I recently upgraded to the v3 scheduler. I’ve read the FAQ and all the relevant threads I could find, but don’t understand this behavior.
I understand that the new count is capped by the review count. The FAQ says, “If you find this happening, the recommended solution is to increase your review limit, and work through the backlog before you add more new cards.” Sounds good to me. But it won’t seem to let me do that.
For today, Anki is letting me review 223 cards in this deck. (It’s a top-level deck with no subdecks.) Custom study says I have 234 available review cards. I would like to review those extra 11 cards. However, when I increase the review card limit by an arbitrary large amount, as shown:
… the result is that I get 7 more NEW cards, but I still don’t get to review those 11 review cards. That is, “Increase today’s review card limit” does not seem to actually increase today’s review card limit:
I get the same result if I increase the review limit in the deck options up to, say, 300. Just more new cards. Never allowed to see the rest of the review cards.
This would seem to be the opposite of what the FAQ recommends I do. I’m not trying to introduce more new cards. I’m trying to complete all my available reviews.
I may well be misunderstanding the intention of this behavior, but if so maybe it could be explained/implemented more clearly for the user.
Anki for Mac Version 23.12.1 (1a1d4d54)
Python 3.9.15 Qt 6.5.3 PyQt 6.5.3.
Aha! Thank you. So I take it the 11s are a red herring here — I really have 223 reviews, and thus 17 new cards to hit the limit of 240?
I’m having some trouble understanding these buried cards, though. What does the -11 indicate about the new cards? That 11 will be unburied? I.e. they’re the siblings of 11 new cards from yesterday? And the +11 are those cards from yesterday, not being reviewed until tomorrow?
I do try to consult the manual, but often wish it went into slightly greater depth. Thanks again for your help.
Yes, that’s what it looks like to me. You can verify by searching is:due in the Browse window – I expect that would say 234 cards (223 + 11). If you flip into “Notes” mode (Browsing - Anki Manual ), you should see that they belong to 223 notes.
I’ll be honest – I’ve never seen a negative number on the New cards. That makes me think it’s a new signal that came with a recent change. I’m wondering if it is related to the end of v2 scheduler support – perhaps to make it clearer for folks dealing with v3 features (like Reviews limit News) for the first time? But I’m speculating there.
I don’t think it’s about cards from yesterday being unburied today – because that already happened when the new day started, and I don’t think Anki has a use for “remembering” that.
Is it possible that you have a total of 28 New cards in this deck (17 + 11)? [Search is:new -is:suspended in the Browse window.] How many Notes do they belong to? [Flip into Notes mode.]
[It’s got to be a coincidence that you’re seeing both numbers being 11, right? ]
The +11 are cards that are Due today (or a little bit overdue, if they’ve had siblings burying them for a few days), but that you won’t be shown because you have sibling burying turned on. They will be unburied in the morning, and you’ll probably study them tomorrow (depending on how many co-siblings they have).
Interesting! I went ahead and studied, so those searches won’t work anymore I guess. But it’s definitely not that there are 28 New cards — there are thousands. Interesting to note that when I increased the review limit, the negative number on New went away completely.
Now that I’ve studied, would you expect is:buried to yield 11 cards? It yields 240. Would siblings have to be buried if they weren’t even due on the same day? Because New cards are introduced Forward first and Reverse the next day, I’d think Reviews generally wouldn’t be due the same day apart from random collisions due to fuzz factor and answer variations. And if all 240 had siblings to bury, then what were the +11? I’m questioning everything now.
If you’re curious, I can report back what it does tomorrow.
ETA: OK, I looked at another deck similarly set up that I hadn’t studied. It had 16 +1 Reviews. (No New cards in this deck.) 17 cards were Due, and 2 of them were siblings that had randomly collided. After studying, is:buried yielded 16 cards. So that’s still kind of confusing but at least basically tracks, and I guess supports the -11 being a coincidence, but that’s still a mystery.
My ideas after that get pretty speculative, so I’ll hold off.
Totally expected. Every sibling of every card you studied was buried (unless they were in learning) - Deck Options - Anki Manual and Studying - Anki Manual. So, if all of your cards have exactly 1 sibling, you’d expect the number of cards studied to be equal to the number of buried cards. The +11 only included cards that would have been shown to you today if not for sibling burying.
I indeed have 220 cards due from 216 notes. So now I think the matching negative number is not a coincidence, but instead means “You would have been limited to 20 new cards today, but 4 of your due reviews will be buried due to colliding with their siblings, therefore you have room for 4 more new cards for a total of 24.” It all (more or less) makes sense!
Thanks for bearing with me. Maybe one day I’ll achieve Anki enlightenment after all.
That does clarify things! I was puzzled above by why you saw -11 when Anki was only going to add 7 more cards (17+7=24) if you raised the limit. But in juxtaposition with the Decks page, I’m starting to see why. Thanks!
[As an aside, be careful with artificially limiting your daily reviews. There can be advantages to doing it (Deck Options - Anki Manual), but it also means you’re delaying some reviews unnecessarily. If you don’t keep a close eye on it, you could end up with an unwanted backlog. Best practice is to do all of your Review cards every day.]
First, some more background as you wished, @cloudburst:
The numbers in the deck tree are provided by a different algorithm than the one providing the counts on the deck overview screen. The latter is correct in the sense that it shows the amount of cards you will actually see when reviewing.
Grey numbers indicate differences between the two calculations. They are caused either by
buried cards (which can only be accounted for after you’ve decided which deck to study), or
the two implementations not matching up, i.e. programming errors.
Call me biased, but I prefer to assume burying being the cause until proven otherwise.
Spot on! Positivie numbers (i.e. the deck tree showing higher counts) are far more common as they simply indicate some cards getting buried. However, since new cards are restricted by review cards (default setting), buried review cards can also lead to more new cards being shown under certain circumstances.
In fact, there is a pertinent tooltip when hovering the grey numbers.
That makes me think it’s a new signal that came with a recent change. I’m wondering if it is related to the end of v2 scheduler support – perhaps to make it clearer for folks dealing with v3 features (like Reviews limit News) for the first time? But I’m speculating there.
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