The “explain” feature when editing a flashcard is absolutely invaluable - the social context/connotation like that is really hard to parse from a dictionary, and I’m particularly relying on it right now since we don’t have wordreference anymore. It’s usually broken into three parts - the general definition, the general context, and the context specific to this sentence. I typically don’t find the third one useful at all - it’s actually going a little too far and trying to explain the motivations of characters of my book to me!
So my pitch is this:
If you remove the third section of “explain”, the same content result could be cached and used again for the next user, and then there would be a button available to the next user, (maybe a premium-only feature), “explain in this specific context”. Obviously this adds a lot of data to store alongside each word (it could be less wordy), but over time, it would decrease the number of GPT queries you’re running. So maybe, if it balances out against the additional amount of storage needed, it could help your margins. Although, it would allow free users to accurately create more new flashcards per day, which might lower the number of people that subscribe.
I’m all about you (Steve) getting the profits you deserve from this amazing product - especially if that enables you to continue to offer a free version for users who don’t have as many means. (speaking of, I’m heading over to the subscribe page right now!)
Interesting suggestion. For me, the context part is incredibly important. Many times I’ve gotten a definition that didn’t quite make sense, but it’s explained that the word is being used metaphorically or part of an idiomatic expression.
As for the cost savings, I do feel a little bad when I go to edit the translation for a word (if say, something is capitalized when it shouldn’t be) and then it generates an explanation when I didn’t need it.
Oh yes the context-aware is super helpful for idioms - a lot of the time I end up turning the flashcard into a phase rather than a single word to capture it. I would definitely not recommend fully removing the feature - just suggesting an option to not automatically include the hyper-specific analysis. I really have no idea how much the cost of the GPT queries really adds up.
Thanks for the suggestion, and for being concerned about my costs! (Please don’t worry about this, Readlang and I are doing fine!) The whole point of the explanation is to be context aware. If you don’t want the context-aware aspect, then the dictionary tab might make more sense. I get that if you were used to using Word Reference before then it’s not as good anymore. You could try one of the following alternatives though:
If you are learning Spanish or French, try my new AI dictionary experiment as explained here: Dictionary with Word Reference/Nightly not working? - #6 by Steve. It’s somewhat similar to what you suggested in that it’s AI powered but not context aware, so that I can cache the results for other users and therefore I’m comfortable offering it to all users. If you think this approach is good please let me know since I’m trying to decide whether it’s worth pursuing further.