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How Quora died

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Re: How Quora died

#261

Post by vintermann »

wonderfulcloud wrote: post #179

Apart from how most internet companies get worse when money comes into play. I find that most of social media went south around the time of Trump's election and the heavy partisan moderation that followed it. Quora further seems to have been taken over by Chinese paid writers.

The worst is that Quora paid its own users to spam the service with questions they didn't actually need answers to.

You think you're helping a real human, with a real human need, and then you see he's asked not only what museums you recommend in your hometown, but also what museums you recommend in 400 other small towns from all over the world, and what restaurants you recommend for 400 other random small towns, and then what local radio channels you recommend for 400 more etc.

Re: How Quora died

#262

Post by dpkirchner »

karaterobot wrote: post #186
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.

Reddit is the same way if you don't go to old.reddit.com. You see that there are N comments, but you only get to read the first few, and suddenly you're looking at an entirely different post. Every time I accidentally go there I get confused by it. There is no chance anybody asked for this, it's so stupid it had to come out of perversely chasing some metric.

And often when you expand comment replies the comment you were looking at disappears and you have to scroll around to find it again. It must be deliberate, there's no way you accidentally make something work that poorly.

Re: How Quora died

#263

Post by thexumaker »

nonrandomstring wrote: post #85
obernard wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes I absolutely do agree with that. Designers and product managers may completely ignore people like me, trample all over our needs and ignore us. Why would they care about the one percent. All good luck power to them and their values. But I am also not the least bit concerned with whether their products are a success or not. Why would I care if they do not? Yet I cannot concur that "almost every" site does. No, the…

You're not even 1%, maybe .000001%

Re: How Quora died

#264

Post by choppaface »

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…

Marc Bodnick was the original “community manager” and frequent contributor. He’s now working on his own social net, the first-ish of which (Telepath) already flopped.

Re: How Quora died

#265

Post by Angostura »

wonderfulcloud wrote: post #189
apexalpha wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you point to some examples of partisan entries?

Essentially any issue that relates to politics or geopolitics tends to have a strong left wing bias, as if it is written from the perspective of the left wing against the right wing.

Or, your Overton window has shifted.

Re: How Quora died

#266

Post by Karellen »

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/

One person's hoard is another person's endowment. To-mah-to, to-may-to.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_endowment

Re: How Quora died

#267

Post by scarface_74 »

nonrandomstring wrote: post #200
scarface_74 wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Accessibility is important. But it doesn’t relate to success of a company. Besides, modern screen readers and even accessibility affordances on modern cell phones - at least iPhones - don’t struggle or care whether the site uses JavaScript

> But it doesn’t relate to success of a company. I am wondering what you mean by "success" of a company here? Is that purely financial success? Or rate of growth or something like that?

Financial success or rate of growth

Re: How Quora died

#268

Post by mkl »

6510 wrote: post #141
input_sh wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They most likely also prefer titles that get clicked. But the best results are those where the user uses the back button and clicks something else. They must not click back within n seconds of course. The user has to spend a minimum amount of time on the almost useless page. I got this feeling looking for many things. I know there are pages but get many results very very close to what I was looking for. Dubious rever…

> "how to style css with html"

I was intrigued by the idea of such a page, but unfortunately your comment is apparently the only mention of that phrase on the internet.

Re: How Quora died

#269

Post by Karellen »

wonderfulcloud wrote: post #189
apexalpha wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you point to some examples of partisan entries?

Essentially any issue that relates to politics or geopolitics tends to have a strong left wing bias, as if it is written from the perspective of the left wing against the right wing.

Then again, reality has a well-known liberal bias.

;-)

Re: How Quora died

#270

Post by matsemann »

IshKebab wrote: post #250
matsemann wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't sound like either of you know how SO works. Very little is done by mods, mainly it's votes by normal users. Like I could be voting to close something as a duplicate, off topic etc with my privileges. It's the community doing this, not moderators. And the community is tired of people asking for help with their homework or doing very little effort themselves before asking. Why do these people deserve others spe…

> And the community is tired of people asking for help with their homework I don't think anyone objects to closing those questions. That's not really what this is about. My questions are very clearly not asking for help with homework and trivial "how do I write a for loop" or "it doesn't work" questions. Still get downvoted/closed frequently. Most often: * It gets closed as duplicate because there's a vaguely similar…

Feel free to drop links to your said questions. Often it's just vague allegations with little evidence.

Getting something closed as a duplicate shouldn't be taken as a slight. It's often good that various formulations of a question then can point to the same answer. Or if the answer to the other question answers yours, isn't it just good that you and other people will be directed there? It's a Q&A site, not a forum. Which question stands doesn't matter except for feelings.

Same with your vague or clarity. It's Q&A, not a forum with back and forth discussions. It's just not a right fit. You might think that's not how you'd like the site to be, but it is how it is. It's not overzealous moderators closing it.

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