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Hacker News' Reading Level

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Re: Hacker News' Reading Level

#3

Post by iwwr »

steveklabnik wrote: post #2

It would be equally interesting to only see the reading level of the articles, rather than the comments.

An elevated reading level is not necessarily a sign of more thoughtful or insightful comments. It could just be contrived banality disguised as conceptual depth.

Re: Hacker News' Reading Level

#4

Post by olalonde »

iwwr wrote: post #3
steveklabnik wrote: post #2

It would be equally interesting to only see the reading level of the articles, rather than the comments.

An elevated reading level is not necessarily a sign of more thoughtful or insightful comments. It could just be contrived banality disguised as conceptual depth.

> An elevated reading level is not necessarily a sign of more thoughtful or insightful comments. It could just be contrived banality disguised as conceptual depth.

Put simply, high reading level doesn't mean good content. (trying to prove your point :D)

Re: Hacker News' Reading Level

#5

Post by achille »

Can someone briefly explain how google determines reading level? I'm assuming it's using something like the Flesch–Kincaid test:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flesch%E2%80%93Kincaid_readabil...

A brief search on wikipedia reveals a few readability tests, but they all seem to be based on sentence/syllable ratios, not content complexity.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Readability_tests

And in general they all rank multi-syllable (longer) words higher. Which would mean a conversation between two Java API writers would be ranked higher than a ruby conversation :)

Java vs Ruby vs Lisp: http://i.imgur.com/tq3pA.png

Re: Hacker News' Reading Level

#6

Post by j_baker »

iwwr wrote: post #3
steveklabnik wrote: post #2

It would be equally interesting to only see the reading level of the articles, rather than the comments.

An elevated reading level is not necessarily a sign of more thoughtful or insightful comments. It could just be contrived banality disguised as conceptual depth.

"contrived banality disguised as conceptual depth"

Is it possible this phrase is an example of itself? :-)

Re: Hacker News' Reading Level

#8

Post by aeurielesn »

achille wrote: post #5

Can someone briefly explain how google determines reading level? I'm assuming it's using something like the Flesch–Kincaid test: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flesch%E2%80%93Kincaid_readabil... A brief search on wikipedia reveals a few readability tests, but they all seem to be based on sentence/syllable ratios, not content complexity. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Readability_tests And in general they all ran…

> I'm assuming it's using something like the Flesch–Kincaid test

Yes, It seems to be since it is only available for content in english.

Although, as far as I know they have not said anything regarding the algorithm used yet.

You can see (what it seems to be) the official announcement here: http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Web%20Search/thread?ti...

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