FAQ
Cloze Overlapper is an add-on for the spaced-repetition flashcard software Anki that allows you to easily transform enumerations, lists, and other types of sequential information into flashcards.
It basically just reads the input you provide and creates a sequence of flashcards that build on each other. In its most basic configuration it will create a series of cards where each answer will serve as the context cue for the next card in line:
This is explained in much greater detail in the corresponding Wiki section, but you basically just define a number of items you'd like to cloze, either by supplying them as a linebreak-separated list, or by using the cloze hotkey. The add-on will then do the rest of the work for you.
The add-on is best suited for enumerations and other list types that follow a specific order. It can also be employed to memorize unordered lists, but will be much less effective at that. Please make sure to check out the Tips section for some helpful hints on how to formulate your flashcards.
Both! Each have their own use cases.
Image occlusions are best suited for:
- Highly visual information
- Topics where the spatial relation between items is more important than their exact sequence
Overlapping clozes can be helpful when dealing with:
- Subjects where good visualizations are sparse
- Any type of sequential information, e.g. enumerations, pathways, algorithms, reactions, rankings
In some cases it can also make sense to use both methods for the same information, e.g.: Image occlusions to remember the location of specific structures involved in a neural pathway, overlapping clozes to memorize their sequence and interaction.
First, please make sure to familiarize yourself with Anki's documentation on Siblings and Burying if you haven't done so already (don't worry, it's just 200 words long).
Next, let's get some of the terminological hurdles out of the way:
-
note: a distinct unit of information (= a database record), consisting of multiple fields, e.g.:
- country: Australia
- capital: Canberra
-
card: a flashcard generated from that information, e.g.:
- Q: "What is the capital of Australia", A: "Canberra"
-
siblings/related cards: all cards generated from one note, e.g.:
- Card 1 ("front-to-back-style") – Q: "What is the capital of Australia", A: "Canberra"
- Card 2 ("back-to-front-style") – Q: "Canberra is the capital of?", A: "Australia"
- card queue: a collection of cards of a particular state that are scheduled to be presented to the user. The different queue types include: new, learning, reviews
- sibling-burying: scheduling behaviour where seeing one card of a note will postpone all other cards of that note by a set amount of time. The reasoning behind this is to prevent interference and/or instances where cards would give away each other's answers
- sibling-spacing: scheduling behaviour where, even with sibling-burying disabled, related cards will still not be shown one after another, but rather be interspersed with cards of different notes. This term is sometimes used interchangeably with sibling-burying (e.g. in Cloze Overlapper's options menu. Sorry about that inconsistency..)
Now we know how Anki behaves by default. Is that behavior desirable for overlapping cloze deletions? I don't think so, and if you're reading this section chances are that you don't think so either.
See, the cards generated by the add-on are sequential and don't really give each other away, at least not outright. So there's usually no reason to postpone them. Spreading them out over multiple days can even be harmful in the learning phase, as that will make it harder to build the sequential link in our memory that we're striving for.
That's why I decided to work a couple of tweaks into Cloze Overlapper that directly modify how sibling-burying is handled for overlapping clozes. Specifically they allow for sibling-burying to be disabled for the new queue and review queue.
The corresponding settings may be found under General → Scheduling in Cloze Overlapper's options menu:
By default only the first override is active, but you are free to enable the second one as well. My reasoning behind only enabling the first option was to make it easier for users that are familiar with regular cloze deletions to switch to Cloze Overlapper. I will probably end up changing this default in the future.
There are a couple scenarios where your cards might still be undergoing sibling-burying:
- You've just installed Cloze Overlapper and are trying to review some cards. In that case please consider enabling the burying override for reviews.
- You're not using desktop Anki. In that case please consult the section below
If none of the above applies then you are likely facing a bug and should either create a new issue report or ask for help in the add-on's official support thread.
Cards only appear sequentially as long as they are in the new queue. Once they enter the learning queue or review queue they will start getting scheduled apart. Anki will also randomize the order of cards within a review session, so if you're reviewing multiple cards on one day they might show up out of order. This is completely normal and just part of how Anki's scheduling works. To change this, the add-on would have to perform some pretty extensive modifications to Anki which might a.) interfere with regular reviews and would b.) make the reviewing experience even more inconsistent between Anki and its mobile counterparts.
My advice is this: Just ignore the review order at the start. The great thing about the add-on is that it always provides you with the pertinent context to your items. So even if the cards appear out of order you will still learn to recall the items in sequence. The issue will also start to resolve itself once your cards get spread further apart by Anki.
There are some scenarios where going through the entire sequence at once could be important, though, e.g. in preparation of an exam. In cases like these I'd advise you to either use Anki's preview window (optionally extended through Advanced Previewer), or to create a filtered deck and sort it by card creation time.
The introduction order of cards will vary between the desktop release and mobile apps. This is completely normal and caused by the fact that the add-on only has an impact on card scheduling on the desktop release. Add-ons can't influence the schedulers used by mobile apps or AnkiWeb, and so the cards on there will be presented to you just like they would by default, with no modifications applied.
What this means, in effect, is that your new cards might not appear in sequential order, but might rather be interspersed with other cards. Depending on your deck options you might also only be able to see one card per note a day.
The only existing workaround to the first issue is to create a separate deck for each overlapping cloze note. Issue no. 2, on the other hand, can be addressed by disabling burying of related cards in your deck options (both for new cards and review cards).
Important: All of the above is only pertinent to the introduction order of new cards. Reviews will always be randomized, regardless of the platform (see Why Does Anki Randomize My Reviews? for more information).
This is completely normal and occurs with any type of cloze note type in Anki, the standard one included. If you delete a cloze deletion on your note, i.e. remove a list item, then Anki will mark that particular card as empty. This is a safety mechanism to prevent you from accidentally deleting a card and its scheduling information. You can remove these empty cards by going to Tools → Empty Cards from Anki's main menu.