When I first visited the site I didn't understand how to use it. After I played around a little bit and I viewed some of the flashcards - I clicked study and now I get it. It's simple but cool. That being said, maybe a how it works feature or suchlike. And one other thought - your logo is hard to read....
This is a project I have been working away at for a few months. If this is not something people want that is ok since it is something I want. FlashcardDB is an attempt to build an online flashcard website that doesn't suck.
When I had decided it was time to tranfer my thousands of flashcards to a webapp, I just could not bring myself to use any of the existing flashcard sites on the web. Some are awful. Some are old and tired. One or two look good but they were just not what I had in mind. I wanted a dead-simple user interface and the Leitner System built-in -- with a cool graph! You know the rest. I decided to do it myself.
I created eight flashcard sets at Quizlet early this year and felt it was entirely adequate and quite easy to use. It does not suck.
I guess the only major difference is that FlashcardDB uses user verification (the oddly-labeled "I was" buttons) rather than text-entry verification. I prefer the flow of text-entry verification myself, but I can see how your taste may differ.
FlashcardDB looks okay, but I still greatly prefer Quizlet.
Some are awful does definately not include Quizlet. Quizlet is very very well put together.
What I personally wish for there is (a) the ability to create richer flashcards - especially flashcards that need more than one line or richer formatting and (b) the Leitner System. With Quizlet once you mark a term 'correct' it is correct forever (until you manually reset your set).
I am planning a text-entry verification method and maybe multiple-choice. But for more complicated flashcards you need to have manual verification to start.
Thanks a lot for your thoughts! They are greatly appreciated.
Hey, I have been following your site for a while now. One of my submissions (unsuccessful) to YC WFP was a concept highly similar to flascarddb/quizlet. This project has not launched. And don't worry, it looks nothing like FlashcardDB :)
Quizlet is obviously more powerful, but has a lot of superfluous functions. The drag and drop thing is a cool addition but probably has little impact on actual learning. I also don't think the page layout is optimal. But hey, he's a high school student and they have >80k users.
I wouldn't do text-entry verification unless you can make it fuzzy -- which is extremely difficult for typed input. Last time I tried in Quizlet, you are marked incorrect unless your answer agrees 100%. At most, I'd make it a suggestion function that tells you if you are on the right track or not. This is something I'm intending to implement later on.
Feel free to send me an email. I've been thinking about this, on an off, for no less than two years, and only recently started building a related product.
If you were following for awhile I must have put you to sleep with the lack of action! The very best of luck to your project.
I agree about the problems with text-entry verification. Obviously with multi-line and/or formatted cards (some sort of lightweight markup language) there are further problems. Grading on a scale is an option - whether manually (I was correct/I was wrong or I kinda got it!) or by robo-grading. I was thinking something along the lines of: "Congratulations human, you are 89.3091001% correct". There is software that allows you to rate your level of understanding between 1-5 and assigns the next spaced repetition on a sliding scale.
Yes, I think about it a lot too and haven't wanted to rush to implement a half baked version. In the end I trust the user. If you put a lot of effort into entering cards on a website (or onto actual cards) you generally won't cheat yourself. Removing the pain of managing the spaced repetition is where I find the real value.
I used to have a Leitner Cardbox made of a shoe box and strips of cardboard. I was never using it completely accurately of course and then when my GF found it hidden away, a spider was making a nice place to hatch her eggs. That was the end of the Cardbox.
Cool. Maybe you should explain how the Leitner system works and how it's going to be used. I don't quite understand how it works from the explanation and diagram on the site, and I guess I need to have an account for it to actually work when I study.
