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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

#131

Post by Hnrobert42 »

abetusk wrote: post #62

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 a…

How do we know it was quality content? This whole article confuses me. I’ve got nearly a thousand comments on this site. If I deleted all of them, no one would care and rightly so. I get that a Quora answer and HN comment are different, but my point is that he may be just some dude who likes to pontificate. Despite saying he wanted to grow out of his comfort zone, he’s back at the same thing, now pontificating on YouTube.

Re: Leaving Quora after 10 years of answering questions

#132

Post by dotancohen »

marginalia_nu wrote: post #115
dotancohen wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're being downvoted for "gatekeeping" but you're not wrong. NSF has the L2 paid membership section, which is the absolute best place for information in the field - both public and insider information. Likewise airliners.net has (or had) an excellent paid option, and I can think of a few others. Requiring payment is still a good way to let those passionate about a topic self-admit themselves while keeping the masse…

I think the problem is the scaling of communication, rather than letting in the unwashed masses. In any community experiencing continuous growth, there will be a constant influx of people unaware of the social norms and conventions. Most of these "normies" are just regular people, that if they stuck around, you'd realize they were no different than the regulars. If this is a one-thing event, the community usually sta…

I agree. Any community can only scale at a certain rate and maintain its culture. Scaling too fast leads to the infuxed culture dominating.

We see the same issues with immigration as well, see for example how many European cities are struggling with the prevalence of Arab culture and Muslim customs. They welcome the immigrants (the people), but do not welcome the changes to the culture of their cities.

Re: Leaving Quora after 10 years of answering questions

#133

Post by radu_floricica »

spurgu wrote: post #85
radu_floricica wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder about that. I'm not on reddit anymore, nor is anybody I know.

Niche subreddits are still decent but the community as a whole is a cesspool. The mistake was bringing internet to the masses, as opposed to keeping it difficult enough to be used only by passionate and/or smart people. Now that the cat is out of the bag maybe paid memberships to exclusive communities is the way to go? Just late night riffing here after a few drinks and, might be wrong about all of the above.

After a few drinks I'd expect you to say something more controversial, like it failed because it took sides in the culture war.

Bringing discussion to the masses is actually a known problem, and something reddit managed to solve with subreddits. Quite a few others before it fell due to this issue, notably slashdot and digg.

Re: Leaving Quora after 10 years of answering questions

#134

Post by tlocke »

DeathArrow wrote: post #104

When you answer on Quora, SO or Reddit, you are not only helping the community. You are helping the owners get richer. You can help the community as much by writing on your personal blog. That way you are in control and have the freedom of choosing what to say and how to say it. No rules to obey, but your own.

For me, it's all in the licence that the content is under. I contribute to Stack Overflow and Wikipedia because the content is under an Open Source licence. For Quora and Reddit the licence is proprietary and so I don't contribute.

Re: Leaving Quora after 10 years of answering questions

#135

Post by thatguy0900 »

GhettoComputers wrote: post #123
DeathArrow wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's always 4chan if you want to feel exclusivity.

Left it when Reddit had better quality. Back to 4chan for higher quality discussion, shame it’s been poisoned by trump tourists

If you've been there 5 years I'm not sure you're a tourist anymore. And 4chan has been complaining about being ruined by tourists since project chanology anyway

Re: Leaving Quora after 10 years of answering questions

#136

Post by [deleted] »

nefitty wrote: post #100
dotancohen wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're being downvoted for "gatekeeping" but you're not wrong. NSF has the L2 paid membership section, which is the absolute best place for information in the field - both public and insider information. Likewise airliners.net has (or had) an excellent paid option, and I can think of a few others. Requiring payment is still a good way to let those passionate about a topic self-admit themselves while keeping the masse…

They could have left that part about intelligence out. I'm extremely intelligent, probably in the top 0.01% of the world. I welcome the less intelligent into my world. I believe in democracy.

[deleted]

Re: Leaving Quora after 10 years of answering questions

#137

Post by [deleted] »

smoe wrote: post #22
freedomben wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's been a long time since I went to Quora but they used to have some really high quality answers from real experts. Quality was always a little hit and miss but the good answers were really good.

What killed Quora for me was their push towards canonical question/answers, not allowing for any context to a question, ridding it of a lot of the nuance that made many discussions actually interesting. Now there seems to be just more and more rehashing of the same questions that have already been beaten to death waiting to get merged together. I was somewhat active for a while writing answers, but every time I wante…

[deleted]

Re: Leaving Quora after 10 years of answering questions

#138

Post by Mezzie »

prashantsengar wrote: post #77
Mezzie wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people like the puzzle/challenge aspect as well. Plus somebody asking something you know the answer to reinforces that your decision to retain that information has value. I'm a librarian. We answer a lot of questions.

And sometimes you don't know the answer to the question before you start writing, but in the process you learn something new.

Answering questions I don't know is the BEST.

Re: Leaving Quora after 10 years of answering questions

#139

Post by adolph »

nsonha wrote: post #126
adolph wrote: post #67

This is really sad. After Yahoo Answers shut down, only Quora, W3Schools and Pinterest are left standing as informational beacons. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo!_Answers

Stack exchange is pretty good. And unlike many people here I don't have high opinion of stack overflow, I think good documentation and github issues do a better job these days. W3Schools and Pinterest? I don't think they are the same kind of platform

True. Anytime I have a Python 2.6 or RHEL 5 question the Stack sites are on point.

Re: Leaving Quora after 10 years of answering questions

#140

Post by spurgu »

radu_floricica wrote: post #133
spurgu wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Niche subreddits are still decent but the community as a whole is a cesspool. The mistake was bringing internet to the masses, as opposed to keeping it difficult enough to be used only by passionate and/or smart people. Now that the cat is out of the bag maybe paid memberships to exclusive communities is the way to go? Just late night riffing here after a few drinks and, might be wrong about all of the above.

After a few drinks I'd expect you to say something more controversial, like it failed because it took sides in the culture war. Bringing discussion to the masses is actually a known problem, and something reddit managed to solve with subreddits. Quite a few others before it fell due to this issue, notably slashdot and digg.

> After a few drinks I'd expect you to say something more controversial, like it failed because it took sides in the culture war.

Haha that's what would happen later on in the discussion.

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