Include "Descending Lapses" Option in Deck Options under "Display Order"

Anki Suggestions
1

When creating a filtered deck, there is an option to give preference to cards that I have the most lapses on. I use this a lot as a form of gamification because it starts with the most difficult ones (being the ones I have the most lapses on) and leaves the easiest ones for last when I am already tired.

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It would be interesting to have this option in the deck settings as an alternative as well;

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2

Doesn’t descending difficulty roughly approximate that already?

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3

Oh, my apologies! I didn’t realize that because the translation in the Portuguese version I’m using is a bit off. You’re right, that option does meet the need. I’ll be correcting the Portuguese-BR translation. Thanks for pointing that out!

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4

@dae, I’m sorry, but I’ve noticed that actually, this option is only available in Anki 23.10. In Anki 2.1.66, it is not available. And the one above, it has been removed.

Regardless, I will proceed with the translation.

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5

Which one you see depends on whether you have FSRS enabled or not.

6

Descending difficulty is a poor approximation for ordering by lapses when using FSRS. FSRS will assign a difficulty of 100% to a card after only two lapses for me, so essentially all cards in a given review will have maximum difficulty. Only 11% of the cards in my review yesterday had a difficulty below 100%. The other 89% get randomized at the front when using descending difficulty, but there is a significant difference between cards with 2 lapses and those with 10 lapses.

Here are some possible solutions:

  • Add a “descending lapses” option under display order.
  • Uncap the difficulty of FSRS. The FSRS developers experimented with this but concluded it didn’t aid scheduling so the idea was abandoned. Something like that could still be useful for display order.
  • Instead of hardcoding a few standard display orders, allow the user to define their own order using any metric available when searching for cards. This would be the most flexible approach, but also the most difficult for users to understand.
7

You make a good argument, and there is no good reason these days to have a particular order in filtered decks and not normal decks or vice versa. A PR that adds the extra order would be welcome.

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