It was really hard to come up with a simple title for this question. Anyway, here's the story:

I started using Skritter over a year ago, but never really used it actively. I recently came back and wanted to rehearse all the kanji I ever studied (some of them I already added in Skritter when I first started).

Soon I started to wonder why some words never show up. So I located these words from my lists and they are marked to next show up in 3, 4, 6 or _9_ years! They are simple words which I guess I always got right but several years is too extreme.

Is there anything I could do to not get the repetition times so long? I found this information from another topic: "One thing I do is never mark a word right the first time I see it, even if I know it. If you do, it will put the word on a fast-track and after just a few correct answers in a row it will quickly get pushed back several months or even years, and you will probably forget it before then. Marking it as so-so the first time you see it will keep this from happening." I wasn't aware of this so I guess this is why it's happening.

you last time used it a year ago?
no wonder!

Might be a good idea to just nuke all your words/progress and start all over again.

Thank you for the tips, I'll try a fresh start.

learninglife - so having a break makes the time in-between get longer and longer? I assumed everything would be on the queue because I haven't been practising them. I guess I need to educate myself more on how SRS's work.

One more question:
Should I make a habit of marking any new words so-so first, as suggested above (quoted on my first message)?

If you do single-section study for each of the sections in your lists, it'll do the SRS much less and focus more on words you haven't seen in a while, so you could go through all those sections and get a complete run-through that way. (This would be for the web version, not the iOS version.)

There's some more info about how the scheduling works here:

http://www.skritter.com/faq#scheduling

I would only mark the new words so-so if I actually wanted to see them again. The reason it pushes them out so quickly if you always get them right is that you don't need to spend much time telling Skritter what you already know. But if you do want to practice every word, then marking so-so on first review is a good strategy.

Nick
Would if be possible to create some customized controls for the SRS. For example:
1. Max time for repetition
2. Treat new characters that are marked as known as so so for the first # times.
3. Get correct # times in a row before increasing the SRS time.
4. Allow manual decrease in time for review for individual characters and words.

1. Possible, but not a worthwhile option.
2. Possible, but probably not a worthwhile option.
3. Possible, but not a worthwhile option.
4. Like in the word popup or something? This one we want to do eventually.

4. How about using the 'star' to control this? (ie. Starred words increase time between reviews at a slower rate).

People tend to use the stars for different things, so I'm not sure that would fit with how people have been treating the stars so far. That particular way of doing it would also be complicated, since the starring information isn't currently present during scheduling.

Nick
I was thinking it would be nice if that info was shown in the lists we are studying. It would also be nice if I could go into My Words and be able to click somewhere to have it show the ones due last at the top of the My Words list.

As a side note I would also prefer it if instead of having to click next if I could just scroll down and have skritter automatically add more words as I scroll.

I would like to be able to change the time for review by clicking on it. I don't like popups so much. I would rather have a drop down box or better yet remake the layout for mobile and have the area expand to show more options. Both ways would make making changes on mobile easier than with a popup. By the way I was sad to hear 1-3 weren't worthwhile.

Best of luck to you.