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1% rule

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Re: 1% rule

#81

Post by Mahn »

yingw787 wrote: post #21
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.

Tangential, but it's strange to me the sort of culture that Quora has cultivated over the years. It seems to tolerate and even encourage low quality content and contributors to the point that ignorance, misinformation and poorly researched opinionated answers thrive on a regular basis. That's not to say there aren't good contributors and content, but browse any one random topic today and you'll be forgiven for thinking you are on Yahoo Answers. Just no filter at all, extremely poor questions, offtopic comments posted as answers, people with no understanding of the subject shamelessly pretending to know what they are talking about, etc etc.

It's just all around incredibly unpleasant. I loved Quora in its early years when it was invitation only, but I don't ever want to have anything to do with it again.

Re: 1% rule

#82

Post by smichel17 »

dang wrote: post #46
airstrike wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To add to that, I was wondering earlier today if HN has seen an increase in traffic, this "1% activity", and / or longer visit times now that many of us are WFHing until further notice... I suspect so, but would love to know!

Someone asked me that today. There seems to be a slight increase in traffic, but there's so much fluctuation normally that it's impossible to say, and it ticked down a bit today relative to last Wednesday. I suspect it's just noise. Perhaps our users are particularly honest and don't goof off on HN while working at home any more than they do while working at the office.

I'm not goofing off, I'm networking!

Re: 1% rule

#83

Post by aexl »

nyfresh wrote: post #62

Long time lurker here.I often feel I have nothing useful to contribute.So I don't. You're welcome.

I'm as well a long time lurker. Whenever I contribute something, I feel that it should be helpful for many other people out there. This comment probably isn't...

Re: 1% rule

#84

Post by smichel17 »

Hokusai wrote: post #30

> 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 contri…

I had a longer reply that I was going to post, but then it got longer and more nuanced than I wanted to spend the time to type out, so I discarded it instead. I do this quite frequently.

This is not directly related to your comment (although the comment I didn't post was), but it's another interesting personal observation to add to the pile.

Re: 1% rule

#86

Post by matheusmoreira »

nyfresh wrote: post #62

Long time lurker here.I often feel I have nothing useful to contribute.So I don't. You're welcome.

Another reason why people avoid contributing: unwritten social rules. New members often step on people's toes and suffer the consequences. As a result, joining a new group can be intimidating. Better to lurk for a while and gain understanding of what is and isn't normal.

Re: 1% rule

#87

Post by pedalpete »

How should we take it if we have 60%+ of users creating content, and very few lurkers? Is that a good thing? Or under-optimized?

Re: 1% rule

#88

Post by wyattpeak »

Mahn wrote: post #81
yingw787 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Tangential, but it's strange to me the sort of culture that Quora has cultivated over the years. It seems to tolerate and even encourage low quality content and contributors to the point that ignorance, misinformation and poorly researched opinionated answers thrive on a regular basis. That's not to say there aren't good contributors and content, but browse any one random topic today and you'll be forgiven for thinki…

I browse Quora quite a lot, but I only follow writers I like, and no topics, to avoid exactly this. The average answer quality is dreadful.

I think the point about shamelessly pretending to understand, though, is a subtler question, and difficult to address. I follow people on a lot of topics I don't know about, and I've occasionally discovered later down the line than they're full of crap. And I realise in retrospect that I've helped them do it, upvoting seemingly well-researched answers because I appreciated the effort.

It really highlights the difficulty of figuring out who to trust when there's no central authority, and I could see myself being drawn into some reality-denying group a la flat-earthers or antivaxxers just because I happened to follow the wrong people at the start, and on their advice reject other answers.

Re: 1% rule

#90

Post by giancarlostoro »

dang wrote: post #71
dwd wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given the demographics, is the 0.8% likely due to HN posters/readers being more at the introverted end of spectrum so slightly less inclined to engage?

Your guess is as good as mine. Maybe they have more IP addresses.

I would make a basic assumption that most users have either at minimum two IP addresses or three they use for HN. One would be work, another home and at the minimum one would be mobile although I think mobile IP changes as you travel if I am not mistaken and not guaranteed to be static. So potentially more than three but these could be shared among HN users so maybe 2 at a minimum at the very least.
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