I love Bunpro but the quality of the SRS is wanting me to stop using it :(

Bunpro
#32

Agree with the idea of being able to manipulate a full SRS system for advanced users, but I think less people are capable of doing proper tweaking of any of the customization of SRS.

Most of the problems are with the learner themselves. It’s a bitter pill to swallow (and one I’ve had to take myself time and time again).

The amount of time it takes to fully understand SRS is better spent clearing your review queue.

I think it’d be better if Bunpro had a selection of methods and timings one could opt into so they didn’t have to learn how to learn. Leave it to the experts to create the experience of learning.

For example, a user could select from:

  • How many times will you review a day? (1,2,3)
  • What time(s) of the day can you review? (Morning, Afternoon, Evening)
  • How long will you spend in a review session? (15 Minutes, 30m, 60m)

If a user selects 1, Evening, 15m then perhaps it starts with learning many items, but tapers off over time so that the review queue doesn’t exceed 20 items a day. An option to “review ahead” would follow traditional SRS timings, but the queue would otherwise only refresh daily.

Again… I believe that time making your own SRS is better spent clearing the review queue. Leave it to the pros… the bun-pros :upside_down_face:

7 Likes
#33

I also love Bunpro, and the SRS is also my biggest complaint. I spend a LOT of time doing ghosts and other reviews outside of the SRS to try to boost my retention, which completely defeats the point of an SRS. And because some lessons are complex and lump together lots of different conjugations (like て form), you can get quite far in the SRS not knowing how to e.g. conjugate 〜いで, which the SRS will try to ameliorate by instead reinforcing って since that’s also part of the て lesson you failed. I end up failing lots of the later lessons that rely on those foundational grammar points I’ve supposedly passed, and then intentionally ghosting them for some remedial study of that earlier grammar point.

This makes Bunpro the least rewarding app I use for studying Japanese. SRS progress doesn’t feel “real” when you have to do so much studying outside of it (ghosts, extra drills, textbooks) to avoid high failure percentages on topics you’ve supposedly mastered, which makes gaining levels in the SRS not feel like an accomplishment.

The Bunpro devs are at least aware of it, though, and the app has still done more to motivate me to learn grammar than anything else I’ve tried, even if I wished the SRS worked better. Maybe these improvements could be prioritized soon?

4 Likes
#34

i find that im getting frustrated that the hints are misleading me and i end up failing. one sentence has a hint saying its Progressive, then i type in the answe and then a red hint at the bottom says its supposed to be in passive tense. or that i typew in the right answer (in this case it would be 通り) but i keep getting told im wrong, as the correct answer is…とおり… like i understand the grammar, but the hints are just screwing me over, so maybe i need to not read the hints? idk. but i am getting a bit frustrated with it.

2 Likes
#35

Answers must be in hiragana which can be frustrating if you’re used to type in japanese, but it’s helpful when you can’t install japanese keyboard on your laptop (eg: my work laptop).
as for the hints some people find them great, but in my case, I was frustrated too so I just ignore them, and when I’m in a synonym loop I switch to reading mode (especially when it comes to translate ‘I have to’ ‘I must do’.
Hope you’ll find a way to deal with hints that suits you !

1 Like
#36

man, that type of stuff annoys me too. Why am I getting a “hint” after I’ve already screwed up? It’s too late for the hint!

1 Like
#37

For those in synonym hell in this thread please give some love to this one I made with an example.

2 Likes
#38

Hi Jake, I know that your comment was in good faith but honestly it did feel a little big disingenuous; how could you have “a tough time figuring out the core issue you seem to be having” when my comment just before yours said:

Most reviews are too easy, i.e. the interval between two reviews was too short.

I’m not sure how to make this any clearer… Other users have also chimed in and expressed the same frustration. Some users have contributed with potential solutions (thank you! :pray:) which are unfortunately all very manual (I don’t want to manually adjust the SRS level of my cards).

@bunnypro has summarized what we wish for well. Below you can find the relevant setting on jpdb.io.

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One last observation, and I’m not sure if there’s a setting to change this specifically, but having multiple cards for the same note (using Anki terminology) being reviewed in the same session doesn’t seem very effective. I would prefer to have max 1 card per note being reviewed in the same session or day.

3 Likes
#39

Thanks for the follow up! I apologize for not phrasing it better. I had simply meant within the context of the whole thread it was hard to figure out what the problem was because while you pointed out the intervals were too short, others were saying it was perfect as is and still others were saying the intervals were too long.

That to me spoke to a core issue that the comments about various interval lengths were just symptoms of. But at that point it wasn’t really clear what a solution would because we didn’t really know what the core issue was.

That screenshot really helps make it clear that the core issue is just wanting finer control over interval length and also gives a good visual of what the desired solution is. :bowing_man: That will help a lot and shouldn’t be too tough of a change to implement.

12 Likes
#40

@GudGud07 @Buntebunpou @amberglade @bunnypro @hx9 @Zealot

Just thought I would follow up that we added an “Advanced Settings” option here: https://bunpro.jp/settings/reviews

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The SRS Interval setting can be adjusted to shorten or lengthen the SRS interval. The little “See More” has a chart that lays out how each setting impacts the time where Default is our base numbers.

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The change affects reviews going forward and doesn’t retroactively change existing reviews you have coming up.

We played around with a variety of numbers and looked at user data and these intervals are the ones we felt offered the best range without being either too impactful or not impactful enough.

As always, would be happy to hear it your feedback about the change and about your experience using it going forward!

16 Likes
#41

Looks great, thanks for implementing and for the info! :+1:

I’m hoping to try out a different SRS interval setting, though I do worry that if it doesn’t go well and I want to change back, it could take quite a while for the change of setting to feed through back to where it was before. Still, worth a try! :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

2 Likes
#42

It only affects future reviews.
So there will not be a “Update All” button for this setting – if you change back to the default, you will have to wait for that Review to come back around again to give it whatever the next default interval is.

2 Likes
#43

That doesn’t really address the problems with e.g. the て-form lessons that lump together lots of different conjugations into a single SRS item that advances in level without comprehensively drilling you on most of them, but shorter intervals are going to help my whine about forgetting. Thanks for pointing that out!

#44

Yeah, unfortunately this change wont help that issue. That will get solved in a different update.

3 Likes
#45

Really? That’s awesome! Complaining here is so fulfilling, lol. Thanks again.

4 Likes
#46

Yeah, I guess in the most extreme cases it could take some months for the change to feed through (e.g. if you change from the “Longest” setting to “Default”, in the case of an Expert 2 review).

But I’m sure it isn’t really practical from a coding point of view to make the change of setting happen instantly to all upcoming reviews.

So I’ll give it a go and just acknowledge that it could take a while to get things back to how they were if I later change my mind! :laughing:

2 Likes
#47

Wooww this is exactly what I needed, I hope that a lot of people will find it useful, what a great start of the day !! I’ll let you know how it goes but at first sight I think this is the solution I was looking for !

4 Likes
#48

Any chance we could be allowed to use different intervals for grammar and vocab?

5 Likes
#49

JPDB reschedules all future reviews instantly, just saying :innocent:

1 Like
#50

Just released this today:

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6 Likes
#51

That’s an interesting feature (and great reaction by bunpro team as usual!) but I fail to see how this solves anything to be honest.
Yes the intervals can feel too short at the beginning stages, but having them longer on the higher levels seems highly counterproductive to me as they are already very long :thinking:

I do feel the problem with SRS too though, but it seems to me it isn’t a simple set interval length issue. What it is I have no idea, I am no SRS expert :slight_smile:

1 Like