I've put weeks of effort on the post and months on the project. I think it's worthy of being in HN and the votes so far seem to imply the same. I have been improving the title and posting at the time period HN allows. It's not a repost in the sense that it hasn't gained any attention. It just hasn't reached a critical enough mass. What does it mean to you? If you think the post is just not high quality perhaps you can comment on that, rather than the number of times it has been posted.
Lots of us put weeks/months into our projects. As somebody who's definitely had their fair share of "Show HN"s be swallowed into the murky depths, take the "L" and just give it a few weeks before reposting again.
Now onto some feedback:
**** What I like ****
The article is well-written and I really appreciate the candid nature of the journey to see this project through to the finish line.
**** What I don't like ****
There's literally dozens of JLPT flashcard sets (online and physical).
It's a bit hard for me to understand the point of the physical card aspect of this kickstarter. It pushes SRS/Leitner/etc - but I can't even fathom anyone trying to organize and set this up with physical cards.
The "no silly mnemonics" feels like a solution in search of a problem. Most of the flashcards that I've used for Chinese and Japanese had no such thing on them.
**** Questions ****
Did you work with a native Japanese speaker to vet your cards?
How can I rely on your expertise as a non-native speaker? Did you major in Japanese? What level of the JLPT have you passed?
I see no mention of 部首, are you incorporating radicals into the learning process?
**** Constructive ****
If it were a work of art, such that I could display the cards decoratively then I think I might be more inclined to invest. For example, if you'd gotten a Japanese calligrapher to do the kanji.
Thanks vunderba, that's a good point about the time and that's a better comment than the parent one.
The mnemonics really were the main feature driving me away from existing resources and to make my own.
On the questions: I am not an expert, but I didn't make anything up. All data is picked from dictionaries like JMDict/jisho.org. The layout and choosing which information to display how I found best was according to my studies.
On 部首: They're highlighted for each Kanji (back side) and annotated on the bottom right in the full form, but there are no individual cards for radicals.
All in all, the deck features and what makes it different is better described by the guide that I link in the post (which, while interesting, is better suited for the audience which cares about Kanji).
The post itself focused on the building and business part which I think is well-suited for the HN crowd.
Np. Thanks for the details. And FWIW I might just not be the target demograph for the product, but it does seem like you have an audience for it because the Kickstarter is gaining support~~
I am under the impression that this is fine considering none of them have gotten any attention at all. I'm confident that this is material Hackers will find interesting, so I'm not giving up at the first try.
Over longer time periods that's true. Over spans of several days, Many repostings of the same personal project is not consistent with the spirit of HN because self-promotion is not the primary intended use and is not intellectually curious.
Despite it being an advertisement of something I've done -- in the Show HN sense -- there are many features which distinguish it from other existing resources. For instance:
- Highlighting the Kangxi radical really helps with visually breaking apart the components of each character, and often serves as a hint for the meaning
- Include the meanings for the kun'yomi readings trailed by okurigana, most often verbs and adjectives, which can be easily conjugated according to included cheatsheet
- Always try to use compound examples which only use Kanji seen before according to the order (and, within the same JLPT level, we also topologically sort the Kanji s.t. components appear before Kanji they are part of)
- An etymological classification which hints towards the origin of the character, and, in the digital version, includes a link to the corresponding wiktionary page which often has an explanation. Broadly:
* Pictographic, a Kanji whose origins lay in "drawings"
* (Compound) Ideographic, where the Kanji represents an idea or forms a new idea resulting from the meanings of its components
* Phonetic, where one component (typically the radical) gives a semantic to the character, and another component gives the phonetic family of the character. Essentially the semantic comes broadly from the semantic component and then multiplexes on the component which provides the sound...
On white rabbit specifically:
- We do the traditional flashcard style, where no information at all is given from the back
- We include card markers for physical spaced repetition ala Leitner Box style
- Afer going through the physical cards, eventually up to N3, students have access to the full digital Anki deck to continue studying through all the Joyo with a better scheduler (Anki's FSRS).
Of course, that's where we stand on the design space. A key differing point is mnemonics, which are very common in these resources, but that we purposefully do not use (in fact, this deck was first born out of the frustration with existing mnemonic-based resources, as they typically are disconnected from any real etymological reason, or from the character at hand).
Thanks for this extensive response. I respect what you created there, my comment was not supposed to talk down your creation!
As I already said, they look great! Wish you all the best and lots of success, I mean it.
Edit: maybe add this explanation about what makes your product so special to your site. I mean this extensive explanation (or did I overlook it there?). I am not sure whether it is a good idea to refer to competing products though, this is a question for marketing persons.
Edit2: also, you are absolutely right, this is a show HN post. I should not have made that part of the comment. I apologise.
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