Hello,

I've been using Skritter for a few months now and almost exclusively working from my own custom lists. I'm gradually noticing more and more cases where the definitions of certain words aren't exactly the definitions I'm trying to learn, and I'm having to memorise the extra definition myself. Would it be possible to have some sort of 'add another definition' feature, allowing you to tag on an extra definition without modifying the previously-existing entry? Or would that make things too messy?

On another more trivial note, I would personally appreciate a way to jump more quickly to my own custom vocabulary lists, as at the moment it involves navigating through several pages to get to them.

Oh, and another suggestion: it might be an idea to automatically switch off the "select traditional character" input box when the user entering information isn't studying traditional characters. I for one usually have no idea which is the correct variant but am nevertheless forced to choose one, which I guess results in quite a bit of incorrect data swimming around.

Being able to put in your own custom definitions is one of many features we have lined up to add eventually. Hard to give an estimate when it will come around, but it's only a matter of time!

From the practice page you can get to any list you are currently adding from, in case you didn't know. Below the practice area there's a list of active lists, or a double line which you click to open the list of lists. You can click on the name to go directly to that list's page. Other than that, we'll probably be doing a general reorganization of the custom list page and builder at some point in the future, as we've discovered it's quite the source of confusion!

As for adding traditional selection, we need that sort of information in the system otherwise you can't study the simplified or traditional version. We do go over what people put in and make corrections. But it saves us time if the people who do know which version is correct or takes the time to research it have the ability to make the selection.
If in doubt, the first option is most likely, I think. I'm not a studier of Chinese myself, so will have to confer with Nick on how might be a better way to present those options.

I have experienced the above problem, too, and also a similar one:

I entered "电子计算机" and it says "ordinateur electronique", which, from speaking French, I know means "computer". I know there are users from all over the world on Skritter, which is great, but what do I do if I cannot read the definition entered for that vocabulary word and cannot change it?

We edit those, but hadn't gotten to that one yet. It was created 10 days ago, and we're about two weeks behind that--our man Ben, who is helping us with those, has been making a bunch of vocabulary lists instead recently.

You will be able to submit edits to those definitions more easily along with pinyin and definition practice (otherwise definition practice won't work very well!). Until that's ready, just let us know and we'll fix it early.

Magicdave, don't worry about selecting the incorrect traditional variant if you don't know it--we'll catch it. The first one is usually the right one, unless it's the same character as the simplified, where it's not as easy to guess.

I'm so happy to learn that I was not the only one confused by the process of creating a custom list. I am building a list in stages for one of my favorite textbooks, but it has taken me a while to figure out how this works. (What do those arrows mean? I thought the red X meant I had caused some error. Somehow I got my sections out of order and don't know how to fix it, or whether it matters, etc.) Anyway, I am looking forward to finishing the list soon and publishing it. By the way, I think Skritter is great and is going to grow exponentialy. Another challenge is going to be organizing all those user-published lists.

Sorry for the unintuitive custom list builder. We've been doing user testing and that's the place people really have a hard time. We've gotta think long and hard how to make list building easier! Along with many other things.

As for organizing the lists, we've got lots of ideas. We could set up a search engine like we have for the forum. We could create a wiki which people could build and edit to organize lists however seems best. We could do a tagging/category system. We'll probably do some combination. Given how many there are published already, figuring out some organizational tool is getting to be a higher and higher priority.