Clay Shirky on social software

[David]

Naama wrote:

> It depends on individual psychology. I would be doubly insulted 
that 
> somebody read my post and wasn't interested enough to reply! I 
prefer 
> to think that the post wasn't noticed, rather than read and tossed 
> away.

You say that, but I wonder if you have thought through the 
implications.  We have nearly 10,000 members on the main list - most 
of these are lurkers.  Let's suppose 90% have forgotten their 
membership so we have about 1000 active members including 'active 
lurkers' - that is, people who make an effort to read but never post. 
Even if the numbers are not right the argument will carry through.

How many people will read one of your posts, do you suppose?  A 
hundred?  Five hundred?  How many will reply?  How many do you *want* 
to reply?

I think the wise person will accept one reply and four hundred and 
ninety-nine 'double insults', rather than five hundred replies (even 
if offlist), or have the vast majority of the list skip their posts 
entirely.

In fact, unless list volume is going to snowball uncontrollably, the 
average number of replies to each post *must* be very small, 
certainly less than one though I can't quite do the sums in my head.

David