So how many readers _actually_ read a blog post?

Whilst I accept from a business perspective that more detailed metrics help choose direction, figure out what works and whatnot, as a user I'm somewhat against the ever-finer grained tracking of activities.

"Hits", "Performing Social actions", ...

Obligatory Snow Crash quote:

"Y.T.'s mom pulls up the new memo, checks the time, and starts reading it. The estimated reading time is 15.62 minutes. Later, when Marietta does her end-of-day statistical roundup, sitting in her private office at 9:00 P.M., she will see the name of each employee and next to it, the amount of time spent reading this memo, and her reaction, based on the time spent, will go something like this:

Less than 10 min.: Time for an employee conference and possible attitude counseling.

10-14 min.:Keep an eye on this employee; may be developing slipshod attitude.

14-15.61 min.: Employee is an efficient worker, may sometimes miss important details.

Exactly 15.62 min.: Smartass. Needs attitude counseling.

15.63-16 min.: Asswipe. Not to be trusted.

16-18 min.: Employee is a methodical worker, may sometimes get hung up on minor details.

More than 18 min.: Check the security videotape, see just what this employee was up to (e.g., possible unauthorized restroom break).

Y.T.'s mom decides to spend between fourteen and fifteen minutes reading the memo. It's better for younger workers to spend too long, to show that they're careful, not cocky. It's better for older workers to go a little fast, to show good management potential. She's pushing forty. She scans through the memo, hitting the Page Down button at reasonably regular intervals, occasionally paging back up to pretend to reread some earlier section. The computer is going to notice all this. It approves of rereading. It's a small thing, but over a decade or so this stuff really shows up on your work-habits summary."

People don't read. They scan.

http://www.useit.com/alertbox/reading_pattern.html

Your scrolling js metric is clever, but that doesn't mean they've read a thing. All it means is they've scrolled to the bottom of the page.

I've caught myself scanning at articles from people I don't know. I try to understand the gist of it to see if it's worth reading carefully, but when it comes from writers I know and respect I'll take my time and have a pleasant read.

It would be interesting seeing the same statistics for a well established author. I'm guessing the numbers would tell a different story.

Some blogger about 1.5 years ago asked readers to include some unusual word, like "mongoose" in their comment, as a test of reading comprehension, and the first 30 or so comments failed to follow that instruction.

I'll admit, sometimes I skim posts and go straight to the comments on HN. Sometimes I find the discussion here to be more scintillating than the link itself.

Some reference style posts are not intended to be read in full. I've done a few of these on my blog such as comparing the 5 major browsers, how good the iPod touch is for reading many different sorts of reading material, best aa batteries which describes the different battery technologies and includes a buying guide, etc. I organize the material so that people can read the specific sections that are of interest to them, and skip the rest. Google Analytics (a crude measure, I know) tells me that average time spent reading per page on these reference posts range from 4 minutes (the browser post) to 14 minutes (the battery post). So pretty sizable chunks of the posts are being read (by those who continue on to a second page, at least).

Then again - these being reference posts - the vast majority of readers come in through Google search looking for answers or advice, which is obviously much more targeted than a community news site. The times are far lower on days where a bunch of people come in due to a listing at Hacker News or Reddit.

As I often do, I skipped the article itself and went straight to the HN comments.

The swarm of useless links (why would you link to twitter.com?) and red underline is not helping. I never did find the link to this blog post you talked about through the whole article. And gray headers don't do much for breaking up the text.

These are confounding variables.

Copy format has some play with this too. Interesting that in this particular case the section headings are anti-aliased but the paragraph texts are not. If you're not going to used anti-aliased you should pick a font that is not so rounded and apparent. Reading anti-aliased text is akin to rubbing my eyes with sand paper. Okay, it's not that bad but it has the same psychological effect of making me not want to keep reading.

I will also admit, that even when the copy font displays pleasantly, I will only skim paragraphs to determine the general theme and tone of content to determine my interest and whether or not I will keep skimming, start reading, or leave altogether. But still, bad font choice is very distracting and doesn't help.

Piles of (automatic?) random links in the blog post, no link to the test blog post.

I wondered if the layout and wording of the 20th paragraph that the writer was so mystified by so many people stopping at looked like an ending.

You have about 300 ms of my time where I scan the first paragraph and decide whether or not to continue. Maybe that indicates I have terrible reading skills or maybe it means I have an advanced pattern recognition filter.

I wonder that too. It seems that sometimes the comments on HN to a blog post don't match up (I wonder if they even read the same post I just read).

If I click on a link and find something I like enough to finish I will vote up and add a comment if I have something to add.

What if blog posts had several versions, from TL;DR to full post which would unfold as you scrolled the website.

I'm interested to see what your percentage of completed reads of this post is :)

And he is testing us right now, I get it, I get it.