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I hope many of us internalized this early. It's not very accurate, but I try to think of this as meaning that on average, everything I post online is being read
by cycloptic 7y ago
I hope many of us internalized this early. It's not very accurate, but I try to think of this as meaning that on average, everything I post online is being read by a minimum of 99 people, multiplied by either the upvote count on the thread (for HN) or the number of active followers I have (for Twitter). It has helped me to always think this to myself before posting something.
I probably am biased from the culture on these sites but it still seems all to easy for people to still get dragged into fruitless discussions, overly emotional flamewars and trollbait that they will regret later.
- xwdv 7y agoWhy should we care about what the silent 99% think? We’re the top 1%, everyone else wishes they either had something to say or the courage to say it.
- nixpulvis 7y agoBut is all that thinking really worth it? I mean surely you don't want to say too much bullshit, or mislead people... But take this comment; would I really post it if I thought it would waste the time of some hundreds of people reading it? Also... then there's the problem of feedback, which is how you make progress in a conversation... but I fear I begin to digress.
- H8crilA 7y agoI wish downvotes had a text field feedback option. I often downvote comments for reasons that may not be obvious to the author. That could be ripe for abusive messages, but still think it's a noteworthy idea.
- brewdad 7y agoThe old Slashdot moderation system had a variant of this. You could assigns comment score and a reason for that score. It worked pretty well until users inevitably learned how to abuse it.
- DelightOne 7y agoI don't know the problems there, but would the following avoid the abuse? Only accept pre-defined labels everyone agreed on + references to existing answers? Alternatively only allow a refutation format which is simple to validate. And make it clear that votes are only a show of sentiment since this is not a democracy we are talking about.
- zaphirplane 7y agoAbused in what way? That’s different from any other points moderation system
- dredmorbius 7y agoWriting for money and reservation of copyright are, at bottom, the ruin of literature. No one writes anything that is worth writing, unless he writes entirely for the sake of his subject. What an inestimable boon it would be, if in every branch of literature there were only a few books, but those excellent! This can never happen, as long as money is to be made by writing. It seems as though the money lay under a curse; for every author degenerates as soon as he begins to put pen to paper in any way for the sake of gain. The best works of the greatest men all come from the time when they had to write for nothing or for very little. -- Arthur Schopenhauer, "On Authorship" https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/On_Authorship https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/On_Authorship Writing for online credit, audience, influence, and/or "imaginary internet points" may not be money, but they are all extrinsic motivators in the sense Schopenhauer references.
- yingw787 7y agoThat's why I left Quora. I'm a really gullible person, and I was going to respond to somebody who posted something inflammatory, then I realized I had the option to just walk away. So I did. I remember something similar about companies too. When you have product market fit, customers will sear you when your product doesn't work. If you don't, you'll never hear from them again.
- egfx 7y agoIf you don’t what?
- KineticLensman 7y agoIf you don't have product market fit
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- smichel17 7y agoHave a product-market fit
- Mahn 7y agoTangential, but it's strange to me the sort of culture that Quora has cultivated over the years. It seems to tolerate and even encourage low quality content and contributors to the point that ignorance, misinformation and poorly researched opinionated answers thrive on a regular basis. That's not to say there aren't good contributors and content, but browse any one random topic today and you'll be forgiven for thinking you are on Yahoo Answers. Just no filter at all, extremely poor questions, offtopic comments posted as answers, people with no understanding of the subject shamelessly pretending to know what they are talking about, etc etc. It's just all around incredibly unpleasant. I loved Quora in its early years when it was invitation only, but I don't ever want to have anything to do with it again.
- 7y ago
- Viliam1234 7y ago> on average, everything I post online is being read by a minimum of 99 people... There are also big differences within this 1%. Even among the people who write regularly, there is probably a tiny minority that generates most of the text. Imagine people with no life, spending each day at least 10 hours online, typing without thinking too much, which allows them to post at least one comment each minute... doing this for years. Your comments are mostly lost in this ocean.
- cycloptic 7y agoOn Twitter that still seems to be a bad problem but it's less so here. Those types tend to say the same things over and over again and get dismissed or downvoted. Unless there are posters on HN that just happen to be 100x more interesting than everyone else... are there? :)
- dredmorbius 7y agoThe Leaders list notes high-karma HN contributors. There are many notable accounts, from leaders and experts in the community, who don't make that list. Popularity and prolificity are not measures of quality.
- ars 7y ago> is being read by a minimum of 99 people I think of that sometimes when writing. I try to avoid, for example, abbreviations: It's shorter for me to write, but it means 99 other people will need to decipher them. Or not editing my post, things like that, that might save me time, but are multiplied by 99 on the other end.
- qqn 7y agoThis reminds me of our prof encouraging us to ask anything "because at least five others are wondering the same thing."
- keithnz 7y agoone nice thing on stackoverflow is you can see your "Impact". For instance mine is... IMPACT ~3.9m people reached looking at their stats, a very small percentage are answering most of the questions.
- knzhou 7y agoThis thinking actually causes me to post more, and get into more flamewars, because it bothers me when something obviously wrong is going to be seen by hundreds of people.
- dhimes 7y agoI feel that too. If the bad guys are the only ones talking, they will be pretty convincing.
- blaser-waffle 7y agoThat's not just a feel, mon ami: that's explicitly the point of online marketing & propaganda. Their methods aren't new at this point and are fairly well documented.
- EGreg 7y agoJust because 99% of people lurk doesn’t mean they will see YOUR contribution. I mean, the popularity of authors or posts is not uniform either.
- dntbnmpls 7y ago> I probably am biased from the culture on these sites but it still seems all to easy for people to still get dragged into fruitless discussions, overly emotional flamewars and trollbait that they will regret later. Life is about emotions and regret. If you don't have any emotions or regrets, you haven't lived. I hope people internalize that as well. Also, my top peeve on social media these days are virtue signaling goody-two-shoes. The paternalistic moralizing and talking down to isn't my cup of tea. If people wanted that, they could go read Aesop's Fables.
- alok-g 7y agoA data point: A HN post of mine had ~29K unique viewers* with ~680 upvotes. Ratio comes to 43 unique visitors per upvote. (* Per Github traffic stats.)