---
title: C- Most people will primarily consume information
enableToc: false
tags:
- claim
---
Authored By:: [[P- Brendan Langen]], [[P- Rob Haisfield]]

Statistics over the years cite a [90-9-1](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22622574) rule to contributors in online communities, and although that does not hold up across all communities, the majority of people fall into the consumption-only group (90%). Most site data is not publicly shared, but estimates range from 80-98% of people as lurkers, 1.9%-19% of people as editing/updating content, and .1-1% of people as primary contributors. 

Looked at differently, the 90-9-1 rule also indicates the breakdown of contributions from users. In this group, 90% of posts come from 1% of users, 10% of posts come from 9% of users, while no posts come from 90% of users. Our closest public comparison to a discourse graph is Wikipedia. [In 2006, 99.8%](https://www.nngroup.com/articles/participation-inequality/) of visitors were lurkers, 0.2% edited pages, and only .003% were contributors.

This speaks to a large gap in the activity we want to see in a discourse graph. [[C- It will be important to capture the potential energy of information consumption|It will be important to capture the potential energy of information consumption]]. Additionally, we need to [[Q- What workflows and behaviors facilitate synthesis|enable workflows and behaviors to facilitate synthesis]]. How can you lower the barriers for someone to meaningfully contribute?

[[C- Synthesis is supported by Active Reading|Synthesis is supported by active reading]], and a number of tools assist with this. 

[[LiquidText]] is built on the claim that systems must enable people to trace excerpts back to their original context to support active reading, because [[C- Knowledge must be recontextualized to be usefully reused|knowledge must be recontextualized to be usefully reused]]. The tool allows you to "pull out" excerpts and make pointers to context, and use these units on a canvas to weave together a larger understanding, albeit in a less formal fashion.

[[Hypothesis]] allows users to annotate webpages and documents in their margins, providing the option to further enrich a snippet with context. Sharing is built in to Hypothes.is, affording added context and active reading across groups. This enables social tagging, which helps users find related content and build community. [[C- Social tagging is a key user behavior to managing a decentralized knowledge graph|Social tagging is a key user behavior to managing a decentralized knowledge graph]]. This can come in the form of text, likes or [[C- Emoji reactions are a form of social tagging|emoji reactions]]. 

[[Readwise|Readwise]] offers a view towards actions a reader can take to save important notes and passages without considerable effort. 
[[P- Tiago Forte]] famously coined the term ["progressive summarization,"](https://fortelabs.co/blog/progressive-summarization-a-practical-technique-for-designing-discoverable-notes/) which is the behavior we are looking to develop in discourse graph communities - [[C- Incrementally processing notes is a key user behavior to promote synthesis|incrementally processing notes is a key user behavior to promote synthesis]]. Progressive summarization refers to consuming an information resource, taking the important parts out of it, rereading the important parts at a later date, summarizing the most important parts of that, and so on, until you only have the most important content.

How can we incentivize users to contribute? 
Perhaps [[C- Anonymous contributions to a decentralized discourse graph enable balanced review|anonymous author contributions]] combined with [[C- Making editors identifiable incentivizes high quality reviews|identifiable editors]] can increase the volume and quality of reviews while reducing bias. A helpful proxy to ask ourselves is [[Q- What would a Web3 Wikipedia look like|what would a Web3 Wikipedia look like]]?

[[Q- How can people maintain a decentralized discourse graph with a high quantity of information in it|Our goal is to enable people to maintain a decentralized discourse graph with a high quantity of information as it grows over time]].