It’s extremely nice to have a big audience. It’s very flattering that people care enough about what I say to be bothered to read it. The problem with having a large audience is people can get a very demanding at times. 🙂
I’ve mentioned the 1% rule (or 1-9-90) before. The number of people producing content in an internet community is really small compared to the number of people consuming it. That discrepancy can cause problems when it comes to interactions between the consumers and producers.
When someone wants to speak to me (or any other person producing content in the community) they see it as a 1:1 interaction. In actual fact it’s really a Many:1 interaction, because you are not the only person wanting to interact. 🙂
Now I don’t want to come across as butthurt by this. It’s a really nice problem to have, if you know what I mean, but it is a problem.
I have a whole list of new stuff I want to produce. I have a whole list of corrections I need to make to the articles on the site. I do community stuff like presenting. I have a full time job that is nothing to do with the website or the Oracle community. This does not leave a great deal of time for dealing with people on a one-to-one basis.
If you want to speak to me I will try to answer, but please don’t take offence if I can’t. Just because my status on Facebook/Twitter/Google+ is online, it doesn’t mean I am free to speak to you. The fact I don’t respond doesn’t mean I don’t care.
In reference to this, Tom Kyte once said, “The more you do, the more people want you to do.” That’s so true.
Cheers
Tim…
