I have characters and words (following my Chinese university course) in my priority queue, but instead I get other stuff in my lessons.
For example, I just received 友好 (friendly), which is not in my priority list and not even in HSK1. I believe it is shown to me because I have started learning 友 and 好, so it starts giving me the compounds – instead of picking up the next item from the priority queue!
Edit: I tried fixing this by setting the “Daily Dictionary Limit” to 0, but the problems remains.
You were right that the Priority Queue wasn’t absolute.
I’ve pushed an update that should fix this now everything in your Priority Queue should come first before we default to our selection algorithm.
This change seems to have removed any character limit for daily lessons, as long as they’re in the priority queue. As in, I just had an all-character 15 lessons with 0 of my currently-unlocked-but-unlearned words mixed in (since none of them were in the queue). Not necessarily a problem, but it does mean I’ll need to change up how I approach priority queue if this is the intended outcome.
Conceptually it is easier to see the priority queue as “absolute” and was the intention (if anything the previous behavior would be seen as “broken” by some) but I also acknowledge your way of using it seems like a useful way to go about it…
How would you go about it without the previous behavior? I suppose one would have to just switch to prioritizing words they come across
The settings for the “New” seems broken. (For example, my settings were learn 10, 7 words 3 characters, learn words first, but my last learning was 5 words, 5 characters, with learning characters first.
So right now I have about 100 dictionary items in my priority queue (some of the most common words that aren’t in HH official word pool). My dictionary limit is 4, so I only see four of those a day. It doesn’t override seeing words or characters, and it means I got to “set it and forget it” by making a massive side queue to get me through a lot of common words without needing to do much daily management besides my actual lessons/review.
I similarly kept a bulk queue of characters that are my next priority characters to learn, and I’ve been able to use the word limit option as my controlled ratio of words-to-characters for lessons each day (i.e. if I say I want 15 items a day and only 10 words then I’m also saying I only want max 5 characters).
It meant I could, same as those dictionary items, just bulk pick characters (like from a list) and they would function as an alternate lesson order more built to my needs/interests. I still unlocked, say, 3-5ish characters a day, and 10ish words, without needing to go and check which 5 characters I want next right then and there every day.
Could you please make the character limit option also explicit (alongside word limit and dictionary limit) if this is the priority queue philosophy you have in mind? Otherwise a user pointing to a list and saying “I want to learn this first, not the lesson order” is potentially going to mean losing the organic flow of characters-unlocking-words that is such a dynamic and compelling feature of this site. I thought this character limit was already built into the word limit, but it is not if priority queue is now functioning as intended.
This can occur if we no longer have any valid words to select. Seeing as you also have a preference for selecting words after you only start characters, thus explains why you had it in the reverse recently We don’t have as many words to pool as you get into the higher levels
Thank you for the background on how you use the site! Ironically enough, I’ve gotten more feedback that suggests the opposite, where the current priority queue is confusing (though to be fair it is)
Still, I do acknowledge the more lax and convenient workflow of character-centric prioritization with ratios, or the separate dictionary queue, with hard limits, and how it lets one truly set and forget. Also it matches more with the philosophy of HanziHero, of learning words alongside characters to cement them.
So I think the solution which makes us all happy here is to provide an explicit option. Thus for those who have a different learning path or have an edgecase where the recommended words get in the way, well, they can turn it off now.
I’ve shipped it, though from the perspective of those who want an absolute queue it’s still incomplete w.r.t. dictionary items. I would like to add that in too, or rework how dictionary items interact with the queue, while still respecting the ratios, but for now this new setting is what we can point to whenever someone wants their priority queue to always come first
@lkbaerenfaenger If you want an absolute priority queue, be sure to navigate to your settings and turn off the “Respect daily limits and lesson order” setting now just added!
This is now updated as well. Thus if you have dictionary items, they’re no longer in a separate queue. The “dictionary limit” is ignored. Everything is now consolidated under the same Daily Lessons queue if you disable the above option let me know if something seems amiss!
everything in your Priority Queue should come first before we default to our selection algorithm.
let me know if something seems amiss!