New "practice" mode

[TomAllen]

Yes it would.

If the stats at the end of any test shows if it's been paused or not, I suppose employers or just friends etc can see if they've paused. You could even have a simple line stating "Tom Allen typed 167 words in a row without pausing" or something.

I like all these ideas .

[LARSSS]

A limited amount of long tests is a good idea I think. Long typing may cause very dry eyes/dizzy, less concentration, tired fingers or little ache in the neck, back, etc. So what I want to say is: if you get more points the longer you type, people feel more "forced" to type longer. Therefore a limited amounts of long tests seems like a good idea to me. And you have to try to score as many points in these tests as possible. And you can only do like one long test in 30 minutes and 3 long tests per day, for example.

[christianstrang]

@Larrrs: Even though this idea makes perfect sense, its quite a bit of overhead to implement this.
Update: Although I agree that their might be some kind of limitation on how many points a user can score a day (this limit would increase over time, maybe another way to reduce the amount of cheating).

Any suggestions and implications about the point system, feel free to discuss!

[TomAllen]

I would suggest getting a final list of options set, (capitals, numbers, symbols etc) and then we work out pointing systems.

The simplest of course is to assign everything a percentage, so that adding numbers to a test adds 10% difficulty, meaning 10% points bonus and so on. This way, you add all the percentages up (100% for the basic 1 minute test, 10% for numbers, 10% for symbols) and if you get 140%, that means 140 points, plus whatever multiplier for endurance tests.

There is of course the option, of having the practice mode having absolutely no pointing system, where you simply get a WPM score but the ability to pause etc, and only on a "test" page do you have to type for a full 10 minutes (or whatever you've set it to) and get a score at the end.

Then people can practice for however long they want without scoring, using whatever options they want, and then when they're ready can test themselves.

I hope this makes sense - seems like a hard concept to type out quickly haha

[Linsk]

Hi everyone,

Here's what I would like to see in this training mode:
- Be able to choose the test duration (unlimited, limited among several choices or type myself the duration);
- Be able to choose the test content (among all the available word banks where I could select the words I want or creating my own word bank or text);
- Display the details of my mistakes and my number of corrections (and have the option to take the next test with these words only or at least increase their frequency);
- Display my accuracy percentage.

About a possible points system, I just think accuracy has to be taken into account.

[Kanto-Dream]

(Sorry for bad english, I'm a young rench)

Hi!

I read the whole ideas you proposed, and they seems great to me

To my mind, it would be awesome (and crazy, actually :p ) if the amount of point increased exponentially for each letter, independantly from the word, and caved in to 0 if a fail occurs.

I mean, imagine the sequence "word water food enough". The letter "w" well-spelled would give 1 point; the "o" would give "1", the "r" would give 2 points, the "d" would give 3 points, the "w" would give 5, then 8, then 13, then 21...(Random exponential function...) And if the typist fails, the chain would be broken, and the typist would have to rewrite more and more to get more and more points!

So this systems would reward accurate rather than fast typist! since the typist isn't accurate and fast...



And I had another crazy idea, which I thought to by thinking of myself :p
I'm very fastly infuriated by typing, while I'm passionated by...
It's a question of, when you begin the test, beginning forever. It means you can't refresh the page or leave it when you misspell some words, as I use to do. If you do, then the failed test will be registered in your stats, in the server etc...
So you would have to go on, to the end!
I don't know if it's useful, or even if it is possible to do it, but it would help me a lot to prevent pushing on F5 again, and again, and again...

Thanks for reading!

[christianstrang]

I kind of like the idea with the increment in words/letters correct but I think the point calculation would become to hard to comprehend for new users, but some kind of multiplier increase sounds like a good idea, just have to figure out something that makes sense, is easy to understand and not too complicated to implement.

[TomAllen]

You could go a different way an add another mode, where it's a "combo" mode. Literally just the longest chain of correctly spelled words, either words that are correct but corrections are allowed, or a combo of words without correction. This way it keeps modes separate and simple to understand.

It just depends on if you want to keep the website simplistic, or add pages and pages of different modes and scoring schemes.

[Gapen]

Hi!
Christian, your new mode sounds very good

I have an idea to reward accuracy : you could implement an option which, if checked, would immediately stop the test if you make a mistake. It would encourage user to focus on accuracy than wpm.

But the problem would be with calculation, like the "pause option" : it would be difficult to match such an option with any calculation system ...

[jacksparrow]

i don't like this point system idea. I only ever want to see how fast im typing which is wpm. I am not willing to switch over from that to this. not in a million years. I'm surprised at how much people like this idea does wpm speed mean nothing to you? however, I like this practice mode idea with customization everyone needs a way to get faster and I think this is it. I also like different level of timed test from 2 mnutes to 5 minutes but 15 minutes is insane on the fingers that should only be in practice mode.

so far my likes are: practice mode, different level timed test, customization, and yeah..
dislikes: point system, point system leaderboards, point system.

wants: chat box, multiplayer, comment section on profile, new achievements, other statistics like accuracy, all-time fastest typist leaderboards, moderators for cheaters.

cya