Ghost Reviews (Update! July 12, 2018)

Kirito · July 10, 2018, 10:39pm

I think I did all of N5 and some of N4 in a week or so and then slowed it to 5 new ones a day. Finished N5/N4 in a month or so. One of the reasons my error rate is high is because I count almost every typo as a wrong card.

I do 250+ reps across 3 different languages every morning on Anki. It’s not really an issue and i have a good idea on how to not overwhelm myself. The issue with the ghost cards is that every wrong card you get splits into 2 cards.

Apologies for my tone. I got to work late because I spent an hour trying to finish my ghost card reps xD

seanblue · July 10, 2018, 11:08pm

Gotcha, I understand. I see how for some people the Ghost reviews would be a penalty on top of a penalty. Hopefully they’ll add an option soon so you can turn it off.

seanblue · July 11, 2018, 2:00am

@Pushindawood The Show Upcoming Grammar section still doesn’t include any of the Ghost reviews, so it’s out of sync with the upcoming review count.

Anthropos888 · July 11, 2018, 8:46am

Request:

Please don’t allow the same grammar point to show up twice in one session (one normal sentence and one ghost sentence). That will influence the normal SRS negatively because it’s way too easy to answer that question when I got the same grammar point just a few minutes ago as ghost review in the same session. Even though the sentence is different, the grammar itself is no more challenge then.

Please add at least 24h between a normal review and a ghost review of the same grammar point.

Please consider the influence of ghost sententes on the normal SRS when it comes to burning items. Example: I got the final sentence on SRS 12 wrong and the SRS drops to 11. Let’s say I have to wait another 5 months (or whatever timespan you use for SRS 12) for a burning chance. But in between I will see the ghost sentence for that grammar 6 more times for around 1 or 2 months. That effectively reduces the time until I get the burnable sentence for SRS 12 again. Thus it will be too easy to burn that grammar point.

Suggestion: ghost and normal reviews should not be completely independent from each other. The timespan between normal reviews for one grammar point should increase a bit for each ghost sentence I got. And especially for burnable grammar points: if the time between SRS 11 and 12 is let’s say 5 month, then the time between the last ghost review of the same grammar point and SRS 12 should be 5 months as well. That means, the time for the next normal review has to be re-calculated with every ghost review of the same grammar.

seanblue · July 11, 2018, 9:56am

I think that sounds a bit complicated. But I understand your concern and it’s one of the reasons I suggested the max SRS time for Ghost reviews to be about 2 days. That way it helps drill the sentence you got wrong without negatively influencing long term reviews.

nickeleye · July 11, 2018, 5:13pm

Is it just me or does the review counter calendar not include ghost reviews?

jonoleonard · July 12, 2018, 12:05am

Just want to put in my support for this. Find it very useful for my style of learning. I don’t find the added review count to alarming as I already know the sentence and its meaning, so I don’t need to spend a lot of time reading.

Good way to quash leechers! (for me atleast)

Pushindawood · July 12, 2018, 8:26am

Update: July 12, 2018

Choose Ghost Review Aggressiveness

When Ghost Reviews are set to ‘ON’ in settings, a Ghost Review will be created for a sentence if you miss it once in your reviews. Set Ghost Reviews to ‘Minimal’ to only add a sentence to Ghost Reviews if you miss the same sentence more than once.

Tweaks to Ghost Review SRS

Ghost Review intervals are now 4 hours, 12 hours, 24 hours, and 48 hrs, meaning that you will see your Ghost sentence four times over the course of the next four days.

Ability to remove all Ghost Reviews

You can now remove all Ghost Reviews from your review queue by clicking on Profile, Reset and selecting Ghost Reviews from the dropdown menu.

Please let us know if you have any questions or suggestions. Cheers!

Kirito · July 12, 2018, 10:06am

I really appreciate the super fast turnaround time! You guys are awesome.

One question: if we turn Ghost reviews off, what happens if we get a review wrong? Do we get in the “review loop” like before or does it go to the next sentence?

seanblue · July 12, 2018, 10:21am

Similar question to @Kirito, but I’m more curious about the Minimal case. If the SRS still moves on to the next sentence, how would you get the same sentence wrong more than once within a reasonable time period?

Also, have you updated the Ghost reviews from before this update so they use the new SRS?

Jake · July 12, 2018, 11:06am

Reviews will now always move forward in their cycle even when not creating ghost reviews. The only times you will see a sentence more than once is if that grammar point only has a limited number of sentences, or if you miss a few sentences during your normal reviews so you end up being quizzed for a total of more than 12 times.

@seanblue For minimal, it will make them if you miss the sentence more than once during your review session or across multiple session before getting it correct. The logic here is that when you miss a question, sometimes it was just a typo or a situation where you didn’t read the sentence clearly and you get it wrong. However, if, when quizzed again, you miss it again, then it most likely means a few extra reviews are warranted.

As for current ghost reviews, they will update themselves as they are studied, are only a handful of advanced ghost reviews currently.

Ghost reviews themselves are still relatively new and will keep being developed. We can only gain so much insight from our own testing, but putting them out there for you guys to use gives us a lot of good data and feedback, allowing us to make changes as necessary!

Anthropos888 · July 16, 2018, 11:54am

I think that’s not optimal. Users who do reviews once a day get the same ghost sentence every day over 3 days and then a last time after 2 days. The sentence will still be in the short term memory and it’s too easy to answer it.
Suggestion: 8h, 24h, 48h and 96h.

seanblue · July 16, 2018, 2:33pm

I think it’s better to drill in the Ghost reviews rather than review them over longer periods. I personally wouldn’t want to drag them out too long. Besides, having two review intervals less than 24 hours is in line with regular reviews, so it’s no different.

Anthropos888 · July 16, 2018, 4:20pm

Normal reviews change their sentence on every SRS level, so it’s ok to have 2 reviews within 24h. But ghost sentences are always the same, every day, that’s just too easy. But it’s all still very new, so let’s wait how Bunpro is going to adjust the ghost review in the future

seanblue · July 16, 2018, 5:37pm

Yeah that’s true. And I agree that waiting a bit and seeing how it turns out makes sense.

seanblue · July 18, 2018, 1:31am

@Jake Have you considered adding a way to cancel/burn specific Ghost reviews? Sometimes I get a review wrong because of something not directly related to the grammar point being reviewed (for example, I just remembered to use てもらう but forgot to change it to て form). In cases like that, I kind of want to let the review be marked wrong, but I don’t want to do Ghost reviews for that sentence over and over… I don’t know, maybe I’m just nitpicking at this point.

testfugu · July 22, 2018, 11:05am

I agree with @seanblue

Sometimes, I think I am reluctant to allow an answer to be marked as wrong, because this means I will be seeing the same sentence for quite a long time. However, I am willing to wait and see how you will tune the feature, so I am not turning it off yet.

seanblue · July 23, 2018, 10:45pm

@Jake One observation is that getting reviews wrong early on (which is probably common) makes Ghost reviews a little weird. It’s weird because this can result in two or even three reviews for the same grammar point all popping up around the same time. Best idea I have right now is to delay the regular reviews for the grammar point until the Ghost review has been “burned”. Not sure if that’s the right change to make, but I do think something will need to be adjusted to address this.

atartan84 · July 24, 2018, 12:05am

I hated the ghost reviews for about 2 weeks. i couldnt believe that for the 96 lessons i had learned, i had 180 reviews!

But after this two weeks, something clicked, and im fully benefitting from the ghost program. At first it was very slow and tedious, but over the rainbow the grass is greener and the reviews are much better and my grammar is improving. i got through 220 reviews yesterday in about an hour. at the beginning of the ghost program i could get through about 40 in an hour.

your system is great and now that you have different levels of the ghost reviews you are definitely making a special program and SRS system. you are very unique and I:m very glad i am subscribed to Bunpro! Keep it up.

hamigakiko · July 25, 2018, 9:05pm

These are killing me, but my god they help so much! I am finding that am really finding things which i need to study more, and the ghost reviews keeping getting higher and higher percentage correct so something must be working. So, even though it has increased the workload A LOT, it is a great idea - keep up the good work!