Participation Inequality: Lurkers vs. Contributors in Internet Communities. Jakob Nielsen’s piece on the split between lurkers, synthesisers and creators. He puts it at a 90-9-1 rule. But has some other interesting examples, like blogging, where he says the ratio is more like 95-5-0. (for a clever guy his maths aren’t that good ;-)
Anyway, it’s a great article, and the bit about how to minimise inequality is smart:
- Make it easy to contribute
- Make participation a side-effect
- Edit don’t create
- Reward – but don’t over reward – participants
- Promote quality contributions
That’s enough paraphrasing, just click over here to read the whole thing.
technorati tags:participation, online