Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

1% rule

en.wikipedia.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 158 posts

Re: 1% rule

#101

Post by Zanni »

c3534l wrote: post #72
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?

I'm not sure that's a good assumption. Introverted users may be more likely to participate in online discussions since they prefer it over in-person conversations.

Hmm. I'm an introvert, and I find I'm less likely to participate in online discussions, mostly for the reason cycloptic mentioned above: online discussions will be read by more people and require extra care (which can be emotionally exhausting, especially on a contentious topic). I generally prefer to interact with fewer people, so one-on-one communication or small groups are ideal. You may be conflating introversion with shyness?

Re: 1% rule

#102

Post by jcims »

kirubakaran wrote: post #26
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 :-) )

An astute one at that

Re: 1% rule

#103

Post by hyperman1 »

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…

One day, you should write a meta article on hacker news. I always find it interesting to hear what goes on backstage.

Re: 1% rule

#104

Post by hyperman1 »

Same goes for bugs. 90 pct of your users doesn't even report downtime. A report on something non major is rare. I learned to listen to reported problems carefully, however weird.

Re: 1% rule

#105

Post by alecco »

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…

I used to submit more years ago, but it got ridiculous to get votes. I suspect there must be a LOT of brigading to get posts out of the /newest cesspool.

Re: 1% rule

#106

Post by dfee »

I remember the days of early social networking: I.e. pre-mass networking like we have now with FB, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, etc.

It seemed then that more individuals participated then, than do today (literally, those Sam individuals have fallen off).

Anyway, I wonder at what size of “community” this principle takes hold. Certainly, some form of it is true at the scale of modern social media as mentioned above, and it seems the same for the quarterly class updates that come from my college. But at 20 people we seem to have a sort of “small group dynamics” principle take over.

And maybe, then the right way to think about this is that as the groups size approaches one, I should be applying this model to groups as a whole (“in a collection of small groups, only 1% flourish, 9% stay stagnant, and 90% are silent”).

Re: 1% rule

#107

Post by swagasaurus-rex »

magicsmoke wrote: post #63
perilunar wrote: post #54

1% sounds bad, but compared to pre-internet days it's pretty good. Consider a large city newspaper: probably hundreds of journalists and letter writers, but millions of readers, so much less than 1%.

Also speaks to the nature of influence and power throughout history. Usually it's only around 1% of the human population that can reach and impact the lives of more than a few hundred others (roughly the size of a small village where you can get to know everyone) and expand their influence over countries and empires of millions. Likewise, history only records the details of the lives of far less than 1% of all people…

Even those people in the history books, it's hard to care about them really beyond caricatured silhouettes of who history portrayed them to be.

Re: 1% rule

#108

Post by BiteCode_dev »

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.

Yes but if everybody does that, the only thing that will remain in the history will be unchallenged inflammatory claims.

Which will lead most people passing by to consider that the topic is mostly driven from the point of view of this minority.

This is why we hear a lot about the SJW, anti-vax, the flat earther and so on these days: they make a lot of noise online, even if IRL we never see them because there are so few of them.

This is also why we can see extreme political point of views rising, because people are embolden to join in, reading mass of unchallenged content, pandering to their fear. IRL, they may not, it would not be socially acceptable and the barrier to entry would be bigger.

Re: 1% rule

#109

Post by fanf2 »

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…

How do story submissions compare to comments?

Re: 1% rule

#110

Post by zaphirplane »

brewdad wrote: post #76
H8crilA wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish downvotes had a text field feedback option. I often downvote comments for reasons that may not be obvious to the author. That could be ripe for abusive messages, but still think it's a noteworthy idea.

The old Slashdot moderation system had a variant of this. You could assigns comment score and a reason for that score. It worked pretty well until users inevitably learned how to abuse it.

Abused in what way? That’s different from any other points moderation system
Post reply on HN