I am sorry to say that I am still struggling with the issue of the counter not updating correctly. Still the same issue as in 2010...2009... so maybe I don't understand how this counter thing is working. Maybe you should be looking at another way to represent progress during a session. The current situation is very frustrating. Just now I have been practicing trying to get the counter down. Started at 520 and have been doing about 50 characters and tones of which I got around 70% correct, only to find myself with a counter showing 547 items for immediate review. How can this be?

++++ Totally erratic...while I was writing this message the count got down to 487, so about the number I would expect it to be. So why is it shooting up and down like this?++++

I probably need to rewrite the system entirely in order for it to be accurate, as inherent design limitations in the current architecture prevent me from fixing it fully. (I have tried about half a dozen times.)

I wish we didn't need to show the numbers at all, but when we originally had it without numbers, users made it clear they wanted to see them until we had to put them in.

Do you think that the proposed goal mode would solve your problem, where instead of showing how many reviews are due, the progress bar counts down from N without regard to what is due, where N is some number that you pick as a daily target? That would be perfectly accurate in terms of how many reviews you had done.

Hey nick,

I personally like the counter as my goal is to get to 0 items due everyday, so I wouldn't want that to go away for an arbitrary goal I set for myself.

@marchey
A more accurate way I've found for monitoring my progress has been to look at the average "percentage due" number on the items I've been studying. If they're at 230% you know you have a lot of studying to do and can see how slow or fast the numbers go down. My goal is to get to 99% every day.

I agree with josh. If it's an arbitrary number, we wont be studying with the optimum SRS. It might start ok, but as we'd probably be studying too little or too much, we'd be increasingly getting further away from the right number (either doing too much in a day, or too little). That could bite retention.

That some people might not keep up with the amount of reviews, or come back from holiday with too many is side stepping the issue. They either need to add less, study more, have a lower retention target, or in the latter case study feverishly or use the save me tool (which is effectively doing the same thing as you propose -- putting a certain number of items on each day).

The current system is fine, it's just the count down bar could do with being accurate.

The goal mode would be for when you have a large review queue, mostly, and it would be optional. It seems like erratic jumping of the review bar is mostly a problem at higher review counts, whereas slight inaccuracies / stuck bars is what happens closer to 0.

@josh.. How do you handle the addition of new items? It's easy to add a few too many items (either on purpose or not) and end up with a queue that's way the heck out of control. Once this happens, you're on a two or three week catch-up schedule, and I hate that!

I've been skrittering for more than a year now, and I still haven't found a sound mechanism for adding new items without losing control. I hope you'll share yours!

jcdoss: stop practising for the day once a certain number of new items have been added? If that many new items have been added, you're due items will be close to 0 anyway.