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Comment by blackboxlogic | Hacker News Reader

Good idea or bad idea: browser profiles where User enters their level of understanding for a variety of subjects. browser sends the level specific to each web request. Server customizes content, returning the same article, styles ranging from explain-it-like-I'm-five to just-show-the-research-paper.

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I prefer the idea of content being dynamic, with users being able to expand on certain points, and more direct access to sources. Interfacing that would be a bitch though.

Basically what simple wikipedia does, no? It's a good idea if it is very explicit and the users determine what they're reading.

Definitely not as some sort of half baked ML project though that pushes simple articles on demographics it thinks can't read.

This exists for media types ("Accept" HTTP request header) and for language ("Accept-Language" HTTP request header). You can configure your browser to tell it which languages you understand, and your order of preference.

You're proposing something like "Accept-Semantic-Complexity", or maybe extend Accept-Language somehow to include acceptable complexity. It could work in principle but I doubt anyone would use it. Many websites already have a tendency to ignore Accept-Language and instead use some fuzzy region detection when they offer multiple languages.

That would depend on how it's exposed to the user. Are you empowering the user to run up and down that scale, or just feeding them whatever your model thinks is best?

A slider at the top of the page gradually adding detail and vocabulary?

That could be cool. Another idea would be to present an executive summary at the top and more detailed versions as you scroll down. Sort of akin to how pictures load from more -> less pixelated on a slow internet connection.

About fifteen years ago some of the more forward looking newspaper folks were really excited about targeted and personalized versions. It never came to pass because it’s one of those things that’s fun to prototype and hard to execute well at any sort of scale and on deadline.

That said, expandable context and background boxes are still a great idea.

Wikipedia sorta supports something like this with a lot of English articles if you chance the domain to simple.wikipedia.com for the language. Then it gives you articles that are much more ElI5.

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