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Quora’s Demise

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Re: Quora’s Demise

#51

Post by dasil003 »

alecco wrote: post #38
olalonde wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Groupthink and being penalized for speaking your mind, both common problems for high-IQ communities. That's what I like about HN. Groupthink is indeed present (especially when it comes to technical topics such as programming languages or OSes - we all have a strong incentive to promote what we use), but not nearly as much as any other online community I'm aware of. There's a recurring pattern that I like here: usua…

HN groupthink is getting out of control. No answers but donwvotes to any dissenting comment.

This is a tricky one. Of course every human community has some measure groupthink. However, when people complain about groupthink here and you investigate their comment history you often find a confrontational or rude tone paired with unconvincing arguments. Much like "Fanboy", "Groupthink" is a sort unassailable conversation-ending ad-hominem that people trot out when they are frustrated, with or without reason...

Re: Quora’s Demise

#52

Post by dasil003 »

tatsuke95 wrote: post #36

>"It was a turning point I happened to catch at its birth." Really? Because I'm pretty sure myself and many others caught it when the T-echo Chamber was trying to sell us on this new message board system that was going to make a lot of money and change the game. Quora was an online community that happened to be "cool", so it attracted intelligent people which made the content fantastic. But nothing they were doing, i…

You pretty much nailed it. Quora was a fad for the valley's elite. It was launched with a critical mass of the right people that pretty much everyone in tech had reason to jump on board right away.

But if you grow this quickly you're also likely to implode this quickly, especially with the fundamental conflict of interest between startup vs community curation. As far as I'm concerned, the only way to make a great community is to prioritize that over profit and growth. That's why HN, MetaFilter, and countless smaller communities and boards can thrive long-term, but "community" startups like Digg, Reddit and Quora tend to go to shit. The closest I've seen to bucking the trend is Stack Overflow, but that's due to subject matter focus, phenomenal long-term utility, and abysmal competition, and even there it's hard to argue it's still as great as it was a couple years ago.

Re: Quora’s Demise

#53

Post by jules »

olalonde wrote: post #32
carguy1983 wrote: post #27

My complaints about Quora: * You have to use a "real" name. * Their members are predominantly white upper middle class tech/finance/marketing professionals - occasionally some Asians, but mainly from California or NY. * There's no good way to browse the site - if there is, it's not easy to find. * Groupthink and being penalized for speaking your mind, both common problems for high-IQ communities.

> Groupthink and being penalized for speaking your mind, both common problems for high-IQ communities. That's what I like about HN. Groupthink is indeed present (especially when it comes to technical topics such as programming languages or OSes - we all have a strong incentive to promote what we use), but not nearly as much as any other online community I'm aware of. There's a recurring pattern that I like here: usua…

On the contrary, HN groupthink is quite severe (although it has decreased somewhat since the time that comment scores were no longer displayed). I guess it depends on perspective: if you're in the middle of a box, the box looks like the entire universe.

Re: Quora’s Demise

#54

Post by olalonde »

unalone wrote: post #48
alecco wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN groupthink is getting out of control. No answers but donwvotes to any dissenting comment.

I think it's actually better now than it was. There are a number of contrarian voices in each contentious thread arguing firmly that there's more to an issue than perhaps simple analysis would give credit for. There used to be more of an Ayn Randian/"supermen" feel, more people patting each other on the backs for being superior creatures cos entrepreneurs are the end point of evolution. The site seems a fair deal san…

That's why I don't think down votes should be used to express disagreement (although pg doesn't share this opinion). I personally frequently up vote comments I disagree with if I feel they are thoughtful and bring an interesting perspective. The variety of ideas is important and should be encouraged.

Re: Quora’s Demise

#55

Post by padobson »

ABC - Always Be Curating.

A successful social network is always going to have a lot of content you don't want. That's why you need to be filtering the sources of that content constantly.

Quora is an interesting case because it plays nicely with Twitter. I've found if you keep your Twitter feed curated, your Quora feed will be well curated too.

If someone is consistently tweeting junk, unfollow. If there's a Quora board that has a ton of lousy questions, unfollow.

Don't feel committed to following someone once you have, and don't worry about whether your observations about a person's or board's signal to noise ratio are accurate or not - if a content creator belongs in your content world, they'll get back in one way or another.

Start right now. If you find useful comments in this thread, follow all commenters on Twitter and Quora. Best way to curate is to add more quality to differentiate from junk.

Re: Quora’s Demise

#56

Post by huggyface »

carguy1983 wrote: post #27

My complaints about Quora: * You have to use a "real" name. * Their members are predominantly white upper middle class tech/finance/marketing professionals - occasionally some Asians, but mainly from California or NY. * There's no good way to browse the site - if there is, it's not easy to find. * Groupthink and being penalized for speaking your mind, both common problems for high-IQ communities.

Their members are predominantly white

Adorable racism.

Groupthink and being penalized for speaking your mind

Is it groupthink that I pointed out your blatant racism? Message boards the world over are full of people saying wrong, obnoxious, ignorant things and then foolishly thinking that a negative response is just because everyone else is prey to groupthink, etc. It is a short-circuit of self-analysis.

Re: Quora’s Demise

#57

Post by J3L2404 »

jules wrote: post #53
olalonde wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Groupthink and being penalized for speaking your mind, both common problems for high-IQ communities. That's what I like about HN. Groupthink is indeed present (especially when it comes to technical topics such as programming languages or OSes - we all have a strong incentive to promote what we use), but not nearly as much as any other online community I'm aware of. There's a recurring pattern that I like here: usua…

On the contrary, HN groupthink is quite severe (although it has decreased somewhat since the time that comment scores were no longer displayed). I guess it depends on perspective: if you're in the middle of a box, the box looks like the entire universe.

I disagree on comment scores. Not having them makes bandwagoning more likely because I tended to not upvote comments that already have high scores. It does likely make the data more useful to pg though. On technical questions it is painful not having comment scores.

Re: Quora’s Demise

#58

Post by pepve »

akkartik wrote: post #14
tptacek wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comment doesn't actually say anything. Yes, things change. Yes, that's a part of life. That doesn't automatically make all change for the better.

It reflects the lack of content in the article, which boils down to, "things changed so I'm leaving." Lincoln isn't claiming that Quora is doing fine. (At least not in this comment.) I find it useful to be reminded that as a species mankind hasn't figured out how to grow things without changing them (and so exposing them to the possibility of decline).

I'd like to put that stronger: it's impossible to grow things without changing them.

Re: Quora’s Demise

#59

Post by whateverer »

huggyface wrote: post #56
carguy1983 wrote: post #27

My complaints about Quora: * You have to use a "real" name. * Their members are predominantly white upper middle class tech/finance/marketing professionals - occasionally some Asians, but mainly from California or NY. * There's no good way to browse the site - if there is, it's not easy to find. * Groupthink and being penalized for speaking your mind, both common problems for high-IQ communities.

Their members are predominantly white Adorable racism. Groupthink and being penalized for speaking your mind Is it groupthink that I pointed out your blatant racism? Message boards the world over are full of people saying wrong, obnoxious, ignorant things and then foolishly thinking that a negative response is just because everyone else is prey to groupthink, etc. It is a short-circuit of self-analysis.

> Adorable racism.

How so? Shutting your eyes doesn't make the bias go away.

Re: Quora’s Demise

#60

Post by ma2rten »

olalonde wrote: post #32
carguy1983 wrote: post #27

My complaints about Quora: * You have to use a "real" name. * Their members are predominantly white upper middle class tech/finance/marketing professionals - occasionally some Asians, but mainly from California or NY. * There's no good way to browse the site - if there is, it's not easy to find. * Groupthink and being penalized for speaking your mind, both common problems for high-IQ communities.

> Groupthink and being penalized for speaking your mind, both common problems for high-IQ communities. That's what I like about HN. Groupthink is indeed present (especially when it comes to technical topics such as programming languages or OSes - we all have a strong incentive to promote what we use), but not nearly as much as any other online community I'm aware of. There's a recurring pattern that I like here: usua…

I think there is groupthink in HN even on non-technical topics, but it's much more subtle. It's about that every problem should be resolved using a rational argument. I think arguments appealing to intuition, emotion or authority are likely to get down voted. I am not saying it is a bad thing, that bias is part of why I read HN and not some tabloid. However, I don't think rational thought is perse the best answer to every question, because it's inviting to make incorrect assumptions.
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