Hacker News Reader

Comment by blfr | Hacker News Reader

How many of those 300k and 3M are registered users?

If you mean how many logged-in usernames, something like 40k and 100k.

That's a surprisingly small percentage, in my mind.

Do you have any insight as to why? My first guess is that it's non-HNers who stumble across it because of a google result or similar.

I was surprised by it too, but people with more experience than I have seem not to be. When I've told them, their reaction has been "yup, it's always like that". So maybe it's not unusual?

I'm pretty sure it isn't one-time stumbling upon the site. It's that most regular HN readers don't log in.

I imagine a lot of people don't register an account until they feel the need to comment on something. I had browsed HN for a long time before I decided to register and the only reason I did register was so I could reply to someones comment. This is of course anecdotal but its easy to imagine the same case for many people.

Yeah. The main attraction of HN is the links. Comments are usually nice to read, but I rarely have much to add to the discussion.

For me it's at least 50/50. Maybe not even--the links really are just important as they create discussion on a given topic.

I really, really enjoy the comments on this site.

Indeed, the only point of the links for me is that they generate worthwhile discussion. (Which is why I tend to flag political links and such that have been proven to not generate worthwhile discussions, whether or not the article itself is worthwhile.)

Especially because HN shows no summary or anything of the linked article: I'm not going to click on a link if the only information about it that I have is an (often purposefully) abstruse title and a domain name. Once there are a few comments that give me an actual impression of what the article is going to be, then maybe I'll go back and actually read it.

I do love the comments, but I rarely have anything to add, so I don't really need an account. :)

It's pretty common for Internet communities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule_%28Internet_culture%...

And some of those are sockpuppet or throwaway accounts, so the actual number of users is bound to be slightly lower than the number of accounts, or even unique IPs.

Yes, thank you.

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