting to have SRS as a foundation

Re: Show HN: Make spaced-repetition flashcards

#57

Post by for_i_in_range »

fnordian_slip wrote: post #46
j4nt4b wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I completely agree about using pen and paper for learning and organizing my life. I have a weekly wall planner made of sticky notes and it’s so much more fulfilling than poking around a calendar app to see my week outlined in a two square foot section of my office wall. But for those of us who are curious about your process, could you please tell us what the Z word is and link to your recommended resource?

Im not the GP, but I'd guess Z stands for Zettelkasten, at least that's the only famous system I'm aware of in that space. You can read more about it ihere: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zettelkasten

Correct!

But I don’t recommend you read the Wikipedia entry.

Read this instead:

https://sociologica.unibo.it/article/view/8350

Re: Show HN: Make spaced-repetition flashcards

#58

Post by deagler »

fouric wrote: post #49

I use Anki. It's poorly-designed, but it's the best thing that I've used so far. I'd love to have an upgrade, but you have to convince me that your tool is actually materially better than Anki, and doesn't just "look beautiful". Using language like "modern" is a turn-off - it evokes feelings of Electron implementations, webtech, slow interfaces, and web design that wastes tons of visual space to be "minimal". I see t…

We're not at feature parity with Anki yet. Our focus isn't copying or competing with Anki. iI you just want everything in Anki but better and free, then Zorbi probably isn't the right fit for you (yet!)

For now, we're focusing on helping students learn more effectively through spaced-repetition. Hence our Chrome Extension + Notion Integration. Hope that gives you an idea on where we fit into the "Spaced-Repetition" space.

Also, here is our changelog: https://zorbiapp.notion.site/zorbiapp/What-s-New-a7c0b5d9241...

Re: Show HN: Make spaced-repetition flashcards

#59

Post by deagler »

Korpocalypse wrote: post #52

I tried it briefly: I really liked it at first but there is one critical flaw; you need to be able to do the flash cards in reverse. Knowing the definition of something by seeing the name is useful, but it's only half of the value of flashcards. I'll come back to it if they add the ability to study the cards seeing the definition side to quiz you on what the name of the concept is.

Thanks for the feedback.

Will let you know when we have reversable cards.

Re: Show HN: Make spaced-repetition flashcards

#60

Post by deagler »

mellosouls wrote: post #15

This looks like a really nicely put together resource, congrats! I would be likely to sign up if I knew there was an option to export to a more established free flashcard engine (e.g. Anki), or at least to csv, say, for no other reasons than peace of mind and flexibility. I see in your FAQ that that is on the cards (hah!) so I will keep my eye on it and I think you will definitely get more buy-in when that is a worki…

Thanks! Export to CSV is coming soon.
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