First off, sorry if this is under the wrong category. I thought at first it belonged under basic help, but seeing as it’s related to FSRS, I decided to put it here. Basically, I need help with Anki giving me strange time interval choices, with a significant proportion of cards offering the same choices respectively, having huge time gaps between choice intervals (for new cards I found that especially strange), and choices on the same cards even being exactly the same.
I’m not just a n00b but I’m just plain stupid when it comes to numbers and math, especially statistics and calculations, so how FSRS works (aside from the concept itself) is like rocket science for me. I read the FAQs and guides but to be honest it’s like in one ear and out the other, so I apologize in advance if this question is so stupidly easy that it’s a waste of time for you.
Context and Background:
- I’ve been using Anki to study Thai for about 3 months now. I have 2332 cards, which are Basic and Reverse, so I guess technically I’ve only created 1166 cards myself.
- I didn’t learn about the reverse cards option until about a month or so in, so I changed around a thousand cards at the time from basic to basic and reversed.
- A couple weeks ago I added a 3rd field to the cards, an IPA/transliteration field for the Thai. I exported the entire card set to a CSV, populated it with the 3rd IPA field, and then imported it again.
Modifications:
- The fact I changed Basic to Basic and Reverse a good halfway into the study set, doubling the cards at the time.
- A month or so in to studying, I turned on FSRS after reading how it can be more useful for languages. When I first did it, I clicked “Optimize”, thinking that’s what I was suppose to do (I think I read that I should). That may have been when the problem started but I’m not sure.
- I added a 3rd field to the Anki set and repopulated the entire existing set with the updated field a couple weeks ago.
- I added the FSRS Helper add-on about a month ago and did “reschedule all cards” and “disperse all siblings” thinking it might help but it didn’t. I haven’t touched it since for fear of screwing things up more.
My observations:
- Lots of cards I review jump from 10m to 8d - a significantly, and suspiciously, larger proportion than what I’d expect - I’d probably say between 20 to 25% of the cards I review every day give those choices, whether I’ve reviewed it 4 times or 40 times.
- Even many new cards, ones that I look at for the first time, will eventually be <1m, 10m, 8d, and 10d, which is very annoying. Since they are still fresh, I would like to review them a couple of times within the near future, not a week later. For these cards, I end up having to click More > Set Due Date > 1 day or 2-3 days depending on comfort level.
- Cards that I have reviewed a dozen times already, within a week or so, but are still somewhat new or difficult for me, also have confusing time jump choices, such as going from 10m to 7d or more. A card that’s still new to me, I would think it’d be best to review it again within 2-4 days, not a week or more later.
- Some cards have the same time choices for both good and easy options.
- Some cards, regardless of whether I choose “again” or “hard” will consistently display the same unchanging choices. I tested this hoping to get a new card that gave me the choice of <1m <6m <10m and 16d to eventually give me something less than 16d, but no matter how many times I clicked again or hard, it never changed.
I’m sure I could probably provide other useful information to any kind soul who dares to help, but I’m not sure what exactly you need, so rather than posting a dozen more screenshots of various possibly useless Anki stats, if you (the kind soul) would be willing to help me fix these time interval issues, just let me know what exactly you need and I’ll do my best to provide it (you might need to tell me where to look to find it though).
Example screenshots of the time intervals are below. I would really appreciate any help on this. I’ve been hesitant to try to fix it myself for fear of making it worse, hoping maybe the problem would solve itself after a couple weeks of reviewing and setting days, but nothing is changing unfortunately. So here’s hoping someone out there understands the issue and maybe even knows a quick fix for it. Thanks a bunch to anyone willing to help.
Example pictures:
Cards with the same good and easy options:
Lots of 8d cards:
Confusing jumps:
New Cards, first time seeing them:
How can it be improved? But I might be getting ahead of myself and the answer to that question might be in the article you sent. I’ll give that a read soon, sounds interesting.
That total is how many cards you have due in the next 30 days. The backlog part is only the ones due before today, so to the left of 0 – it looks like about 200 cards? You can see that more clearly on the main decks screen – your “Due” (green) cards today will jump from 80 to 200-something, because all of the overdue cards are counted there.
I hope that you won’t feel the need to do that anymore now that your intervals will be a better fit. Think of it as garbage-in, garbage-out – if you give FSRS incorrect data, it will reward you by being bad at scheduling your cards! 
Now is a good time to get into a better habit.
