I love this.
But, I want separate settings for Vocab and Grammar.
As I want grammar to always produce a Ghost but Vocab only after a certain stage.
So if we are talking fine control, this would be even better.
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Does this mean enabling it now and doing “Update All Existing” will make ALL existing master items show up in the review queue at once right now? Or does it take into account when an item was mastered to schedule its next review?
EDIT: Nvm, the pop-up answers that. I was scared to click the button so didn’t see the popup before. It does take into account mastered date.
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@Saraph – Thank you for taking the time to respond to me.
To your first point on “mastered”, you’re right that the arbitrary 6 month threshold feels tacked on and making intervals tweakable seems like a quick win for flexibility. But here’s the rub: every new knob you add, even optional ones compound complexity.
Like, the idea of the user choosing becomes more irrelevant, it turns into the codebase ballooning, the UI getting fiddlier and the mental load on users (and devs!) to maintain it all.
Why not question if “mastery” even needs eternal extension at all? If the goal is true proficiency, subtraction might be better. Cap it cleanly and push users to real use applications, not giving us more dials to satisfy the hardcore users.
Adding a separate Mastery+ interval? That’s the slippery slope and we’re already seeing this happen with Bunpro, which is why I am pushing hard against it. Start with one config, you end up with a mess of interdependent settings that no one fully tests leading to bugs.
This stems from a philosophical argument that Bunpro is no longer becoming a sharp knife, but turning into a Swiss Army tool that does nothing.
@Zanzou – Thank you for taking the time to reply to me directly as well.
Optional and off by default doesn’t make it harmless. More flexibility can sound empowering but it often masks a lack of strong design choices.
The last thing you want is a diluted core experience that is mediocre for everyone.
Eternal reviews for rare vocab? Great for your workflow, but what is Bunpro’s ethos to "graduate? Imo this risks anchoring people for a perpetual dependency instead of immersion.
Tutorial hell is real, and I think this inclusion of Master+ just keeps you in without ever escaping.
I really want the devs to monitor this hard. Data on adoption versus churn just not looking at forums or they will wake up with a bloated system that’s harder to evolve.
Anyway, the bottom line I have is: Options aren’t free. They add cognitive load and technical debt. If we’re serious about simplicity, let’s talk about subtraction before additions become the default path.
Edit: Below is a compilation of what I deem to be conflicting philosophies, I will put it in a spoiler tag to keep the reply shorter.
Is it simple?
The landing page:
Here are all of the settings just from the reviews pane:
We’re not done! Here’s from the General pane:
No, it is not simple. If I have to ask what something is/how something works and I have used this site for over five years…how on Earth can you expect a new user, a new Japanese learner to react?
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Super excited to use this but I’m having trouble making it work. The audio doesn’t seem to play, I just get a blank screen, no audio play button/slider. I tried this for a batch of reviews in a row and also pushing P I can’t get the audio to play.
(I have my volume up and am hearing audio for example sentences in grammar reviews)
edit: it’s working in the iphone app… just not in safari on macbook
Separate question: how do I know what word in the sentence is being tested? I wouldn’t have a problem marking a review correct even if I didn’t get every word in the sentence, as long as I knew the target word.
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Thanks for the updates! Love the amount of customization! 
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re: Listening Review type
I’m not able to change it in the global Review Settings. They’re greyed out in both my Grammar and Vocab review setting. The ones that are on right now are the Fill In - Manual options.
And if I’m understanding correctly, it’s either my selection (e.g. Fill In) OR Listening, can’t be both regardless of whether it’s set individually, Deck or global setting, correct?
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Yeah, noticed this, too. It’s probably a temporary thing? Listening mode is still working, though.
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I think maybe a lot of people (well at least myself) can’t/don’t want to do listening exercises every time, but it would be nice to have an option to do it for ‘the current review session’. Would that be possible?
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I agree with Rustx. I’m keen to try master+ mode, but I do not want 300+ reviews coming in one go to clear. Is there an easier way rather than marking individual grammar points day-by-day? Maybe a randomly allocated 1-2 points per day?
Btw Another great update too guys, thank you.
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Maybe you could do something like turning it on, doing however many reviews you want, then turning it off again? I would expect it to retain the last review date even when you turn it off, but haven’t tested this.
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For those of you wanting to do listening-only versions only sometimes, or in addition to your usual fill-in, listening cram sessions might be helpful. Otherwise I suppose it would likely require developing a separate review schedule for a listening version of each card, doubling the number of your permanent reviews so that you are tested twice on everything.
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I second this. There should be an extra setting to choose how many you want to be added everyday like how you can choose how many new grammar or vocab lessons there are each day.
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I posted this in a previous discussion about Master+ before it was released, but going to repost my thoughts below:
I don’t suppose there’s any way to make this an item or deck specific setting rather than a global one? I’d love to use this feature, but don’t really want to be getting recurring reviews for very simple words like 私、これ、etc when studying for N1+ 
As a follow up to this, I’m also curious how this will affect the performance of enabling/disabling vacation mode. Doing a quick test now, I have 2848 items which took about 5 minutes to process when disabling vacation mode. It timed out partway (which happens every time I turn vacation mode off), so I had to re-start it again partway.
If I enable the Recurring Mastered setting, this will spike my items to 7,379, so can I assume that my vacation mode processing time will also now double/triple?
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What Grammar/Vocab item is broken for you (the one in the screenshot)?
It shouldn’t be a browser issue, it might just be broken audio for that specific Vocab/Grammar.
how do I know what word in the sentence is being tested?
Hitting “Show Answer” will reveal the sentence, with the item being question highlighted.
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You have to select “Reveal & Grade” as the Answer type and it should display fine.
We’re gonna switch the Review Type system to a simple dropdown in the future, instead of the Question/Answer split.
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Will be adding something that will allow this in a future update.
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どうもありがとうございます！
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It’s not one specific item… I can’t get the audio to play (or the play button to appear) for anything. Even when I look at the answer card and the sentence is revealed, I can’t play the audio. This only happens for vocabulary reviews when it’s set to Listening mode in a web browser. Grammar reviews play fine and everything plays fine in the app on mobile.
re: my question about what word is being tested: what I mean is that if the “question” on the front of the card is just audio of a full example sentence, I don’t know what word is actually being tested until I flip the card and see the whole sentence. Is that how it’s supposed to work? It seems like it could end up being very difficult to focus on the word being tested (and thus kind of inefficient) if it’s part of a larger sentence that may contain words that haven’t been learned yet.
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I just did a bunch of Master+ reviews and got a bunch wrong…but from what I can tell they’re impervious to dropping any levels and are still at Master+.
Was this a conscious decision or is there a way this could be tweaked - personally I’d like them to come back into my reviews faster than another 6 months since I clearly can’t remember them 
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If I have a bunch of things in my master list that have been sitting there for a while, I’m worried that enabling master+ will inundate me with hundreds of review items which will get in the way of me reviewing other stuff that is more important to review in the short term. Is there a way to drip feed just a certain maximum number of master+ items per day?
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