Talk:Reading

Hodge Podge

This article seems to be a mishmash of information, indicated by the fact that "Reading speed" is the second topic and "Miscellaneous" has a large place. I think it makes sense to reorganize the information according to the domains of literacy: phonological awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and reading comprehension (the latter should probably be subdivided, perhaps into comprehension processes [e.g., working memory] and knowledge). If there is no objection, I'll do that sometime in the next week. Kearnsdm 08:21, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Reading in a computer

is there any good info about how to best read in a computer? font type, size, etc. ? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 201.83.178.101 (talk) 05:30, 7 April 2007 (UTC).

Good question; I was looking for information on a similar topic. I recently read a statement that reading on a computer screen was only 60% as fast as reading on paper (and the article specifically mentioned the Kindle). I think this is completely false and was disappointed to see that no reference was included. I have done lots of computer reading and am going to finish Gone with the Wind within the next hour, having started a few days ago, not reading continuously, of course.

I don't know of any online guides to reading by computer screen. I set the fonts that seem most comfortable to me. I don't have a Kindle, but do have a Nokia N800, and read using something called FBreader, though I have also had good results on a desktop computer with Microsoft Reader and Rudenko Reader, among others. The latter two are good because they also support text to speech, but require Windows.

I can't figure out where to put information like the above in Wikipedia. Perhaps it doesn't belong there.Geneven (talk) 15:33, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

Happy to know that! Thanks for your support. Imransagor338 (talk) 19:39, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

Nowadays we could use Adobe Acrobat reader, which is a great tool for Screen Reader folks 😀 Imransagor338 (talk) 19:43, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

Biased Section

The entire section headed "Skill Development" seems to be an argument for altering the standard spelling of English words to a phonetic system. It is an opinionated rant. Why is this under "Skill Devlopment"? The claim that the problem is the language itself rather than inadequate education is utterly unsubstantiated in the article. The author of this section evidently learned to read - so did I, and we managed to do it despite the bizarre and inconsistent quirks of English spelling.

Has the author looked at the Wikipedia entry for the list of countries by literacy rate? The Reading entry also seems to claim that "Chinese picture-writing symbols" are easier to learn to read than English words. The literacy rate in China is lower than that of most English-speaking countries, and looking at the list by literacy rate, I see no correlation between writing system and literacy rates. Clearly, the type of writing system is not the main predictor of literacy. I propose that the argument for changing the spelling of English be deleted, or at the very least moved to an appropriate section.

I agree and was struck by the apparent bias of that section, so I have added a POV marker to that section. Various statements such as "The Only Way Students Learn to Read English As a result, the ONLY way students can learn to read English is to learn the spelling of all 20,000 or more words in their reading vocabulary one-at-a-time by rote memory or by repeated use of the word. This learning can come through either the phonics or partially through the whole word teaching method." seem questionable to me and are unsourced. I don't think these sentiments have either scientific support or are in accord with the views of most educators. Armarshall 14:01, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

I would go a step further. This isn't just a "biased section"; it's vandalism, plain and simple. There is absolutely no way that this extraordinary rant can be integrated into the rest of the article; this is self-evident, and doesn't require any extensive soul-searching on our part to determine. As of ten seconds from now, I am removing the offending content. Mattrognlie 07:30, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

The section on speed reading could stand to be explained

"Speed reading courses and books often encourage the reader to continually speed up; comprehension tests lead the reader to believe their comprehension is constantly improving. However, competence in reading involves the understanding that skimming is dangerous as a default habit."

Speed reading information I've seen stresses comprehension, with that in mind I do not understand how speed reading could be considered dangerous as a default habit. It'd be a good idea to explain this fully or remove it 70.132.22.157 02:04, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

Subvocalized reading

The page for subvocalization and this one contradict. I subvocalize when I read and I have had the reading level of a 12 grader since I was in 7th grade. Others I know also subvocalize and they excel in reading just as much as I do. I'm sorry but that information is heavily biased and promotes speed reading.

Correlation vs. causality

The section "Effect of Reading" begins with the statement: "Studies have shown that American children who learn to read by the third grade are less likely to end up in prison, drop out of school, or take drugs. Adults who read literature on a regular basis are nearly three times as likely to attend a performing arts event, almost four times as likely to visit an art museum, more than two-and-a-half times as likely to do volunteer or charity work, and over one-and-a-half times as likely to participate in sporting activities, according to Jamie Littlefield on charityguide.org.^[2]"

But a glance at the Littlefield article cited indicates that no "effects" have been shown at all. Rather, it appears to claim nothing more than correlation between reading and the positive effects cited.

And this interpretation is further quite plausible: Educated, more intelligent families tend to have children who avoid behaviors that result in prison time, etc., and who are more cultured, etc.

It's not implausible, either, that reading might very well *cause* the effects noted. But that is not what the cited article claims. It just claims that children who read are more likely to have the cited qualities: this is the same as claiming *correlation* -- something far easier to infer from data than is *causation*.

Thus, the word effects is not appropriate here, since this word means causal relationships, not mere correlation. Daqu 18:14, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps another way to approach this would be to say that the correlation is firmly established, but that at least some researchers and statisticians suspect a causative relationship between reading failure and increased rates of poverty, need of public assistance, high birth rate, death (due partly to illiteracy impeding good health care -- e.g., decreased ability to take medications as directed due to illiteracy, etc) imprisonment, recidivism, and so on.

There is a further clear relationship between reading failure frequently being the result of learning disabilities, which cuts across socioeconomic lines. History of difficulty in school -- failure to learn, and especially failure to learn to read, results in shame and poor self image, rejection from peers, increased behavior issues, increased juvenile delinquency, juvenile incarceration, etc etc.

My point is, there is clearly a case to be made for causation, and the research /statistics supporting this line of thought should be included in the article with notation that this is not proven but suspected, at least by some.

Obviously, appropriate citations would need to be provided. I'll look for some.

Best,

Rosmoran 17:29, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Great images; idea about navigation box for reading and related topics

Hi,

Whoever added the new graphic images, good choices! They look terrific.

Also, I've seen some sets of related articles that use nice info boxes that point users directly to closely related topics, in context of the main article rather than at the bottom. I put together a strawman to illustrate the idea and would like for interested editors to take a look and see what you think.

Here is a strawman to give you an idea of what I'm proposing:

User:Rosmoran/sandbox/reading/reading template

Here is a mock up of what the reading article might look like with this navigation template added:

User:Rosmoran/sandbox/reading/example reading article with nav template

Thoughts?

Best,

Rosmoran 19:27, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Content of article

The content of this article seems very random. The topics don't seem to relate to one another, and sections seem to be unmatched in the level of detail they present.

Look at the major topics covered:

• reading rates

• types of reading (proofreading, close reading, etc)

• skill development (but only discusses initial reading acquisition -- doesn't address acquiring skills related to the types discussed in Types of Reading)

• reading assessment -- related specifically to assessing progress during initial reading acquisition.

• effects of reading (social effects, such as higher literacy rates results in lower prison populations)

• lighting

The relationship among most of these topics is at best scanty.

I'm thinking we need to revisit the content of the entire article, and consider covering the topic at a very high level with sub-articles providing the details.

Thoughts? Other ideas?

Rosmoran (talk) 00:27, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

I second your proposition; this article seems very confusing and needs revision - there's simply too much information compressed into too little of a space. I can start by rearranging the sections and cleaning up the text, but that will be a while - in the time in between some comments would be nice.

Here is a possible outline:

1. History
2. Reading skills; sub-section: Development, Assement, Methods
3. Effects
4. Health; sub-section: Vising, Lighting
5. Notes
6. References
7. External links
8. See also

ChyranandChloe (talk) 03:38, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

The first step revision has taken place, all sections have been revised to a more logical order. Furthermore most images of people reading has been commented out; they are interesting and appealing, but they are also unnecessary for the relevance of this article. They however would be perfect for a history section and posses potential for a new article. Next step is improving the wording and consistency of this article, in addition to adding a "History" section. ChyranandChloe (talk) 03:26, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Eye damage

Anything on how far something you're reading should be away from you? or if it is damaging to your eyes to read in the dark? I hear that reading in the dark actually doesn't damage or strain your eyes; and reading something in front of you should be around a foot away. Any research/information? 70.111.251.203 00:48, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I've heard of eye damage, myopia, eye strain, and so on before. So far the information I'm heard is - well - it's controversial. For instance, public perception has it that myopia is caused by reading - especially reading in the dark where there is eye strain; however, from a physician I spoke to that's untrue, myopia is "genetics". There has been research conducted that reading or more specifically intelligence is linked to myopia, and they are hypothesizing that reading is the genetic trigger to myopia; for example, just has your muscles adapt when they are used, you eyes will reshape and thus refocus to the distance you view things at the most. Anyway, here are some links Myopia, Ohio State, More links with Google.ChyranandChloe (talk) 03:51, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Move Reading → Reading (process)

Reading may refer to the computer acquisition of information, the mechanism in which bills are introduced, certain people, and places. To provide a more flexible position for the disambiguation page, I believe that this article Reading should be moved to a new article Reading (process). Move will be made, 07 July 2008. ChyranandChloe (talk) 02:03, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Now can you fix the disambiguation page! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.102.119.5 (talk) 16:12, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

It takes time, I have to let the bots fix the links to this article before changing the redirect. I'll do it on July 16. ChyranandChloe (talk) 02:33, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

I think it should go back to plain old 'reading' myself. All the other meanings are pretty trivial. Richard001 (talk) 08:02, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

The reasoning to place the disambiguation first is to give the reader the power to choose which definition of "reading" to use rather than narrowing them to simply "interpreting symbols to construct meaning". This exposes them to other possible definitions that would otherwise be hidden or underrepresented. You are right in that this article holds the most natural name space, which is why it was decided to place Reading (process) at the top of list in the disambiguation. ChyranandChloe (talk) 21:52, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

It doesn't matter, the others are trivial (and "the computer acquisition of information, the mechanism in which bills are introduced" are both processes anyway!). We have Reading, Berkshire at the top with it, but almost nobody has even heard of it - in fact the majority of the world probably wouldn't even know where Berkshire was! We have hatnotes for these things; reading should be moved back to 'reading', and a hatnote to reading (disambiguation) should be (presumably re-)added.

Also, think about people trying to internal link to this article. Unless they know that reading is a disambiguation, or they check every link they add (I try to but it can be tiresome, and I doubt many others do this), there will be a lot of links to fix. Your user page is a perfect example: "This user appears to be able learn though reading [...]". Richard001 (talk) 23:16, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

Before you make the move, you'll have to CSD delete the Reading (disambiguation) redirect, move the disambiguation, CSD delete the Reading, then move the Reading (process). You have consensus. ChyranandChloe (talk) 22:10, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

Read is a VERB, not a noun —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.5.14.6 (talk) 22:24, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

7ho email 41.10.170.133 (talk) 19:55, 11 October 2024 (UTC)

Intelligence

The "Intelligence" section is in desperate need of some citations. I've tried looking but the closest I managed to find was:

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21993021-2702,00.htmlIndianparttime2 (talk) 21:46, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

There are additional problems in the intelligences section. I don't have time to address them right now, but simply, the "intelligences" listed are not "intelligences" as envisioned by the Howard Gardener's theory. Verbal-linguistic, visual-spatial, and mathematical-logical are mislabled and there is no "auditory" intelligence identified by the theory. Further the intelligences listed are mischaracterized. This section is in need of a lot of love.Glortman (talk) 11:22, 9 June 2017 (UTC)

Guy reading picture

Guys, I don't know you, but I think the picture of the dude reading does not really add any particular value to the article beyond the aesthetic one (that implying he is aesthetic if at all). IMO this picture should be removed. Furthermore, it seems to me this picture was added for some personal fame reasons. Thanks! --Camilo Sanchez (talk) 07:58, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

need a WIKI reading project

All of the reading Artiles on wiki lack consistancy, tend to be single country orientated, and therefore lack a global view. There needs to be reading by country catergory to reflect the skill requirments of different writing systsm and the different orthographies whith each writing system.

dolfrog (talk) 13:13, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

The solution to your perceived problem is for you to add "missing" information from other countries, not to balkanize the reading-related articles. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:46, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

This not a perceived problem but a real problem as from your commnets you seem to have very litle idea about how humans first learn to speak, and then have to learn how to interpret the visual notation of speech adopted by their culture, which is called reading. Unless you have a full understanding of all of these issues and have them presented in global terms in the appropriate Wikipedia articles, then the content of well researched related Wikipedia does not relate to these less well researched articles. So the well researched Dyslexia article does not realte to well to so many of the less well researched articles in the Reading category as most are more opinion based using non peer reviewd books rather than peer review based research to substanciate and support their claims. So you it appears to be an editor who calims to be a reading expert, so It should be your role to improve this mess in the reading category, I have enough to do research peer reviewed research to supportthe existing Dyalexia Article and sub articles, and do not have the time to carry out the major revision that the many of the reading articles in the Reading Category require. So It ti time for you to stop criticsing from the side lines and begin to do some real editing work. dolfrog (talk) 15:59, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

PubMed Research papers regarding Reading

I have been collating a series of PubMed online Research paper collection, mainly about dyslexia, which can be found at user:dolfrog There is a Reading Collection of articles which may be worth looking at when developing this article There is another collection which could also be of interest Dorsal and Ventral Streams - functional anatomy of language dolfrog (talk) 18:32, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

Reading Makes You Less Likely...

A bizarre paragraph near the end makes some unreferenced and to some extent insulting statements about having a high reading level making you less likely to take drugs or go to prison.

I am going to go ahead and remove the whole lot. It seems like a slur against drug users, implying they are less bookish or educated.

119.224.57.190 (talk) 00:28, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

Proposed trim of "external links" section

Prompted by a recent addition, I checked the whole list but I couldn't find anything that isn't either irrelevant or has some sort of axe to grind. A strict application of WP:ELNO would remove the lot. Other views, please, before implementing this WP:BOLD step.--Old Moonraker (talk) 17:56, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Goals of reading

I started a new section called "Goals of reading". Most of the information come from Mortimer J Adler's How to Read a Book, but the section certainly needs work.--ThomasMagnus 21:26, 3 June 2010 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by ThomasMagnus (talk • contribs)

Misuse of sources

A request for comments has been filed concerning the conduct of Jagged 85 (talk · contribs). Jagged 85 is one of the main contributors to Wikipedia (over 67,000 edits, he's ranked 198 in the number of edits), and practically all of his edits have to do with Islamic science, technology and philosophy. This editor has persistently misused sources here over several years. This editor's contributions are always well provided with citations, but examination of these sources often reveals either a blatant misrepresentation of those sources or a selective interpretation, going beyond any reasonable interpretation of the authors' intent. I searched the page history, and found 3 edits by Jagged 85 in April 2010. Tobby72 (talk) 17:19, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

That's an old and archived RfC. The point is still valid though, and his contribs need to be doublechecked. Tobby72 (talk) 21:06, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Printed vs. Electronic Reading

I changed the wording of the overview section to be neutral regarding how much printed word is read as opposed to electronic displays. To say that "most" reading is still of the printed word would need a citation. -- Fyrael (talk) 15:41, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Reading people?

Another common meaning of "reading" is picking up on social cues to detect information beyond the meaning of words. Even the standing definition could apply to much more than written language: "Reading is a complex cognitive process of decoding symbols for the intention of constructing or deriving meaning." What would be the best way to include the interpretation of other symbols such as bodily/facial gestures, apparel, or tone? --₄¹7 「話」 22:44, 2 November 2011 (UTC)

A topic like this would need its own page, there is a lot of work on the topic has been done and it deserves its own page.Beefcake6412 (talk) 22:51, 2 November 2011 (UTC)

Some articles that cover what you're talking about would be Nonverbal communication and just Communication. However, I think you're also confusing this article with the Reading page, which shows all the different articles that could be titled "Reading."

Rereading

I re-added the book published by Harvard, under the rereading paragraph. It helps establish the concept and term as being notable beyond just a casual sense, and it is one of few academic works published on the subject. The book goes beyond just listing an authors favorite books, it examines the phenomenon in general, by a literature professor. Also don't throw around the word "advertising", it's uncalled for, see WP:FAITH, if it was astroturfing it would be obvious. The edit was made in good faith. Green Cardamom (talk) 05:11, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

Content random, poorly organized - new section?

It seems to me that the content is still quite random. For example, why does the main section "Overview" contain comments about horizontal scrolling and contrast? That seems to not fit there, and also to be an opinion, not a statement of fact. I'd like to remove it and some other extraneous parts, pending comments?

Also, I think a useful section or subheading would be addressing the impact the internet has had on reading. There are tons of popular press articles on the topic (eg Nicholas Carr, "Is Google Making Us Stupid?", and NY Times, "R U Really Reading?"). There is also a fair bit of research on how the presence of hyperlinks, for example, makes reading more difficult or easier. Toxicmegacolonlaptop (talk) 18:50, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

Braille?

Many of the descriptions throughout this article ignore Braille as a non-visual language, for example from the last part of the introduction, "The common link is the interpretation of symbols to extract the meaning from the visual notations." This implies that blind individuals who are literate in Braille cannot read. This is a bias that I would like to see removed. --zandperl (talk) 02:33, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

Agreed. The trivial fix to that sentence is "... interpretation of symbols to extract the meaning from the visual or tactile notations", but the more is required, including a short Braille section with a {{main}} hatnote to Braille. Mitch Ames (talk) 13:45, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: no consensus for move. Miniapolis 13:59, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

---

• Reading (process) → Reading
• Reading → Reading (disambiguation)

– Someone apparently unilaterally decided (no RM that I can see) that the act of a human being seeing and comprehending sets of words is not the primary topic of the word reading. I believe it is absolutely the primary topic, above all other combined possible uses (and there are several, including some like Reading, Berkshire that are seriously significant, but which still do not come close to being the primary topic). The current article at reading (process) is pretty pitiful but the topic therein is clearly more notable than all others, I think. But what do you thin-k? Red Slash 22:51, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

• Support: When most people hear "reading", they think of the act of picking up a book or newspaper and reading it. Illegitimate Barrister (talk) 07:22, 1 May 2013 (UTC)
  • Er, maybe, but when people hear rɛdɪŋ, they think something else. -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 02:26, 2 May 2013 (UTC)
• Oppose. With page views as:
  

Reading (process) [1] viewed 141099 times in the last 90 days.
Reading, Berkshire [2] viewed 123961 times in the last 90 days.
I don't think we can promote Reading (process) as WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. Zarcadia (talk) 17:00, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

• • I see your useful statistics. I also fully recognize that we're dealing with a reasonably important city as the leading secondary claimant to the title. But I feel WP:ASTONISH is useful here. Who would actually type in Reading thinking they'd get the city? Red Slash 01:19, 3 May 2013 (UTC)
    • Well apparently 123961 people have, as the page views are almost 1:1 with Reading (process). There is no WP:PRIMARYTOPIC here. Zarcadia (talk) 20:48, 3 May 2013 (UTC)
      • Nonsense. The pageview stats say nothing about how many people were searching for the city with just the single word "Reading". We have links, you know. Powers ^T 23:23, 3 May 2013 (UTC)
        • Looks like you're unfamiliar with how disambiguation works here at Wikipedia. After reaching the disambiguation page readers will then choose the page they are looking for. With stats as Reading (process) 141099 vs. Reading, Berkshire 123961, it's clear that it's 50:50 between the two. Reading (process) is far from being the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. Zarcadia (talk) 20:31, 17 May 2013 (UTC)
          • To try to clarify what Red Slash and Powers are saying to you, the stats you've listed are simply page views. They do not indicate in any way how the viewer arrived at the page. Red Slash is doubting how many of the views for Berkshire came about by a user typing in 'Reading', arriving at the DAB page, and then proceeding to the Berkshire page. It doesn't mean that the stats are irrelevant, just that they don't show the entire picture. -- Fyrael (talk) 21:05, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

• Support per the "long-term significance" criterion of PRIMARYTOPIC. The act of reading long predates Reading and will most likely outlive it as well. --BDD (talk) 17:13, 1 May 2013 (UTC)
• Oppose. Although it is one of the most important human activities, Reading (upper case) can also apply to a number of cites including inter alia Reading, Berkshire and Reading, Pennsylvania. The extremely wide usage, and the page hit statistics indicate to me it would be preferable for readers for the process to be so identified for the sake of disambiguation. -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 02:26, 2 May 2013 (UTC)
• Support. To me process sounds more like a manufacturing process or a computer algorithm than what people do when they look at characters and find meaningful words from them. Apteva (talk) 03:35, 2 May 2013 (UTC)
• Oppose. At least two significant topics that share the same title. The disambiguation page at Reading is the sensible solution. Tassedethe (talk) 02:03, 3 May 2013 (UTC)
• Oppose. In short written titles, the (broad) geographical sense is not distinguishable from the action of comprehending writing. That makes this just ambiguous enough to justify the present location of the disambiguation page. Note that this page definitely needs a better parenthetical disambiguator in the title, but the present move request can't really cover this effectively. 168.12.253.66 (talk) 20:30, 3 May 2013 (UTC)
• Support. Just as Apple is the fruit and not the company, regardless of pageviews, so too should this title direct readers to the common English meaning of the word. Powers ^T 23:23, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

Apple (fruit) woud be a more sensible way to approach consistency; like Orange (fruit). Dicklyon (talk) 05:07, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

Apple (fruit), with apple redirecting to it? Absurd. We've never done that, outside of a few outliers, and you know it... and I really wish you'd cease your crusade to change that. Powers ^T 23:40, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

Not true. Article writers have often done this, but someone quickly changes it. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 10:36, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

No. Not so absurd as you may suggest. apple should become the disambiguating page, with links to Apple Inc, Apple (fruit), and Apple Corps. -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 02:22, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

Right, I wasn't suggesting that Apple would be a redirect, but that it would be a disambig page, like Orange. But I'm not proposing or crusading to do that, just saying that it would not be unreasonable or unusual, and that it would be the conventional way to address what you see as an inconsistency. Dicklyon (talk) 03:05, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

But you suggested "consistency" as a reason to change the name of the apple article, not primacy (or lack thereof). So you're saying that because orange is a disambiguation page, apple should be too? If that's the case, I don't understand why. Powers ^T 17:00, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

• Oppose "Reading" appears to be a disambiguation page in 2003 and for many years ; "written comprehension" is probably a better title for this page anyways. -- 65.94.76.126 (talk) 01:06, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

• Oppose – a bogus primarytopic claim is not the only way to improve a title you don't like. Dicklyon (talk) 05:03, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

  You only think it's bogus because you don't like it. It's not bogus. Powers ^T 23:40, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

  It's bogus because there's no coherent rationale for picking this one topic as primary over the others. Most primarytopic claim RMs are similarly bogus, from people who just don't like disambig pages and prefer to put the ambiguity into the titles. Dicklyon (talk) 03:05, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

  The rationale is that the common English word is the topic that most of our readers would expect to find at that name. Anyone who was looking for the city under that name would not be surprised; they'd say "Oh, of course! That makes sense that this article is about reading; I'll have to be more specific, or visit this disambiguation link to find the city." Powers ^T 17:00, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

• Support. Frankly I find it surprising that we're having a discussion at all. I would have thought that the intent of WP:Primary topic is very clear indeed. If it isn't then we need to tweak it. I also point out that as this is reverting a recent undiscussed move, the no consensus result that seems likely should be to move back to the original, which has been stable for some years now. Andrewa (talk) 15:35, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

• Oppose. Although the seeing and comprehension of sets of words is the most important dictionary meaning of "reading", Wikipedia is not a dictionary. As far a encyclopedia topics go, Reading, Berks, Reading, PA, and (maybe) Reading Railroad are at least as important. There is no primary topic —  AjaxSmack  01:29, 9 May 2013 (UTC)
  • Per our naming conventions, none of those could be named "Reading". If the AP Style guide adds Reading PA, we can choose one as the primary topic, but now, reading as in reading a book is clearly primary. Apteva (talk) 02:11, 11 May 2013 (UTC)
• Oppose per the page views. I agree with AjaxSmack that reading (process) is the most important of the terms needing disambiguation, but I don't think it rises to the level of being the primary topic. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 09:43, 10 May 2013 (UTC)
• Oppose. Reading is very well and widespread known as a place. Many other subjects are named deriving from this place. A wikipedia link to Reading is likely to be assumed to be about the place. Finding yourself at what may be considered (erroneously) a mere dictionary word is likely to be confusing. A DAB page is least likely to confuse. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 10:30, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

• Suggest instead Rename to Reading (literacy), as "process" does make it sound like machinery, or computing, or some technical thing. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 10:33, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

• I see where you're coming from here, but "literacy" seems like too narrow a scope to me. "Literacy" refers exclusively to the written word, but the article also covers the reading of musical notation and of pictograms. Also, the term "literacy" implies a certain level of skill in the reader, but the article also covers the acquisition of reading by beginner learners. How about Reading (cognition) instead? I think that would include all of the pertinent activities covered in the article, and I like it better than Reading (process). — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 12:39, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

• I still prefer "literacy". To me, it is broad, and includes musical literacy, ancient hieroglyphic literacy, even pictographs and simple code or sign reading. Oddly, "literacy" has a broadness far exceeding that of "literature". "Cognition" has too much to do with mental processing of the information beyond the reading itself. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 13:03, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

• I would say that reading is the mental processing of the information. But anyway, given the disagreement here and the nature of the discussion so far, this is probably best left for a future move request. (Maybe we could open one straight away if this closes with a "no consensus".) — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 14:41, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

  RMs only last a week (normally). If more discussion is wanted, an RfC would be the next step. They last 30 days. Apteva (talk) 15:17, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Postmortem--no primary topic?

Hola, this is your previous RM poster here. At Talk:Reading, I recently concluded a test of primacy, and indeed it appears that loads of people do type in Reading expecting to get the city. (Doubtlessly pronunciation has something to do with this.) I finally agree that by pageviews, at least, we have no primary topic. Any future move request would have to rely more on the second criteria at WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. Red Slash 00:36, 30 June 2015 (UTC)

Benefits section?

You hear a lot about the benefits of reading (especially being read to as a young child), including as it relates to future academic success. I think this definitely merits mention in the article. Anybody have access to academic databases that contain studies on this? — Preceding signed comment added by Cymru.lass (talk • contribs) 16:29, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

I agree in principle. The existing "Cognitive benefits" section could be broadened and expanded. RCraig09 (talk) 17:32, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

The problem with a benefits section is that it will promote the false notion that all are cognitively able to read effectively, and that alternative forms of communication are not required for those who need to use the various alternative forms of communication. Tis problem can be seen as society narrowly focuses on text based communication and fails to provide the alternative methods of communicating their message for those who need them, and promotes purely selfish and discriminatory attitude. dolfrog (talk) 03:46, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

Perhaps an additional section "Alternatives to text-based communication" could be added to deal with your (Dolfrog) concern, somehow incorporating a link to Ableism. But merely describing benefits of text-based reading does not promote the notion that all people are cognitively able to read effectively. RCraig09 (talk) 15:28, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

Requested move 16 November 2015

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: No move. The proposal is well-stated and argued, but opposing statements were well argued as well. In closing this request, I note that oppose !votes invoked policy and evidence, whereas some support !votes give no real rationale. In summation, consensus is against this move. Cúchullain ^t/c 21:14, 4 December 2015 (UTC)

---

• Reading (process) → Reading
• Reading → Reading (disambiguation)

– One of the two ways to determine a primary topic is long-term significance, for topics with "substantially greater enduring notability and educational value", even if another topic by that name gets viewed more often. That's why, to give just a few examples, Apple is a fruit and not a tech company, Pink is a color and not a singer, and Avatar is a religious concept and not a movie. For this reason, I propose that the topic with the greatest long-term significance when it comes to Reading is, well, reading. It is such a fundamental aspect of not just nearly every culture and civilization in the world today, but so many previous cultures and civilizations, going back thousands of years, even ones where only a small percentage of the population could actually do it. It is the thing that you are doing right now that is the reason we are even able to communicate our opinions to each other and have a discussion about this. I see that the last time this came up two and a half years ago, there were some who objected based on the existence of a couple of places - one in England and the other in Pennsylvania. These places are not insignificant, it is true. However, I would argue that the concept of reading is so utterly fundamental in its importance, so worldwide in its interest, that it would overwhelm even Athens and Rome in how significant it is, and Reading, Berkshire and Reading, Pennsylvania are nowhere near as important as Athens and Rome. Not even close. Egsan Bacon (talk) 21:46, 16 November 2015 (UTC) Relisted. Jenks24 (talk) 07:12, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

• Support, primary topic and concept. A nice and well written nom. Randy Kryn 2:22, 17 November 2015 (UTC)
• Support, no competition. In ictu oculi (talk) 07:38, 17 November 2015 (UTC)
• Comment Reading shows up commonly in disambiguation pages with links, generally meant for Reading, Berkshire 73.154.175.89 (talk) 18:54, 17 November 2015 (UTC)
• Comment. Now we got to get workin' on writin' and 'ritmatic. Randy Kryn 20:17, 17 November 2015 (UTC)

• Oppose per WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. Although the seeing and comprehension of sets of words is the most important dictionary meaning of "reading", Wikipedia is not a dictionary. As far a encyclopedia topics go, Reading, Berks, and Reading, PA, are at least as important:
  • Reading (process) has been viewed 41497 times in the last 90 days.[3]
  • Reading, Berkshire has been viewed 60243 times in the last 90 days.[4]
  • Reading, Pennsylvania has been viewed 29432 times in the last 90 days.[5]

Thus, there is no primary topic as is obvious from these article pageview stats. —  AjaxSmack  03:23, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

• Relisting comment. More participation required, AjaxSmack's stats certainly make a good case. Jenks24 (talk) 07:12, 24 November 2015 (UTC)
• Oppose per AjaxSmack's well-reasoned rationale & previous RM's comments. SnowFire (talk) 15:12, 24 November 2015 (UTC)
• Oppose per Ajax. Dohn joe (talk) 22:00, 25 November 2015 (UTC)
• Support. Clearly the primary topic. It is not plausible that two cities named reading are "at least as important" as the human capability of absorbing knowledge from the written word. Please. As the nom already covered, view rates of articles (the "popularity contest") doesn't tell us anything about global, lasting significance. Both cities could fall into big sinkholes tomorrow, and lots of people would be sad, and some regional economies updated for a while, but in a couple of generations it would be dimly remembered historical curiosity. If a virus tomorrow wiped out the human capacity for reading, we'd be plunged into a second stone age (or maybe bronze age if we were lucky) within one generation and we wouldn't recover for centuries at least.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  02:01, 28 November 2015 (UTC)
• Oppose. Making sense of the written word may be considered logically or philosophically primary, but in the special WP sense of primary topic ("highly likely—much more likely than any other topic, and more likely than all the other topics combined—to be the topic sought when a reader searches for that term"), there clearly isn't one here. The different pronunciations are unfortunately not able to be conveyed visually. 11:56, 1 December 2015 (UTC)
• Oppose. This is definitely the primary topic for the "reeding" pronunciation (if, like Wiktionary, we distinguished between reading and Reading, this would be an obvious move), but since it shares its spelling with several major topics pronounced "redding", we can't say that it's more important than everything else. Nyttend (talk) 22:53, 3 December 2015 (UTC)

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The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Reading rate - moving back to its own section

At some point in the past the section Reading rate was put under assessment, making wikilinks to reading rate stop working. I'm moving it back into its own section, under reading skills, since it is not just a means of assessment. The inscrutable note was actually part of the diagram caption and refers to data in the diagram. StarryGrandma (talk) 22:47, 25 September 2017 (UTC)

Requested move 17 October 2018

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: moved Support had stronger arguements (WP:PRIMARYTOPIC, WP:PTOPIC, more global significance and Fyrael's counter arguements) ( Non admin closure) JC7V-talk 23:14, 5 November 2018 (UTC)

---

• Reading (process) → Reading
• Reading → Reading (disambiguation)

– To say that I am astonished to find this article at this name is an understatement. As naturally expected this article was created at "Reading" in 2003 even though Reading, Berkshire was created a year earlier. It was only moved in 2008 after this one-man so-called "discussion". Article policy makes it clear on this:

"A topic is primary for a term with respect to long-term significance if it has substantially greater enduring notability and educational value than any other topic associated with that term.

It's absolutely beyond doubt, that reading, yes literal reading has greater cultural significance and perpetual notability than any other term in the now weird disambiguation page. The foremost and unambiguous usage of "reading" everywhere in the world, in the past century, the present and future is reading first, then anything else behind. It's the default world over and needs no qualifying, but anything else do need one before it could be understood. In fact, whatever is named "reading", it must have gotten that inspiration from actual "reading".

I perused the above two discussions in 2013 and 2015 and found the arguments forwarded not only lacking in policy-based reasons but hollow and essentially appeal to page views and amassed together they gave the discussion usual fate of no consensus, which should have reverted to the actual first used title, but wasn't done. It is noteworthy that, if we follow appeal to pageview argument then Apple Inc. could have been moved to Apple as the former got 4x the number of views for the latter consistently for several years, but it wasn't so because respect for enduring significance, AT policy and common sense prevailed.

Another point to consider is that the current name Reading (process) is not only clearly ambiguous but to some extent incorrect. This is because Reading (computer) is also a process and can be named as such. There's no way to immediately tell whether Reading (process) means reading done by computer, by human or by legislators. But "Reading" in and on itself, unquestionably means literal reading, unqualified. No society, culture or civilization that can claim they don't know "reading," in fact reading is so fundamental to literacy that without it we couldn't be here at all even if Reading, Berkshire is the capital of the world.

There's also a particular argument I want refute: in the previous move request a claim was made that Wikipedia is not dictionary and this remained unchallenged giving it semblance of validity. The argument looks meaningful on the surface but it's thoroughly hollow in content and forgets the spirit of why NOTDIC was written. WP:NOTDIC is meant for those articles about words that cannot be meaningfully expanded beyond the definition. That's not true for "Reading", it's a developed, rich encyclopedic topic proper and not only here but even in traditional paper ones. The example of real dictionary word is Inedible and you can see what the page contains. So if there's a town/city named "Inedible" then it will surely be primary topic notwithstanding the word. I hope the community will rectify this anomaly, and the sooner the better for us. –Ammarpad (talk) 15:03, 17 October 2018 (UTC) --Relisting. Favonian (talk) 16:03, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

• Comment: Just to point out a couple of issues with the statements made by nominator: 1) the 2015 discussion did not end with no consensus. There was a consensus for no move. 2) the closing admin in 2015 came to the opposite conclusion about quality of arguments stating, "I note that oppose !votes invoked policy and evidence, whereas some support !votes give no real rationale." -- Fyrael (talk) 16:12, 17 October 2018 (UTC)

• Move discussions are binary. It's either consensus for move or no consensus for move, that's true always. Everything in between is superficial. I am talking of the situation in whole including the 2008 one-man discussion and the subsequent ones not just fixating on whether the closer typed "no consensus" or not. On second point, the vote claimed to invoke policy actually didn't, it was appeal to popularity/pageview and the rest piled on it. –Ammarpad (talk) 16:49, 17 October 2018 (UTC)

Mmm, nope. There are WP:THREEOUTCOMES. If you personally feel that the difference between "no consensus" and "not moved" is insignificant, you can feel free to hold that opinion, but don't present it as fact. -- Fyrael (talk) 18:17, 17 October 2018 (UTC)

• Support. The act of reading is indeed a supremely notable, educationally valuable, and fundamental concept, and one that clearly merits primary topic status. It's also worth noting that the current title clarifier is not just unnecessary but also ambiguous, since something like Reading (computer) is presumably also a process, albeit one conducted by machine. ╠╣uw [talk] 16:15, 17 October 2018 (UTC)
• Support: In addition to the obvious significance, I think that despite the cities having similar view counts as the process, even readers searching for those cities most likely don't expect to find them at the base title "Reading". Also, as this discussion has taken place multiple times over multiple years, would it not be prudent to run an experiment like I've seen on a couple other pages, where a new redirect is used in place of Reading (process) on the disambiguation page and we use the traffic through that redirect as an indicator of how many readers who arrive at the DAB page continued on to the process page? Edit: looks like a previous experiment determined that the cities had plenty of traffic through the dab page. -- Fyrael (talk) 16:31, 17 October 2018 (UTC)
• Comment. I have no strong feelings about the proposal either way, but I have been disambiguating incoming links to Reading for ages, and whenever any number of links builds up, there is always a strong contingent of links intending Reading, Berkshire. If this move is carried out, vigilance will be required to insure that incoming links intending that or other meanings are quickly found and fixed. bd2412 T 03:29, 18 October 2018 (UTC)

• The reason why those disambiguation links accumulated was because of the anomaly of this naming when it was unilaterally moved in 2008. Had it stayed, that couldn't have happened at that tempo. By default, linking to "reading," any average editor will expect it to lead to "reading," the literal unambiguous "reading." So your comment and effort you made in fixing those dablinks are both another points on why this move should be made, so that henceforth anyone who link to "reading" will link to correct place per natural expectation. If this succeeds I will surely help as much as I can in resolving them, but number of dablinks shouldn't be barrier to rectifying anomaly. –Ammarpad (talk) 05:27, 18 October 2018 (UTC)

I think you've misunderstood the comment. bd2412 is saying that while disambiguating links they have come across very many instances where an editor simply linked Reading and expected it to go to the Berkshire article. Neither the 2008 move nor a move now would have any bearing on the number of those instances. The difference is that as things currently stand there are tools which alert us to when a disambiguation page starts having a high number of incoming links and they can be quickly fixed, while there are no tools available that tell us if an editor simply links to an article they didn't mean to and so there would be extra work required to watch the primary topic article for mistaken incoming links if the move succeeds. -- Fyrael (talk) 19:14, 18 October 2018 (UTC)

• Support per nom, primary topic, WP:ASTONISH, common sense, and reading between the lines. Randy Kryn (talk) 04:34, 18 October 2018 (UTC)
• Support Per Huwmanbeing the fact that a good disambiguator doesn't appear to exist is also surely a consideration. We should however include a direct link to Reading, Berkshire. I went past the Berkshire town yesterday and wandered about this and surely even people interested in that place will know that "Reading" refers to this. Crouch, Swale (talk) 13:22, 18 October 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose. The cognitive process is nowhere close to the primarytopic by usage - it's not even the most-read "Reading" article. The Berkshire locale is. This proposed move will make it more difficult for our readers and editors to navigate our encyclopedia. If you want a better disambiguator, try "(cognitive process)" or "(activity)". But don't make the encyclopedia harder to use. (Btw, I'd love to see the outcome of a special redirect experiment such as that suggested by Fyrael above.) Dohn joe (talk) 18:42, 18 October 2018 (UTC)

• This is appeal to pageview/popularity but not based on WP:AT policy and has been debunked, see above. By your logic see the usage of Apple and Apple Inc., tell us which is more popular and also tell us how they're named. By doing that sincerely, you'll understand how your argument deviated from policy and appealed to pageview. –Ammarpad (talk) 19:21, 18 October 2018 (UTC)

  Um, pageviews is one of the principal ways to determine primary topic by usage, according to the very same guidance page you quoted from in your nomination:

  A topic is primary for a term with respect to usage if it is highly likely—much more likely than any other single topic, and more likely than all the other topics combined—to be the topic sought when a reader searches for that term.

  Tools that may help to support the determination of a primary topic in a discussion...include: Wikipedia article traffic statistics

  . Please review the guideline and reconsider your position. Dohn joe (talk) 03:28, 19 October 2018 (UTC)

• There is a reason this was written first, which you don't want quote:

  "A topic is primary for a term with respect to long-term significance if it has substantially greater enduring notability and educational value than any other topic associated with that term.

  So you have to first weigh them for their long-term significance and eternity of notability, if the result is clear then the remaining process is needless, just as the case here is and the same process that reserve Apple for fruit despite being overwhelmed by Apple company in terms of 'pageview' you're talking of. –Ammarpad (talk) 07:36, 19 October 2018 (UTC)

  I'm sorry, that's completely incorrect, in so many ways. The usage criterion is listed before the long-term significance criterion. The guideline goes on to say that where the two criteria indicate different (or no) primary topics, then discussion is required to determine whether and which is the primary topic - they even use Apple/Apple Inc. as the example for that kind of discussion! Please familiarize yourself with WP's policies and guidelines before starting or commenting on RMs. Dohn joe (talk) 13:09, 19 October 2018 (UTC)

• Strong oppose. No WP:PTOPIC. I consider Reading, Berkshire (pop. 163,000) just as significant. Most bad links to the DAB page are intended for there. Pageview analysis agrees with my gut feeling: both get about the same amount of traffic. Considering only those two, in the last month: 50.6% for the process and 49.4% for the town; and on 9 days there were more views of the town article than of the process article. Narky Blert (talk) 15:01, 19 October 2018 (UTC)

  You think that the town is just as significant as a process that is known to just about everyone. Reading goes on everywhere, including in Reading, Berkshire. The 163,000 figure is just for the borough, the town actually has 227,887 and the Reading/Wokingham Urban Area 318,014 though but I still don't see how its even close to being as significant. Crouch, Swale (talk) 16:18, 19 October 2018 (UTC)

Oh, look! a squirrel!

"You think that the town is just as significant as a process that is known to just about everyone."

WP:PTOPIC: "A topic is primary for a term with respect to usage if it is highly likely—much more likely than any other single topic, and more likely than all the other topics combined—to be the topic sought when a reader searches for that term".

A topic which gets only 50% of the page views, and which on some days is the less-read topic, can never be PTOPIC. Narky Blert (talk) 04:14, 20 October 2018 (UTC)

Throw in Reading, Pennsylvania, and reading (process) only got 37% of the views in the last 30 days. Reading (process) was the most sought-for topic on only 9 of those 30 days. Link. There is absolutely no way that reading (process), or any other meaning, is PTOPIC. Narky Blert (talk) 04:36, 20 October 2018 (UTC)

Yes it doesn't meet PT#1 but the long-term significance criteria is clearly met and no one looking for the towns would be surprised to end up here. Crouch, Swale (talk) 10:02, 20 October 2018 (UTC)

• Strong Oppose per all of Dohn joe's comments above. While I agree the reading process is an encyclopedic topic (this is not a NOTADICT issue), the bottom line is when someone searches with the term "reading", they are not that likely to be looking for the topic about the process; they are more likely to be looking for any one of the other topics named Reading, as shown by the page view counts, so it would be a great disservice to our users to take everyone searching with reading to the article about the process. This is a great example of why I was against adding the historical significance criteria to WP:PRIMARYTOPIC - it's confusing, and leaves us with guidance that suggests titles that hinder the user search process in situations like this. Going by usage criteria exclusively (ignoring historical significance per WP:IAR) also helps protect against the wrong link problem explained by BD2412 and Fyrael above. For all these reasons, this move would be a very bad idea. --В²C ☎ 18:44, 19 October 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose. I agree with other commenters that there is no clear primary topic by usage. Shhhnotsoloud (talk) 07:18, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
• Support. This is what the two criteria at WP:PTOPIC were made for. Primary topic can be determined by usage or by long-term significance. Long before Reading was founded, people were reading; people will still be reading long after Reading is gone. Goodness, Apple doesn't get half the pageviews that Apple, Inc. does, and we still keep it as primary topic. The concept of reading is so far more important that it defies comprehension. If Reading were located anywhere outside of the British Isles, there's literally no way we'd even be debating this. Red Slash 23:56, 21 October 2018 (UTC)

  As someone who lives in the British Isles and is mainly interested in geography even I agree that this is UK geo centric, however I don't think its location is the main reason, just that its a large town (the largest non city in its country), gets a lot of views and is the capital of Berkshire (the equivelant of a US state capital). Crouch, Swale (talk) 10:22, 22 October 2018 (UTC)

• Oppose per Dohn Joe's pageview links. This just isn't the primary topic by pageviews, not particularly close to it, and while reading-text is certainly a fundamental idea etc., many people are only interested in the surface-level dictionary definition and don't need this article, which is why it's not surprising or weird that more readers are interested in the topics like the various cities with this name. SnowFire (talk) 02:46, 22 October 2018 (UTC)

• This is same appeal to pageview argument which I refuted from onset. It's been made clear, pageview is not what solely determine primary topic. Apple Inc. has almost double pageviews than Apple consistently since creation but it was determined to not be primary topic despite its high popularity and the fact that more people are actually looking for the tech company when they search the unqualified term. Then your claim "many people are only interested in the surface-level dictionary definition and don't need this article" is nothing but a sheer conjectural surmise without any verifiable evidence. –Ammarpad (talk) 06:21, 23 October 2018 (UTC)

• Your "refutation" is not very convincing to me, and I could equally suggest that your belief that reading is "more important" means that it is also the primary topic is also "pure conjecture." It is undeniably correct that in some cases, the community has deemed a lower-pageview topic to still be the primary topic, but this needs to be defended or explained on specific grounds. In Apple's case, the fruit is a hugely encyclopedic and important topic, much more so than this "reading" article, and its competition is a corporation that has been around a mere 30 years. The reading (process) article isn't as encyclopedic/important as Apple-the-fruit, and multiple cities with hundreds of years of history that will assuredly have hundreds of years more have a better assurance of long-term significance than Apple Inc. So yes, it's a useful comparison, but it's the start of the argument, not the end. I'm not sold that pageviews, the "default" decider of such primary topic wars, has been overturned here. It is perfectly common for core, fundamental ideas of human existence to have disambiguation pages at their base name; cook is a disambiguation page, not a redirect to cooking. This is not a problem. Disambiguation pages are fine, there's no harm being done, and as a counterpoint to your Apple example, there are plenty of cases where there's a topic with >70% of views, and a disambiguation page is STILL used as the landing point for the topic (often comes up with fictional characters that share names with real people). SnowFire (talk) 21:22, 23 October 2018 (UTC)

• So you're reusing my argument. Mine is not conjecture, I explained it with verifiable evidence from the start. Probably you didn't read my nomination statement well in hastiness to comment. Then your claim that "reading" is less important than Apple is even more risible now. Just let me quote one commenter who put it more succinctly some years ago:

  " [Reading] is such a fundamental aspect of not just nearly every culture and civilization in the world today, but so many previous cultures and civilizations, going back thousands of years, even ones where only a small percentage of the population could actually do it. It is the thing that you are doing right now that is the reason we are even able to communicate our opinions to each other and have a discussion about this. I see that the last time this came up two and a half years ago, there were some who objected based on the existence of a couple of places - one in England and the other in Pennsylvania. These places are not insignificant, it is true. However, I would argue that the concept of reading is so utterly fundamental in its importance, so worldwide in its interest, that it would overwhelm even Athens and Rome in how significant it is, and Reading, Berkshire and Reading, Pennsylvania are nowhere near as important as Athens and Rome. Not even close. "

  . –Ammarpad (talk) 05:59, 24 October 2018 (UTC)

• I was nicely assuming you were actually responding to the Wikipedia concept of a primary topic. Apparently you weren't. You seem to be conflating two similar-but-distinct things: Reading-the-topic and Reading-the-Wikipedia-article. Reading-the-topic is important, and you don't need to convince me how important it is or quote flowery statements about the importance of reading. I already agree with all that. However, Wikipedia policy as well as this debate are on Reading-the-Wikipedia-article. All of my above comments are on the article, but you seem to be interpreting them as on the general topic. Disambiguation is not strictly done by comparing an importance-o-meter on the underlying topic, lest the likes of Meaning (existential) become primary topics. And "Apple" the fruit has more than 4x the pageviews of Reading (process), so my claim is hardly "risible" if interpreted as I meant it - a statement about the relative importance of the Wikipedia articles. SnowFire (talk) 18:34, 24 October 2018 (UTC)

• Feh! I have a script reloading the article every two seconds, it will be teh primary topic soon enough </sarcasm> Seriously though, using a tool to determine the best outcome is unhelpful, reading past the wikilawyering and !votes is what needs to happen in forming a legitimate view [I'm talking to you buddy! No, not you mate, the guy standing behind you, sorry, no offence intended!]. I won't lose any sleep either way, but mildly support the move to an unquestionably more important usage than the locations, on the basis that people who think town articles with that name—they couldn't care less about and will never edit or visit— can nevertheless be used to advance some fractious agenda. Anyone without skin in some game on a policy talk page, charged debates with teams making outlandish assertions and accusations without reference to RS and V, would think the same. — cygnis insignis 08:39, 22 October 2018 (UTC)
• Support. For a non-English speaker, reading gave me the first impression is an action (or process) rather than other things. It is obviously a primary topic in common sense. --B dash (talk) 10:34, 23 October 2018 (UTC)
  • B dash, are you invoking WP:IAR? Or do you not know and understand what PRIMARYTOPIC and paritculary Wikipedia:Disambiguation#Not_"what_first_comes_to_(your)_mind" says and means? --В²C ☎ 16:16, 25 October 2018 (UTC)
    • The point is that "Reading" most often is understood in English to refer to the process rather than the capital of Berkshire, even though people in Berkshire might think this if being referred to first when seeing it, the general global audience will think of the process. Crouch, Swale (talk) 16:29, 25 October 2018 (UTC)
      • I understand that point. What I don't understand is the relevance of that point to determining whether the process is the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. For it to be relevant, you'd have to define "primary topic" quite differently from what WP:PRIMARYTOPIC says: one potential criterion to commonly avoid is what "first comes to mind".

      What "first comes to mind", to anyone, is irrelevant. What matters is whether the process "is highly likely—much more likely than any other single topic, and more likely than all the other topics combined—to be the topic sought when a reader searches for" reading. And it's clearly not that. --В²C ☎ 16:58, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

• Support readers outside the UK are unlikely to search for the Berkshire topic. feminist (talk) 05:59, 24 October 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose. Reading (process) fails both primary topic tests. Page views show that many readers are looking for one of the towns. They may not even have considered the literacy meaning, especially as the words are pronounced differently. As Reading, Berkshire dates from the 8th century, its significance is also long-term. On a more practical note, the status quo helps editors to find and fix wikilinks to the "wrong" Reading, thus keeping everything correctly linked up for our readers. Certes (talk) 23:48, 24 October 2018 (UTC)
• While I agree that no topic is primary for the term, I strongly agree that Reading (process) retains ambiguity and is, therefore, the wrong title for this article. In my opinion the page should be titled Reading (literary).--John Cline (talk) 03:06, 25 October 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose per WP:PRIMARYTOPIC usage criteria. The addition of the bs "historical significance" criteria to primary topic is one of the worst policy changes WP has ever seen, and results in enormous waste of time like this proposal. The bottom line is this: when people search WP with "reading" about four times as many are looking for the one in Berkshire as are looking for the process. Why would we send all those people to an article we know they are probably not seeking? That's what consideration for "historical significance" gives us: a worsened WP search experience. Just say WP:IAR to the well-meaning but ill-conceived "historical significance" criteria. --В²C ☎ 16:07, 25 October 2018 (UTC) A note that Born2cycle already made a bold strong oppose !vote above Galobtter (pingó mió) 20:50, 3 November 2018 (UTC)

  The hits you gave are for the DAB page not process. Crouch, Swale (talk) 16:24, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

  Oops. Thanks. Fixed. My point stands. The process is not primary. --В²C ☎ 17:03, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

  Just to clarify something, the number of page views for each article is not 1-to-1 with the number of times readers tried to reach that article through the single term "reading". For all we know, and I rather suspect it's the case, most of the users that were looking for the Berkshire article started to search for "reading", saw what they wanted in the suggestions, and went straight there. Those users would not be affected in any way by us moving the process to the base name. I'm not saying that page views should be ignored, just that they are an indicator of what we are looking for, rather than the actual figure itself, which would be how many users tried to reach the article by just using "reading". And I believe far more users, relatively speaking, are having to go through disambiguation while looking for the process article than the Berkshire one. -- Fyrael (talk) 20:25, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

  Readers would surely often use the upper case when searching for the Berkshire one, I would personally use upper case for searching for both, in a way its a shame we can't use DIFCAPS (as pointed out in the last RM) but that guideline is disputed anyway. Crouch, Swale (talk) 20:32, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

  I think a good parallel for this situation, but on a smaller scale, is Butte vs Butte, Montana. The city again outstrips the general concept word in views, but I've got to believe that users trying to look up the city fully expect that they won't find it at the base name. They'll type in "butte" and then click on the suggestion matching what they want. -- Fyrael (talk) 21:19, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

  The vast majority use Google to search which takes them directly to the WP article they're seeking - so page view counts reflect quite accurately actual relative interest in pages. That's why, for example, the page view counts for the Mercury dab page are relatively low even though it as at the Mercury base name[6]. Since Google takes care of itself, we want to arrange our articles to work best for the minority that uses WP search (and choose our primary topics accordingly), but it is a tiny minority, I'm sure, compared to those who use Google search. --В²C ☎ 23:23, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

  You seem to be talking about the opposite of what I'm talking about, but it doesn't much matter now. The actual thing that matters, which again is how many users end up on the Reading dab page that were looking for each article, seems to have been determined by an experiment just a few years ago and it looks like the cities had enough traffic to make the process not primary by that metric. So, I withdraw my previous argument. -- Fyrael (talk) 13:28, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

  I still think it's important for us to come to an understanding of each other on this issue, because it applies to many articles, not just this one. Here are my thoughts and assumptions.

  1. Assumption: Most users use Google to search and land on our articles. A relative minority uses the internal WP search (aka WP searchers).
  2. Assumption: Google is very good at landing users directly on their sought wp article (skipping our dab pages). This was the point I was making with the Mercury example - while the page view count for the dab page is so relatively low. Most people use Google to search with "mercury" and see the choices of element, planet, mythological figure in the results, etc. and click on whichever one they seek. So they never even see the dab page.
  3. Thought: Because Google is already very good at getting its users to the page they seek and that's all out of our control, even though WP searchers are the minority, making sure the WP search process works well for WP searchers must be our main focus.
  4. Thought: Because most users use Google and Google is very good at landing users directly on the desired page, page view counts in general are reasonably accurate at telling us the relative popularity of each page associated with a given search term, and therefore quite accurate at telling us the likelihood each page is the one being sought relative to the others.
  5. Assumption: The desired article of the minority of users who are searching on WP with a given term is probably distributed about the same as are users who search with that term on Google. There is no way to know how close those distributions are, much less what to do if they were significantly different. It might be off in one direction for one article, and in another direction for the next, but in the end it probably averages out, so for all these reasons it's a reasonable assumption to make.
  6. Thought: since most users search with Google, dab pages at base names should get relatively low page view counts. However, they do tell us something about the ratio of WP searchers vs Google searchers.

  Hope that helps. Thanks. --В²C ☎ 18:24, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

  Born2cycle I've unbolded your !vote since you !voted above. Galobtter (pingó mió) 20:50, 3 November 2018 (UTC)

• Support. Clearly meets both the historical significance and common usage criteria of WP:PRIMARYTOPIC as reading (process) gets the most page views on Wikipedia and brings up the most search entries in a Google search. As Ammarpad said, the places' names are likely derived from the process. Flooded with them hundreds 15:15, 1 November 2018 (UTC)

User:Flooded with them hundreds - would you mind reconsidering your !vote based on the following: 1) it's been shown that the Berkshire town article overall gets more views than the process article, and especially when you add in the Pennsylvania article and others, there's no way that the process article gets more views than the other "Reading" articles combined, as called for at WP:PRIMARYTOPIC; and 2) the towns were not named after the process, but rather "the name probably comes from the Readingas, an Anglo-Saxon tribe whose name means Reada's People in Old English." What do you think? Dohn joe (talk) 15:41, 1 November 2018 (UTC)

I'm unconvinced that the process is not primary as I agree with the OP that "literal reading has greater cultural significance and perpetual notability than any other term". The places may have some relevance in some parts of the UK and US but the reading process has global relevance and I think that is enough to put this at the base name, in addition to the page views (19,418 for the process and 18,458 for Berkshire in a month; even at an unusual title the process still gets slightly higher views). Anyone visiting the base name isn't likely to look for the place in Berkshire. Flooded with them hundreds 16:07, 1 November 2018 (UTC)

The Berkshire article has more than 20,000 more views than the process article over the past year. And again, adding in the Pennsylvania article, no article gets more than 40% of pageviews. Dohn joe (talk) 17:25, 1 November 2018 (UTC)

It's just a statistical fluke that this particular tool has more page views for the process in the past 20 days. If you take the exact same search to the start of the year, the process becomes the fourth most viewed. -- Fyrael (talk) 20:26, 1 November 2018 (UTC)

• Support direct link to the most common name as suggested.
  提尔巴 (talk) 17:16, 3 November 2018 (UTC).
• Support The process of Reading has "substantially greater enduring notability and educational value" (WP:PTOPIC), and is much more globally significance than Reading, Berkshire. That usage is split does not matter here due to the sheer significance of the process of reading. Galobtter (pingó mió) 20:45, 3 November 2018 (UTC)
• Support as primary topic with respect to long-term significance. People have been reading long before Reading, Berkshire was a settlement. — Newslinger talk 01:58, 4 November 2018 (UTC)

---

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Experiment for primary topic

I'm breaking this into a new section so as not to disrupt the move discussion. IF the result above is not to move, would any editors object to running a redirect experiment in order to determine exactly how many users actually travel from the disambiguation page to the most common Reading articles? Does three months sound like a sufficient period of time or would we be more comfortable with six? I mostly would like to just see traffic for Reading (process) and Reading, Berkshire, but I've also seen Reading, Pennsylvania mentioned. Any others that someone would like considered? I'm not sure if there's standard practice (and I suspect there isn't, since this isn't that common) for the actual title of the special redirects, but I'll maybe ask on the disambiguation project page. -- Fyrael (talk) 21:32, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

Reading (visual activity) was used for this article, maybe we could use Reading (town in Berkshire) and Reading (city in Pennsylvania), similar to Lincoln (president) and EA (video game company) by User:JHunterJ. Crouch, Swale (talk) 21:39, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

Oh....thank you for linking that. I hadn't realized that this experiment was already run in 2015. Looks like Red Slash found that the cities had sufficient traffic through the disambiguation page that the process couldn't be considered primary. In that case I'm perfectly willing to accept the results of such a recent experiment. -- Fyrael (talk) 21:48, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

...and within hours our article about reading has links intended for a town. Certes (talk) 14:22, 6 November 2018 (UTC)

There will always be some links to the wrong article on the wiki because people are too lazy to check their links, or even to think through where their links probably go. Also, is this where you meant to put this comment? -- Fyrael (talk) 15:17, 6 November 2018 (UTC)

@Certes: You clearly missed he point here. The article of the town was never at "Reading," (and rightly, will never be). So the fact that link was incorrect has no relation with this move whatsover. If that link was there for the past 10 years, it has been incorrect since so, it didn't became so today as you're wrongly assuming.–Ammarpad (talk) 16:39, 6 November 2018 (UTC)

I think you in fact have missed the point that Certes is alluding to, although in fairness they didn't say it explicitly. The big difference between how things were and how things are now is that before as soon as 1 or 2 links to the disambiguation page had been created the page would show up at Wikipedia:Disambiguation_pages_with_links and be very promptly fixed. Now in order to catch these wrong links someone has to take it upon themselves to periodically view the newest links to Reading (which I assume there's a tool for somewhere) and examine them one-by-one to see if any need fixing. It was discussed above though, so I don't see any purpose in rehashing. -- Fyrael (talk) 17:29, 6 November 2018 (UTC)

Cognitive benefits

The section is too short and neglected. It also doesn't mention the crucial aspects. I reckon it needs to be reworked. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Szymioza (talk • contribs) 11:39, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

Is this article necessary?

I am aware of the many contributions made towards this article. However, it seems to me that our readers would be better served if the material was put in other articles (Literacy, Learning to read, Educational assessment, etc.). If so, it would be easier to maintain credible, encyclopedic content. Some of the sections, such as "Reading skills" and "Assessment" are better covered elsewhere. And, some potions should be transfer elsewhere. The entire opening paragraphs have no citations, but perhaps the wiki-links are meant to cover that. Overall I found about 23 instances without citations; so it appears to lack sufficient credibility, or usefulness.

I would be willing to help if others agreed to the strategy. John NH (talk) 21:21, 5 January 2021 (UTC)

Proposed merger of Learning to read with Reading

Further to my above comments, perhaps the best solution would be to merge Learning to read with Reading. This would enable our readers to find information more easily. It may be that many readers go to Reading when they really want more in-depth information about reading acquisition or teaching reading, etc., and don't know where to find it. Many readers, perhaps a majority, read Wikipedia on a smart phone so they may not see the "Reading" menu.

I welcome your suggestions. If there is an agreement to do the merger, I am happy to begin the process. John NH (talk) 15:36, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

I have begun the merging process. I will favour material that is relevant, encyclopedic and having references. Comments welcome. John NH (talk) 17:05, 14 January 2021 (UTC)

I have finished the merge and welcome suggestions. John NH (talk) 16:40, 17 January 2021 (UTC)

About unclear tag

The main thing that I want to emphasize here is that the article is very disorientating, with varied level of detail and information. In my opinion, the article structure would make readers very confused and not knowing the general gist (especially for an article for reading itself). Looking through the article, some sections need simplifying (Teaching reading), while others need clean up (The Reading Wars: phonics vs. whole language). There is no consistency here. I suggest that the article needs to follow the WP:SUMMARYSTYLE more throughly as in my view the article is the most deficient on. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 16:38, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

Thank you. I will take a look at these concerns when time permits. John NH (talk) 13:31, 15 January 2022 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: Language and Literacy Acquisition and Development

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 30 August 2022 and 21 December 2022. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Literacystudent (article contribs). Peer reviewers: Jaimekatz926, Nlavinier.

— Assignment last updated by LehmanProf (talk) 23:41, 6 October 2022 (UTC)

Split off Science of reading

If there are no objections, I will split off the Science of reading subsection so it is a separate article. Then I will reduce the subsection in the Reading article and I will add details to the new article. John NH (talk) 15:10, 7 November 2022 (UTC)

Everyday conversation

Benefits of reading books 103.232.131.19 (talk) 12:37, 20 November 2022 (UTC)

Mandatory reading

we have a red link mandatory reading (compulsory reading). Is it a definable concept? If not, then the redirect should be done or red links to be unlinked Estopedist1 (talk) 16:22, 31 January 2023 (UTC)

Sources that may improve coverage of non-Latin scripts

I used ChatGPT to search for these. So there may be better and/or older studies.

They may be especially useful for the "science of reading" sections and anything mentioning brains or cognition. Some sources also have decent coverage of cross-language transfer with comparisons to native readers' skills and cognition.

• Kim, S.Y., Cao, F. How does the brain read different scripts? Evidence from English, Korean, and Chinese. Read Writ 35, 1449–1473 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11145-022-10263-9
• Li H, Zhang J, Ding G. Reading across writing systems: A meta-analysis of the neural correlates for first and second language reading. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition. 2021;24(3):537-548. https://doi.org/10.1017/S136672892000070X
• https://searchworks.stanford.edu/view/13505854 (a book)

Arabic and Hebrew:

• Chan, Martin Luther. 2024. "Learning to Read in Hebrew and Arabic: Challenges and Pedagogical Approaches" Education Sciences 14, no. 7: 765. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci14070765
  • Notes that even for native speakers, not vocalising slows down the pace of reading - probably due to the absence of vowel letters.
• Asaad, H., Eviatar, Z. Learning to read in Arabic: the long and winding road. Read Writ 27, 649–664 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11145-013-9469-9
  • "for all levels of skill, phonological awareness contributes significantly to reading accuracy"

Komonzia (talk) 22:34, 13 August 2024 (UTC)

What to split?

@Seefooddiet, I'm curious if you have any initial ideas for what could be split off and summary styled. This article is almost charming in how evenly unorganized it is. It seems like Learning to read is plausible, for a start. Remsense ‥ 论 19:32, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

Learning to read, stages to skilled reading could be on the same article. Teaching reading should be its own article due to length. Science of reading could be its own article. seefooddiet (talk) 19:43, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for your suggestions. I will review this and make some suggestions soon. John NH John NH (talk) 19:23, 26 September 2024 (UTC)

I have prepared a draft of a sub-article entitled Science of reading. John NH (talk) 23:47, 4 October 2024 (UTC)

More to come. John NH (talk) 23:48, 4 October 2024 (UTC)

I accepted the draft. 👍 Ca ^{talk to me!} 04:36, 11 October 2024 (UTC)

The article has been split off, but the content has not been removed from the Reading article. seefooddiet (talk) 03:24, 16 October 2024 (UTC)

Thanks, I see that. I will reduce the main article soon. John NH (talk) 19:48, 16 October 2024 (UTC)

More to follow. John NH (talk) 19:41, 24 October 2024 (UTC)