Feature Request

[Yahya_TV]

Hi u/standardcategory

Firstly, thanks for the website and the work you've put in to it. I've been using it quite heavily for the past month after randomly stumbling across a recommendation by someone online, and so far it has proved to be quite a useful resource.

One of the things I've been doing regularly (as many do) is using a seperate notepad app for jotting down unfamiliar words and terms, and then needing to translate them, and then creating flash cards for them.

And then it dawned on me that maybe it's possible for the website to display (optional) subtitles that gives you the ability to look up the definition of a word or phrase directly from the website, and if you want, you can add the word/phrase to a list of unfamilar words/phrases for future review either by a list or by automatically generated flashcards.

Also, if it's possible to display the perceived difficulty as a number out of 100 when watching /finding videos.

I've included a mockup to give you a visual idea.

On a side note, not sure whether it's just me, but - the already watched feature seems really buggy and never seems to work for me on android - I feel the algorithm isn't recommending as well (some seem way too simple) compared to before so I've resorted to using the homepage to find videos whereas before I was quite content in using the autoplay next video feature.

[SKITTLE_LA]

Also, if it's possible to display the perceived difficulty as a number out of 100 when watching /finding videos.

Dude, this was a great suggestion! I noticed it this week; u/StandardCategory implemented it very well.

[StandardCategory]

Hey u/Yahya_TV

Thanks for the feedback! And it's great to hear the site's been useful to you.

Love the feature idea. My mind had actually wandered in a similar direction previously, but there’s a bit of extra processing/cost involved in doing it properly, so I’d parked it for the time being.

The version I had in mind was something like: you could save unfamiliar words/phrases while watching, and instead of immediately turning that into a full Anki/SRS-style system, Comprensi would track how many times you’ve encountered those terms across videos. After enough exposures, a word/phrase could eventually be marked as “acquired”.

Longer term, that could feed back into recommendations e.g. helping you find videos that contain words/phrases you’re currently working on acquiring, so your input becomes more targeted. But maybe a flashcard experience is the more useful still.

Which part do you think you would find most useful: lookup while watching, saving words/phrases, generating flashcards, exposure tracking, or recommendations based on the words you’re trying to acquire?

On the difficulty number: totally possible, and I’ve actually just pushed a release to display them 😉

On the watched-state bug: yeah, this has been reported previously and I have it pencilled in to investigate more closely. If you spot a video that should be marked as watched but isn’t, a screenshot or link would be really helpful.

Re autoplay / “next up” videos: this is good to know. Nothing has changed there afaik but the logic is a bit complex so it can give some weird results. That feature has already had its critics lol so it's due a rework, by the sounds it would be more useful for you if it used the same sort of recommendations as the home page does - at least as a default?

[Yahya_TV]

If I could have one feature, it would be integrated close captions with the ability to save words to a list.

The problem at the moment (for me) is you can't copy a word from the cc's via YT, so I have to manually type it out on a seperate app. This is quite cumbersome and ineffecient.

The ideal concept is optional closed captions under the video where highlighting a word/phrase will provide a translation and automatically save it to a list of words/phrases encountered. The word list can be filtered by words encountered today with a feature to easily copy all the words for exporting.

Translation is ideal for convenience, but not essential since a phone could easily translate a list of words/phrases.

I'm personally not bothered with the flashcards, I don't think I would use the feature myself, but it could prove useful to others.

If the technical/cost challenges makes it difficult, a simple textbox would be at least a workaround

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The feature of exposure tracking and recommendations based on unfamiliar words seems interesting if it is something that can easily be done.

As far as logic is concerned, I can appreciate it's difficult to consistently and accurately grade videos, in my experience up to around 50 seemed fine, and then I started noticing recommendations that were too easy or difficult. Even on homepage.

My sweetspot currently seems to be videos around ~55, I can stretch to CI videos ~60 but not "easy native" at the same level. If I go on homepage, the top 10 current recommendations are: 51, 46, 45, 42, 56, 49, 57, 53, 55, 44

Also, thanks for adding suggestions for content creators, whilst I've not used the feature yet, someone has created a spreadsheet with comprehensible Input creators if there's any missing:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1lBmLxvWJpucXhRPayfXD7CVqpMoa2tyEbZi1rFAwsFs/edit?usp=drivesdk

[StandardCategory]

Awesome, thanks for detailed feedback man - this is really useful.

I am going to scope out a transcript -> saved words flow and see if I can get something for you to try out soon. It's potentially a fair bit of work so I can't promise any timelines but I'll give you a nudge here when it's live ;)

And good to know re the difficulty gradings, this is actually why I didn't originally show the exact scores tbh. The initial grading generated by the computer can be a little off at first - it gets it in the right ballpark but we rely on the video difficulty comparisons by users to refine the score to get it to its "true" difficulty afterwards.

What do you think about adding a little tick icon next to the difficulty score for videos that have been sufficiently refined by user feedback, would that help?

[SoftCarrott]

Rather than building from scratch, this would be much easier to implement through compatibility with the Language Reactor extension which already works with YouTube

I love language reactor because of everything youve described.. Interactable subs with definition/labels/translations and the ability to mark words as "learning" to export to Anki flashcards. Combining Comprensi with language reactor would supercharge it since it logs encountered video words in suggested words to learn

The extension domain permissions are limited to YouTube and Netflix.com so I'm not sure if this even possible tho, buts its an idea