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The Tyranny of the Marginal User

nothinghuman.substack.com

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Re: The Tyranny of the Marginal User

#791

Post by nitwit005 »

whack wrote: post #478

This is a hilarious read but I think the author is too optimistic about the state of humanity. Marl isn't the "marginal" user, Marl is the "average" user. If the average user actually cared about deep and meaningful content, then any A/B test that throws her under the bus in order to please Marl will show bad data, and the proposed change would be killed. Yes, the author tries to hand-wave this away as "product is st…

Marl is supposed to have a short attention span. Reading a bunch of comments, and composing your own multi-pararagraph comment, is hardly Marl-like.

Re: The Tyranny of the Marginal User

#792

Post by mtVessel »

User23 wrote: post #575
sneak wrote: post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A big thing to consider is the fact that everyone got online all the time during the enshittification phase of OKC - it wasn't just OKC's userbase, but it was the median of the whole internet that got dumber and less sophisticated/more basic. When OKC was great, the random median many-hours-on-the-internet-every-day user was a lot better than it is today. Now that's just a median member of the general public, thanks…

When I first got online the average user’s IQ was no joke north of 120. Now of course it’s around 100. Someone needs to come up with a pithy term for how a subpopulation’s average value for any attribute approaches the population’s average value for same as the subpopulation’s size approaches that of the population. It’s conceptually a simple, even trivial, notion, but it’s cumbersome to talk about. That’s also why u…

Regression to the mean?

Re: The Tyranny of the Marginal User

#794

Post by mdnahas »

Partly, it’s the business model. I was at OkCupid and we made money by ads, rather than successful matches, and this drives the business.

Another is the metrics. OkCupid tried to focus on “three ways”, which was a message, a reply, and a reply to the reply. That’s just enough communication to make a date for Marl. If we had focused on users who had a better-than-marginal experience, it might have preserved the features this author liked.

But, really, a different business model makes a big difference.

Re: The Tyranny of the Marginal User

#795

Post by michaelcampbell »

wbobeirne wrote: post #349

I worked at OkCupid from 2013-2017 and totally resonate with the author that mid-2010s OkCupid was a really special product, and that it took a steep decline as the decade went on. It's not entirely fair to say that the Match acquisition immediately caused that decline; I started a couple years after Match got the company in its hands, and only two of the original founders were still focused on OkCupid full time. But…

> in an effort to match their level of growth

I feel this is the turning point leading to downfall of many companies.

Re: The Tyranny of the Marginal User

#796

Post by abricot »

dredmorbius wrote: post #740
narag wrote: post #735

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything you said + progressing hypermetropia for the last 25 years. When mobile screens got half decent sizes, I already hated the medium. When people said that those text pages, around 2000, what was the name? WAP? were going to get everybody online, I was very skeptical. But of course, that was pre-iPhone.

I remember WAP, and had an early-phase smartphone with limited Web support (Palm Treo/Centro) which ... remains one of the better phones that I've had (hard keyboard among other features). You wouldn't want to read much on that, but as a quick on-the-go reference, particularly when travelling, it was handy. One of my daily drivers is a large (13.3") e-ink tablet. Reading on that is actually a pleasure, though it's le…

Check out eInkBro Browser if you haven't already. It saved my sanity when I started using my eInk tablet.

Re: The Tyranny of the Marginal User

#797

Post by gojie »

whack wrote: post #478

This is a hilarious read but I think the author is too optimistic about the state of humanity. Marl isn't the "marginal" user, Marl is the "average" user. If the average user actually cared about deep and meaningful content, then any A/B test that throws her under the bus in order to please Marl will show bad data, and the proposed change would be killed. Yes, the author tries to hand-wave this away as "product is st…

> That's why we're here in the HN comments.

I half-agree with you. I think it's possible to cultive environments where content consumption is more intentional and anti-Marlian. I think HN does a pretty good job of this.

Re: The Tyranny of the Marginal User

#798

Post by ilyt »

dredmorbius wrote: post #679
Jensson wrote: post #602

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Smartphones was the final nail, after that close to 100% of young adults are active online participants. The good thing is that things aren't getting worse at least, all the idiots are already online.

I suspect smartphones affect this in two ways. One is that they put the Internet in everybody's hands, literally. The other, though, is that by virtue of the interface, both display (tiny) and input (shitty, to put it mildly), the effective IQ of those participating, regardless of whatever it was initially , is severely penalised. When I'm typing at a keyboard, I can look at the words I'm typing, or the source I'm ty…

I miss times when there were sensible smartphones still available with proper keyboard...

Re: The Tyranny of the Marginal User

#799

Post by ilyt »

dredmorbius wrote: post #740
narag wrote: post #735

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything you said + progressing hypermetropia for the last 25 years. When mobile screens got half decent sizes, I already hated the medium. When people said that those text pages, around 2000, what was the name? WAP? were going to get everybody online, I was very skeptical. But of course, that was pre-iPhone.

I remember WAP, and had an early-phase smartphone with limited Web support (Palm Treo/Centro) which ... remains one of the better phones that I've had (hard keyboard among other features). You wouldn't want to read much on that, but as a quick on-the-go reference, particularly when travelling, it was handy. One of my daily drivers is a large (13.3") e-ink tablet. Reading on that is actually a pleasure, though it's le…

I find that it heavily depends what kind of scrolling happens.

I am fine with "instantly jump by constant amount per mousewheel click"

Smooth scrolling ? Much worse

Smooth scrolling custom-implemented in JS, with ramp-in ramp-down speed? Close the webpage

Re: The Tyranny of the Marginal User

#800

Post by ilyt »

opsimist wrote: post #717
gwd wrote: post #709

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is, that won't duplicate the original Internet, because the Internet exists. This new filtered internet won't contain all the smart tech people; it will contain all the smart tech people who wanted to join an alternate internet of smart tech people . Those are different sets of people.

Early Internet was place for people with similar background, which were small part of all smart people. IMHO, we need a bait. Something, that will bring in smart people, and only smart people. HN detracts regular people, because it looks boring and doesn't help to continue discussions. This is good for HN, but bad for discussions (and spamers). I'm thinking about mix of a court and wikipedia. Something, where we can…

Even if it becomes successful there will be someone that will decide to make something that gives it easy access to the luddites.

> I'm thinking about mix of a court and wikipedia. Something, where we can play our game (who is right? who is the smarter?) on steroids, something where we can layout our arguments, facts, ideas, and then discuss them (flame all night long), until someone else, an arbiter, will read all that and declare a winner. IMHO, a topic and number of win/lost/unfinished discussions will be a good indication of smartiness and expertise in a domain.

Any system based on voting will be overwhelmed by clueless people upvoting "wrong" thing, just look at reddit.

Only moderation works but that brings all kinds of problems with who is moderator and who chooses them, and what they are allowed to do etc.

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