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How Quora died

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Re: How Quora died

#401

Post by mrd3v0 »

kiba wrote: post #33
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…

Perhaps VC backed businesses aren't really ideal for these type of sites.

Perhaps VC-backed businesses aren't really ideal for any kind of sites.

Re: How Quora died

#402

Post by rcxdude »

stevage wrote: post #293
thriftwy wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

StackOverflow's priorities shown through this gating make little sense to me, and they spectacularly fail at communicating to new users what the norms of the site are, which is one big reason why so many people have a story of a bad experience of it.

Re: How Quora died

#403

Post by stemlord »

This article frames the situation as if Quora once took off, and was once good, which I very much disagree with. Quora never "took off" by way of being good/helpful. It was all just forced SEO. Quora was dead on arrival to me

Re: How Quora died

#404

Post by Kye »

manquer wrote: post #305
kiba wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps VC backed businesses aren't really ideal for these type of sites.

YouTube does very well ? .

So well it had to sell to Google because it didn't have a funding model.

Re: How Quora died

#405

Post by kawaiikouhai »

gn4d wrote: post #346
keiferski wrote: post #31

I think the upvote/downvote model for evaluating content is fundamentally not a good one, and this deficiency is the root problem for a lot of sites (Reddit, Quora, etc.) that were founded around the same time, circa 2005-2012. It lends itself too much to groupthink, popularity contests, and self-promotion. X/Twitter has a million other problems, but I do like their new Community Notes of fact-checking claims. It's e…

>I think the upvote/downvote model for evaluating content is fundamentally not a good one This is why the bump model that 4chan uses is superior. You can sort threads by activity, but all posters display with equal weight, and you must utilize critical thinking to evaluate each and every post (unless it is from a trip user whose authority you trust in a particular domain), not some little number that pushes them to t…

> This is why the bump model that 4chan uses is superior.

The elephant in the room is that 4chan's average quality of content is by far the worst of any major forum platform. The "bump" model is also used iirc by most bbs or older-style internet forums. In the modern age, incel forums are probably the most popular of these older-style forums (and surprisingly they probably have only slightly better average quality than 4chan).

So, correct me if I am wrong, but the bump model usually results in shitty average quality of information.

As the bump model needs heavy moderation as the upvote/downvote system is a form of self-moderation/censorship. However, the entire appeal of most sites that use the bump model is to shitpost or be edgy...

Honestly, the bump model does sound intriguing from a utopian, critical-thinking first, free speech first-principles perspective, but I'd like to see an example of a successful popular forum that implements such in reality.

Re: How Quora died

#406

Post by johnnyanmac »

croisillon wrote: post #95
scarface_74 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

nah i think pinterest is even a notch worse

Pintrest stays in its lane and it sounds like actual users can benefit from it for their own needs. It's only annoying if I need a quick image snip.

Quora can and will pop up for nearly every search query and I've never been satisfied with the answers I peek at, ever.

Re: How Quora died

#407

Post by gn4d »

kawaiikouhai wrote: post #405
gn4d wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I think the upvote/downvote model for evaluating content is fundamentally not a good one This is why the bump model that 4chan uses is superior. You can sort threads by activity, but all posters display with equal weight, and you must utilize critical thinking to evaluate each and every post (unless it is from a trip user whose authority you trust in a particular domain), not some little number that pushes them to t…

> This is why the bump model that 4chan uses is superior. The elephant in the room is that 4chan's average quality of content is by far the worst of any major forum platform. The "bump" model is also used iirc by most bbs or older-style internet forums. In the modern age, incel forums are probably the most popular of these older-style forums (and surprisingly they probably have only slightly better average quality th…

I do respectfully disagree with you.

The bump model allows chaos wherein you, the reader, must critically evaluate everything with no preconceived notions or pre-filtering. This is how you question, re-evaluate, and sharpen your knowledge through productive debates. There are diamonds and gems in "flat", bump-structured fora, that do not exist in other group-think, mass-consensus-based sites.

Why does the average quality of information matter? You are making a trade-off for convenience. It is indeed convenient to accept common group-think. If you are critical enough to recognize low quality posts on bump model sites, why are you concerned with low quality posts? Read on to the next post.

Insert the meme here of Cypher stating that he doesn't even see the code anymore, but the remixed version of "I don't even see the shitposts and shills anymore."

>I'd like to see an example of a successful popular forum that implements such in reality.

You know what they are, but I will elect to avoid an instaban by posting them here.

Re: How Quora died

#408

Post by manquer »

Kye wrote: post #404
manquer wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

YouTube does very well ? .

So well it had to sell to Google because it didn't have a funding model.

They got a billion dollars for a year old company i don’t think that can be characterized as selling because they didn’t have a funding model.

Fine, Facebook , TikTok , Reddit and myriad others have found how to moderate and monetize user generated content if you need better examples

Re: How Quora died

#410

Post by johnnyanmac »

keiferski wrote: post #31

I think the upvote/downvote model for evaluating content is fundamentally not a good one, and this deficiency is the root problem for a lot of sites (Reddit, Quora, etc.) that were founded around the same time, circa 2005-2012. It lends itself too much to groupthink, popularity contests, and self-promotion. X/Twitter has a million other problems, but I do like their new Community Notes of fact-checking claims. It's e…

It comes down to the same thing at the end of the day. You gotta pay for quality (be it quality contributors, or simply quality fact checkers to properly moderate information) and no one wants to pay. Not the users, not the webmasters. So the best way is to leave it to the users to sort out. We know that is error prone, but at least works some of the time.
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