DART and 90-9-1 rule

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Posts: 10,562

https://www.nngroup.com/articles/participation-inequality/

07.28.2021 07:20PM

"In most online communities, 90% of users are lurkers who never contribute, 9% of users contribute a little, and 1% of users account for almost all the action."

"All large-scale, multi-user communities and online social networks that rely on users to contribute content or build services share one property: most users don't participate very much. Often, they simply lurk in the background.

In contrast, a tiny minority of users usually accounts for a disproportionately large amount of the content and other system activity. This phenomenon of participation inequality was first studied in depth by Will Hill in the early '90s, when he worked down the hall from me at Bell Communications Research.

When you plot the amount of activity for each user, the result is a Zipf curve, which shows as a straight line in a log-log diagram.

User participation often more or less follows a 90–9–1 rule:

90% of users are lurkers (i.e., read or observe, but don't contribute).
9% of users contribute from time to time, but other priorities dominate their time.
1% of users participate a lot and account for most contributions: it can seem as if they don't have lives because they often post just minutes after whatever event they're commenting on occurs."

do you think that this applies to DART?

Debates: 77

Posts: 3,565

07.28.2021 08:05PM

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@Dr.Franklin

That's a tough one, because DArt does not count activity well enough to make an easy accounting of the rule you propose. For example, member participation in Debate would be better counted if we knew, not the number of debates, because they vary in numbers of rounds, but by number of rounds argued by all members, currently 493. I think that data point is "Number of arguments" listed beside the pages of debates, but I'm not sure.

As for forum, I think the number of posts registered would be the measure, but they are not totaled other than for each member, currently 524 of them, but not a grand total.

However, because we may know that 493 debaters [but that includes inactives], and potentially the number of rounds [10.672 as of now], that would mean 1% of members [4.9] have waged some 9,600 rounds, and I don't think that's the case.

For Forum, not knowing the grand total of posts, I cannot hazard a guess.

Topic's author

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07.28.2021 10:51PM

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@fauxlaw

I think it depends on the type of website, DART is designed for user interface so the number of lurkers will naturally be down.

Wikipedia, has a ratio of 99.8% lurkers, 0.2 general users, and 0.003% super users who are responsible for most edits. This makes sense as encyclopedias are not built for user input.

for the forums, i would say that 5-10% of users are responsible, there are tons of pages on the forum leaderboard with people who have not contributed much to the website

Vader

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Posts: 14,585

Vader

07.28.2021 11:28PM

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@Dr.Franklin

According to math, I account for 4% of the sites entire forum posts

9% of the original threads

And in a year I average 4,323 posts, which is 1% of the sites posts

Safe to say I'm apart of the 1%

It's weird. I don't usually spend all day here, lots of my posts come from mafia. I usually check the site and comment on the post for about an hour, then do my own thing for more. Though I will say from 2018-2020 I was pretty insane

Topic's author

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07.29.2021 12:23AM

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@Vader

yeah i think im teetering on the 1% too but hard to tell

I don't usually spend all day here,

i think the "it can seem as if they don't have lives because they often post just minutes after whatever event they're commenting on occurs." comes from mainstream websites, theres amazon reviewers who

"Furthermore, at the time I wrote this, 167,113 of Amazons book reviews were contributed by just a few "top-100" reviewers; the most prolific reviewer had written 12,423 reviews. How anybody can write that many reviews — let alone read that many books — is beyond me, but it's a classic example of participation inequality."

that is insane!

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Posts: 8,689

07.29.2021 12:38AM

I'm about 2% of all posts but I added up the top 30 contributors and that group makes up 60.6% of all posts. Supa's closer to 5% than 4%

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Posts: 8,689

07.29.2021 12:40AM

65% of all COVID disinformation available online is manufactured by just 12 people.

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07.29.2021 01:29AM

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@oromagi

And 65% of those 12 people are iterations of Fauci, who ought to next wear a mask as a diaper.

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Posts: 19,892

07.29.2021 06:27AM

Dr franklin are you a socialist? Must we enforce equality of participation?

Topic's author

#10

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07.29.2021 06:39PM

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@RationalMadman

Dr franklin are you a socialist? Must we enforce equality of participation

RM, I am not a socialist. I am economically center like most right wingers in the US.

On the question of enforcing equality of participation? Well, thats impossible, all internet communities fall into the 90-9-1 rule

#11

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07.29.2021 06:40PM

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@Dr.Franklin

Most US leftwingers are centre-economics-wing. The Right of the US is economically further Right than any other highly developed nation in existence.

#12

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07.29.2021 06:41PM

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@Dr.Franklin

If you believe 90-9-1 is a rule and not a sign of a bad community for the 90, then what's the point of this thread?

Topic's author

#13

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Posts: 10,562

https://www.storybench.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/polcompass-730x489.png

07.29.2021 06:45PM

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@RationalMadman

Most US leftwingers are centre-economics-wing. The right of the US is economically further Right than any other highly developed nation in existence.

yes you think that from the policies which are connected to a corpocracy system that we have in the US.

BUT how do the voters themselves think?

as you can see from the graph, republican voters are economically center, smashing what was previously thought of them. Americans DONT WANT unrestricted capitalism garbage where everything is profit, they want a moral free market where the restrictions are duties to the employees, nation, community, and God.

Topic's author

#14

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Posts: 10,562

07.29.2021 06:46PM

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@RationalMadman

If you believe 90-9-1 is a rule and not a sign of a bad community for the 90, then what's the point of this thread?

I thought this was an interesting phenomenon to share, and does the rule apply to DART?

#15

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07.29.2021 06:47PM

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@Dr.Franklin

According to you it applies always.

#16

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07.29.2021 06:49PM

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@Dr.Franklin

Americans DONT WANT unrestricted capitalism garbage where everything is profit, they want a moral free market where the restrictions are duties to the employees, nation, community, and God.

And like the right-wing of pretty much all nations where there really is one, you're conned by bullshit promises and propaganda to vote against what you want in favour of an evil worse than 'the Left' that would actually help out the small business owners and working class far more.

Topic's author

#17

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07.29.2021 08:10PM

And like the right-wing of pretty much all nations where there really is one, you're conned by bullshit promises and propaganda to vote against what you want in favour of an evil worse than 'the Left' that would actually help out the small business owners and working class far more.

well sure i suppose, the GOP is a mess but a lot of liberals are angry at the dem party too

Topic's author

#18

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Posts: 10,562

07.29.2021 08:13PM

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@RationalMadman

According to you it applies always.

well most of the time

wikipedia has a ratio of 99,8-0.2-0.0003

29 days later

#19

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Posts: 2,049

08.28.2021 12:51AM

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@Dr.Franklin

Just about everything is a zipf curve.

Topic's author

#20

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Posts: 10,562

08.28.2021 01:21AM

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@janesix

interesting

#21

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08.28.2021 06:14PM

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@Dr.Franklin

Galaxies, languages, city populations. All kinds of seemingly unrelated things.

#22

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08.29.2021 07:15PM

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@Dr.Franklin

There's a very toxic tone in that article btw,

It is encouraging you to design a system that doesn't reward the 1% of extremely active users as if to say 'fuck off no-lifers'. This makes you wonder how the loyalty is going to be maintained... or their usefulness to the ecosystem of activity.

Another major assumption in the article is that the lurkers somehow want to contribute but feel they can't. This is a lie. If anything only the 9% would approach higher activity levels with more incentives, the lurkers tend to not care and certainly get furious with Amazon and Facebook for employing underhanded 'passive participation' by logging their activity and preferences.

#23

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Posts: 19,892

08.29.2021 07:16PM

If 90-9-1 is natural, let it be. That is Taoism. Let it be, why change it? Why force?

Give me a good reason and I'll listen.

Topic's author

#24

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Posts: 10,562

08.30.2021 01:07AM

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@RationalMadman

t is encouraging you to design a system that doesn't reward the 1% of extremely active users as if to say 'fuck off no-lifers'. This makes you wonder how the loyalty is going to be maintained... or their usefulness to the ecosystem of activity.

I think that it isnt exactly not "rewarding" them. Its highlighting that a lot of what you see online was written by well-no-lifers

nother major assumption in the article is that the lurkers somehow want to contribute but feel they can't. This is a lie. If anything only the 9% would approach higher activity levels with more incentives, the lurkers tend to not care and certainly get furious with Amazon and Facebook for employing underhanded 'passive participation' by logging their activity and preferences.

i agree with this

Topic's author

#25

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