Better Kanji depth

[Squallman]

Kanji is a huge obstacle to overcome in learning Japanese, but jpod101.com seems to be pushing to learn them quickly. Not that I'm against that; I really want to learn the kanji, but I don't think the current way it's set up is very effective for learning. Each kanji is given a tiny row of information and that's it. The kanji itself is too small to really understand how it's written or if there are smaller elements that help make the character have logical meaning. I think that each kanji needs its own page.

I know, I know. You just got done totally renovating the site and making a page for each of the 2000+ characters would get tedious really fast, but I think we should allow the users to submit content as well. For example, there could be a mnemonics section where users can submit how they remember kanji. I have found that sometimes it's something as simple as noticing characters within characters or making up a story to be able to remember the kanji forever.

Other features would ideally be stroke order, all the readings as well as examples where the kanji is used in compounds or sentences (these could also be user-submittable). Perhaps show what the kanji looks like when it's handwritten, or find pictures where it's used in real life signs in Tokyo (also user submittable). This would help users draw the connection between theory and reality by seeing the character in real life. There should also be a part that tells you what grade children learn this kanji in, on which JLPT level this kanji is on and so forth. I have a few more ideas, but I'd like to hear what people think about this idea first. Remember, making them user-submittable would make the pages a lot more easy to make, as well as more rich in information. I, personally, would be interested in helping with this project if you decide to persue it. Just let me know!

[davidhallgren]

Very good ideas and suggestions and I totally agree. Many of the things you mentioned will hopefully start appearing here soon. Allowing for users to add content in some areas is a very interesting idea and I hope we can realize that as well. Thanks again for excellent suggestions.