The 100% learned issue, and suggested solutions

[LuciusVorenusX]

@mike

The gist is that the 100% Mastered review interval will continue to grow for a given sentence each time you answer it correctly, and at any point you can still reset a sentence back down to 0% Mastered (or back to 25/50/75% by editing the sentence after answering).

No, no a thousand times NO! Have this for the people who want it; it’s fine to have it as an option, I have no objection to that whatsoever. However what works for me is repetition and plenty of it. The idea of having words reappear a year or two from now is absolutely NOT something that I want to see happen for me. True, the initial review cycles are in my control, and they are WAY, WAY shorter than the default cycles, but if I say 30 days, I don’t want the system deciding “Oh, you got that one right so we’ll make it 45 days (even though you wanted to see it again within 30), now we’ll make it 60 days, etc, etc”. Nor do I want to have to reset the question to 0% mastered and have it mixed in with the ones that I genuinely haven’t seen.

I understand that some people want to see longer repetition times and as I say, as an option I’m fine with that. But I have no interest at all in having my Closemaster exercises stretched out for years.

[blogscot]

Currently, learners can configure their review intervals for 0% 25% 50% 75% and 100% mastered. Could a similar method of configuring Hard, Normal, and Easy settings be developed to allow learners to choose their preferred ratios which would apply to each setting, i.e. I’d choose 0.25, 1 and 2. Others might choose 1.5, 2 2.5. To prevent gaming the system I’d suggest any ratio less than 1 gets its score set back to zero.

[kadrian]

@blogscot

Could a similar method of configuring Hard, Normal, and Easy settings be developed to allow learners to choose their preferred ratios which would apply to each setting, i.e. I’d choose 0.25, 1 and 2. Others might choose 1.5, 2 2.5.

If it wouldn’t be too hard to implement and explain, this might suit lots of people. I’d love to push the review interval for easy sentences WAY out, to 10 or 20 times the interval for “normal” sentences, so playing reviews would be a more effective use of time once you’re very familiar with the easier material.

Another solution for this would be to ignore those sentences permanently, but I often don’t use that feature because I find the “sentences played” count motivating. Would it be possible to keep ignored sentences in our statistics?

[LuciusVorenusX]

@kadrian

If it wouldn’t be too hard to implement and explain, this might suit lots of people. I’d love to push the review interval for easy sentences WAY out, to 10 or 20 times the interval for “normal” sentences, so playing reviews would be a more effective use of time once you’re very familiar with the easier material.

I think that’s a really good idea. There aren’t a LOT of sentences that I would use it on because in Italian Fluency Fast Track has over 11,000 sentences, so even with my relatively short review cycle and doing at present a few hundred sentences per day, it takes quite some time for the most basic sentences to reappear. Even those I don’t REALLY regard as a waste of time because as long as I’m hearing the language and writing in the language (with NO ENGLISH, thankfully!) then I’m happy because everything is being reinforced. But pushing the most basic of basic ones out would probably mean clearing the way for some of the more complex ones.

[Ilraon]

Firstly, thank you Mike (and whoever’s working with you) for trying to deliver a nice experience to your users. I believe we all highly appreciate your taking the time to discuss improvements with the community.

Now, onto my small thoughts.
I am not convinced by the user experience regarding the “hard” button. If seems to me incompatible with the fact the sentence is 100% mastered. Intuitively, if I find a sentence to be hard, I don’t want to review it in over 180 days; I can be sure I’ll have forgotten by then. In my opinion, two buttons would be enough.

Additionaly - and that’s a separate thought, it seems to me that users are essentialy eager to have two things: 1) keep the review time more or less normal ; or 2) push the review way further in time when it feels like reviewing the sentence is a waste of time.
So, maybe pushing the “normal” button shouldn’t change the interval, and pushing the “easy” button should multiply it by whatever factor, possibly 2 by default?

You mentioned setting the multipliying factors for those two could appear in settings, and that’s one way to settle the decision. This would allow the configuration I just described, by choosing “1” for normal. Pressing enter would by default press “normal”, and people like @Ceid (whose post I think made several good points), could keep studying the way they want to.

As a sidenote - fairly unrelated, if you’ve completely played a collection, and you play it anyway, you’ll review words even though they’re not ‘ready’.
I’ve never used that myself, but I think I might when I feel like forcingly reviewing a collection at a random time, even though its review pile hasn’t stacked up.

I like the idea of the interval increasing, since it can really get out of proportions with the daily number of reviews. I personally find almost humoristical that the review times might be larger than a year - it seems to me unlikely that I’d even be using clozemaster on the same collections at that point, but based on the fact some people are really long-time, loyal users, it seems to be relevant.

[mike]

@LuciusVorenusX

Closemaster

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Thanks for all the additional feedback! Given the poll results and all the feedback, this feature is now opt-in:

You should be able to go to your Dashboard > Review Settings top right, and then select how you’d like to handle correctly answered 100% Mastered sentences - dynamically always increasing next review, static 0.5/1/2x your 100% Mastered review interval, or the default / way it was originally which always uses your 100% Mastered review interval setting. While we can’t please everyone all the time, making this feature opt-in seemed like as cloze as we could get to a win-win-win

@blogscot

Could a similar method of configuring Hard, Normal, and Easy settings be developed to allow learners to choose their preferred ratios which would apply to each setting, i.e. I’d choose 0.25, 1 and 2.

Good idea! We may be able to add this in the future. Will also have to give some more consideration to points like you mentioned.

Any other thoughts or feedback please be sure to let us know. Thanks again!

[jamesp999]

thanks so much for finding a way to provide a balance of user experiences to please everyone.

[LuciusVorenusX]

@mike

@LuciusVorenusX

Closemaster

Oh Mike, Mike, Mike… the S is diagonally adjacent to the Z key and after doing several hundred exercises that day that particular tyop could have just as easily have ended up being Cloxemaster or Cloaemaster given that the Z is a key that my fingers seldom have reason to visit as its Scrabble score can attest. Actually now that I think of it, it could easily have ended up as “Vkixwnsdywt” by that time of night. You’ll note that I use the word “Cloze” correctly in every other post! (As far as I can recall.)

Thanks for making this opt in. That should make everyone happy.

[Mupfel]

Mike, thanks a lot!
I really enjoy increasing intervalls, but it’s also great to have the options.

One question: what happens in the app? On the website I set the option to increasing, will the intervalls on the app be also increasing now?

[AlexG71]

Thanks Mike!

Hopefully this will please as many people as possible.

One small point to mention … since the changes made for the 3 options, the shortcut keys don’t seem to work for the first two options i.e. 1 for Hard, 2 For Normal, 3 for Easy aren’t working. Also the normal ‘default’ shortcut of ‘enter’ is also not working.

At moment I either have to tab to the options, or mouse click.

Can you take a look when you’ve got a second? Thanks!

[mike]

@Tarob

One question: what happens in the app? On the website I set the option to increasing, will the intervalls on the app be also increasing now?

For now already 100% Mastered sentences answered correctly in the app will still always use your 100% Mastered review interval setting. We’ll aim to get the review setting and Easy/Normal/Hard controls added in the next update to the app. Giving it a bit more time to see if we get any further feedback - updating the website is faster/easier than the app

@AlexG71

shortcut keys don’t seem to work for the first two options i.e. 1 for Hard, 2 For Normal, 3 for Easy aren’t working. Also the normal ‘default’ shortcut of ‘enter’ is also not working.

This should now be fixed - thanks for letting us know! And please let us know of course if you’re still seeing the issue or notice any others.

[LessPaul]

Am I correct in my understanding?

"Use Hard/Normal/Easy buttons after answering to set next review to 50/100/200% of 100% Mastered review interval" setting always calculates from the 100% master days setting.
Example: Assume my 100% is set to 100 days. No matter how many times I answer the question, when I press 3, it will be scheduled 200 days from today.

"Use an always increasing next review interval with Hard/Normal/Easy buttons after answering to modify the rate of increase" setting will continue to lengthen the existing interval.
So the new interval will be longer than the current interval every time I select 1, 2, or 3.

[jamesp999]

if i hit enter twice is the default easy for the 50/100/200 option?

[Koeppchen]

I reverted to the old method because the gui changes between (0% ,25% and 75%) and (100%) are confusing and the shortcut keys 1 2 3 get mixed up in my head with the keys 1 2 3 and 4 for answering in multiple choice.
On the other hand i would love the always increasing invervals, because they make sense.

[mike]

@LessPaul

setting always calculates from the 100% master days setting.
Example: Assume my 100% is set to 100 days. No matter how many times I answer the question, when I press 3, it will be scheduled 200 days from today.

Correct!

@LessPaul

setting will continue to lengthen the existing interval.
So the new interval will be longer than the current interval every time I select 1, 2, or 3.

Also correct!

@jamesp999

if i hit enter twice is the default easy for the 50/100/200 option?

Default should be the 100 option, or in other words 1x your 100% Mastered review interval setting.

@Koeppchen

On the other hand i would love the always increasing invervals, because they make sense.

Good points! Perhaps we can add an option where it still only shows the Next button but is always increasing by some multiple, say 1.2x.

[Koeppchen]

Yes, this would make sense.
I tested a little bit more and what happens is when i use endless review when i press next, the next interval is first increased by the “normal” Interval. The increased interval in only in the next step. and can not be set when using the “end round” button.
If i want a shorter interval i sometimes use a wrong answer to reset the invterval instead of typing the correct number and then using r, Enter because this is easier to handle mentally and on the keyboard.

[simias]

I’m a new ClozeMaster user (I don’t even have a single 100% entry yet!) but I want to say that I’m super happy that it supports this feature. I’m a long time user of Memrise and the fact that review intervals max out at about 180days there makes it really frustrating to use when you start having a few thousand words in your rotation. I don’t want to review “animal”, “me” and “daughter” every 180 days! And manually ignoring them is annoying and feels like a workaround more than a true feature.

I do find the default repetition intervals a bit steep in ClozeMaster though. Especially the 75%->30days to 100%->180days. I’m going to give it a try though, maybe I’ll end up liking them. And at least here I can reconfigure them if I don’t!

[Floria7]

Simias, welcome. I’m fairly new too and still learning how to use Cloze, and this discussion has been really helpful. I’m going to test everything, find what suits me and learn loads. To have Mike reply and advise is a real bonus. As an ex Duo person, I’m already hooked on all that Cloze offers! Happy learning to you.

[morbrorper]

@mike

We’ll aim to get the review setting and Easy/Normal/Hard controls added in the next update to the app.

It looks like this didn’t make it into version 2.6.8, as far as I can see.

[Floria7]

@LuciusVorenusX - I’m interested to know how you’ve set your 100% mastered as I’m a bit unsure tho tis probably personal preference. Auguri.