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How Quora died

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Re: How Quora died

#51

Post by obernard »

nonrandomstring wrote: post #42
Wistar wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what always stops me at quora’s door.

Me too. I've a simple but strict set of security rules for whether I'll use a website. - it does not want to run javascript - that I can access it over Tor without being blocked - that it will work in a text based browser like elinks Despite the protestations by idealogues that no such sites exist, HN meets all those requirements, as do dozens of useful sites I regularly use. If and only if I get to evaluate the qual…

You must agree that for almost every web-based product, designers and product managers can safely decide to completely ignore all people who have requirements like yours without it ever affecting their success.

Re: How Quora died

#52

Post by scarface_74 »

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.

Quora is the only site that I actively block to make sure that I don’t go there by mistake.

It has to be the worse site on the internet.

Re: How Quora died

#54

Post by _Algernon_ »

ivanmontillam wrote: post #40
fullshark wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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

I will always downvote a comment when someone writes something like this. It is irrelevant to the conversation and screams insecurity.

Re: How Quora died

#55

Post by obernard »

AlexandrB wrote: post #6
thedudeabides5 wrote: post #3

This is what happens when you gatekeep replies / lurking. Remember StackOverflow...

An odd takeaway. The article seems to imply that most of their issues stem from spam and low effort questions/answers. Both from users and their own AI. More gatekeeping might have been the solution here.

By making it harder for people to use the site casually, you tip the balance in favor of spammers and away from people who actually have an interest, and therefore usually some knowledge, on a given subject.

Re: How Quora died

#56

Post by allenrb »

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.

Agreed re: being a non-profit. My great hope was that Elon might do that with Twitter. Needless to say, I was… not right about that.

Re: How Quora died

#57

Post by dboreham »

Aardwolf wrote: post #30

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

It appears that Quora's pages are SEO optimized now, to the detriment of human users. Basically you can optimize for ad revenue and not have human user experience degrade significantly.

Re: How Quora died

#58

Post by scarface_74 »

nonrandomstring wrote: post #42
Wistar wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what always stops me at quora’s door.

Me too. I've a simple but strict set of security rules for whether I'll use a website. - it does not want to run javascript - that I can access it over Tor without being blocked - that it will work in a text based browser like elinks Despite the protestations by idealogues that no such sites exist, HN meets all those requirements, as do dozens of useful sites I regularly use. If and only if I get to evaluate the qual…

I can 100% guarantees you that Quora didn’t die because of people who didn’t want to run JavaScript or be able to access it over Tor.

Re: How Quora died

#59

Post by samstave »

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…

Its almost as if user-created-content sites are un-MBA-able... in the way that MBAs are cloned to measure only certain metrics in a soulless gaze toward a self-exit from the growth hocky stick launching pad they are attempting to build on bad faith and anti-patterns...

Reddit is a cluster that manages to ONLY keep going because of how agressive mods can be about their positions, but as we have seen time in, time out, MODs positions get molested by ADMINs and ADMINs posing as MODs. MODs on the take.

The point being that when Reddit IPOs - there are undoubtedly mods who have/are/will-be compensated/profit when IPO hits.

Re: How Quora died

#60

Post by seadan83 »

ivanmontillam wrote: post #40
fullshark wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Interesting reference. Non profits cannot hoard money. I believe it becomes taxable and they can lose their non profit status (i am not an expert)

Though, hoarding seems like a mischaracterization. Per the article linked, the cash burn rate is on the order of $100M/yr, having $150M in the bank is 18 months worth of funding.

The biggest gripe I read in the article is the "high" expenditure rate and how necessary it is. It seems like reasonable people may disagree on whether that spend rate is excessive.

If the expenditure rate were lower, I'd agree it would be hoarding.

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