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Leaving Quora after 10 years of answering questions

exquora.thoughtstorms.info

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Re: Leaving Quora after 10 years of answering questions

#61

Post by antoniuschan99 »

paulpauper wrote: post #16
manigandham wrote: post #6

Quora was incredible back in 2010. I would spend hours reading and writing. The highlight was interacting with some of the great Silicon Valley characters that contributed much of the early content. Since then the site has gotten steadily worse in every way possible, while staying aloft with infinite VC money and rich founders. It's sad story of what could've been.

Just another VC-backed zombie company. maybe it will be acquired by yahoo, google, or Microsoft and put out of its misery.

I get the same feeling when I get Groupon emails. Nostalgic from the 2010s

Re: Leaving Quora after 10 years of answering questions

#62

Post by abetusk »

This really makes my heart sink. It's not just that a top poster is leaving because they feel it hasn't been worth it in any real sense ("financial ... socially ... acclaim ... personal growth") but also because all that knowledge is now effectively behind a gate that will almost surely be lost within a couple decades.

The Quora terms of service forbid "automated tools" and have a system that provides at least some answers that explicitly forbid reproduction [0]. Contrast this with Stack Overflow, where a condition of posting your content is that you put it under a libre/free license (CC-BY-SA) [1].

The author spent ten years of their life creating quality content and now the most likely scenario is that it fades into obscurity without even the hope of it being reproduced or retained for someone in the future to benefit from it.

[0] https://www.quora.com/about/tos

[1] https://stackoverflow.com/legal/terms-of-service#licensing

Re: Leaving Quora after 10 years of answering questions

#63

Post by jollybean »

elzbardico wrote: post #56

"Let me tell you what Quora really is: Quora is the plaything of a couple of toddler luck** who, not content with having somehow pocketed generational wealth by the age of 25, felt obliged to bestow upon us the be-all, end-all: the world’s “best source for knowledge.” I’m serious about that s** – it’s their actual tagline. Not the writings of Isaac Newton nor the notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci. Not the dozens of pre-…

I think Quora was a neat idea, and if executed well, it could have been a Stack Exchange or Wikipedia. But it's not, probably for a variety of reasons. But that doesn't mean it was a disingenuous effort.

Re: Leaving Quora after 10 years of answering questions

#64

Post by logicalmonster »

Havoc wrote: post #35
cblconfederate wrote: post #3

> I will soon be gone from Quora. Were people ever in Quora? Isn't it one more of those 'free' sites that exploit the free labor of random people to sell questionable content? I don't get how someone can get so attached to his own image that considers himself to be part of a company that he s clearly not a part of.

>Were people ever in Quora? It briefly had hn like quality to it. Then they got acquired (I think) stuck a login wall in front of it and the spark died.

The login wall probably marginally increased whatever signup metrics they were tracking and some middle manager at Quora probably patted themselves on the head for a job well done for that genius idea, but it killed my interest in Quora too. I can't be bothered to try and login every single time and I just started purposefully avoiding Quora links going forward once that was implemented. And it's a shame because the content is pretty great and a site geared around answering questions could be the most amazing source of human knowledge out there. But it doesn't work if you purposely try and restrict the content.

Re: Leaving Quora after 10 years of answering questions

#65

Post by r3dblaster »

Quora is a cesspool of dark patterns nowadays and I avoid it or should I say it avoids me. It doesn't work without javascript at all, you can't even view any comments without an account, it's following the same pattern as LinkedIn, Facebook, even Twitter is moving in this direction. They've abused the goodwill of their legitimate content-creators to the point that most those still hanging around are trying to not-so-subtly peddle some product vaguely related to your question.

You need supply and demand in the content space. You can't put up walls like this and expect to just ride name-recognition, network effect and past success forever -- especially when your main offering is essentially just a glorified Yahoo Answers.

Unless you're a Google property where this level of scumminess is countered with at least a Newtonian level of practical convenience, you can't pull this crap. Quora is finding this out, Medium and maybe someday Youtube if Google keeps putting an ad on everything that moves.

Re: Leaving Quora after 10 years of answering questions

#66

Post by nradov »

Gigachad wrote: post #47
shoto_io wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Engagement-driven" product development is a very poor choice. You might be optimising for the short-term and your personal product manager performance review. But other than that it will slowly kill your product.

Reddit has been "slowly killing" their product for a long time now, and it's bigger than ever. Problem is this stuff actually does work if you want to mass market.

Is Reddit profitable yet?

Re: Leaving Quora after 10 years of answering questions

#68

Post by Anthony-G »

fullshark wrote: post #32
cblconfederate wrote: post #3

> I will soon be gone from Quora. Were people ever in Quora? Isn't it one more of those 'free' sites that exploit the free labor of random people to sell questionable content? I don't get how someone can get so attached to his own image that considers himself to be part of a company that he s clearly not a part of.

People like helping people, it gives them a sense of self-worth. Answering questions also can make you feel smart. Now think about how many important websites are functionally built by free labor due to this: Wikipedia, Stack Overflow, subreddits you like, this site etc. It doesn't seem sustainable does it?

It’s not all altruism. Answering interesting questions is a fabulous way of improving your own knowledge of a particular topic. It’s not until you start to explain something to someone else that you realise all the gaps in your own understanding. Many times, I would see a Stack Exchange and think “that’s a quick and/or easy question to answer” – only to discover there are more subtleties and possible edge cases to consider once you really start thinking about it. Before you know it you’ve spent over an hour trying to answer the question as comprehensively as possible.

> Answering questions also can make you feel smart.

Not so much. Though, when I read answers that I wrote years ago, I think my past self was a lot smarter than my present self.

I’d also view Wikipedia and Stack Exchange with their GFDL and Creative Commons licenses as being the textual equivalents of the FOSS world. Both are projects that I’ve benefited a lot from so it’s nice to be able to give something back.

Re: Leaving Quora after 10 years of answering questions

#69

Post by paulcole »

> I look at it and I think it's not as much as I could have done with my time and talents and energies.

Is it a problem if it is?

I see people I know writing books, getting great jobs, etc. It doesn’t make me think I’m capable of those things. Long ago I realized that I’m mediocre, unexceptional, and that if all I do is have an OK job and scroll through the internet after work until I die, it is what it is.

Re: Leaving Quora after 10 years of answering questions

#70

Post by aaron695 »

cblconfederate wrote: post #3

> I will soon be gone from Quora. Were people ever in Quora? Isn't it one more of those 'free' sites that exploit the free labor of random people to sell questionable content? I don't get how someone can get so attached to his own image that considers himself to be part of a company that he s clearly not a part of.

> Were people ever in Quora?

Unless you own ycombinator you are not in HN either by that strange logic.

The same for computer games, which is what Quora is/was to many people.

Almost no one is in anything by these rules. Is a child even in a family if they have zero say on family matters under this logic?

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