Maybe the disagreement between you and Dae is due to the difference in priorities between existing Anki users (SM2) and new Anki users (FSRS).
Existing Anki users are already familiar with the Anki UI and know how to use basic buttons so such UI improvements are not needed, plus the Hard misuse problem is not a major problem with the SM2 algorithm, and the number of new Anki users is steadily increasing every year so there is no need any features for new Anki users.
The FSRS will not work if Hard is misused so the UI or tutorials need to help Anki users learn how to use it correctly, otherwise more Anki users will use it incorrectly and it may be more difficult to spread FSRS in the future. Improving UI and other features should help prevent such problems so those improvements are very important if the focus for FSRS and new Anki users.
Perhaps the official Anki Dae is more focused on existing Anki users, and you are active for FSRS so new Anki users are more important, the development resources are limited so there is a conflict of interest.
If the focus is on existing users the UI issues could be ignored, even if Anki UI is difficult existing Anki users already use Anki, so if we ask them whether they want new features for power users or for beginners they will want for power users, because they are not beginners and they will not use them.
I too think the focus is on FSRS but maybe there is a very different sense of time. FSRS is a high performance but existing users are familiar with SM2, so it is reasonable to change from SM2 to FSRS very slowly to avoid confusing users. But Expertium and LM-Sherlock are mainly developing FSRS so perhaps making FSRS the default right now is fine with them.
I’ve been saying Anki has bad UX for a while, but having worked with my addon now I can confidently say that there is A LOT to consider before making the slightest change in the interfaces.
Just this beta, there was a tiny reviewer-related PR for the reviewer that conflicted with someone’s UI addon. I think there was even another person who was affected by a certain change in the card browser, too?
There are so many addons that can be broken by the slightest change. Some of these might do bad things like access private fields in UI classes (coughcough), but I’d hope that these belong to the minority of addons.
The best thing to do right now, instead of repeating the same obvious thing over and over again, is to help lay the foundation for a better interface. And imo, that is done by helping Dae with the PyQt to Svelte transition. More code, less talk.
I can’t help but be reminded of a parallel situation with SuperMemo. SuperMemo, the way it is presented to you when you run it for the first time, couldn’t be easier to use. You start in the “basic” interface mode, and are immediately presented with a tutorial that not only teaches you what to do, but does it using the advertised functionality of the software: spaced repetition. For the average user, the “basic” interface used to offer pretty much 95+% of the memory-boosting power of the more advanced modes (back before incremental reading became its thing).
And yet, even back then, SuperMemo was constantly lambasted for having a terrible and unintuitive user interface. Why? Because a lot of people (dare I say, most?) hate the idea of having the “real” stuff hidden from them, so they immediately go and enable a bunch of advanced functionality that they have no idea how to use, for fear of missing out.
But that’s not acknowledging the real elephant in the room: that the biggest hurdle facing the spread of the “gospel” of spaced repetition isn’t UI design. It’s spaced repetition itself. Most people who can see the appeal of the idea, and are willing to accept spending time pretty much every day studying material fed to them by an algorithm, will learn to use Anki regardless. Most of those who get spaced repetition shoved in their faces while being told it’s the greatest thing ever, so they reluctantly try it out, are unlikely to stick with it no matter how simple the interface.
If you want widespread usage of spaced repetition as a learning methodology, you would most likely have to package it in domain specific apps (ala Duolingo). Most people aren’t interested in some nebulous idea of “learning” in general. They have specific things they want to learn, and tend to go looking for specific solutions. Anki is very flexible, and can be used to learn pretty much anything. But that also makes it unapproachable. And I feel like that’ll be the case even with a simpler user interface. Most people have no interest in creating their own learning material(/cards). A state of affairs that is exacerbated by the fact that the vast majority of shared decks are absolutely horrid, from a pedagogical perspective. (Though that’s pretty much to be expected from user-generated content.)
That’s not to say I’m against streamlining the user interface. I just don’t think it’ll matter all that much in the end.
The idea here actually was inspired by SM. You’ve raised another great point. Apart from what I mention, it’ll become a FOMO inducing machine. I probably get this the most as a zoomer.
Most people want a course that spoonfeeds them the material in the way they want. For med students at least, I believe AnkiHub can fill that spot.
Anki is in the middle of a large transition from Qt to Svelte. It is important that we push it to completion, as the half-finished state it’s in adds a significant maintenance burden.
Until we’ve got that architectural work done, I don’t believe it’s a good time to be investing in non-trivial beginner-friendly changes, as they will result in wasted and duplicate effort, and further delay that transition.
It’s difficult to provide an estimate for when that work might be complete,
because it depends on how many other things are competing for my attention, and how much others are able to contribute. Personally, I’d rather be writing code than keeping up with support, reviewing PRs, looking after AnkiWeb and so on, as it’s the code-writing part that I actually enjoy. But I don’t have the luxury of ignoring the rest.
The introduction of FSRS to Anki, while great, significantly stalled the Svelte migration, and every new change you advocate for further pushes it back. I may need to consider a feature freeze in the future if the situation does not improve, so we can focus on this work.
Off-topic: How long will the Svelte migration take? I plan to explore some other projects, so I may quit the FSRS integration for a while (after fixing reported bugs). I can come back after the Svelte migration is complete.
I really, really want to work on FSRS-6, and for that I need the new features + the optimizer code with the bare minimum changes so that it can use those features. Then I could make FSRS-6 very quickly.
Though, while I can work on the formulas, I can’t work on integrating FSRS into Anki, so that part will be left to you and Dae.
Btw, Dae. Just out of curiosity, if FSRS-6 came out this month, would you postpone 24.10 to integrate FSRS-6 (assuming it’s better than FSRS-5)? It will require the number of hours since day_starts_at and the number of reviews today before the current review. Also, don’t worry, it will be the last version for a very long time.
some video games have a “REDDIT SUB” button on the home screen, /r/anki does not have a link on the homescreen on Anki, so only the people who actively search for it find it, in other words:
you polled the top 1% power users of anki;
if we polled the average user, it would probably be like, picking 99% “…oh right, there is a manual”
Hence I made the suggestion (in my previous post) to have a simple non-walltext tutorial window.
OK. I will work on building the new dataset. One more thing, some developers have complained that FSRS changes its formula too frequently. FSRS has a dozen of packages. Once we update the formula, they all need to keep up the latest version, and it has blocked their roadmap/plan/todos several times. So I just want to slow down. And the name would not be FSRS-6 because we may have a series of variants of FSRS to satisfy different constrains.
And this discussion has been off-topic. If you have more thoughts, please open an issue or discussion at open-spaced-repetition.
Just want to chime in and say that while @dae and I have not always agreed on things, he always has rationale for why he does what he does and I have always respected that. He has also always responded when I try to do surveys or show how significant issues are.
Beyond that, making Anki simpler is an extremely complicated task. I say that as someone who has been trying to make Anki easier to use for everyone for the past 6 years. I have many ideas, but it’s a very difficult balance. We are currently discussing with Damien and AnkiHub will be funding projects to improve and simplify Anki.
It is worth saying that despite Anki’s complicated nature, it is still one of the most popular, if not the most popular, SRS app out there.
And finally, AnkiHub is working on creating a GPT that will make Anki much easier for new users. More to come
In my view I slightly doubt “Anki’s UI is too complex”.
If users have to read the manual to use Anki, many users will drop out they will not vote, so there should be more Anki users who read the manual, about 75% almost do not read the manual means Anki can be used without reading the manual, thus I think Anki’s UI is already user friendly enough and excellent.
Plus it is almost impossible for any other learning app to beat Anki by performance, Anki has already been developed and refined for about 20 years, enhanced by FSRS, and there are 1500+ free add-ons, so almost all learning features are available, so the only way for other learning apps to sell their apps is to emphasize simplicity so I think “Anki too complex” may be a negative campaign by them.
Most people watch YouTube videos and read alternative guides on the Web. I agree competion tries the “Anki too complex” plank but it works only because that’s how many people feel.
I switched to v3 scheduler around the end of last year (or maybe the start of this year) and even though I don’t remember too much from 2020 when I started using Anki, I remember v3 did feel too complicated to me.
I didn’t really read the manual though, and for most people doing that feels unnecessary. But that doesn’t mean the UI is simple. IMO there’s work to do to simplify Anki and we’re slowly getting there. I don’t think we’ve reached the goal.
The reason I slightly doubt it is because what Anki users are saying and what they are actually doing are opposite.
E.g. you have updated from V2 to V3, why? If you want simplicity it is more reasonable to use V2.
So Anki users complain about complexity (want simple and easy to use), but in reality they may be using the complex one as their top priority (use new and high performance).
I agree with that. I think we should make Anki simpler while not reducing it’s effectiveness. In fact, sometimes simplifying will increase how good Anki works for users. See discussion around historical retention for example. Or sort orders.
