How do ghosts actually work?

Bunpro
#1

Hey there,

I’ve been using the app for nearly a most and it helped me really improve my grammar. I thought I was starting to get used to it, but earlier this week my ghost reviews pile started to increase dramatically. From my understanding of them, ghosts reviews come from concepts you have trouble grasping and/or reviews you didn’t complete in time. I’ve got 60ish vocab ghosts and I’ve no idea where they’re from. Those are not words I failed during reviews, is there something I’m not understanding?

If it’s worth mentioning, I’m following the JLPT N5 deck for vocabulary and since I already know a lot of the words in it I tend to fast forward them to adept instead of starting at beginner, to still get sentence practice and catch any multiple meanings I didn’t know. Could I be creating unwanted ghosts by doing this ?

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#2

By default, a ghost is created when you get a review wrong two times in a review session. You can adjust this in the settings.

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#3

Thanks for your answer. It’s quite weird because I can say for sure I did not get two wrong answers in a row for most of these words… I can’t seem to find ghost reviews settings on mobile, maybe it’s desktop only ?

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#4

Looks like you have the settings turned “On” for Grammar, which means they will show up on even one wrong answer.

You shouldn’t be getting Ghosts for Vocab as it looks like you’ve set it to Off.

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#5

Hey, it’s me again with new ghost issues :sweat_smile:

I got a bunch of vocab ghosts overnight and most of them are for words I didn’t get wrong in yesterday’s practice. Exemples include 神様、ぬいぐるみ、弱い、全て or even ええ. I encountered them in practice just yesterday evening so I know for sure I didn’t get them wrong and yet here they are in this morning’s ghosts. Is there something I’m still not getting?

5 Likes
#6

I’m also getting unexpected ghost reviews. Today, I missed one grammar point I and about 2 vocab words, after undoing some answers. I have minimal ghosts for vocabulary, normal ghosts for grammar, but I have 8 new ghosts reviews, instead of maybe a few. Some of these ghosts I’m pretty certain I got right with no undo during review: なりに、さぞ、次第に.

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#7

When my internet connection isn’t the best, I end up with ghosts for reviews I got correct. As for ghosts that are unrelated to my reviews, that I haven’t seen myself.

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#8

This happened to me. Unexpected ghosts a few days ago on things I definitely didnt get wrong.

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#9

Any chance you got them wrong within the last 4-5 days?

Ghost default review schedule is 4 hours, 8 hours, 24 hours, 48 hours. Takes about half a week to clear them in total if you get every review correct. Or longer if you’re like me and miss them again.

I noticed you didn’t mention the STAGE the ghosts were appearing at. So perhaps they’re ghost 4 and not ghost 1?

#10

Nope, those were all stage 1, and for seasoned vocab too (my ghosts are also set to appear for seasoned items and above) so if I got the reviews yesterday the previous one was probably older than 4ish days. I don’t remember getting those words in recent reviews before either. And even if it could explain it for a few of them, I’m pretty sure I never got ええ wrong haha and yet here it is, so I’m more partial to a technical issue explanation :sweat_smile:

I must also mention that I went from 3 vocab ghosts to over 70 overnight, which is why I’m so sure it can’t be all mistakes on my end.

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#11

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Wah Wah. I’ve gotten ええ wrong before I guess.

Any chance your bunpro says the same? If you have a 100% success rate and a ghost it’s obviously a technical problem, regardless of settings.

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#12

To add to this. I have a level 2 ghost on the grammar point 活かす (was level 1 yesterday). However, this grammar point is Expert level 2. My SRS punishment is HALF. I do reviews every day generally. How could I have had a level 1 ghost with such a high expert level still? I don’t recall missing this point recently (along with other weird ghosts i got). My only guess is that a ghost created due to bad connection doesn’t count as a miss but makes a ghost. It should do neither or both obviously.

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#13

It’s interesting, I’ve got 78% and it’s saying I’ve only reviewed it 4 times. Which makes sense, it’s part of those words I already knew and set up at a higher level from the start. However, the fact that I’ve only seen it 4 times since the 30th of August proves that ghost does come from yesterday evening’s practice and I know for sure I did not mark it as wrong then :thinking:

It might be due to connexion issues, but it would still be weird as I was at home, connected to my home WiFi. It’s what I use for work and I had no issue with any other tool.

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#14

Either way, I’ve disabled ghosts until we can get a proper answer. I really like the concept but having so many of them pop up without reason is bad for morale : I don’t mind putting in more work when it’s necessary, but for those words it’s clearly not and yet I’ve got 70 of them and I could be using that time to work on something else. It’s not the first time that’s happened either, I got similar issues with grammar ghosts

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#15

I am definitely am getting ghosts for words I got right on the first try.

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#16

Yeah, I ended up moving this discussion to the bug report topic and lots of other people have been having the same issue. We didn’t get an answer yet, but seems like a proper bug

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