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How Quora died

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Re: How Quora died

#311

Post by astrange »

mrangle wrote: post #16

This article amounts to concern trolling with a barely veiled agenda for censorship. Its "users are fleeing" claim is an attempt at wish fulfillment. The key to using Quora couldn't be easier: don't search for or read topics that you don't want to see. Human inquiry will always be delightfully messy except in the view of those who have pathological control complexes.

That's useless because it starts recommending you nonsense once it thinks it's learned what you want.

I just opened the front page and the 3rd item was a space called "True Love Conquers All" with relatable-Facebook-meme-style writing and an image of a woman giving birth in the backseat of a car.

Re: How Quora died

#312

Post by marcusb »

miohtama wrote: post #284
marcusb wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Post Elon, they are not-turning-a-profit.

They will, but it would likely need restructuring the debts and the cap table, and would not be Elon's Twitter anymore.

Yes, if the business was different, it would be different.

Re: How Quora died

#313

Post by jonathanyc »

throw__away7391 wrote: post #209
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…

I have no experience running a site centered on user generated content, but it seems to me that the biggest problem/threat to any of them is the people who start showing up once it gains traction and becomes more popular. Early users are a different band of the population, on every successful platform from StackOverflow to Uber they create a particular culture which is impossible to maintain as the general public arr…

A StackOverflow question I asked 13 years ago (and which someone else answered 13 years ago!) was deleted just last month for being off-topic.

All the mods’ accounts were years younger than both the question and answer. Even weirder, the mod who initiated the deletion first tried to answer the question. He only voted to delete it after I commented that the question already had had an accepted answer for 13 years.

Re: How Quora died

#314

Post by spamizbad »

Quora never lived as far as I'm concerned.

It was always touted as some better, savvier alternative to the StackExchange network but it was just clogged up with crummy answers to bad questions. They made it extremely difficult to see the actual content and would make it near impossible to follow threads/discussions without making an account (which would in turn spam you)

The fact that it was SEO-optimized up the wazoo and always clogged up search results didn't make it any better. For that reason I have "-site:quora.com" seared into my muscle memory when searching.

Re: How Quora died

#315

Post by bastawhiz »

I was a top writer for two years (and got a pretty sweet jacket out of it). I was a multiple knowledge prize winner for my answers (which paid out enough for me to report it on my taxes!). Here's the nugget from the article that's the core reason:

> that “was all about trying to come up with questions that would draw in more views and more people,” she said—not about incentivizing high-quality answers. It was all about adding webpages of individual questions, for SEO purposes.

I remember the day they announced to the top writer forum that they were killing incentives for good answers and starting to incentivize engaged question askers. Overnight, you got bots posting questions about trivial math problems (literally just multiplication in most cases). The top writers disappeared.

What hurts the most: I deleted my account. At some point it became undeleted. I don't have the ability, as far as I'm aware, to kill it. My profile lives on to enrich the people who betrayed the writers. Kind of sad, but it was all about engagement. Ad dollars.

Re: How Quora died

#316

Post by mgh2 »

bastawhiz wrote: post #315

I was a top writer for two years (and got a pretty sweet jacket out of it). I was a multiple knowledge prize winner for my answers (which paid out enough for me to report it on my taxes!). Here's the nugget from the article that's the core reason: > that “was all about trying to come up with questions that would draw in more views and more people,” she said—not about incentivizing high-quality answers. It was all abo…

Ads ruin everything. No respect for power users, plain greed.

Is there any parallel to Medium?

Re: How Quora died

#317

Post by Aeolun »

simonw wrote: post #258
prepend wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are their losses greater or less than pre purchase. I know revenue is down, but I wonder how the cost cuts affected margin.

They made a profit in 2018 and 2019 ($1.2bn and $1.45bn according to SEC filings) but not in any other year.

Presumably they could have done Elon’s massive firing spree at any point in time and become profitable overnight?

Re: How Quora died

#318

Post by Aeolun »

boringuser2 wrote: post #294
stevage wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Isn’t a lot of what the US government does decided by capital anyway?

Re: How Quora died

#319

Post by Aeolun »

jonathanyc wrote: post #313
throw__away7391 wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no experience running a site centered on user generated content, but it seems to me that the biggest problem/threat to any of them is the people who start showing up once it gains traction and becomes more popular. Early users are a different band of the population, on every successful platform from StackOverflow to Uber they create a particular culture which is impossible to maintain as the general public arr…

A StackOverflow question I asked 13 years ago (and which someone else answered 13 years ago!) was deleted just last month for being off-topic. All the mods’ accounts were years younger than both the question and answer. Even weirder, the mod who initiated the deletion first tried to answer the question. He only voted to delete it after I commented that the question already had had an accepted answer for 13 years.

There should be something you can do about such blatantly misaligned incentives…

Re: How Quora died

#320

Post by flurdy »

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.

Yeah, the login wall made me always close the tab. I am just assuming there is still a login requirement with Quara so I still automatically close the tab.
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