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How Quora died

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Re: How Quora died

#291

Post by hunglee2 »

The downward slide on Quora started with the 'Top Writers' program, which created an elite tier of contributors who were anointed and then privileged by the platform, rather than voted on by the members. This created an aristocracy who could now guarantee high visibility for even mediocre answers, whilst hugely disincentivising everyone else - especially first time contributors - to even try and make a response.

A commentator made the point elsewhere - this type of platform should be a non-profit, maybe a community owned platform.

Re: How Quora died

#293

Post by stevage »

thriftwy wrote: post #203
asveikau wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have show dead enabled here. There is a shocking amount of irrational negativity in that thread, even for HN.

It is well-known that people radicalize when they are excluded from political process. Wikipedia is notorious for excluding ordinary contributors from the process. Anybody can revert your change and that takes precedence over what you did, and there is no obvious appeal process for you, but de facto there is for the well-connected long-time editors. They can always gather some cavalry and run you over. So they should…

StackOverflow also raises the bar for becoming a contributor. You can't start commenting until you have some upvotes on answers or questions for instance.

I think these things turn out to be a bit important.

Re: How Quora died

#294

Post by boringuser2 »

stevage wrote: post #273
boringuser2 wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're going to entrust making the world a better place to... the US government?

Sure. Much better than to VC backed startups anyway.

We're going to have to agree to disagree.

The US has done terrible things in the too-recent future in the explicit name of making the world a better place.

At least, that rationale triggers my gag reflex.

Re: How Quora died

#295

Post by astrange »

multjoy wrote: post #214
oxfordmale wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that PR companies can push out whatever they want, where as an ordinary individual with personal knowledge of a topic, can't. It means many Wiki articles on person or companies, are often glorified advertisements, rather than encyclopedic entries.

A blog post can be sufficient reference. The point is that Wikipedia isn't original research. You updating the page on the basis of personal knowledge isn't the way it is supposed to work.

Nobody writes blogs anymore, so that doesn't seem like it'd help.

Re: How Quora died

#296

Post by stevage »

samstave wrote: post #221
krkhan wrote: post #116

I was an active contributor to Quora in the mid-10's -- my answers gained some 3m views. It was really something back then, as many people have fondly reminisced about the era. There were so many great writers who brought so much understanding to whatever crazy stuff they were passionate about by writing for free on Quora. You had diplomats, chefs, former propaganda writers, people living through violent conflict, do…

I rage quit Quora some years ago publicly here on HN, I dont recall now the exact reason (something to do with unwanted profile/content/privacy change or some such... It was quite a while back, but I have never really gone to quora since, especially since its basically a paywall (I also never go to NYT unfortunately because their paywall is so BFY;TW I cant stand it.

Wow what is that acronym?

Re: How Quora died

#297

Post by ethbr1 »

dlahoda wrote: post #282
multjoy wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A blog post can be sufficient reference. The point is that Wikipedia isn't original research. You updating the page on the basis of personal knowledge isn't the way it is supposed to work.

I added Dimon as short name for Dmitry in RU, referenced YT video with 40M views were Dimon was short name for Dmitry, video was named "He is not Dimon" for person with official name Dmitry, who was prime minister of Russia. I am Dmitry too btw, I know Dimon is also in Belarus. Was reverted as that was not reference to some book or sciene article. Never contributed after that. May be one or 2 graph theory improvement…

That seems to usually root cause to asshole editors.

   - Thing done
   - Editor makes a judgement call
   - Turns out to be a bad call
   - Editor refuses to admit mistake
   - Things escalate

Re: How Quora died

#298

Post by astrange »

JSavageOne wrote: post #245
krkhan wrote: post #116

I was an active contributor to Quora in the mid-10's -- my answers gained some 3m views. It was really something back then, as many people have fondly reminisced about the era. There were so many great writers who brought so much understanding to whatever crazy stuff they were passionate about by writing for free on Quora. You had diplomats, chefs, former propaganda writers, people living through violent conflict, do…

Fascinating and confirms my suspicions. The point when the questions popping up in my feed were obviously not genuine is when I lost interest in Quora. The worst was how it'd always show me variations of questions fetishizing working at Google. Seriously every single Quora digest email had some variation of a question like "What is the best thing about working at Google?" Unsubscribed and don't miss it.

My newsletters always had one-two of those and then another that was always like "what's the hardest part of how nobody in society respects you for having a 160 IQ?"

Re: How Quora died

#299

Post by temporarara »

kstrauser wrote: post #199
mp05 wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you don't see the irony of people raving about how innately superior they are because of their IQ but hate on people whose core tenant was being innately superior? "Smart" is very much a function of the work you put in, though of course not the only factor. I don't feel the need to have to explain this more than I have. Edit: I have to ask... what about the smart people that don't oppose them? What's their deal?

I find anyone bragging about their intelligence to be intolerably obnoxious. 100% of the smart people I know oppose Nazism. It seems there are too many politicians around who are objectively intelligent but are a bit comfortable with at least some of the Nazi Party’s ideas.

"We demand an expansion on a large scale of old age welfare." That's one Nazi Party idea according to Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Socialist_Program). I would say you are not that intelligent if you oppose that just because "Nazism bad". If you oppose racism it's pretty clear that you don't in general support Nazism. But opposing Nazism doesn't mean that you even oppose racism, maybe your smart friends just don't like that particular German codified version of racism, it's pretty pointless statement without some analysis. Just like US was back then against Nazism and ultimately even went to war with them while simultaneously being openly racist.

Granted, many of the Nazi ideas revolve pretty obsessively around the concept of race, but looks like at least in one case they were even explicitly not racists: "We demand struggle without consideration against those whose activity is injurious to the general interest. Common national criminals, usurers, profiteers and so forth are to be punished with death, without consideration of confession or race." And that's another idea I basically fully agree with. IMO death penalty should be reserved only for the most serious cases, but society needs to be extremely harsh to career criminals and their ilk, they laugh at lenient punishments.

Re: How Quora died

#300

Post by samstave »

stevage wrote: post #296
samstave wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I rage quit Quora some years ago publicly here on HN, I dont recall now the exact reason (something to do with unwanted profile/content/privacy change or some such... It was quite a while back, but I have never really gone to quora since, especially since its basically a paywall (I also never go to NYT unfortunately because their paywall is so BFY;TW I cant stand it.

Wow what is that acronym?

BFY;TW - "Because Fuck You; Thats Why"
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