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How Quora died

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Re: How Quora died

#31

Post by keiferski »

I think the upvote/downvote model for evaluating content is fundamentally not a good one, and this deficiency is the root problem for a lot of sites (Reddit, Quora, etc.) that were founded around the same time, circa 2005-2012. It lends itself too much to groupthink, popularity contests, and self-promotion.

X/Twitter has a million other problems, but I do like their new Community Notes of fact-checking claims. It's essentially anonymous and somewhat immune to self-promotion.

Going forward, a better path for FAQ-type sites is probably something similar to that model. The hard part is how you get users to answer questions while removing the self-promotion and gamification/scoreboard incentives.

It's possible that AI might just destroy this space entirely, but I still think you need some form of human fact-checking in order to avoid hallucinations.

Re: How Quora died

#32

Post by jfengel »

chris-orgmenta wrote: post #8

The UI isn't really mentioned directly in the article, and is another major problem. It's optimised to keep you reading. But you don't want to keep reading, you just want your original question answered. Unfortunately, they style all the page components the same, and you are forced to read to see if it's an answer to your question, a 'related question', or something irrelevant (like the ChatGPT example given). On top…

Quora isn't a great place to get answers. It's better as a source of mindless, faintly informative entertainment. At its best it's a bit better than your ordinary content farm because it's not as click-baity; the users are volunteers who just want to write. "Recreational typing", as one prominent user puts it.

Re: How Quora died

#33

Post by kiba »

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…

Perhaps VC backed businesses aren't really ideal for these type of sites.

Re: How Quora died

#35

Post by fullshark »

RajT88 wrote: post #21
jfengel wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How about Wikimedia?

Re: How Quora died

#36

Post by sparks1970 »

Whenever a search leads me to a question/answer on Quora I'm inevitably hit with a Sign In popup that blocks the whole screen. Feels obnoxious and I just back button away.

Re: How Quora died

#37

Post by tjpnz »

nottorp wrote: post #9

Don't blame LLMs, blame the registration requirement. This is one of the kinds of product that people will skip if they can't evaluate it frictionless.

They're also driving away contributors with more altruistic motivations. There are a few niche subjects for which I can offer a semi-useful perspective. But I'm not going to do it if Quora build a big fucking wall around it. When they started introducing that I deleted my account. Fuck them.

Re: How Quora died

#38

Post by passion__desire »

keiferski wrote: post #31

I think the upvote/downvote model for evaluating content is fundamentally not a good one, and this deficiency is the root problem for a lot of sites (Reddit, Quora, etc.) that were founded around the same time, circa 2005-2012. It lends itself too much to groupthink, popularity contests, and self-promotion. X/Twitter has a million other problems, but I do like their new Community Notes of fact-checking claims. It's e…

Anyone who shares an article or news which has been community noted gets an immediate downvote in recommendations for me.

Re: How Quora died

#39

Post by CM30 »

Well, the revenue sharing probably didn't help much for sure. I've seen dozens of sites and platforms add that as a feature, and as unfortunate as it is, this almost always backfires. People see 'make money contributing to this platform' as 'free cash for spamming!' and the quality often falls off a cliff. You need really strict rules and a good moderation team to keep a platform under control in this situation, and that's rarely the case for services like Quora.

You can see the same issues cropping up on Medium with its partner program, on Twitter thanks to Twitter Blue and revenue sharing, and even to some degree on the likes of YouTube and Twitch (though they're so massive that the scammers don't really stand out/do as well). Put money on the table, and the scammers will come out of the woodwork to try and get as much of it as they can, quality content be damned.

Edit: I also suspect part of the issue with revenue sharing programs is that they don't offer enough to incentive genuine experts, but offer enough that if you're utterly desperate and local costs of living are low, you're incentivised to spam for it.

Re: How Quora died

#40

Post by ivanmontillam »

fullshark wrote: post #35
RajT88 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

How about Wikimedia?

Wikimedia is a non-profit that operates like a for-profit when the yearly round of donations comes around. They literally hoard money[0].

I will get downvoted for this, but it's my perception.

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[0]: https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/wikipedia-millions-bank-beg/

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