Could just leave the learn ahead limit so people could use it if they know about it, but add the button regardless in improve user friendliness?
There is definitely a difference between 1m and 7m+. We know that there are different types of short term memory. We don’t have a good understanding of what interval is best, but too short is definitely not best.
There is a popup that says we’re modifying settings.
Anki for sure needs to be simpler. I think the best way forward is to make the initial user experience as simple and intuitive as possible while still keeping the advanced options in the background for others if they want to use them.
It’s the most intuitive. If it says you’re going to wait 15 minutes for a learning card, it would make the most sense to wait that 15 minutes. Also, if you have 15 minute steps and learn ahead is 15 minutes, your repetitions have the potential to be too fast. I think this is a very handy advanced feature, but not something that new users understand well, hence why I suggest a button that lets the user study ahead. That way they know and understand exactly what happens, but don’t have to actually wait if they want to finish during that study session
“Hard to document” and “hard to identify a single frequent-question about” aren’t the same thing. The feature has been quite easily and simply documented. The fact that it arises in so many different contexts for different users is an indication of its far-reaching impact.
I’m not sure a button makes sense. You’d still need to let the user configure how far it should be looking ahead (they may want to skip a 20 minute step but not a 3 hour one for example). And the user won’t know how many cards are within that look-ahead limit until they press the button. Failing a card and not seeing the red count increase is confusing.
The default learn ahead limit is set to 20 minutes, so that the default learning steps fall within the limit. To do otherwise would mean an out-of-box experience where the user studies a few cards, and is then told they need to wait up to 10 minutes before proceeding. Back when that’s how Anki behaved, it was a frequent pain point.
The answer buttons also show values like <10m, to indicate that the full delay may not elapse.
That’s a good point. Perhaps the button would use the learn ahead limit and hovering over it would say “change how far to learn ahead in preferences” or something. But then it’s clear to the new user what is happening. Could also add an option in the preferences to make it automatic
It seems it’s a frequent pain point regardless. This is one of the most frequent user questions I’ve gotten over the years regardless of what the setting is. Perhaps my solution isn’t the best, but I think there is certainly a more user friendly way to introduce this to new users without affecting the current advanced users workflow. Do you have any other thoughts?
To a new user without any presumptions about how Anki works? Currently — I’m probably not misremembering — if you have steps longer than learn ahead limit it behaves differently than otherwise. I believe that can be more confusing for a new user who’s learning to use the app.
Nothing changes if we add a button?
The idea is also to better communicate the feature to users, especially the new users. If Anki is exported with “learn ahead” disabled, it provides an opportunity to do exactly that. People who don’t mind answering from their STM, they can simply “learn ahead” without any issues.
I think there will be significant pushback from users who currently have a learn-ahead limit set, and don’t want to have to take the extra step of clicking/tapping a button at the end of review, and don’t want their learning count to be misleading until they press it.
I’m sorry, I’m not following the argument here. I’ve explained the reasons why I think a button on the congrats screen is not useful to users who use a learn ahead limit currently. You now seem to be arguing that we could provide some option to make things behave like before, for those users? Then who exactly is the button for? The people who don’t currently learn ahead won’t be using it.