Feature request: FSRS should take reverse cards into account when scheduling

Hi

When I enabled the FSRS it was a huge improvement to my Anki experience. Previously, I always had to think “strategically” when assessing my responses, to ensure each card would not be reviewed to soon or too late after the current review session. So, for instance, when missing a card that I have known for a long time, I might respond “hard” instead of “again”, to avoid going back to square one.

With FSRS it seems I can mostly ignore this, and always respond honestly according to how difficult it really was to remember the card. This is with one notable exception: It does not seem to take into account that when you are dealing with a reverse card, it is often in practice recently reviewed.

For instance, if you have a front named “agua”, and a back named “water”, and after a few reviews in the first session you respond “easy”, it will be scheduled for a next review after a few days. But then, when you are shown the reverse card shortly after, and the prompt is “water”, it will be easy to respond because in reality you just reviewed it (as a reverse card). If you now answer “easy”, because it was, it will be scheduled for next review after something like 19 days, at least when I do it. My only other option is to pretend it was “medium hard”, and tap the green button, but then it will be reviewed again in the same session, which isn’t necessary and wastes a lot of time.

What we need is that the scheduler recognize that a card and its reverse are related, so reviewing the reverse card is almost like reviewing the forward card, and vice versa.

I don’t know if this is the best place to make a feature request, but anyway, it worth a try to post it here.

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The FSRS helper addon had a such functionality by dispersing sibling cards.

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Thank you. I did not know about this addon, and found out that it can still be used. However, it does not seem to affect new cards that are “queuing” for first review. Therefore the problem still exists, although the FSRS helper improves it on subsequent reviews.

I think the ideal solution would be if the FSRS algorithm, which is based on machine learning, could also take sibling’s review history into account (if possible). Since it’s based on machine learning, it might not need to make assumptions about how much or little reviewing the reverse card affects your memory of the current.

I hope the developers of Anki and perhaps the FSRS helper addon reads this, I think it could improve an already awesome product.

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I do think it would be fantastic if FSRS could optimally schedule siblings for us. Almost all of my notes have sibling cards.

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Just because the cards are siblings does not mean that they contain similar information.

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Maybe if they are of the Basic type. But all cloze deletion siblings contain the same information …

That would require massive changes to Anki, so the realistic answer is “no”.

I know, but it often does. That’s why I included the phrase “… it might not need to make assumptions about how much or little reviewing the reverse card affects your memory of the current”.

I don’t think I have any sibling cards that don’t contain similar information. Cloze deletion and reverse cards do. But I don’t know all types of sibling cards that may exist.

This discussion seems to be of no consequence now, as someone has mentioned that such a feature is unlikely to become reality anyway.

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