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1% rule

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Re: 1% rule

#51

Post by dang »

airstrike wrote: post #50
dang wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Thanks for answering! > Perhaps our users are particularly honest Or particularly dishonest and have historically goofed off on HN at the office everyday until they ran out of content to read!

(That's kind of what I meant, but don't tell them.)

Re: 1% rule

#52

Post by WiPo »

Well, this kind of disproportion would only be worse in traditional media: dozens of writers serving millions of newspaper/magazine readers.

Re: 1% rule

#53

Post by lonelappde »

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.

We're not goofing off, Dan; we're using our non-commute time to learn about the environment.

Re: 1% rule

#54

Post by perilunar »

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%.

Re: 1% rule

#55

Post by lonelappde »

WiPo wrote: post #52

Well, this kind of disproportion would only be worse in traditional media: dozens of writers serving millions of newspaper/magazine readers.

Even worse, each article has only 1 writer for all readers!

Re: 1% rule

#56

Post by qqn »

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…

This reminds me of our prof encouraging us to ask anything "because at least five others are wondering the same thing."

Re: 1% rule

#57

Post by keithnz »

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…

one nice thing on stackoverflow is you can see your "Impact". For instance mine is...

  IMPACT
  ~3.9m
  people reached
looking at their stats, a very small percentage are answering most of the questions.

Re: 1% rule

#58

Post by casefields »

nhumrich wrote: post #41
rzzzt wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Thats what is most interesting about human innovation and creativity in general. There are very very very few original ideas out there. Almost any idea anyone has had, a large number of people have had it. And most innovation is just tiny tweaks to existing formulas, over time. In fact, if you understand the backstory behind most innovations, you realize it really wasn't all that impressive. There were many proposed…

That is essentially the point in Gladwell's famous article "In the Air | Who says big ideas are rare?"

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2008/05/12/in-the-air

Re: 1% rule

#59

Post by ladzoppelin »

Things "even out" here, its been like that for years. The top comments are usually smart with added inflammatory BS that only top comments possess. You can actually find really good advice, about many subjects, right after that first block of unstoppable up-votes.
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