The next big feature for the site will be custom lists of kanji/vocab that users can make (and offer to other users) to help with materials that aren't covered by what's already on the site.
I want to have a simple category system (aside from search capabilities) that'll be used to divide up the custom lessons. The user will be able to enter in their own categories, but I want to have a large set of premade categories to help keep the numbers down.
I'm thinking things like: Textbooks, Onomatopoeia, Slang, Business Japanese, Dialects, Counters, Manga readalong (I would love to see people make lists of terms commonly used in particular anime/mangas, much in the same way you usually get a short list of unknown vocab when you have a new reading in a textbook), song Lyrics, etc.
Think about what categories of Japanese *you'd* like to study, and/or custom lists you might be interested in making. This'll be a huge help, thanks.
I was thinking about making lists for my (still in progress) glossaries for sewing and beading - I use some Japanese books for both crafts, and am compiling a glossary as I go along. So maybe a "hobby" section?
"cultural references" might be good too... stuff like ぼけ or the Meiji era, that get mentioned in other contexts a lot. Mythological creatures and figures would fall in there too, I imagine.
metaphors and idioms might be useful too - 猫舌 and such.
Just thought of another list I'd like to see: a common name list. Common names (especially last, but also first) and the kanji that go with them; perhaps this could even be expanded into lists of place names and their kanji, too. That could easily be its own category, especially if it included historical names and such (or popular fictional).
Probably it would be nice to have some term categories regarding everyday life activities like: Video Games, Cooking, Food, Car, Bike, Sports, Computer, Internet (if not same as computer), Music, Photography. I guess that is very similar to the hobby suggestion.
Thanks! I think adding all of those would create too many small categories, but I could see some of those going into hobbies, and some going into what you said, an 'Everyday life' category (which I'm going to add). Again, thanks!
"food" is sounding better and better - as the only Japanese student at my friend's birthday party this weekend, I kept getting handed various snacks she had brought back from Japan or picked up at Mitsuwa, with the expectation I could tell them what they were about to eat. As if we covered any of that vocab, let alone the kanji, in class. xD "Well, it's a cake... and... yeah." "something, something, that's 'flavor'...some other flavor...Oh! I know this one! Matcha flavored." e.e;;
This will definently be useful. When you are picking words for a custom list, you might want to have a "add schedules to this list" button, so you can make 1 big schedule off of all the things you are studying... Don't know how useful it will actually be, but sounds good in my head... ;) (possibly a paid feature)
I'll second that one, I think having everything in one schedule would actually be helpful...I occasionally catch myself distinguishing between two similar terms based on what schedule I'm currently studying rather than the subtleties of the definitions...having such terms possibly both come up in the same quiz would force me to actually learn them properly.
I've got the lesson creation/update page finished, and the display page for your own lessons done. I need to build a simple page for users to see all lessons, then I'll put it on the beta. It's not yet tied to actual quiz taking, but I wanted to focus on hardening the actual creation/edit/viewing aspects (as I'm sure there will be a fair share of bugs) before I move on.
It might make it easier for people if they could import their custom lists from Mnemosyne (or whatever) as well. A lot of these are already floating around, and they're all just xml files (or tabbed text files) for the most part. This would make the transition pretty effortless for people already using some other software for their quizzing needs.
You could maybe start with just importing the terms themselves, but I'll bet it wouldn't be TOO hard to import the level of the terms, and fold it into the user's renshuu mastery schedules appropriately...
Of course I'm just talking out of my ass, but it seems like a cool idea.
the levels could be a problem, but I could definitely handle importing of files at a later stage (once some of the core elements are a bit more stable).
The biggest challenge is that the site doesn't just let you enter in a big block of terms without any validation. It attempts to map the terms to ones that are already in the database, then it lets you enter in ones that aren't in there as 'unverified' terms. The more the words are tied to the database, the easier it'll be for both you and other users to take advantage of lists with their study history. So even if they dump in an xml/text file, they still have that one validation step.
Fortunately, though, I think the interface I've set up for this is extremely smooth, fast, and easy to use. We'll see :)
