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1% rule

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Re: 1% rule

#21

Post by yingw787 »

cycloptic wrote: post #5

I hope many of us internalized this early. It's not very accurate, but I try to think of this as meaning that on average, everything I post online is being read by a minimum of 99 people, multiplied by either the upvote count on the thread (for HN) or the number of active followers I have (for Twitter). It has helped me to always think this to myself before posting something. I probably am biased from the culture on…

That's why I left Quora. I'm a really gullible person, and I was going to respond to somebody who posted something inflammatory, then I realized I had the option to just walk away. So I did.

I remember something similar about companies too. When you have product market fit, customers will sear you when your product doesn't work. If you don't, you'll never hear from them again.

Re: 1% rule

#22

Post by Fiveplus »

isseu wrote: post #7

I really like this reddit post about this topic: Most of What You Read on the Internet is Written by Insane People https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/9rvroo/most...

I wish there was a similar analysis for comments left on boards like this one and reddit (which I left earlier this year because the website just isn't what it used to be).

Although, I would say it's an interesting take on Amazon reviews. A place not many people believe could be as popping as it is.

Re: 1% rule

#23

Post by dang »

I once ran the numbers for HN and was surprised at how closely they matched this rule. Maybe I'll do it again.

Edit: here are some estimates. We don't track enough to know about distinct users, so all we can do is guess.

The number of accounts that have posted to HN this year, divided by the number of IP addresses that have accessed HN, is 0.008. How close that is to the '1% rule' depends on which is the bigger factor: users with more than one IP or IPs with more than one user. We don't know. If the former is bigger, then 0.008 is a lower bound.

Here's another way. The number of accounts that have posted this year, divided by the number of accounts that have viewed HN while logged in, is 0.36. That doesn't tell us much, but we can estimate the ratio of logged-in users to total users this way: logged-in page views divided by total page views. That ratio is 0.23. We can multiply those two to estimate the ratio of posters to total:

   posters      logged-in
  ---------  *  ---------
  logged-in       total
  
   = 0.36 * 0.23
   = 0.0828
So the two ways of estimating produce 0.8% and 8% respectively. Both ways are bogus in that they assume things we don't know and mix units that aren't the same, but they're the two I came up with and I don't remember how I did it before. It's interesting that they're almost exactly an order of magnitude apart. That makes it tempting to say the number is probably in between, but that's another cognitive bias talking.

Re: 1% rule

#24

Post by nixpulvis »

xwdv wrote: post #12
cycloptic wrote: post #5

I hope many of us internalized this early. It's not very accurate, but I try to think of this as meaning that on average, everything I post online is being read by a minimum of 99 people, multiplied by either the upvote count on the thread (for HN) or the number of active followers I have (for Twitter). It has helped me to always think this to myself before posting something. I probably am biased from the culture on…

Why should we care about what the silent 99% think? We’re the top 1%, everyone else wishes they either had something to say or the courage to say it.

Such 1%, wow.

Re: 1% rule

#26

Post by kirubakaran »

jcims wrote: post #19

I blab online quite a bit (in comments only, no blog or anything), but I rarely vote/like/etc. Does that make me more or less of a narcissist?

blowhards ⊂ narcissists

( I'm not calling you anything; I don't know you. Just making an observation :-) )

Re: 1% rule

#27

Post by rzzzt »

ecdavis wrote: post #2

On top of that, some percentage of users who do contribute content are just recycling/reiterating content they've seen have success in that community before. Reposts, memes, predictable opinions, etc. The number of people who actively create the culture of an online community (and, I suspect, offline communities) is pretty small.

Where does the novelty element start, though? Someone could come and argue that your comment is also predictable, as is my reply below it.

Re: 1% rule

#28

Post by Chathamization »

I think this is a key to understanding online discourse. A lot of the stuff you see is generated by a very small percentage of the users (probably much less than 1% if you look at the numbers[1]), and this small percentage likely consists of the more problematic users. Consider that:

- The amount of output someone can put out is inversely proportional to the time and effort someone spends on it. If it takes about 30 seconds to throw out a low quality post full of misinformation and 30 minutes to make an accurate and well thought out post, than the former is going to far outnumber the latter.

- The amount of effort someone puts out is inversely proportional to the amount of time someone spends offline. Someone who is addicted to social media and lives online is going to be producing much more content than someone with a healthier balance that includes lots of offline time.

Almost all online spaces are set up in a way in which this small number of (often problematic) users dominate the output and overwhelm most other users. The voting system used on sites like Reddit further exacerbate the problem. It shouldn't be surprising then that online spaces are the way they are. We should recognize that it's the result of how they're set up, and not a reflection of human behavior as a whole.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/9rvroo/most...

Re: 1% rule

#29

Post by eindiran »

dang wrote: post #23

I once ran the numbers for HN and was surprised at how closely they matched this rule. Maybe I'll do it again. Edit: here are some estimates. We don't track enough to know about distinct users, so all we can do is guess. The number of accounts that have posted to HN this year, divided by the number of IP addresses that have accessed HN, is 0.008. How close that is to the '1% rule' depends on which is the bigger facto…

Is there a post you made when you ran the numbers before? I'd be very interested to see that.

Re: 1% rule

#30

Post by Hokusai »

> The 1% rule is often misunderstood to apply to the Internet in general, but it applies more specifically to any given Internet community. ... only 23% of the population (rather than 90 percent) could properly be classified as lurkers, while 17% of the population could be classified as intense contributors of content.

This is something important to take into account. I can be a lurker in Hacker News but a top contributor in my towns gardeners forum.

Any given person has a maximum time that can dedicate to lurk or contribute. But, one hour of lurking has way more coverage than one hour of contributing. e.g. I can read Reddit, Hacker News, and Wikipedia and still have time left to eat breakfast. But, I want to contribute a new Wikipedia article, probably I will need that complete hour or even more. So, I just contribute to 1 community while lurking in the rest.

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