A note on estimated reading times
People have been writing a bit about “estimated reading time”, the feature where a link to something is accompanied by an estimate of how long it will take you to read it.
Matt Campbell pointed out that estimated reading times are often ableist. Adrian Roselli pointed out that existing widgets such as scroll bars do a better job of giving you a sense of how long of a read a page is.
But, from my perspective as somebody who still regulary works on web-based reading systems, the biggest argument for why they might not be ableist is that they are largely bullshit. They aren’t that useful – at least not in the way people think.
To be meaningful, a reading time estimation algorithm needs to take a number of these variables into account. The bare minimum would combine text complexity, usually estimated as a combination of sentence complexity (writing style) and vocabulary, with length and the median level of schooling of the assumed audience to get a rough estimate. This would only even be vaguely correct for a reader with the estimated schooling.
Well, they usually just divide the word count by 233 (or similar number) and rounding to the minute. It’s basically just a word count transposed into an idiosyncratic and opaque base 60. At some point a programmer read in a study that the average person read 233 words per minute and decided that this would be a great way to estimate reading time for everybody on the fucking planet. This average person does not exist any more than the half child from the average 3.5 person family does. It doesn’t take anything whatsoever into account.
