I noticed it feels better after the first interval is completed.

I may have missed something though.

Same here. I simply noticed that I had about 6 imported categories but the cards were being learned not from the first category imported; without the randomized learning setting.

It would be easy to implement a textual report in a plugin if you wanted to.

I may look into it, even just for a weekly outlook.

Anki has been designed to scale to decks of 100,000 cards or more, and such a setting would not be efficient.

I can see the issue of “what” to select when thousands of cards all have the same comparative age. The wrong selecting may take much longer, and may not be worth it. The randomized learning setting does well enough.

Your comments about the documentation are quite fair

Perhaps it is where my confusion came from. One thing that comes to mind is the Mark feature, which I was unable to see where I could look at marked cards other than in the Edit All window. I’m more clear after playing with it for a few weeks, but some friends and family installed it after I mentioned SRS and they were a bit confused as well. I think it is less about the exact use and features vs some general guidelines to studying.

Adjusting the original 8-12 hours to something a bit bigger won’t do any harm. Anki should adjust the next interval to suit.

Looking at the Mnemosyne source code, it looks like the default setting will show the cards in the order they’re added, just like Anki. It uses the order the cards are in the deck, not the day they were added. I may have missed something though.

Re textual statistics, most users prefer the graphs. It would be easy to implement a textual report in a plugin if you wanted to.

A setting to compare card age is unlikely - Anki has been designed to scale to decks of 100,000 cards or more, and such a setting would not be efficient.

Your comments about the documentation are quite fair - it is lacking, and is something I plan to fix for 1.0, but the interface is still changing at this point.

Maybe I’m doing it wrong, since I’m only guessing at the proper way to do SRS.

The 8-12 hour interval is on cards I’ve yet to learn. So on Day 1, I implied that those cards were recently moved from New to Failed. By the morning of Day 2, I usually feel comfortable after a few reviews to grade them Hard (the 8-12 hour interval). The result is that these cards reappear that evening when I review, rather than the next morning (which I’d prefer).

As far as the functionality, I believe it works correctly, to these settings, so if I were to review in the evenings, it would show me the next day. Perhaps my timing for learning new cards is off, but for a most cards, I only feel comfortable after keeping them in failed on the first day they appear, and if I start to remember them on the next day, I grade them with an interval (usually happens in the morning).

Reviewing the group of previous days’ failed cards in the morning, then pushing ones I know to an interval, allows new cards to be put in the failed queue in the morning. I review the new cards from morning to evening, and the next morning I usually grade them with an interval (aiming for the next day). If there are no slots available in the failed queue, no new cards will come out [and no scheduled review cards will be reviewed; or so I've observed].

[Maybe 'Failed' should be called 'Learning']

Complaining that you had to change the settings so that Anki shows new cards in random order is unfair. It’s the same default as Mnemosyne.

I’m not sure if the default ordering is the same in Mnemosyne, as I started without the random order setting, and never needed to change that setting. My thought is that Mnemosyne showed new cards in order per category, but it selected cards from multiple categories, regardless if the category’s contents are older than another category.

I noticed that Anki does card level ordering over the whole deck, so if a set of cards are imported into a tag, and another set is inserted to a tag just after, the first tag’s contents will be learned first.

Mnemosyne’s learning was spread evenly over the categories, cards in order, per category.

This may not be entirely true, depending on how Mnemosyne compares card dates. If it uses the DATE, then cards imported anytime during a day will be considered the same age. Anki seems to use the full DATETIME for comparing age. I haven’t looked at the code, but it’s just a hunch.

This would invalidate what I said about Mnemosyne learning evenly over categories, because cards imported at a later day would be learned later.

[Hopefully that made sense]

Many people have reported that new cards spread throughout reviews make the reviews more fun. If you have set a reasonable number of new cards per day, it’s not dangerous.

I would have liked to do it this way, but once the Failed queue is full the reviews will not proceed. Again, could be error in my method.

Reviewing cards in order of oldest first (the default) makes getting rid of the bulk of your reviews easily. This reduces the chances of the number of cards building up to unmanageable levels.

The randomization of review is trickery I enjoy. As long as the review count isn’t over say 250, I personally don’t have an issue with large review sets.

It would be good if you could evaluate those points objectively instead of just being against change.

You’re definitely right about that. I suppose I send mixed signals on both Mnemosyne and Anki with these posts. I can admit being subjective about the change from Mnemosyne to Anki, so here’s some hard things I think would be good:

• Textual statistics which don’t require the graphing library
• A setting which specifies how to compare card age (by second, minute, hour, day)
• Tips/tutorial on the way to study with the default options (I’m guessing that grading failed cards on an interval should happen in the evening)
• Tips on the relation between Failed queue and New (if failed is full, no new cards will be shows, etc)
• Something like Tip of the Day, or a repository of tips/hints (not really that important)

Of course, I’m being unfair ^_^ that the way users work to stimulate thought and more intrigue. I think my personal issues could be cleared up if there was a good tutorial of how to set it up for the way a person wants to review, or some simple insight on the timing.

Even if I have my grumbles with it, Anki is a great and sleek piece of software. I truly appreciate the comments from you, and it shows you are a committed developer, which is just as noteworthy since it shows the software has spirit and more possibilities… Honestly, Mnemosyne is solid and suffices, but it seems to be going Latin [much less possibilities].

The default 8-12 hour intervals were chosen because many people like to review at night and then again the next morning.

As for the failed cards being in order, this ensures that every card you see has been waiting for as long as possible. SuperMemo displays the final drill in order too AFAIK, and Mnemosyne’s approach often ends up showing the same failed card very soon after it was previously seen - and sometimes multiple times in a row.

Anyway, if you’ve made mistakes on the cards, they’re likely to be difficult to remember. I don’t see order as being a big problem here.

As for the graphs, all the information is available in the deck if you want to write a plugin. The majority of people want graphs, not text.

Complaining that you had to change the settings so that Anki shows new cards in random order is unfair. It’s the same default as Mnemosyne.

Many people have reported that new cards spread throughout reviews make the reviews more fun. If you have set a reasonable number of new cards per day, it’s not dangerous.

Reviewing cards in order of oldest first (the default) makes getting rid of the bulk of your reviews easily. This reduces the chances of the number of cards building up to unmanageable levels.

Basically, I think many of the points you raised are simply the fact that Anki doesn’t perform the way you were used to with Mnemosyne. It would be good if you could evaluate those points objectively instead of just being against change. And Anki can be customized fairly easily to behave similarly to Mnemosyne, so attacking the defaults when they work well for other people seems a bit unfair.