The situation where 90% of users are ROM-only has long been occurring in online communities around the world.

It is common for users to participate in online communities such as online bulletin boards and Discord but not post, and in Japan they are called ROM-only users . In some communities, it is not uncommon for ROM-only users to make up the majority of users. This situation of 'the majority of users participating in online communities but not posting' seems to occur in online communities all over the world, and Jacob Nielsen , a leading UX researcher, also discussed the proportion of ROM-only users and ways to encourage users to speak up in 2006.

Participation Inequality: The 90-9-1 Rule for Social Features
https://www.nngroup.com/articles/participation-inequality/

Nielsen said, 'In most online communities, 90% are lurkers who don't contribute at all, 9% contribute a little, and the majority of the action comes from the remaining 1%,' calling this the '90-9-1 law.' Nielsen also said of the 1% of active users, 'They post within minutes of something happening. They probably don't have a life.'

According to Nielsen, the existence of ROM-only and high-frequency posters has been confirmed since the dawn of the Internet. For example, a survey of more than 2 million posts on Usenet, the original social networking site, revealed that 27% of all posts were made by users who posted only once, and 25% of all posts were made by just 3% of users.

A situation similar to the '90-9-1 law' also occurs in services that are not intended for social interaction. For example, in 2006, Wikipedia had 32 million unique visitors and 68,000 active editors. In other words, 'only 0.2% of participants contributed.' Furthermore, two-thirds of Wikipedia's edits were made by 1,000 users, which is 0.003% of the total. From this, Nielsen says that Wikipedia has a '99.8-0.2-0.003 law.'

When there is a bias in active users, such as the '90-9-1 rule,' there may be a discrepancy between what is posted and the majority opinion of the community. While Nielsen says it is impossible to completely correct the '90-9-1 rule,' he lists the following efforts as ways to mitigate it to the '80-16-4 rule.'

- Making it easier to contribute to the community
'Posting text' is a fairly high hurdle. Therefore, it is recommended to provide an easy way to contribute, such as 'pressing the like button.' For example, a system like Netflix's 'rating content with a number of stars' seems to be a good way to lower the hurdle of contribution.

・Create a post template
Writing text from scratch is difficult, but rewriting part of an existing text is easy. Therefore, by creating a post template, you can lower the hurdle for contributions.

- Allow automatic contributions
Amazon has a recommendation display function that says 'People who bought this item also bought this item.' This function is not performed by other users who 'recommend this item,' but is automatically displayed by the system based on the user's purchase history. In other words, just by 'buying something,' Amazon automatically helps to display recommendations to other users. Nielsen also recommends creating a system that can automatically contribute in this way.

Reward contributors
Giving contributors rewards such as 'special badges' or 'advance notices of new content' can increase motivation. However, be careful not to give too many rewards, as users with high contributions will start to dominate the system.

- Highlight users who post high-quality content
If all posts are treated equally, posts from 'occasional, important contributors' will be buried under a sea of other posts, so it's recommended to identify 'excellent contributors' and make their posts stand out.