A note on estimated reading times | Hacker News Reader

A note on estimated reading times

baldurbjarnason.com

14 pointssaeedesmaili7 comments

The „reading time is ableist“ thing is a bit weird, isn’t it a bit like walking time prediction with navigation apps? Is that also ableist because it assumes a „normal“ walking speed? In my opinion, you should always assume an average human by default.

Also, I really disagree with the post. A word count doesn’t help me if I want to know how long a read is, because i don’t now how fast i read as a numerical value. If I have a meeting in 10 minutes and want to read posts until then, should I start an article with 4000 words? I have no idea… if I see „5 minutes read“, I’m probably fine, 12 minutes is fine because I might be a bit faster than average and 20 minutes will be too much. You don’t have to take the given reading time as a literal time prediction but as a „an average reader will roughly take this time“, which you can then adjust based on your reading speed relative to average readers.

> Matt Campbell pointed out that estimated reading times are often ableist.

No more so than a navigation app telling you that it's 10 minutes walk to the corner shop.

A lot of people just never learned emotional control - they feel a trigger and rather than learning to deal with that momentarily heightened state, they externalise it, assume that it's someone else's fault and that something has to change.

I think they would say the same thing about navigation apps as well. People even joke about it— walking: 20 minutes, walking (gay): 10 minutes. But it's bringing up a good point where the software's design assumes something about the user.

A better design would just ask the user choose their waking speed and ability. If you're in a wheelchair no sidewalks will likely be a problem. If you walk with a cane you probably would prefer fewer elevation changes. It's one of those accessibility features that able bodied people probably get a lot of use out of.

In this case a word count doesn't assume anything about the user but reading time does. I think the emotional response is the one to having ableism pointed out. It doesn't make you a bad person or anything, it's just pointing out a design that perhaps isn't what you intended. If you were a slow reader would you like to be constantly be reminded that you're "below average?"

Honestly what it probably comes down to for me is this:

> If you were a slow reader would you like to be constantly be reminded that you're "below average?"

I wouldn't care. I'm comfortable in myself, and I don't see it as being an issue that most of the world is structured around the average/normal case. I might be a competent reader but then there are tons of areas in which I'm lacking.

If there's an option for me to enable to add that my walking speed is 4km/h or 6km/h or whatever, great, win. It's not inherently discriminatory to not have that though.

> So, estimated reading time calculators are literally just a method for obscuring the word count.

That’s also all it needs to be, I have never had an issue with an estimate saying 12 min when in fact it was 15min, or 5min.

I really only care about it saying 2min, 10min, 30min or 60+. It’s just a ballpark.

Having me tell the algorithm how hydrated I am to improve the estimate is laughably ridicules and adds no value at all.

I agree with his thesis, if not the details. The first thing I do when encountering content is skim it, check out its form and shape, writing style, look at the headings, pull quotes, etc. then if I judge it worth reading, I'll go back and read it "properly". It could say 2 minutes or 20 hours and I'm still going to size it up because otherwise how do you know it doesn't just peter out in some silly way and end up wasting your time anyway?

A better system would need to estimate how much of the article is bullshit that people will just skim over.

Seriously what an incomprehensibly dumb set of arguments. First that reading times might be "ableist", and second that they aren't useful because they're crude estimates. I cannot imagine what would bring someone to waste their time worrying about such things.

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