[P]

Not sure if this is new, but Google now rates pages by their reading level. You can search by it in the advanced settings, and rate sites on how advanced their texts are. The dumbest site in that piece is Youtube.com, which should surprise noone. Anyone have a better example?

[Doofy]

Let me guess. MySpace is second dumbest?

[Doc HM]

I see MacNN forums rate a basic reading level on 37% of the pages, intermediate on 62% and Advanced on less than 1%, which must be all my posts.

[turtle777]

LOL:

"President Bush"
Basic 4%
Intermediate 92%
Advanced 3%

"President Obama"
Basic 39%
Intermediate 59%
Advanced 1%

SCNR

We're going to have some much fun with this.

-t

[Doofy]

Originally Posted by Doc HM 

I see MacNN forums rate a basic reading level on 37% of the pages, intermediate on 62% and Advanced on less than 1%, which must be all my posts.

So basically we're less advanced than YouTube, which gets 2%.

Bess, shut up about poop!

[Person Man]

Originally Posted by Doofy 

So basically we're less advanced than YouTube, which gets 2%.

Bess, shut up about poop!

Ah, YouTube. Their own brand of stupid.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by Doofy 

So basically we're less advanced than YouTube, which gets 2%.

Bess, shut up about drink!

My response. I like drink.

[Person Man]

Wow, the Besson filter even changes quotes!

Doofy, I don't think you told him to stop talking about drinks...

[besson3c]

I think there should be more filtering, cause I'm starting to get bored with all of your shticks. Changing up a word here and there changes the whole landscape...

[Eug]

So, I'm a moron. My blog (sig) rates 53% basic, 45% intermediate, < 1% advanced.

P.S. That adds up to less than 99%.

[ghporter]

Dumb sites have dumb content. YouTube has plenty of dumb content, but its ratings seem to come almost exclusively from the @#$^@&*%heads who comment on clips. That's not "content," it's text graffiti.

Reading grade level calculations tend to be relatively poorly quantified. Does the calculation weight for word length? Sentence length? Advanced punctuation? Use of "advanced" versus "basic" words regardless of length? Google doesn't even tell us what level they peg each of their three selections at...

Microsoft incorporates the "Flesch-Kincaid" method in Word's "Readability Statistics." F-K is extremely useful for technical writers, writers of training materials, and even university students. Interestingly, it's incredibly easy (given a copious vocabulary) to rewrite exactly the same meaning from a very low grade level to a very high grade level, or vice versa.

[Eug]

My brother worked for a magazine, and used to get all his articles dumbed down for publication. It used to irritate him, but then again, not everyone wants to read dry peer-reviewed journal-like articles in their weekly national magazine.

I sometimes read The Economist (when it's lying around in the doc's office or whatever). I would never consider reading it if it wasn't dumbed down for me, and I consider myself a fairly well-educated guy... just not in economics. The Economist isn't Weekly World News level in dumbness but the point here is that if you want to cater to the masses, you need to be able to reach them.

BTW, the blog comment above actually isn't surprising. It's a blog. If I wrote formal articles for a national weekly magazine, it'd be much less colloquial. I think style has a lot do with perceived dumbed-downness.

[ghporter]

It's possible to put things in more common, less esoteric terms without "dumbing down" the content. It's not a trivial task, but it's a sign of someone who really knows what he's talking about when he can explain something very complex to someone without any real background in his subject. The Economist does a pretty good job at explaining without making it look "dumb." Other magazines seem to have editorial policies that encourage intellectual snobbery in how they write stuff for "the common folk."

[freudling]

engadget has to be right up there with really dumb.

[Eug]

Originally Posted by ghporter 

It's possible to put things in more common, less esoteric terms without "dumbing down" the content. It's not a trivial task, but it's a sign of someone who really knows what he's talking about when he can explain something very complex to someone without any real background in his subject. The Economist does a pretty good job at explaining without making it look "dumb." Other magazines seem to have editorial policies that encourage intellectual snobbery in how they write stuff for "the common folk."

I agree to a certain extent, but I really do think The Economist is pretty dumbed down. There is usually no in-depth analysis of anything... which is quite frankly one reason I read it, which is the same reason I may read Time Magazine.

It cuts out a lot of the content, so I can read it very quickly and even though I may not have any background in the topic I can understand what it is trying to say. Quite frankly, if I have to devote 20 minutes to the article, I'm not interested, and would rather just go post crap on MacNN.

However, if it's an easy to understand 10 minute article I'll read it, because I'll enjoy it, and I might learn a thing or two too, and it's better than reading about Britney's cellulite in People.

OTOH, I encourage you to read Weekly World News. I used to get it every week at the grocery store (and would get funny looks from other people in line at the cash). It's bloody hilarious. The people who "write" that must have tons of fun. I'll never forget the headline "6 foot Chernobyl chicken".

[ghporter]

The Economist does a good job of explaining high level issues; I think in-depth analysis of anything more complex than Econ 101 issues would take several issues-worth of print. Probably not cost effective for them to put all that stuff on paper. That would be a great article for them to publish though; "The Cost-Benefit Analysis of Publishing In-depth Analyses."

WWN is a hoot. They've outed Jon-Benet's killer something like 8 times (always someone different), introduced us to the concept of people's diets causing their newborns to be green, and claimed the right to selectively withhold enforcement of various physical laws for purposes of "journalism." My son (at about 12) suggested that the "writers" who work at WWN must either be the best party group in the world, or have some large supply of mind altering entertainment pharmaceuticals. I have to agree.

[d4nth3m4n]

Haven't read the thread, just going to leave this here, before this gets moved into poli/war

What is the meaninng of this? Captcha or Gotcha?