But, have you contacted them yet? 
1 Like
You know exactly who I have and haven’t contacted
1 Like
At the risk of gettting of getting myself in trouble here, I want to float some of the things that this claim makes me think about.
-
To what extent are the content creators here creating their own content versus modifying content that others have created? If a deck has origins in content that was authored by another entitity is the deck in compliance with the express and implied rights of those entities? For instance if the deck was partly based on content of an Anki deck and then modified, to what extent does Kitsun.io get involved to ensure the rights of the original content creators are not infringed.
-
What is the basis for the claim of “more than any other SRS platform?” Which platforms exactly because there are a lot? Anki, Memrise? Anyone who has dug around trying to figure out which (of several similair decks) to use from Anki Web may have seen there can be a lot of strife in the Anki community stemming from one user modifying the work of another and then posting the modified deck without attribution. Did Anki not care enough to get involved there? Does Kitsun caring more imply that the situation would pan out differently?
-
Could we say that the Kitsun platform has been shaped by elements of other SRS platforms like Anki which are available for free, open source, and allow users to freely modify and manage their own study materials. Also, doesn’t it seem like the current user base is based on the community of another competing SRS platform, WaniKani? Could we suggest that elements of Kitsun and to some extent the decks hosted on Kitsun are present in the WaniKani platform? I have always thought WK was being fair to creators of Kitsun in that respect because not every organization would permit others to build and promote what could be considered a competing platform within its own. To that extent couldn’t we suggest that WK seems to care about the creators of and on the Kitsun platform? Would Kitsun similarly allow what could be considered a competing platform to be developed in its community forum?
-
If Kitsun were to operate as a free platform I think the above questions would have a lot less merit, but it’s not. And unlike Anki in particular its users will not have the same ability to manage the content they are paying for. It is not my opinion that Kitsun should operate as a free platform. However, as a paid platform, wouldn’t we say that the bar is higher? Do we think that paying users of the Kitsun platform have a right to know that the content they are paying to access is in compliance with the rights of all constituents for any material that is not part of public domain?
-
The claim that content creators work hard is one that I agree with. The claim that content creators should be rewarded is a gray area to me. If someone develops and publishes a resource I think their intellectual property rights should be respected. Beyond that, I think there’s room to say that everyone should manage their expectations appropriately. I mean, being rewarded, which is distinct from compensation, is not something that is reasonable to expect in general, right? It’s great when it happens, but you’re setting yourself up for disappointment and arguably a bit naive if you are doing free work with the expectation of future reward.
2 Likes
Having a proper discussion is never a bad thing, don’t worry.
-
So far we have a mix of content. Some comes from anki decks (ex: 10k), some comes from creators (either from wordlists or actually manually creating cards while consuming content).
As you state, it’s a very gray area. E.g. I would not allow sharing WK’s content on Kitsun whereas I wouldn’t mind if it’s a genki deck (because it’s a wordlist, which is not the basis of the whole genki package). -
I do not wish to moderate decks in general, however, when we are talking about paid decks, there must be some moderation. If someone extracts the content of a deck and reuploads it with a lower price, then that wouldn’t be fair. I think that having a report system and going case by case would work there.
-
The Kitsun platform has definitely been influenced greatly by other SRS platforms.
The current userbase is 90% WK users, the reason for that is that the WK forums is the only website I’ve posted on about Kitsun so far. This will soon change since Kitsun is nearly at a state that I feel confident enough to post elsewhere and to launch it in general.
As for competing with WK: In my opinion Kitsun does not compete with them. WK’s main selling point is the content that they bring, not the actual system (imo). That content will not be available on Kitsun. WK has been very friendly and supportive of this project and I plan to keep it that way
-
How would you want to raise the bar exactly? I don’t mean this in a sarcastic way btw!
-
I agree with your comments here. But I do think that content creators should be rewarded if they invest a lot of time in creating content and they personally want to be rewarded for it. Expecting to be rewarded is something else though. But eventually this would be up to the buyer to decide whether or not the effort so far would be worth the money that’s being asked for the deck.
So yeah, just my quick view on this. I think you bring some very valid arguments to the discussion
2 Likes
Good point
Moderation for example, which you addressed
The other aspect is related to content editing rights, but tangent to the questions I have raised so far in this topic. I’m not seeking for you to concede or justify your stance, I don’t envy having to juggle everyone’s demands and I already believe you are more than fair in that regard. So what follows can just be taken as a monologue, if I really feel like I want you to address a particular point, I’ll do that in a later reply as needed.
As a user of a community deck, I think I should have all the editing capabilities for that deck as the original author. There’s two sides to that coin, for sure. Some users are better off staying downstream of the author and picking up on their mods. Other users however are better branching off, losing access to future improvements by the author and editing the deck as they see fit.
For myself, I desire less control over the content (let’s say the values of the fields and the notes/cards themselves) but I want full control over the presentation style. To me, most of the content is authored by folks that are clearly more expert than I am with the language, I want them to call the shots there. When it comes to style and formatting they are not experts, and sometimes they fall into the common trap of going overboard when given the opportunity. I think it would be unreasonable of me to expect them to be experts in that area.
Also the language experts tend to include some features that are useful to users with more language proficiency, but are just clutter and distraction for the less experienced. I’m not ready for a 和＞和 dictionary yet.
I have taken as shot at it, but I’m no longer interested in trying to explain interface design principles to a content author. Twelve buttons going across the screen might be someone’s idea of utility, but to someone else it’s UX hell. Nor do I think content authors should have to juggle those concerns. It’s frustratingly difficult to praise someone on one hand for all the great work they’ve put into the deck and at the same time say the formatting needs major changes. I just want to say thanks for the fantastic content and go on applying whatever presentation changes I see fit and leave it at that.
On Kitsun, if I want to tweak the way one side of the card looks, I should have as much control over that as the original author of the deck. For myself, I think Anki is a little clunky, but the actual experience while studying is fine, and I can tweak it to my needs. But Anki is seemingly infamous for more than just its interface. As a developer and someone who reads patch notes, I got a strong impression of how bad Anki syncing could wreck your day, and I am very careful and deliberate about how I sync on the occasions that I need to.
So to me I see Kitsun with a brighter future in terms of content, but considering how much backlogged Anki content I have, if I had to decide today, I wouldn’t pay to access what I consider to be roughly the same decks that I’m using. The part of me that would be willing to pay so that I wouldn’t have to deal with platform migration, is overshadowed by the part of me that prefers to manage my own versions of notes/templates/layouts to suit my changing needs.
I hear you loud and clear, and I think that’s a good direction
2 Likes
The main point I wanted to make was that it should be possible that something you created will be paid later. As you can see on the internet people are not willing to pay for stuff they want and know operator is having a loss. I don’t think that reuploads from Anki or “I’ve extracted 10000 words from jmdict” would make lots of money. A way to make sure is to allow only original content, at least you should have to demonstrate that you created it.
But I think that there are lots of decks not in existence because people don’t want to run their own web shop for the 500¥ or whatever deck they might have, what would be bought in an App Store without a second thought, but not really the “let’s create an account with payment details on another website where I can make monthly payments that I will have to cancel soon because I actually just want to cover the ¥500”
It’s also worth discussing if you need to be able to edit everything. Once you pay you are more entitled to request improvements. You should spend time learning and not playing with CSS or whatever (what the majority of users won’t do anyway).
1 Like
As for editing layouts of community decks. Private link sharing which would allow for a full personal copy is still in the planning. That way you get the whole deck. Perhaps you would be able to discuss this with the author before buying, or it could be a more expensive option?
Like… pay x to use the deck, pay y to have complete control of the deck. That way the author can decide whether they want to give control over their content or not.
Although. Perhaps a feature which would allow for personal layouts wouldnt be so bad either:
- Personal Layout X replaces Community Layout X in this deck
Would this solve it for you or would you still prefer complete control ala the previously mentioned personal deck copy?
3 Likes
i think the whole paid deck idea is pretty bogus. best use case i can imagine is people using it as a front end for selling their saucy self portraits or tips on “how to become a millionaire” or other similar nonsense.
I don’t think it’s nonsense, as long as the decks have quality. People are already selling decks through methods like Patreon. It works because they actually have quality. If you think of Wanikani, it’s just a deck with quite some high quality.
At the end of the day, the market will decide: the poor quality decks wouldn’t sell.
However, having decks integrated on Kitsun would help creators protect their work without having to build a whole platform around it (like the Tofugu company did with Wanikani). I think it’s a very valid idea for the future, once Kitsun grows more into the mainstream.
2 Likes
is the kitsun interface basically a clone of wanikani or is wanikani a clone of something that came before?
I posted a question about something similar. I just want to be able to twick layouts, not decks, after copying them. It’s fine if you make people pay the layouts and the decks but I it’ll be really nice if we could at least change the background colour of cards and add or remove fields on layouts that we copied privately. At least for the basic kitsun layouts. Then have some premium ones maybee ?
I get the part where releasing your own twick to the community can be tricky. Not my intention. Just want a quick way to make decks for myself and not lose too much time on making layouts from scratch just for one little twick like colour or field.
What does the fox god say ?
1 Like
Please take a look at my reply, I believe it answers your questions:
1 Like
Apologies if this has already been discussed but I’d love to see Kitsun to have publisher agreements that would be mutually beneficial to all parties. For instance, I would like a product key that would allow me to upload a publisher developed (or financially backed) SRS deck if I purchase a vocab book such as below (hardcopy or not).
The consumer incentive is obvious but in addition I’d rather have trusted high quality deck w/ example sentences using all of Kitsun’s great features rather than some unknown circulated Unki deck or having to build it myself. For publishers such as SM with various translations, it’s a more technological business angle to attract language learner customers and an element they haven’t lost to the blackmarket already given what is available. For Kitsun, it would build subscribers (international +) and have financial agreements for deck security protection and/or development assuming that is possible.
Of course this is a thinking-out-loud fantasy with little logistical considerations as I’m trying to widen my vocabulary pallet. 
2 Likes
Related to that, it would be interesting to have parsed decks (a vocabulary list) of books and have them in the system you’re mentioning.
I would love to see that as a long-term goal, but I do feel like now Kitsun isn’t big enough to have that much influence on publishers 
4 Likes
I agree, but they could start small with pilot programs to test the waters to ‘prove’ themselves and provide initial 3rd party benefits.
But I think Kitsun has leverage even right now beyond having a superior SRS interface. These publishers has zero application presence in a world of Duolingo or Memrise (not that I like them, they just seem popular) and they are constantly blackmarketed. Not sure the growth projection of WK or BP, but I imagine it’s been pretty positive (perhaps they would be friendly enough to share basic projections to help Kitsun). Lastly, 99% of 0 is still 0…in other words, people are going to extract custom decks from their materials whether publishers like it or not. They have far more benefits playing along as there are plenty of workarounds to pirating their material within reasonable grounds. Bottomline for users IMHO, I want high quality decks and willing to pay extra for it. In the long, if someone has access to an art dept or voice actors, you may have something unique in the longterm.
On a side note, I see a ton of potential for a Kitsun JP site for English learners. Talking with my small circle, I don’t see Japanese natives having an SRS platform for their studies. I would promote this in a heartbeat to whoever I knew. Given you know Japanese already, you seem well equipped (perhaps reverse deck creation is scriptable?). At the very least, we could all use the extra practice switching to JP if we are the only users 
.
I have many more ideas that are questionably helpful to Kitsun but I’m sure Neicudi has a vision already.
2 Likes
Thank you for giving your detailed thoughts on this matter! Much appreciated 
I’ll give some quick thoughts as I’m currently away on vacation 
I agree that there is a lot of potential in getting “official textbook companion decks” or something similar on Kitsun. It would probably be a win-win situation for both Kitsun and the publishers (as it wouldnt be blackmarketed anymore and they can curate the content).
However, I believe that a lot of textbooks already have their own (paid) companion apps (e.g. Genki). I also think that Kitsun right now is way too small to get into talks with said publishers, but that this might change in the future
Introducing something like paid decks at the moment would be counter effective to the health of Kitsun, but could be interesting in the future
Internationalization of Kitsun is also something I’d like to introduce at some point. Probably through community efforts (letting users suggest translations)
3 Likes
I’m coming over from Wanikani in search of an SRS platform to help me pick up Korean vocab. One idea I was thinking of…some people are already scared of the first paywall. Especially when this website doesn’t have much content up. How about allowing creators to earn credit based on their decks, which they can use pay off/reduce some of their subscription. This won’t be a long-term thing, but in order to generate content, attract users and promote community/trade, it might work well. Best of luck!
3 Likes
Yeah I think that’s a great idea 
I’d like to re-iterate that paid decks are still very very far off if even ever they might become a reality.
I think it would be good to incentivize creators with other benefits like you said. Credit is the obvious one, but not sure what else could be done. I’d love to hear some more ideas on this 
2 Likes
My honest feedback; paid decks would not go over very well in attracting new users, speaking as a very freshly registered user whom just compared products.
This should be years away before any true actual discussions are had.
2 Likes
I agree completely, hence why I mentioned it in my previous post above
I’m thinking about eventually holding monthly/quarterly contests with lifetime or yearly rewards for the best new decks or something similar. That way the creators still have some sort of reward for their work
6 Likes