V2 flash card question

I just loaded up version 2 on windows mobile. It's not intuitive to me in this version how to do the flashcards under a "pass fail" system. What I want to do is go through a set of flashcards, and the ones I answer correctly go into one pile, and the incorrect ones go into another pile. Then the next time I can go through the failed pile, and if answered correctly they are then moved to the passed pile. IN other words, the passed pile is for words I know and review occaisionally. the failed pile I can review more frequently until I have them memorized.

In V1, it was pretty straightforward, but now the V2 process seems to have changed. Any hints would be welcome (and yes, I read the manual but don't get how to do it).

Use the repetition spacing feature in V2. I don't believe that's the default setting for Flashcards, I believe it just defaults to giving you a set number of cards.

Repetition spacing will score cards you get right higher, you can control the aggressiveness of the scoring. The higher the score the less you see the card. If you set the aggressiveness right it should work pretty much like you describe.

mstevens, I have 2.0 flashcards set up roughly like the way you want. You'll need to change some of the default settings.

In the Flashcard->Advanced->General screen, change "Card Selection" to "Fixed".

In the Flashcard->Advanced->Scoring, change the settings to:
Raise by 10 pts after 1 correct in a row
Lower by 10 pts after 1 correct in a row
Min score = 100

In Flashcard->New Flashcard Session->Card Filter, setting Score filter to "100 to 109" will exclude cards with scores 110 and above (i.e. cards you have gotten right at least once).

FIddling with the above settings, you can use the flashcards as I described in this thread for Pleco 1.0: Flashcards Simplified

thanks Gato and Idolse. I think both solutions may be alright once I get the initial list filtered.

Ideally, what I want to do is take the HSK list and filter it into 3 groups:
1. characters I already know 100% (eg, pinyin, translation, how to write)
2. characters I more or less know
3. characters I need to learn

I would review the above on my own schedule. I understand how to do the above in Excel, break into the different groups, export into Pleco. Export out of Pleco when moving from 1 to 2 or 2 to 3, and then keep the master in a .txt or Excel file (which is also good if I ever have to reflash my WM device). Seems like I should be able to do this in Pleco, but from what I understand of the flashcards, I would have to go through the 4000 or so HSK entries a couple of times. Any suggestions on how to do this in Pleco efficiently?

Is it just me or is the V2 flashcard functionality waaaaay over engineered? I read through the manual, my brain hurts and I still don't understand different scenario usages???

Yes, I think the flashcard interface can be much simplified. Maybe something to shoot for in version 2.1.

The problem with simplifying it too much is that we end up taking out a lot of features that people like - we've tried to design it in such a way that you don't have to deal with the extra features if you don't want to (you can ignore the Advanced screen, Profiles, and Scorefiles altogether and still have a perfectly useful flashcard system), but taking them out altogether is just going to leave us with a lot of disappointed/angry users; name any feature / checkbox in that system and I can almost guarantee you that someone will post a message describing how much they use it / like it.

What we're really aiming for is something more like the Microsoft Word approach - Word has an incredibly large number of features, most of which most people never use, but computer novices can get by perfectly well in it because the features they need are given to them right up front. So perhaps we can do a better job of hiding some of the advanced options (though not too good a job, or else people who want to use them won't be able to find them either), but I don't think simplifying them or getting rid of some of them is the way to go.

mikelove - I work for Microsoft so I'm bought in.

I suggest maybe you add some scenario's/examples into the user manual. For example, I listed what I want to do below but I'm not sure how to do it very efficiently in the Pleco flashcard system. A workaround for me is to make up 3 different lists in TXT/Excel, and keep my master list in one of those formats. In other words, update my flashcards by exporting a txt file, adding those exports to the master txt list, then reimporting into Pleco. It's not ideal but at least I understand how to do it that way. Whereas, in Pleco, it's not real intuitive how to do it. That's after I screened 1,000 HSK flashcards and ended up with a bunch with a 90 score and a lot more with a 110 score, and looking at several interations to get to a 3 tiered classification system.

I don't think you need to simplify, just highlight some scenarios for different user profiles since it's not that intuitive for people like me.

BTW, so far V2 works great on my WM6 device (HTC Cruise). I wish we had this when I first started learning Chinese back in the dark ages.

I think the whole flashcard system is pretty intimidating for most users, more so now in 2.0 than it was in 1.0. While I agree that you can't really take away features, I think the biggest problem with the flashcard system right now is that you start with a blank slate, and I don't think the default of a single profile which just shows you twenty cards at a time is what most users want.

I think maybe what might be most useful is a wizard for first time users. I think there are probably a few high level ways that people study. mstevens does it with the flashcard stack method, a lot of other use basic repetition spacing, and I imagine there are a couple other major flavors out there. The way it works today is you have to know what you want, then you need to create 4-7 different profiles for each way you want to test yourself, with a different scorefile for each type of test. That's all pretty intimidating to set up.

If there was a wizard option that could set up all a bunch of profiles for you for each kind of test and the basic scoring/review style that someone wants that might be easier. I realize that there are still some problems that would need to be worked out, like if the wizard created the profile and you wanted to tweak something the wizard didn't cover then you've got to make that across multiple profiles.

I also still like the idea of tying the test type a little tighter to a specific profile and scorefile, and then just naming them Test Modes, which is how I think of profiles in practice. Right now it's pretty easy start using a profile that's been created for a specific type of test like handwriting and accidentally change the test type, which in turn would skew can skew the scores that you meant to keep separate.

mstevens - good idea about adding some example sets of profile settings to the manual. The scores are a bit less intuitive than our old system of "Ranks" but we made the change because an enormous number of people were requesting a more SuperMemo-like system (with a particular mathematical formula for deciding how often a card would show up, rather than just a series of widely-separated boxes) and that seems to be the direction flashcard software in general is going these days.

With regard to your particular problem, it seems like you could do this by simply importing these three separate lists, then for each list, bring up all of the cards in it in Manage Flashcards and use a Batch command to reassign all of those cards a particular score - 100 for cards you need to learn, something like 800 or 1000 for cards you mostly know and something another order of magnitude or so higher for cards you know 100%.

ldolse - a wizard is a possibility, but I'm pretty well set against the idea of tying test types to profiles - for right now they take away some of the other usage scenarios for profiles (category/card-filter-related ones, for example, like a profile just for re-testing cards that you've learned this semester), and in the future it gets even more confusing since we're eventually planning to let you mix multiple test types in a single session. And for people who don't want to have to deal with profiles at all, the test type might be the only thing they change from session to session - you've got your categories lined up for this week's test, but you want to do some tone practice now and some free-answer characters a little later with the same words, so you're probably not changing anything outside of the Test Setup screen.

Simplification may not require taking away any functions, maybe just a different way of presenting them. I'll try to come up some suggestions.