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The 90-9-1 principle: 10% of HN users decide on what the other 90% see

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Re: The 90-9-1 principle: 10% of HN users decide on what the other 90% see

#11

This is essentially how life works. Ever do a group project, volunteer, anything that involves a group of people? It almost always devolves into about 10% of said group doing all the work.

Yes, the Pareto principle is similar and states that 20 percent of a group will produce 80 percent of the activity.

Re: The 90-9-1 principle: 10% of HN users decide on what the other 90% see

#12
post #3

I'm not certain that I understand what the issue is here (if any); The only thing preventing the "lurking" 90% from also affecting what is seen is... their inaction?

Isn't there the danger of an echo chamber if a small number of superusers generates the majority of content?

"Superusers"? There's nothing super-human about going to the New page and clicking a few up arrows, nor is the Submit page significantly onerous.

Re: The 90-9-1 principle: 10% of HN users decide on what the other 90% see

#13
I think this is the point. A television show should have at least 9 times as many viewers as cast and crew. A newspaper has far more readers than it has editors and writers.

If anything, modern "everyone is a content creator" platforms have already brought this too far even letting 1% of people create the content. On the one hand, this sort of democratization means you can find diamonds in the rough who'd have never had a chance otherwise, avoiding the whole "how many Einstein's died at age 8 while toiling for a family farm" problem. On the other hand, you get a combinatorial explosion of trash content not worth reading. For every Einstein, you get 999 George McCready Prices.

I hope this doesn't come off too elitist, but it relates to the other front page item right now about the guy who doesn't have a blog. Everyone in there is giving reasons he should go ahead and publish a blog. Well, what happens if every single person on the planet publishes a blog? How are you supposed to find the ones worth reading? Someone else mentioned HOAs. What is the point if your HOA board is just every person in the neighborhood? If you completely decentralize literally everything, we lose all of the economies of scale that come along with specialization and division of labor and suddenly everyone needs to be a writer and an editor in addition to everything else they already do.

Re: The 90-9-1 principle: 10% of HN users decide on what the other 90% see

#14
post #3

I'm not certain that I understand what the issue is here (if any); The only thing preventing the "lurking" 90% from also affecting what is seen is... their inaction?

Isn't there the danger of an echo chamber if a small number of superusers generates the majority of content?

Some number of them are fighting the echo chamber

Re: The 90-9-1 principle: 10% of HN users decide on what the other 90% see

#15
This is not a problem, because there are other communities where the 10% of active HN users are indeed just lurkers, and another 10% are the active group.

We simply don't have the time to be active in everything that is interesting to us at all times.

But hey, when you're pandering to your twitter following, I guess you gotta grasp at weird straws like this to generate "content". Yikes.

Re: The 90-9-1 principle: 10% of HN users decide on what the other 90% see

#17
post #3

I'm not certain that I understand what the issue is here (if any); The only thing preventing the "lurking" 90% from also affecting what is seen is... their inaction?

Isn't there the danger of an echo chamber if a small number of superusers generates the majority of content?

There is also "weighting" of posts by mods, which dang has mentioned on multiple occasions.

Re: The 90-9-1 principle: 10% of HN users decide on what the other 90% see

#18
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't there the danger of an echo chamber if a small number of superusers generates the majority of content?

There's nothing special about the "superusers" other than their decision to act. I can think of another parallel: Homeowner's Associations (setting aside my own issues with them for a moment). I would guess that a similarly disproportionate number of homeowners choose to attend HOA meetings, and thus have an outsized effect on the direction and rules of the neighborhood. As a "reward" for not just showing up, but bei…

I don’t think anyone thinks they are special, which is why ideally they wouldn’t have such influence. I don’t think practically speaking there is much to be done about it, it’s just an interesting thing to note.

Re: The 90-9-1 principle: 10% of HN users decide on what the other 90% see

#19
The title seems click-bait(ish). There's no data here specific to HN to demonstrate that this general observation applies on HN as well. There are also levels of engagement: A person who never comments might not creat content, but their upvotes would still influence what people see yet it seems those folks would be counted outside of the 10%.

It would be really interesting to see stats on unique user view to HN vs Unique posters and commenters, I suspect HN might violate to 10% rule, but without that for the headline to make that claim one way or another is just silly

Re: The 90-9-1 principle: 10% of HN users decide on what the other 90% see

#20
post #3

I'm not certain that I understand what the issue is here (if any); The only thing preventing the "lurking" 90% from also affecting what is seen is... their inaction?

Isn't there the danger of an echo chamber if a small number of superusers generates the majority of content?

Not a small number? What is it?
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