Participation inequality

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In Internet culture, participation inequality reflects a theory that more people will lurk in a virtual community than will participate.

[edit] 1% Rule

The 1% Rule is a theoretical internet concept which states that people interacting with content (commenting, posting, etc) on the internet represent 1% (or less) of the people actually viewing that content (e.g., for every 1 person that posts on a forum, there are at least 99 other people viewing that forum, but not posting).

The actual percentage is likely to vary depending upon what the content is. For example; if the article or forum is solely technology based, The 1% rule becomes more of a 10 or 20% Rule.

This can be compared with the similar rules known to information science, such as the 80/20 rule known as the Pareto principle, that 20% of a group will produce 80% of the activity, however the activity may be defined. This is also known as Zipf's law.

[edit] References

• Participation Inequality: Lurkers vs. Contributors in Internet Communities by Jakob Nielsen
• "What is the 1% rule?" by Charles Arthur in The Guardian, July 20, 2006.
• "The 1% Rule" by Heather Green in BusinessWeek, May 10, 2006