Quora has never been a good resource. It was always designed to trick users into clicking through from a SERP with snippet content that isn't on the landing page when you arrive. It is the same business model as Pinterest. The amazing thing is that Euro regulators have for years been trying to favor this business model, trying to force Google to rank these types of sites highly under the banner of competition, when what the users really want is for these sites to disappear from search results altogether.
How Quora died
61–70 of 427 posts
Re: How Quora died
#62If 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…
> Every contributor-driven platform has eventually jumped the shark, and all in exactly the same way. Do you think Wikipedia has jumped the shark? Obviously not perfect, but it's certainly a lot better than Quora in terms of accuracy. It's been around for a very long time and it doesn't seem to me like quality has decreased. Edit: to be clear and re-iterate, I never said Wikipedia was perfect, just that it has a cert…
A lot of Wikipedia entries have become extremely partisan, and kept that way by moderators who are deeply invested in certain narratives. I find it very disappointing that no countermeasures have been taken- afaik Wikipedia still works exactly like 20 years ago, a barebone wiki governed by a lot of obscure, complex and unstructured politics.
Granted, it might be the best possible way for an open-source encyclopedia to work. It is after all an incredible success. It's just pretty bad in some parts.
Re: How Quora died
#63When 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.
I’m not sure what their business model is, I assume ads, so I always wonder what good the login wall does and making the UX so horrible. I too only ever get there from a Google search too, much like Wikipedia, but with Wikipedia I’m usually going to make a few clicks once I’m there as the related link exploration is natural. I assume quora could get more clicks out of me if it wasn’t so awful. They’ve instead taught me to never click past the initial Google link, my bounce rate is 100%.
It seems like such a missed opportunity. Even when I compare to my stack exchange usage, I’m not a registered user, I’m only ever consuming information, but I click around and they benefit through ads.
Re: How Quora died
#64Quora is thriving! It appears on almost every search I do on Google. More than a few years ago. I understand that their quality is terrible but in a economy of focus and SEO they are doing incredible well.
If you publish a well written article and adding all the SEO capabilities that you can, you will almost never appear before Quora.
Re: How Quora died
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 gr…
Yahoo Answers was greater because it was so bad. Quora wasn't good enough or bad enough. Gotta go one way or the other.
If you're a fan of trolling you should check out Quora now. There are some real full time professionals.
Re: How Quora died
#66I was a super enthusiastic Quora user for a long while. This is the first time I actually took the time to _close_ an account a few months back, because I was so frustrated with the turn this whole thing took.
Re: How Quora died
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure ... but 99 out of 100 users just say "weird" and leave. And that's "How Quora died".
I'm not here to defend Quora, but my speculation is that Google's preference for long-form content is equally to blame. Basically the same reason as recipes that start with a long life story: Google prefers pages with lots of content, even if 10% of it is actually useful to anyone. So a page with 50+ "answers" is preferable to a page with two actual answers.
> Google prefers pages with lots of content
And that’s how Google search will be overtaken by GPT with ease. People want answers, not an ad-driven algorithm’s desire for content that is long enough to support more ads.
Re: How Quora died
#68Earlier 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 not a platform.
Their sister Wikicities / Wikia / Fandom (also relying on MediaWiki), and now owned by Texas Pacific Group, is however, another example of a platform getting enshittified.
Re: How Quora died
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Every contributor-driven platform has eventually jumped the shark, and all in exactly the same way. Do you think Wikipedia has jumped the shark? Obviously not perfect, but it's certainly a lot better than Quora in terms of accuracy. It's been around for a very long time and it doesn't seem to me like quality has decreased. Edit: to be clear and re-iterate, I never said Wikipedia was perfect, just that it has a cert…
A lot of Wikipedia entries have become extremely partisan, and kept that way by moderators who are deeply invested in certain narratives. I find it very disappointing that no countermeasures have been taken- afaik Wikipedia still works exactly like 20 years ago, a barebone wiki governed by a lot of obscure, complex and unstructured politics. Granted, it might be the best possible way for an open-source encyclopedia t…
Could you point to some examples of partisan entries?
Re: How Quora died
#70If 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…
> Every contributor-driven platform has eventually jumped the shark, and all in exactly the same way. Do you think Wikipedia has jumped the shark? Obviously not perfect, but it's certainly a lot better than Quora in terms of accuracy. It's been around for a very long time and it doesn't seem to me like quality has decreased. Edit: to be clear and re-iterate, I never said Wikipedia was perfect, just that it has a cert…
Wikipedia is in the business of paying secret writers for content to sway opinions, politically. Of course they have jumped the shark, they’re basically working for agencies.