
1% rule (Internet culture) - aburan28
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule_(Internet_culture)
======
austenallred
I've always felt like one of the most important factors of sites like Reddit
and HackerNews is that it takes very little effort to "contribute". It's
almost part of reading/lurking to upvote an article or comment, and that lower
barrier to entry means a lot more action and a lot more data to determine
which content is the best.

The founders of Twitter were right. When a thought is on the top of my mind,
writing a blog post about it is hard. Sending a <=140 character message about
it is easy.

Lowering the barriers to entry can be a great strategy for something,
especially something that requires a lot of participation to work correctly,
to gain traction.

~~~
unfamiliar
Lowering the barrier to entry is also a double edged sword. Just look at
youtube comments pre-Google+.

~~~
DanBC
I haven't seen much difference after Google +.

Other examples include Xbox online which is horrific.

------
cstuder
I've always liked the reversed interpretation: The web has a multiplying
function. For everything created, there are 10 people expressing an opinion
and 100 people reading it.

~~~
zerohm
I also look at it the other way: 1% of people have the required atributes
(talent, motivation) to produce something that 99% of the population want to
consume.

It's probably lower in other endevours, e.g., less than 1% of people can play
basketball at a level that the average person would actively choose to watch
on a regular basis.

~~~
dredmorbius
Sturgeon's Law: 90% of everything is crud.

Morbius's Law: At Internet scale Sturgeon's law is six-sigma compliant:
99.99966% of everything is crud.

Your filtering / content surfacing algorithms had best take this into
consideration.

~~~
wiredfool
Sturgeon's law is here, it's just not evenly distributed.

~~~
dredmorbius
Well played, sir, well played.

------
ececconi
It's hard for me to contribute online because there are rarely things that I
have a hard opinion on that I think other people would benefit from. Maybe a
lot of it is a lack of confidence that my ideas are worthwhile.

~~~
dredmorbius
Well, that's always possible.

On the other hand, kicking ideas into the mix and seeing what others do with
them can strengthen that muscle.

At least for some people.

~~~
ececconi
I find this to be especially true on HN comments.

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moocowduckquack
If we combine the 1% Rule with Sturgeon's Law that 90% of everything is crap,
then surely it follows that of all the people on the internet only 0.1% are
actually producing stuff worth looking at, and maybe only 0.08% are producing
stuff worth looking at that isn't about kittens, assuming that this internet
kitty-o-meter that I just googled is accurate -
[http://stevetilley.tumblr.com/post/9504481725/what-
percentag...](http://stevetilley.tumblr.com/post/9504481725/what-percentage-
of-the-internet-is-cats)

~~~
dredmorbius
I just posted this above, but I've been saying for a while (mostly on G+,
where noise filters are crap, though I've since given up).

Morbius's Law: At Internet scale Sturgeon's law is six-sigma compliant:
99.99966% of everything is crud.

~~~
moocowduckquack
Well, that's a nice hypothesis, but my theory is backed by actual kitty-data.

------
parfe
Just because people can create and publish does not mean they want to.

Prior to the internet, physical media like books, newspapers, and music
certainly had a similar distribution. Consuming takes little effort, provides
stimulation and enjoyment whether
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random),
/r/AdviceAnimals or Rolling Stone magazine.

A study looking at which demographics choose to participate in which
communities would interest me. Reading comments on local news websites can be
terrifying, but my parents would be more likely than me to participate
becoming that "1%". Other communities like Live Journal, Reddit, or deviantART
appeal to a different sets of 1%ers.

edit: Stats on views vs upvotes vs comments would be an interesting metric for
reddit or HN to publish.

~~~
mcguire
I suggest that, prior to the Internet, the actual proportion was much less
than 1%, simply because the barriers to contributing were higher.

I have no actual data, of course. Finding some would be interesting.

~~~
parfe
As an example, my high school class of 310 students had several original bands
which easily surpasses the 1% mark for creators. Considering the context of
internet posting, "good" or "famous" really don't come into it. In the pre-
internet or offline world, 1 in 100 people being content creators seems a
trivial threshold to cross.

~~~
sentenza
I'd say that the further you go back, the higher the conent creator ratio was.
The absence of storage is what made it possible and the absence of storage is
why it wasn't conserved.

What do you do when there is no music?

You start to sing.

------
tchock23
There are so many factors that can combine to influence this rule, and it's
hard to generalize or even predict which ones will impact it the most.

I co-founded a company that built and managed private online communities for
large brands, and the fact that the sites were private/invite-only and
facilitated meant the engagement levels were often much higher than 90-9-1.

Here are some of the factors that we noticed could change the ratio for our
clients - private/public forums, ease of content creation, whether the site is
moderated, anonymous accounts, commonalities between members, site usability
and the difficulty of registration (setting higher barriers to register can
actually create higher engagement).

Your mileage will likely vary...

------
VLM
Would be interesting to see research on education and MOOCs.

I recently completed an online class where the final announcement reported
1100 people passed and got their statement of accomplishment, unknown number
failed, so total population at least 1100, and coursera forums list each read
(not distinct readers, each time someone reads, even if its 10 times per
individual) and a typical forum post never exceeded 50 or so reads, although a
couple legendary ones got up to 300 or even 500. There were at least tens of
posts.

So at least one CS class on one MOOC had stats around 10% read any individual
post, about 1% create a post and/or respond. So the 1% rule is partially
correct although the 99% lurk is about ten times too high. I'm not sure what
you call someone who's in the community but doesn't even read the posts.

I've been informed discussion forums are critical, but most students didn't
use them and I found them useless other than a waste of time. Then again one
course does not define the experience of all courses, which is where an actual
research paper with real data would be interesting. I still have the gut
feeling forums will turn out useless; after all, who's more likely to be
correct, google/SO/Reddit or a small forum of mostly confused students?

------
ahoge
> _in a collaborative website such as a wiki, 90% of the participants of a
> community only view content, 9% of the participants edit content, and 1% of
> the participants actively create new content._

In Wikipedia's case, there are also those who destroy content.

~~~
ancarda
Wouldn't vandalism be included in the 9%?

~~~
ahoge
I wasn't talking about vandalism. I mean real irreversible destruction of
content.

~~~
lazerwalker
I'm not too familiar with the turmoil of internal Wikipedia politics; how/what
sort of content is irreversibly destroyed given that Wikipedia pages have
public versioning/history?

~~~
ahoge
If an article gets deleted, it's gone.

~~~
jessaustin
Does anyone run a service that saves deleted articles? If not, should such a
service be created?

~~~
ahoge
In the past, there was Deletionpedia:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deletionpedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deletionpedia)

------
mattberg
The history of the term "lurker" was very interesting to me.

I am an active member of the shoe community NikeTalk, and lurkers are almost a
daily subject on that site. Lurkers in a way are actually looked down upon
from active community members (not me personally), since they get quick access
to helpful information on shoe releases without out having to share anything
to help others. If they saw this rule of thumb, it would probably be serious
fuel to their fire.

------
drum
While this seems true for a lot of websites, it seems that the true 'home run'
apps of the last 10 years have a much higher number of creators. Instagram in
particular makes it insanely easy to be a creator, but more importantly, a
creator of something that you're proud to share. The apps that can more widely
enable creators in this ratio, are the apps I believe really take off.

------
mathattack
Different models for different services. Some services are 1 to Very Many.
(TV) Some encourage more involvement (StackExchange in the early days, or HN
now). As a principle it's good to be on top of this, though. You have to treat
your content creators different. And your content editors.

------
Aardwolf
I'm not so sure if this is accurate for all sites, on forums often the amount
of posts in a thread is more than 1% of the amount of views of the thread.

~~~
B-Con
1% distinct users. Many users comment several times in a thread over the
course of a conversation.

------
gaius
Also see
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7015139](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7015139)

------
fit2rule
I was going to say something, but I'm too busy trying to work out how to get
in the top 1% of HN right now, so ..

~~~
alaskamiller
Once young I was in the top. Like winning the high score to some intellectual
video game. Looking back then reflecting, that was a waste of my life.

~~~
sliverstorm
_that was a waste of my life_

Maybe, but it probably taught you a little about civil discourse, rational
thinking & reasoned argument, and gave you some practice typing. I know it did
all those things for me :)

~~~
octaveguin
It may teach more about pandering to an audience. But that is super important
too, sometimes.

~~~
sliverstorm
To me, it teaches somewhere in between- how to coach your argument in a form
that will make it through people's mental firewalls. Sometimes you have to
play to people a little bit to get them to actually hear what you want to say.

------
GrinningFool
I have no comment.

~~~
dredmorbius
"Even a fool, when he holdeth his peace, is counted wise: and he that shutteth
his lips is esteemed a man of understanding."

Proverbs 17:28

~~~
moocowduckquack
"If I had all the money I'd spent on drink, I'd spend it on drink."

Vivian Stanshall. At four in the afternoon.

~~~
dredmorbius
I'll drink to that.

------
hobbes300
I am the 1%

------
greesil
We are the 99 percent.

------
therobot24
occupy the internet?

~~~
JetSpiegel
Could be, if the 99% bothered to comment.

