Using "Remedy Hard Misuse"

[Yuyan]

The whole thing started pretty simply: I had been using the “Hard” button a lot. Then I saw that I could use “Anki Helper” to recover things, but it didn’t really explain what to do after that — it only mentioned “re-optimize parameters”.

(Sorry, I should’ve used the English version of Reddit. It was almost midnight, and I really wanted to go to sleep.)

At the time, I had no idea where to “optimize parameters,” but I thought I was being very clever when I noticed something called “reposition all cards” in Anki Helper.

I clicked it, and… oh, hey, that does look different. Suddenly I only had 50+ words to review again. Not a huge deal, right?

But then my brilliant brain went one step further: “re-optimize parameters.” I still hadn’t actually optimized my preset yet, had I?

So I went into my deck settings, did the parameter optimization, and hit save.

And that’s when things seemed to go wrong.

That night, on 5/6, I suddenly had to review 500+ cards again. That was the moment I realized:

yeah… I may have done something bad.

So now I want to ask: is my current situation normal?

If not, is there still any way to fix it?

I’ve spent two months studying diligently, and now it feels like my memory curve has been completely wrecked, bro.

(My English isn’t very good, so I asked GPT-5.4-mini to help me out. Please be understanding if anything sounds a little off.)

[Danika_Dakika]

@Yuyan

is my current situation normal?

This is what it sounds like you did –

1. You were using FSRS with the default parameters.
2. You ran FSRS Helper’s “Remedy Hard Misuse” feature.
3. You ran FSRS Helper’s “Reschedule all cards” feature.
4. Then you Optimized your FSRS parameters for the first time.

If that’s the case, then – no. That’s not how you would normally do things.

@Yuyan

I had been using the “Hard” button a lot.

That isn’t necessarily a problem or the type of “misuse” that the remedy is designed to repair. That feature is an extreme solution to fix a very specific problem – a history of deliberately grading cards Hard even though you got them wrong (so the only possible grade is Again). Since you weren’t even using Optimized parameters yet, there would be no reason to think you needed that remedy.

I think you should restore your database to how it was before you ran the Hard Misuse Remedy – Restoring an Automatic Backup (Recovering from Data Loss) - Anki FAQs . If you don’t know exactly when you did that, you can try one backup, and if that was after you did it, try the backup before that.

Then you can Optimize your parameters, and post your parameters here, as text – along with a screenshot of your Stats > Answer Buttons graph. That will tell us if you needed the remedy in the first place.

[Yuyan]

Hi, thank you so much for your reply!

I’m really sorry for the late response — I had a lot of classes today and wasn’t able to get back to you sooner. Sorry again!

Yes, that’s exactly what I did:

• I was using FSRS with the default parameters.

• I ran FSRS Helper’s “Remedy Hard Misuse” feature.

• I ran “Reschedule all cards.”

• Then I optimized my FSRS parameters (Optimize Current Preset) for the first time.

About this part:

“That feature is an extreme solution to fix a very specific problem: a history of deliberately grading cards Hard even though you got them wrong, instead of Again.”

I think I may have been misunderstanding Anki from the very beginning.

I always thought that I should not press Again, and that I should press Hard instead.

So for me:

• Hard meant I was 100% sure I didn’t know the word

• Good meant I was 100% sure I did know the word

I’ve now restored my backup from 5/5, and I currently have 111 unreviewed cards. That seems different from what I had on that day — is that normal?

Also, what should I do next?

Here are the parameters from the first time after I restored the backup.

(And I’m really sorry, but I can’t remember whether I had clicked “Optimize Current Preset” a long time ago or not. Sorry about that.)

Just to make sure I don’t cause any irreversible damage because of my misunderstanding and mistakes, I’ll also tell you exactly what I did tonight, on 5/7:

• Opened Anki

• Restored the backup to 5/5

• Changed the language to English (UK)

• Logged out

• Reopened Anki

• Copied the parameters and screenshots

34.1274, 34.1274, 34.1274, 34.1274, 6.3175, 0.9539, 2.9477, 0.1131, 1.9955, 0.0352, 0.9181, 1.4835, 0.0614, 0.2629, 1.6483, 0.7124, 1.8729, 0.4226, 0.2247, 0.0100, 0.2948

I’ll be waiting here for your reply.

Thanks again for your help!

[Danika_Dakika]

@Yuyan

I always thought that I should not press Again, and that I should press Hard instead.

So for me:

• Hard meant I was 100% sure I didn’t know the word
• Good meant I was 100% sure I did know the word

Hopefully you now know how to use the buttons correctly – Studying - Anki Manual .

[I’m skipping most of your questions because this new information changes a lot of things.]

If you were only using Hard and Good, then yes – you probably do need to apply “Remedy Hard Misuse.” In that case, it will show up on your Stats > Answer Buttons graph, which is why I asked to see that. Post a screenshot of that, so I can see what was going on.

There’s no point in you losing days of review history if you really did need to use the remedy anyway, so with correct information, I can probably give you different instructions.

[Yuyan]

Thank you very much for your reply, and I’m really sorry — I didn’t notice your previous response.

I’m currently using the backup from 5/5.

Here are my screenshots.

I started using Anki on 3/31

and other

[Danika_Dakika]

Okay, given that, you can restore the “backup” version of your collection from today. There should be one that was created immediately before you restored the older backup, so you won’t lose any review history.

Then do this –

1. Run Remedy Hard Misuse.
2. Look at Stats > Answer Buttons to verify that the half/over-half of your grades that are Hard have changed to Again. (Your Retention will also drop from 100% to less than 50%.)
3. Run Optimize All Presets to set your FSRS parameters using the new review history.
4. Run Reschedule all cards so your cards are scheduled more accurately.
5. Continue studying using the grading buttons correctly.

I suspect you’ll get really harsh parameters out of this (you can post them here as text if you want me to look at them), but that can’t be avoided for now. If they are too much to handle, you might want to lower your Desired Retention (DR) for a while (and then repeat step 4). What is your DR set to now?

Ordinarily, you’d plan on re-optimizing your parameters monthly. You might want to do that weekly for a few weeks, to incorporate your more recent review history (but there’s no need to reschedule your cards again).

[Yuyan]

Thanks so much for your help — I followed the steps you shared, and my DR is set to 90%. Here are the parameters after optimization. I really appreciate it again; your help means a lot to me!

These updated stats. Given my situation, what’s the best practice for balancing my cards going forward?

[Danika_Dakika]

Those are harsh parameters, but I would compare them to your old situation this way –

• Before, your cards were being scheduled for intervals that were too long, so you were getting most of them incorrect (and then telling Anki you got them right, so they were scheduled for even longer intervals).
• Now, your cards are going to be scheduled for very short intervals, but you should be able to get a lot more of them right, and FSRS will learn (when you re-optimize) how to schedule them correctly.

I think you should leave your DR set as-is for now, and use a Catch-up deck to start working through your backlog. Make sure you study everything that is currently due each day (the cards that stay in your main deck), but take the backlog cards at a reasonable pace.

After a week, take a look at what your workload is (Future Due, without the backlog). If it’s too much, come back with new stats (and your newly optimized parameters as text, please), and we can talk about reducing your DR to lower your workload. If it’s going okay, just repeat steps 3 & 4 above (re-optimize and reschedule), rebuild your Catch-up deck, and keep going for another week.

Once the Catch-up deck is empty, you can put yourself on a regular schedule of re-optimizing monthly, and you don’t need to reschedule.

[Yuyan]

Hey bro, really sorry for the late reply — it got pretty late that night, so I ended up crashing, and the last couple of days have been insanely busy.

Since I’m still pretty new to Anki, I didn’t really have time to dig into the setup, so sorry for the two-day delay.

I’ve spent some time studying it these past few days. I’m still not 100% sure I’ve got everything figured out, but I think I’m moving in the right direction.

Here’s my current setup — would you mind taking another look? Sorry to bother you again.

If it looks good, I’ll start using this plan next Monday (5/11), and I’ll send you my data the Monday after that (5/18).

Here are the settings for EnglishMining Catch up :

[Danika_Dakika]

@Yuyan

Here are the settings for EnglishMining Catch up :

That looks fine, but make sure that your limits are set correctly. If you want “EnglishMining Catch up” to use the same Options preset as your other decks, you’ll want to set the daily max reviews limit on it as a “This deck” deck-specific limit. That way you can leave your normal decks unlimited.

[Yuyan]

Thank you very much for the reminder. I’ve already set up a separate preset for the Catch deck, and I’ll click “Optimize All Presets” next weekend to optimize all presets.