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How Quora died

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Re: How Quora died

#21

Post by RajT88 »

jfengel wrote: post #13
ethbr1 wrote: post #7

If your core business product is content contributed by users... I'm turning to the opinion that you need a C-level ombudsman- / dean of contributors-type role. Whose sole job it is to (1) figure out what contributors are thinking and want & (2) advocate for them inside the company. Every contributor-driven platform has eventually jumped the shark, and all in exactly the same way. Management begins to take contributi…

Quora had one, William Gunn. He was laid off, along with the entire human moderation staff and practically all of the user-facing developers. Quora had been going downhill for quite some time before that, as they realized they had no idea how to monetize the content and were grasping at straws. But that was the point where they appear to have pivoted entirely towards AI and continued the human generated content side…

> they realized they had no idea how to monetize the content

This sort of thing should be a nonprofit. When it was good, it was literally making the world a better place.

Possibly the Library of Congress would be a good steward for such a platform. Something to make it resistant to enshittification.

Re: How Quora died

#24

Post by jfengel »

MiddleEndian wrote: post #5

Quora was never as great as yahoo answers

At its peak it was considerably better than Y!A. They started with Silicon Valley luminaries (their friends) and that attracted a lot of other well educated users, especially scientists and philosophers. A lot of genuinely great content was generated.

I believe Q&A sites will inevitably degrade as the low-hanging fruit is picked early. ("How do I lose weight?" "Explain relativity" "Is God real?") It can start with great answers, but it quickly becomes repetitious. Y!A probably also had a similar phase, but by the time most people heard about it, it was already famously dumb.

Quora followed a similar path. It actually lasted longer than one might expect, in part because they threw a lot of money at it. But it is now much worse because it's better known and a more visible target to trolls and spammers. Plus it's reputation for paying people, which attracts vast amounts of minimum effort, much of it automated. (And not paying any more, but that doesn't stop people.)

Re: How Quora died

#25

Post by moralestapia »

Tangentially related, since the CEO of Quora is on OpenAI's board.

I recently had an interaction w/ OpenAI's community that left a sour taste in my mouth. Asked one question, some smarty guy tried to "XY problem" me, I clarified this is not an "XY problem" and my question is quite clear and specific and eventually one mod was involved, other mods ganged up on me and removed all my posts because "they were violating guidelines". I complained about that sort of abuse, but guess what? The same mods that run the forum run the "forum about the forum" section, lol, so they had their fun again. Left a note there, in case some actual OpenAI employee/investor cares, telling them "this is how StackOverflow died".

I'm sharing this here because if they are taking a page from Quora's playbook, well ... good luck? I'll never bother myself again with the OpenAI community and that's exactly why I stopped being involved with Quora and StackOverflow in the past. I wouldn't be surprised to hear about the forum's demise in a couple months from now.

Re: How Quora died

#26

Post by robg »

walterbell wrote: post #19

No mention of Quora founder at OpenAI? https://archive.is/xsK8S > His position on the [OpenAI] board has also raised eyebrows because Quora has been in increasingly direct competition with OpenAI’s best-known service: ChatGPT ... Shortly after OpenAI launched ChatGPT a year ago, Quora introduced Poe, a platform that allows people to ask questions from various AI chatbots, including ChatGPT.

I’m still surprised that D’Angelo didn’t get as much scrutiny in the OpenAI mess, especially as the only board member still in place. Seems obvious in hindsight that Quora continuing to fail can only be saved by leveraging as training data for the next thing. And OpenAIs ambitions threaten that.

Re: How Quora died

#27

Post by pokstad »

matsemann wrote: post #4

When I visit Quora, mainly through it being a result for something I've searched for on Google, I can never quite understand what's the question, the answer, and what's an answer to something completely different. So I've never felt compelled to stay or join myself. Also, for a while I just hit a login wall, which of course makes you not click a link there the next time.

It’s a UX trainwreck

Re: How Quora died

#28

Post by moralestapia »

input_sh wrote: post #15
matsemann wrote: post #4

When I visit Quora, mainly through it being a result for something I've searched for on Google, I can never quite understand what's the question, the answer, and what's an answer to something completely different. So I've never felt compelled to stay or join myself. Also, for a while I just hit a login wall, which of course makes you not click a link there the next time.

There's a toggle on top left that's by default set to "all related", as in answers to the question asked + a bunch of answers to things you're definitely not looking for, but are tangentially related. If you switch the toggle to "answers", you only get answers to the question.

Sure ... but 99 out of 100 users just say "weird" and leave.

And that's "How Quora died".

Re: How Quora died

#29

Post by yannis »

Not only Quora, but many other sites including the various "stackexchange" sites started declining I would say from about 2018, so this is not a phenomenon attributed to llms. IMHO I attribute this to the following: a) The overuse of social media conditioning users to provide short answers, rather than long thoughtful write-ups, b) Most topics have been saturated to the limit c) lack of interest from the new generation d) Bad management and moderation.

Re: How Quora died

#30

Post by Aardwolf »

Is it dead? It and reddit (and stackoverflow) are the main "human typed" results I still get

(yes I'm aware they're spending some resources on displaying an AI answer at the top).

Of course never really liked quora's forced login thing and how it seems to have removed parts of questions that answers are still referring to and how it mixes answers to different questions in front of the current one

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