Hello lurkers

Topics: online communities, blogging, engagement, PM Partner

David Wilcox posts on participation rates in online communities -

There have been a number of articles referencing Jakob Nielson's recent
Alertbox on Participation Inequality: Lurkers vs. Contributors in Internet Communities. (TalkDigger digs up 50-odd references.) He sites a familiar ratio of readers to contributors to participants:

In most online communities, 90% of users are lurkers who never contribute, 9% of users contribute a little, and 1% of users account for almost all the action.

At the beginning of the PM Partner project, I think I boasted optimistically that we would beat that ratio. I don't think we have. I'm currently developing an online survey for our community participants to assess what kind of participation ratio we had on PM Partner over the last couple of months.

In one sense, the participation rate over a couple month period is probably not that important. If we've built up a good resource that people can use and add to as needed - then we've achieved a lot. If we've made the beginnings of facilitating a community who can support each other as they face challenges in partnerships and performance.

David argues that this "participation inequality" is neither good nor bad. It just is. Some people are natually a little more comfortable with the format and the communication itself.

Neilsen thinks there are some disadvantages (listed in this post) and he also includes some ways to overcome "participation inequality".

I think one disadvantage to particpation inequality - particularly for people such as myself who work on the public pound - is that it can be quite difficult to convince that others that our work has value when only a few people are "participating". (And this is also part of the reason that I'll be conducting a survey - to really test the value of what we've done so far and the approach).

The IDeA is starting to go down the road of more collaborative approaches and online communities of practice - and the concept of participation inequality is one that we're aware of and live with. How we deal with exactly is an approach we'll probably develop over time.

You can check out the new IDeA Communities of Practice platform here at

www.communities.idea.gov.uk



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