Anki Terminology: Leeches

In Anki, a "leech" is a card that you get wrong over and over. The "leech threshold" is a setting which allows you to specify how many times you get a card wrong before Anki takes one of two actions: suspending the card, or simply tagging it as a leech. For example, if your leech threshold is 8 and you have Anki set up to suspend any card that becomes a leech, then getting a card wrong 8 times will have it become suspended.

This is useful because it's inefficient to keep cards in your deck that you're having a lot of trouble memorizing. Sometimes in your studying you can get bogged down by just a few cards. You dread them coming up, you wrack your brain trying to remember them, and you feel disappointed when you get them wrong each time. Often it's better to just identify those "leeches", get them out of your reviews, and then re-visit the information in the future when you're more ready for it. In language learning, for example, a word might be hard to learn until you learn a few other words which are related to that word. It's useful to get those "leeches" out of your reviews, and then unsuspend them in the future when you have a better chance for them to click.

[alvarojneto]

Recommend the book "Make It Stick". It is by a group of education scientists, and they actually state that difficult learning shows stronger long-term retention results. Just some food for thought.

[hyleore]

do the cards get unsuspended automatically? or is there a way to set that up? for example, the card gets suspended for 2 weeks, or a month, and then anki tries to give it again?

[sxgaston]

Thank you for this explanation. What an absolutely horrible feature. Sure anki If I’m having trouble learning something just throw it away. I’m so mad right now. I need to learn things not just learn or keep the cards that I know. I’m floored right now.