Autonomía digital y tecnológica

Código e ideas para una internet distribuida

Linkoteca. 90-9-1

The 90-9-1 Principle

Imago voragine.net
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Pirámide de participantes en una comunidad digital: 90% audiencia, 9% editores, 1% creadores

Here are a few tips to improve the social dynamic across these three groups:

  • Make contributing easy for everyone. Design contribution tools that scale in complexity, giving power tools to power users, while easing usage for light users.
  • Encouraging editing over creating. Blank pages are scary. Create templates, rough examples that can be easily edited, content suggestions, and tons of examples that help eliminate the fear factor.
  • Reward participants. People will give up their first born for a gold star next to their name. Go easy on the rewards, but certainly bake them into the process of participation.
  • Identify both power users and up and coming users. Call out your power users with featured spots on your home page or corporate blog. And don’t forget that if you always call out the top 10 users, the other 90,000 won’t feel like they have a chance. Shine the spotlight on the up and comers too!

The 90-9-1 Rule for Participation Inequality in Social Media and Online Communities

Imago voragine.net
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La pirámide de la regla del 90, 9, 1 de participación en las comunidades digitales

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.

The problem is that the overall system is not representative of average web users. On any given user-participation site, you almost always hear from the same 1% of users, who almost certainly differ from the 90% you never hear from.