Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.
Nielsen link
Author: Dave Winer Posted: 11/1/1999; 9:29:18 AM Topic: Democracy, personalisation and Reputation Managers Msg #: 12585 (In response to 12575) Prev/Next: 12584 / 12586
The Fallacy of Atypical Web Examples:
Anybody who was online in 1985 when The WELL started was clearly a member of a small elite on the frontier of computing. Geographic location (San Francisco/Silicon Valley) made the membership even more elitist and leading-edge. Sure, hanging out with the 1% smartest people in the world can be fun, but the average Web site will have average users. Also, once you get a broader and more diverse user population, you get hit by the extreme participation inequality that characterizes all aspects of the Internet: a few people do all the talking and they are rarely the most interesting people (unless everybody in the group is drawn from the world's top-1%).
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