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You can estimate the literacy of a forum by choosing "annotate results with reading levels", then doing a search for site:example.com. It gives a breakdown of the fraction of pages at each reading level. Far from perfect, but interesting nevertheless.

  site:news.ycombinator.com: 39/55/4
  site:mathworld.wolfram.com: <1/3/96
  site:stackoverflow.com: 5/88/5
  site:lesswrong.com: 12/67/20



If I understand it right, this does not really measure literacy, but the proportion of complicated words used. Mathworld if a site about math, and math uses a lot of special terms, so of course it has a high reading level.


Site:reddit.com 80/19/1

All sites I've searched seem to have at least 1% advanced.


site:4chan.org - 38/59/2

Huh.


It may be time to start frequenting mathworld. If only to immerse myself.




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