I definitely agree with that and LingQ could definitely help a lot. If they would care about this, they could definitely help with an better UI that would reduce a lot of clicks and waste of time. But I suppose we all know that and sometimes we just get angry about it or ZEN!
If LingQ would take this seriously, I bet your wpm would increase.
The fact is that you are the first on saying that you are not really sure on what you have gained after your extensive reading experience (vocabulary wise). I wouldn’t be sure either and I would have a sort of psychological block about it. It is like if processing with LingQ gives me more confidence that I’m actually doing something more than just R+L without looking up words and focusing on learning. Different thing is that we just focus on content.
However, you could definitely increase your wpm if you reprocess the same material a second time with LingQ. Because in this scenario, you don’t have to stop looking up blue words, and you can focus only on converting yellow words.
In these cases, I only stop here and there to check some yellow words, the ones that jump on my mind with more curiosity. I bet in these cases the wpm would be similar to Language Reactor. With the advantage to have already my own dictionary on those yellow words.
I don’t remember if you wrote about it already but I’m curious to know, how do you use Language Reactor in those circumstances? What is the exact process and material you are using? Could you make an example?
With this extensive reading/listening, I wouldn’t use it on LingQ with blue words, but it might be worth trying with another software.