Plurkers talk quite a bit about their “Plurk to response ratios.” That makes sense, because they really are indicative of the way that you are using Plurk and what you are probably getting out of it. If nothing else, it is interesting to see how widely they vary. There is almost certainly no “right” ratio, but there are probably some inferences that could be drawn from classes of the ratios.

It’s easier to think of this question as an analogy to real life. Let’s say that you are at a cocktail party where there are 100 other people. At this party, on average, a reasonable person would listen a lot and speak a little. If you always started a new topic with every sentence (always Plurked) you could really piss people off. If you listened to what others said, and then thought about it and said something back (responses) you would be a pretty good conversational citizen.

I use 100 because that’s probably the average number of people that I see in the Plurk room at any one time. If your ratio is 1 to 1, you are probably talking too much and listening too little. This is probably true up to a ratio of 1 to 5, or 1 to 7, or something. All of this is guesswork. All people and all parties are different. But in this Plurk-to-response neighborhood, you are probably being a bore.

I tend to get caught up in the conversations of others, and respond in someone else’s Plurks more than most. My ratio now is 368 Plurks to 9217 responses, which is something like 1 to 25, which is maybe on the high side. Or, of course, @kafkaz might be right, and I’m just stoopid. Just as a guess, though, most people probably fall into the range 1:10 to 1:20.

That is also probably pretty close to the party analogy, since you usually don’t talk to everyone there, at least not very much, that range might be pretty close to the norm, whatever that is. I would be most interested in what you think about this subject. It is an interesting one.

I’m KDFrawg on Plurk. What’s your ratio? :)