Whenever a new word shows up, it always goes to writing first, and (if you auto add each character), then the character definitions come up.

I'd like the option to reverse this so that I see the full word definition first, and the writing of the individual characters.
Only problem is that the characters are shown when you do the full word, so the character writing should be shown before the word definition.

(I'd guess this is a iPhone side code change, not a server change, so I won't expect to see soon...)

This has come up a couple times before. It seems like it would come in handy for a few people to be able to change the order of part introduction, but that almost all people are happy with the default ordering of writing first.

We try to avoid adding extra options if they won't be used by many users, because options are expensive in terms of time building them, time maintaining them, and complexity of understanding options for users.

It would be cool if, you have the option to add characters from words on, then the characters get added before the word they are used in. Is the any pedagogical reason this couldn't be the default, inatead of an option?

We'd just make whichever method was more popular into the default. More opinions are welcome.

In my opinion random order would be best :)

Does marking a word as 'known' affect the individual characters? If so the word coming first might be better if you already know the word. I agree having the characters first would be better if you don't know the word.

Personally I switched off the "add characters" option- I am not interested in trying to learn the (sometimes abstract and confusing and often multiple) meanings of individual characters if do not have useful meanings as words in their own right. I am trying to ban any that I notice in my words list- wish I could delete them all together- I might automate this at some point. Part of my reason for creating those cool HSK graphs was to do with this issue.

Yes, marking the word correct also marks the characters as correct, except for definition prompts.

Nick, is there a quick way to mark a word wrong without writing the characters? I often know how to write the characters but can't remember the word.

On the web app, currently, you'd have to write the last character, mark it right, and then mark the word wrong using the word-level grading indicators in the prompt.

Later I plan to do what I did in the iOS app: have it automatically not submit wrong reviews for characters that Skritter thinks you know really well when Skritter thinks you don't know the word very well, because most of the time when that happens, it's just as you describe: forgot which character it was in this word, not forgot how to write that character. So you wouldn't have to do any manual correction at all.

I would like to put a vote in for characters before the whole word I like to build my words and mnemonics from the bottom up and have trouble when a new word comes in and I don't know the components first.