Just a general curiosity: How does Skritter count characters/words in regards to simplified and traditional? E.g, does learning 练习 and 練習 count as one words and two characters, or two words and four characters? Apologies if this information is available on the site.

Yes, that's a good question. It would be great if separate statistics were available.

Two words and four characters. We actually used to show separate numbers for traditional and simplified, but we culled that info from the progress page a while ago for the sake of simplicity. That information is still kept internally, though, so we could show it on the progress page.

The 2 stats that I'd like to know is how many characters I know if you don't count the traditional variations, or how many characters I know if you don't count character simplifications, the former being more important than the latter.

I'm not very interested in the current total characters stat right now because trivial simplifications like 財 to 财 are counted as being separate characters.

Have added that on my list of things to do.

Will post back here when it's up!