Participation Inequality: Encouraging More Users to Contribute

[InquilineKea]

<p>[Participation</a> Inequality: Lurkers vs. Contributors in Internet Communities (Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox)](<a href=“http://www.useit.com/alertbox/participation_inequality.html]Participation”>Participation Inequality: The 90-9-1 Rule for Social Features)</p>

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* 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. 

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Wikipedia’s most active 1,000 people – 0.003% of its users – contribute about two-thirds of the site’s edits. Wikipedia is thus even more skewed than blogs, with a 99.8-0.2-0.003 rule.

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<p>I highly doubt that means anything, the most active 1,000 probably revert vandalisms</p>

[mj93]

<p>yeah … i vandalized wikipedia once…and then i never posted again jajaajjaja</p>

[InquilineKea]

<p>lmao only once?</p>

<p>i’ve vandalized it so many times</p>

<p>(back when i hated the world and wanted the world to know of that fact :p)</p>

[mj93]

<p>1000/.003 = 333,333? Wikipedia only has that many users? did i do the math incorrectly? :D</p>

[VeryHappy]

<p>Actually, I think Wikipedia has only about 25,000 contributors.</p>

[mj93]

<p>Users, though.</p>