Hi
I am studying Japanese and on the reading prompts I see the kanji above and for many words the English translation below. Which unwillingly makes me translate from English into Japanese rather than read the Kanji. I try hiding it with my finger (on iPhone), but it's obviously not very comfortable.
Anyone else struggling with this?
I have searched in the forum for previous posts on it, but I am not really clear if there was some general consensus or decision on it.

PS: I have "hide reading" on

This has been a long-requested feature to hide the definitions.

Don't know what the plans are to ever implement it.

After much requesting, I tried the hidden definition setting out on the website to see if anyone would use it. I then asked whether people liked it:

http://www.skritter.com/forum/topic?id=238227852

Only two people responded, and only thirty-two people have activated the feature (it has been live for three months). That's not a very large response--the hidden reading feature has 44x more activations per month of existence, for comparison. (It also exists on the iOS app, so it's not a direct comparison.)

So if you want this feature to stay, or to work differently, then make some noise. Otherwise it won't get ported to the iOS app, and might be cut from the web app.

Nick, I think that posting was a bit hidden... it was on-topic on the thread, but 4 months later. I don't even remember seeing that post, but that was 4 months ago. And April+May were crazy busy for me where I didn't have time to visit the forum.

But I rarely use the website to study (maybe 1-2 times per month?) and never go into the settings to see if there's anything new.

but even that said, having the definition shown in the website is not as big of a problem as on iOS (especially iPhone). The screen/canvas is big enough that you can (with a little effort) ignore the definition if you only focus on the canvas. On the iPhone, the whole screen fits in your field of vision & focus, so it's not the same.

That said, my feedback on the website (just set it up & tried it out) is that this is pretty much exactly what we want, though there is no option to show the definition. But since I rarely use the site, don't change it on my account....
I'd like to see it on iOS. :D

Likewise I never use the website and had not even noticed this topic. I'd like to try it out on the iOS app.

Would also love to see this on the app! +1 ^^

Even without example sentences it would be excellent, but now with them it would be like a cloze deletion, which is awesome.

In Nick's defense, it's much better for them to do on the website because there is a beta site (not really available on iOS), and they can push out changes/fixes quickly (which definitely can't happen on iOS).

So it's understandable that they want to correctly gauge the desire for it. (Make a poll?)

Okay, I've started a poll. While your points about limited sampling are good ones, I would still expect to see way more users enabling the option were it something they actually wanted.

Thanks Nick! I will admit that this kind of poll can also be a bit biased. "Would you like us to put resources to something that you may or may not use but is no cost to you?" But at least you differentiated in levels of enthusiasm.

For people having enabled it, I wonder how often others go into their settings page. For me, it's less than every 3 or 4 months, counting both iOS and the web... (excluding resetting the accounts in iOS).
And if you do visit, it's for a specific purpose, so you'll easily miss a new item. But I think I already said most of this above.

still surprised of the 10 yeses and 8 "maybes" and the automatic forwarding to this post, no one has posted anything. :(

I'm not sure I'm clear on what this feature would do.

I only use iOS, and already have reading turned off. Would there be a difference in behavior, or does this only impact reading mode?

what testing mode does this affect (reading, writing, pronunciation, or tone?) How dies "Hide reading" affect it (I always hide the reading).

This only affects the Pinyin and Tone prompts.

In these cases, you would only be presented with the characters, and the definition would be hidden.

Ideally, you'd be able to show the definition by clicking on it, but that's not currently implemented in the beta website.

Hide reading for Japanese currently shows only the English definition, and hides kana during writing prompts (unless revealed, and is currently paired with hiding the definition from initially displaying on reading prompts, until the answer is revealed, then the kana and English definition show).

Hide definition if implemented I assume would be the opposite and hide reading from writing prompts, so that you would rely on the kana/example sentence to produce the character writings, and not have the English shown (unless revealed), and if both options were enabled, both the reading and definition would be hidden which normally wouldn't make sense except where there are example sentences, so as エリース said it would be like a cloze deletion.

To Jeremy,
For me (in Japanese) and on the iPhone the following appears. As far as I understand hide reading is not linked with hide definition:
Writing prompt: English definition. Japanese hiragana in hidden (which can be revealed)
Reading prompt: Kanji plus English definition and sometimes only Kanji. But in most cases the English definition shows. It seems to depend on the words, but I couldn't make out any clear rule.
Definition prompt: Kanji only. Japanese reading in hidden (which can be revealed).

The only screen where hide definition would be useful (for me) is the Reading prompt. And on that for some (few) words it is already hidden, but for most not. So maybe some bug in the linking of hide reading and hide definition? Or something to do with the specific lists I am studying?

Here's how the "hide reading" setting works on the iOS app for Japanese for me:

Writing prompt: English definition only. Kana is hidden (which can be revealed, and displays after word writing is finished).

Reading prompt: Word is displayed in Japanese, reading and definition is hidden until tapping screen.

Definition prompt: Word is displayed in Japanese, reading and definition is hidden (reading can be revealed, and both definition and reading is revealed upon tapping screen to answer).

I'm not sure why it's working differently in your case though.

Um... interesting. Are you using an iPhone or on the computer directly? I use iPhone only. Maybe some bug?

It's currently only implemented on the Beta Website. This forum thread (and the poll) is for the purpose of determining if the Skritter team should put in the effort to implement this for the iPhone

@nomadwolf & susannekaiser:
I was explaining how the "hide reading" setting currently works on the iOS app for Japanese, although this thread is about potentially implementing a "hide definition" setting.

Susanne, which version of the app are you using? (You can check through Settings>About). *edit* Just received your email with the details. Thanks!

Same here, I never really use the website for practice, but would definitely love to hide definitions in the iOS app. Like described in the original post, I am using my thumb to cover that area, but would much rather just default to not seeing the definition, just as it is already possible with the reading. When briefly using the website last week, I really loved that definitions were not showing, I just did not realise that this was a test phase and under review.

Currently I see that the hide definitions mode affects writing prompts as well as other prompts. It's only practical (to me) to hide definitions on tone prompts and pinyin prompts, hiding it on writing prompts makes guessing the right word pretty difficult if there are many synonyms.

Was it the original intention to hide all definitions? I see above: "This only affects the Pinyin and Tone prompts." which doesn't seem to be true.

It only affects writing and tone prompts. Definitions have always been hidden on pinyin prompts (and, of course, definition prompts).

Japanese reading prompts sometimes show the definitions, but that's complicated, and the hide definitions setting doesn't affect it.

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@nick yeah I know the other types have always been hidden, what I'm saying is that it would be nice to be able to just hide definitions on the tone prompts. I find hiding it on the writing prompts to be a little much. This really isn't high priority, though.

I have only just found this quietly introduced feature. Definitions off for testing tones is a great addition which makes this a much better form of revision for me. It would be even better on the ios app where I currently resort to hiding the definition with my thumb.

Hiding the definition when testing writing seems to be testing my psychic ability rather my knowledge of Chinese. A more cynical person than I might suggest that it was intended to sink this trial without trace.

Since my last comment I have nuked all my words and now I am getting example sentences for most words. They are a great help and have restored my enthusiasm for Skritter. As a bonus the English definitions are now much smaller and I can usually ignore them without needing to cover them with my thumb. I would still like the option of hiding them, but not so urgent now.