wikipendium/wikipendium.no

Show estimated reading time on compendiums

Closed this issue · 3 comments

stianjensen commented

After looking into this a bit more, I got the following numbers from wikipedia:

Rates of reading include reading for memorization (fewer than 100 words per minute [wpm]); reading for learning (100–200 wpm); reading for comprehension (200–400 wpm); and skimming (400–700 wpm). Reading for comprehension is the essence of the daily reading of most people. Skimming is for superficially processing large quantities of text at a low level of comprehension (below 50%).

Turns out it's hard to give a good estimate simply because of the different ways a compendium can be read.
Not sure what a good solution would be here.

iver56 commented

Some thoughts:

  • Pick an average rate of reading and slap on a huge standard deviation
  • Let users have a personal setting for it. Activate the feature by taking a reading test that determines the reading time
  • Instead of estimating reading time, estimate the number of A4 pages of text the compendium corresponds to. Most students have a concept of how long it takes them to read a page of text.
  • I typically use wikipendium as reference when looking up a concept. I rarely read a compendium from start to end, so the reading time feature is not important/useful for me.
  • Keep in mind that by implementing it the interface becomes slightly slower and less clean. Also, the code base becomes slightly larger and more complex with more potential for bugs. Sometimes, keeping it clean and simple is more important than feature cramming.
  • It's possible to create this feature as a browser plugin that is separate from the wikipendium.no code base

TL;DR: I'd close this issue and focus on other features

cristeahub commented

TL;DR: I'd close this issue and focus on other features

👍