Is it even possible to catch up with a lot of Ghosts?

Bunpro
#14

I would just undo them. My own philosophy is that only mistakes with the actual grammar item counts. If I mess up the conjugation of an u-verb it makes no sense to mark it as wrong because the problem was not with this grammar point.

I even undo sometimes (but not always) if I get the particle wrong or forget the na if it’s a na-adjective. Noone will get perfect in grammar with Bunpro. You have to use the language. And small errors like wrong particles will disappear fast while actually using the language. So it makes no sense to invest time in Bunpro to perfect every little detail if you can use that time to really use the grammar. That is much more effective.

Bunpro is just a good base and starting point to get ready to really use the language. And I treat it like that.

13 Likes
#15

Personally, I keep Ghosts on the default (full) setting, and I use them as a gauge to remind me to slow down when I’m going too fast.

As for getting rid of 336 ghosts: While it might appear that that would be hard to overcome, actually it really is not. Remember that ghosts only go up to SRS stage 4, and then they are slain.

The ghost stage timings are a little different than for regular reviews. They are: 4, 12, 24, 48 hours. So, if you get all of them correct (and do them immediately), that’s technically only 88 hours, which is less than 96 hours, which is 4 days.

Thus, ‘in theory’, you could get rid of all of your ghosts in just 4 days.

Of course, that’s not likely to actually happen, since they are ghosts for a reason – you got them wrong at least once before. But I would recommend thinking of ghosts as very ‘lightweight’ reviews. They don’t hang around in your review queue for ages and ages like regular leeches do.

So, surefire way to get rid of those ghosts without resorting to a Reset or changing ghosts to ‘minimal’:

  1. Stop doing any new lessons until you get your ghosts back down to a reasonable level. Depending on your preferences, probably fewer than 20 ghosts at a time is a pretty good starting level.
  2. Just continue to do your reviews as usual, until a) you start getting regular reviews correct so often that they no longer generate (very many) new ghosts, and b) you steadily, one after another, slay those ghosts by taking them seriously – if there are any that you keep getting wrong, then do some extra study/reading until you figure out how to answer them correctly.

In roughly a week or so, your current ghosts should dramatically decrease.

Only start doing new lessons after you’ve got your current review stack and ghost stack back under control.

I guess the key POV that I adopt when thinking about ghosts is that: Ghosts are opportunities to really polish up on grammar points that have been tricky in the past. I don’t see them as obstacles. Again, I use them to signal to myself that I need to slow down on my new lessons, until I can get my ghosts back down to a reasonable level.

3 Likes
#16

as I mentioned earlier in this thread, I only added five new lessons a couple days ago. And to my knowledge, in the past two days, I’ve only seen a review for one of the lessons come up once, and I got it right. So it’s not anything new that’s keeping this going, at least not yet.

1 Like
#17

I was in the middle of editing my post to correct my initial misconception, but I’ll post the edit now as a reply to you instead:

Okay, after checking the OP again, I realized I missed the whole point that the OP is level 58 and it’s not new lessons that are causing these ghosts, but old items in the review queue! Ooops! Major oversight on my part. The previous advice was more oriented to someone new to BP, who’s doing too many lessons.

Okay, well, in the OP’s case, I would recommend that whenever an item is generating too many ghosts because it’s old and you forget it, and there’s just too many of these old ones in your queue, then use the settings to:

  1. Reset Progress (brings it back down to SRS level 0).
  2. Remove from Reviews.

Step 1 is kinda important because if you Remove From Reviews an item that’s at say level 9, then it will still remain at level 9, it just won’t come up in your reviews anymore.

But then, later on, when you re-Learn it as a lesson, after the little ‘quiz’ to put it back in your review queue, you actually won’t see it again for whatever the level 9 (or maybe even level 10!) delay period is.

If you just do this as you go along, like, “Uggh! I really can’t remember this one. I don’t want to generate yet another ghost! Ah! Right! [Reset Progress] & [Remove from Reviews]! Sweet!”, then you will pretty quickly weed out any/all items that are generating too many ghosts.

If you have a heck-ton of items that are doing this, then you can expedite this process by resetting a bunch of them all at once, e.g. resetting all N3 or N4, or whatever deck/path you’re using. (In Account > Settings > Reset page)

2 Likes
#18

Thanks for explaining the ghost SRS. I was going crazy like OP. Been doing a set amount of reviews each day not realizing the intervals were so low for ghosts.

3 Likes
#19

Oh, the other thing about ghosts besides the SRS thing I learned from a reply here, is that a lot of them can be the exact same grammar point just a different sentence.

5 Likes
#20

for the past five days I’ve been spending at least an hour and a half every night grinding through, getting 200-300 reviews done. the result?

image

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lol, it just seems impossible, insurmountable. It’s only growing. Guess I’ll just keep riding this, seeing how long it takes to get to 1,000 Ghosts.

1 Like
#21

try cramming your ghosts instead. spend a couple of days doing that. after that you’ll likely be able to get 90% of them correct 5 times in a row. when slaying ghosts you unfortunately cannot afford to get 20-30% wrong even once as the SRS timings are so short.

2 Likes
#22

Just from the information in this thread it seems like there is a very high chance your grasp on the grammar you have added is too weak or you’ve just forgotten too much over your breaks. I would personally suggest just resetting a massive chunk of grammar. Ghosts are on a sentence basis and not grammar point basis so you likely have accrued multiple ghosts for the same weak grammar points. If you either mass reset by N-level or systematically reset grammar points you are repeatedly failing then you’ll be in a position to re-learn those things from scratch without a massive review burden. Then just add things more slowly than you were doing before.

3 Likes
#23

Kinda against resetting, tbqh. Wanna see how big this can get, or if I can bring it all the way down. Feel like – as I said – maybe if I get to 1,000, that’ll be enough. At the rate I’m going, I’ll probably be there in a week, lol.

#24

If you’re against resetting your N level progress, perhaps you can just reset your ghosts once you reach your insane target of 1000. thereafter you can let your ghosts build up more organically and try to keep them in the range of 0-20

1 Like
#25

When you’re gunning for that ghost slayer badge :ghost:

#26

dude, I can’t slay these ghosts. I’ll be on Ghost 1 for a while, finally get bumped up to Ghost 2 or 3, but then I don’t see it for so long 'cause I’m dealing with so many Ghost 1s that by the time I get back to it, I’ve forgotten it, and it falls back a level.

1 Like
#27

I’ve forgotten it, and it falls back a level

either go back through the lessons or hit the crams until it sticks. your ghosts clearly aren’t going away so something has to change.

1 Like
#28

Like CursedKitsune said, this problem is caused by your brain being completely out of sync with the state of your review queue. As people have mentioned, progressively resetting and removing grammar points where you feel completely lost until the review load becomes manageable again seems like the only reasonable solution. You can of course just try to power through, but then the SRS system serves no purpose and you’re going to waste time banging your head against the wall for no real benefit.

1 Like
#29

I love finishing a review session with low accuracy, getting the message “Better luck next time!”, and immediately having fifty more reviews. I have been doing about 200 reviews a day for the past few days, and it just creates more reviews.

I often miss questions with godan verbs ending in -る, and I have so many ghosts related to this that I tend to assume any review with a -る verb is a question I’ve missed in the past—and that it must be a godan verb. This creates more ghosts when I inevitably type the wrong form for an ichidan verb.

1 Like
#30

srsly. I like the idea of ghosts. It’s just that they can become so damn frustrating. On WaniKani, I got about 2700 reviews to catch up on. But for as frustrating as that will be, I at least know that if I ever have the the time, I can catch up. Here it’s just getting repeatedly kicked when you’re down.

Part of the reason I don’t want to reset is knowing this could just happen again. I mean when I first joined the site a couple years back, it happened. And now a couple years later it just happens again. Frustrating.

1 Like
#31

After a long break I had the same situation, a lot of ghosts.

I’ve tried switching review order to this: ghosts last, shortest interval first. Compared to the usual, random review order, I think this helped to review weak points in smaller batches, and to limit how many ghosts spawned in total.

1 Like
#32

I like to do the opposite. Ghosts first then normal reviews, and also High SRS to Low SRS. I use the ghosts like a “long term” reminder that a grammar point. or a particular application of a grammar point, exists. After reminding myself with the ghosts, the normal reviews come and I’m not clueless to them anymore, except for new ones or the ones that will become other ghosts!

@okayfrog should fudge with the review ordering a bit (if they didn’t try yet), its possible that another setup is all they need to escape this ghost hellscape. :ghost:

3 Likes
#33

I feel like I remember seeing this option before but I don’t see it now. Where is it located?