Armed Polite Society

Main Forums => The Roundtable => Topic started by: Chuck Dye on November 10, 2007, 08:28:24 PM

Title: The Blog Readability Test also scores thread posts.
Post by: Chuck Dye on November 10, 2007, 08:28:24 PM

Lawdog and other bloggers have posted readability test results rendered by The Blog Readability Test.  Turns out you can run your posts through the same test.  My tested posts score elementary school or junior high level .  The Scientific American site, on the other hand, scores genius level.

Title: Re: The Blog Readability Test also scores thread posts.
Post by: Gewehr98 on November 11, 2007, 06:01:55 AM

I got "High School" level. 

Hmmm...

Title: Re: The Blog Readability Test also scores thread posts.
Post by: Thor on November 11, 2007, 06:44:16 AM

That specifies what level of education is required to read one's blogs or posts, not what level they are written at. One thing I learned from being USN, it's really easy to write above someone's knowledge level. Writing articles, thoughts, or opinions at a normal level will get read more and perhaps become a little more popular. Writing at too low or too high of a level will dissuade folks from reading or replying.

Title: Re: The Blog Readability Test also scores thread posts.
Post by: Gewehr98 on November 11, 2007, 06:52:35 AM

Just looked at that site again.

Need to dumb things down, I guess.   

Title: Re: The Blog Readability Test also scores thread posts.
Post by: Chuck Dye on November 11, 2007, 06:57:40 AM

Hmmm... indeed, Gewehr!

When I run some of your recent posts, going for the genuine writing and eschewing the "I got "High School" level" sort, the best I get back is junior high.  What posts did you cherrypick?

Title: Re: The Blog Readability Test also scores thread posts.
Post by: Chuck Dye on November 11, 2007, 07:06:20 AM

Thor,

In the mid 1960s my Dad, a Captain, spent some time reviewing the results of a rewrite of Navy manuals from high school graduate to 9th grade level.  For a time, I was asked for my opinion about this or that wording. 

I commented one day that it seemed he had finished.  Dad said no, not finished, just moved on to the classified nuclear weapons manuals I could not see.   

Title: Re: The Blog Readability Test also scores thread posts.
Post by: Hawkmoon on November 11, 2007, 07:33:02 AM

Quote from: Huck Phinn on November 11, 2007, 06:06:20 AM

I commented one day that it seemed he had finished.  Dad said no, not finished, just moved on to the classified nuclear weapons manuals I could not see.   

Why does the idea of people having only a 9th grade education level playing with nuclear weapons leave me feeling moderately uneasy? Perhaps that helps explain how the Air Farce recently managed to fly a bomber across the country fully loaded with live nukes and nody knew it until a few hours after they had landed ...

Title: Re: The Blog Readability Test also scores thread posts.
Post by: Gewehr98 on November 11, 2007, 07:42:42 AM

A little hint from one of the guys who flew B-52s for a living...

They weren't "live nukes", or whatever that term is supposed to mean.

They had the warheads.  That was it.  Google "Arming Sequence" for the rest.

Title: Re: The Blog Readability Test also scores thread posts.
Post by: Gewehr98 on November 11, 2007, 07:46:46 AM

There was no cherry-picking, btw.

I just plugged my blog's URL into the Blog Readability Test.

I'll have to put a few others I read, like Instapundit and Little Green Footballs, into the test.   

Title: Re: The Blog Readability Test also scores thread posts.
Post by: brennankg on November 11, 2007, 05:57:08 PM

Thanks for the link!

I tried it for my blog, as well as my wife's and those of some of our friends.
Entertaining.


B.