1761463 - Estimated reading times for Pocket recommendations sometimes wildly off

Status: NEW

(Firefox :: Pocket, defect, P2)

Description

[Jonathan Kew [:jfkthame]]

Attachment: New Tab page recommendation, showing completely unrealistic time estimate

I've been noticing that the estimated reading times shown on the New Tab page's "Recommended by Pocket" tiles are often on the low side, and sometimes dramatically wrong.

For example, today my Nightly is showing a recommendation (see screenshot) for an esquire.com article, "38 Documentaries That Will Change Your Life", and suggests a reading time of 1 min. That seems very short to even briefly skim the titles of 38 documentaries!

That recommendation actually takes me to https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/movies/g3342/best-documentaries-of-all-time/?utm_source=pocket-newtab-global-en-GB, which is in fact many screen-fulls long. Clicking Reader Mode on the article shows an estimated reading time of 24-30 minutes, which seems much more realistic than what the New Tab page showed.

In general, the reading times shown on the New Tab page are in the right ballpark, although they seem to consistently be a bit lower than what Reader Mode suggests for the linked articles. But this is not the only time I have seen an estimate that is wildly out of line with reality.

Another example I'm seeing in today's Nightly is a link to "What was the Cold War?" on nationalgeographic.com. Here, the New Tab page shows 3 min, whereas going to the article and clicking Reader Mode shows an estimated time of 10-12 minutes.

It looks like whatever the New Tab page is doing to get these estimated reading times is somewhat unreliable.

Comment 1

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco]]

The severity field is not set for this bug.
:daleharvey, could you have a look please?

For more information, please visit auto_nag documentation.

Comment 2

[Dale Harvey (:daleharvey)]

Seems best for pocket to triage

Comment 3

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco]]

The severity field is not set for this bug.
:thecount, could you have a look please?

For more information, please visit auto_nag documentation.