Currently all of our articles have read time estimates (e.g. “11 min read”) in the sidebar of the articles and on the blog home page. I am curious about two different things:
Do you like the current read time estimates?
Yes
No, I would rather it show more broad estimates (such as “Short Read”, “Medium Read”, “Longer Read”, etc.)
No, I would prefer read time estimates be removed
No (other/please reply)
0voters
Do you find the read time estimates accurate?
Yes
No, the estimates are much shorter than it takes me to read
No, the estimates are much longer than it takes me to read
Reading time estimates are very inaccurate for me personally
When I translated the article into my native language, the reading was much shorter than the estimated time.
When I read it directly in English, it took much longer than the estimate.
Native English speakers should also be able to read the article in much less time than estimated.
Newbies in privacy will probably take longer than the predicted time for understanding terms they don’t understand
I prefer to change it to: short article, medium article, long article, the whole of Shakespeare
You’ve convinced me. Personally I find the estimates incredibly inaccurate but at the same time I don’t usually pay any attention to them anyways. Short, medium, long would be a more objective measurement than the estimated reading time which is always going to be inaccurate for a large number of people.
Maybe a word count instead of a reading time estimate could do the job as it’s always accurate and people can estimate themselves how much time they’ll need to fully read it.
I agree that the times are not useful for me personally. I also do not pay any attention to them but if I were to see short, medium, or long that would give me a better idea of how in depth the article should be.
I put other in the first poll. I don’t mind or pay attention to these. I have ADHD so I rarely read anything all the way through all at once, and often, I have to reread multiple times as reading something that triggers a squirrel thought will send me thinking about that thing while I continue to read without actually comprehending what I’m reading.
So, I realize I’m not the target audience for these but assume they serve some purpose for neurotypical folk who are able plan their day to the minute. Happy to keep them if they are valuable but no input on the second poll unless you add a “time blind” option.
Edit: didn’t even see the previous suggestion but Small, Medium, Large size estimates seems like a cool idea. I still doubt I would gain much value out of these because I will typically jump around reread, and often don’t consume things linearly, but I always liked SML sizing for Jira tickets as opposed to actual time estimates for tasks. As did most engineers who just wanted simple choices to just get back to software development vs virtual paper pushing :).
I understand as I am ADHD as well and when my hyperfocus kicks in I can read all 200+ replies and other times 5 is too many. But for me if I see “short read” for something that is not so interesting to me, I may be inclined to take a peak. But when I see something like 3 - 5 minutes my mind automatically ignores it unless I find it really interesting.
My time estimates are not the same as everyone, hence my suggesting of short, medium and long. It is really strange how the brain con process that completely different and I also am probably not the target audience either.
To be quite honest, these days I find reading less casually enjoyable. I like videos format more even though I know that reading is the correct and purest way to consume info.
I picked other, I don’t really pay attention to the read time estimates, they are just clutter as far as I’m concerned, if I find a thread interesting I’ll read through all of it, regardless of the time involved.
Minute estimations are wrong per person. Bucketing by approximate text length is better. However, I use estimate read length as a means of roughly gauging the length of an article.
Instead minute precision, maybe do 5 minute precision? If you get articles longer than 30 minutes, then Small / Medium / Large like bucketting is likely best.
Probably would do <5 min = short, 5-15 (or 5-20) = medium, 15+ (or 20+) = long if we did the bucket approach. I think so far this sounds like a better solution than just displaying the word count.
