Neighboring countries

[timonbimon]

Been loving this deck so far, thanks so much for all the work you put into it!

One idea I quickly wanted to throw out there: I like to challenge myself and try to remember where in relation to other countries a specific country is (basically remembering where on Earth the country is but without seeing a map, but rather by picturing the map in my head and then listing all the neighboring countries).

To enable that it would be awesome to add a "Neighboring countries" property and thus enable a "Country -> Neighboring countries" deck.

[aplaice]

This is an interesting idea. TBH I sometimes (but not always — the inconsistency is probably not ideal for recall) do this myself on the Country -> Map cards.

On the technical side, this is very much doable, though possibly a bit tedious listing each country's neighbours (especially if we were to include all the translated versions). (We most probably wouldn't include it in the main deck, but a variant.)

However, on the learning side, lists are generally not recommended. Making the neighbouring countries into sets of cloze-deletions, which is the recommended alternative, would not be difficult (e.g. {{c1::Canada}}, {{c2::Mexico}}...), but I'm also not sure if it's a great idea (it'd be close to a thousand cards (though the large number of cards isn't necessarily disqualifying)).

(If we were to go with a cloze, then for mnemonic value, as a bonus it might be nice to highlight the two "featured" countries — i.e. the "source" country and the one that had been "clozed"/hidden — on a map. This would probably need to be done with the interactive map to avoid having hundreds of extra images in the deck...)

None of my objections are meant as a blocker — this is something that I'd like figured out, but I'm not certain what's the correct approach.

[timonbimon]

@aplaice thanks a lot for the detailed response. 🤗 the interactive map with the two featured countries does sound super cool.

two weeks into studying with this deck, I just wanted to point out that this

TBH I sometimes do this myself on the Country -> Map cards.

has actually been working pretty well for me. When being asked for the map, I just try to think of listing all the neighboring countries (instead of just trying to imagine the shape of the country) and makes the need to have actual cards for the neighbors a little less urgent for me :)