I’ve been learning about readability indexes in my online college courses lately. Specifically the Gunning Fog Index and the Flesch Reading Ease Scale. There are plenty more, but the basic concept is that these formulas determine what reading level someone must have mastered to be able to understand what it is that you are writing.
I went on the web and found some automated tools to do the job for me. It is tediouse to do this manually without them. For something to test with, I used the Second Life Terms of Service (TOS). I was not at all surprised at the results. Second Life is available for anyone who is 13 years of age or older, but you must have a reading level of a college graduate in order to understand and agree to the terms of service. I don’t know about you, but that doesn’t sound rite to me.
I would think that one test would be skewed and I found find myself being optimistic. However, I have a diversity in testing methods and the lowest possible grade was 11. How many 13 year olds do you know in the 11th grade? I believe the average age of a High School Junior is 16.
The average grade is 27.33. Not only would I need an AA and BA to understand the TOS, but I would probably need a Masters as well. I doubt that Linden Labs is the only company with terms of services that targets a reading level of college graduates when at the same time it targets people who do not have that level of understanding. When was the last time that you installed software and read through the entire license agreement? Let alone read, but actually understand it as well.
The world of software and services loves to protect themselves with legal jargon that its end-users may not understand. Perhaps it is time that we have our own legal jargon that states our own rights to protect ourselves from the service providers. “By allowing me to connect and offer service to create content in a virtual world hosted and owned by Linden Lab, they are agreeing that I can not be held responsible for blah, blah, blah.”
The only problem there would be that they would need to agree. I do not have the power to persuade them to do so since they are not despirate for my services in particular. There are many others willing to offer the same services without host-end agreements.
Why is it that service providers have such power over us? I’m not talking about Linden Lab’s alone. The MS Windows operating system, Sony Playstation games, even those limited liability warranties that come with your luggage. How can we as a people get our power to persuade when so many accept the norm without question?
Scoring Metrics
Number of characters: 44661
Number of words: 7484
Number of sentences: 183
Average words per sentence: 40.9
Flesch Score: 11.65
Flesch Grade: 22 : Beyond Twelfth Grade reading level
Automated Readability Index: 27 : Beyond Twelfth Grade reading level
Coleman-Liau Index: 21 : Beyond Twelfth Grade reading level
Gunning-Fog Index: 55 : Beyond Twelfth Grade reading level
