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This is a bit f'd, Quora

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Re: This is a bit f'd, Quora

#201

Post by Karunamon »

ceol wrote: post #117
redthrowaway wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you take the replies to replies from a single thread, and conclude that the site itself is useless? I suppose I should discount Stack Exchange, as there undoubtedly questions for which all of the answers are unhelpful or incorrect. Your comment reeks of the typical reddit hate on HN, without anything to back it up.

I wouldn't say the entire site is useless, but the good communities are few and far between due to the reddit's culture abhorring any sort of moderation. Would you like me to edit my reply to be more specific to /r/AskReddit? Certainly if you have a scientific question, /r/askscience is great, and /r/philosophy tends to be decent most of the time. But my point is that getting honest, relatively troll-free discussion…

The trick to reddit is to stay the hell away from the default subs.

The fact that something is frontpaged greatly decreases the signal to noise ratio, the moderators are IMHO asshats.

Do some searching to find topics that interest you, and then unsubscribe from every single front page subreddit. You'll have a much better experience as a result.

Re: This is a bit f'd, Quora

#202

Post by Karunamon »

mkolodny wrote: post #188
ivankirigin wrote: post #57

This is my post. I didn't expect this on HN, but I shouldn't be too surprised I guess. I just want to stress that I really do love using Quora. It has some of the most unique content on the internet. It is because of this that I even care about my activity syndication there.

I upvoted your post for the same reason that you posted it - in hopes that Quora will decide not to kill privacy on the site. Now I kind of wish I hadn't since the sentiment on this thread is so anti-Quora. I love Quora, too. The amount of knowledge you gain from even a few minutes there is truly incredible. If HN'ers could get over the fact that Quora is a social site started by Facebookers, I truly believe they wou…

I don't have much to add other than "yeah, that", and the fact that the breathless cry of "zOMG PRIVACY!" and the sanctimonious hand wringing about "Well what about people who don't want (some dangerous person) to know what they're doing" is starting to get irritatingly old.

There are a few people for various reasons who should stay the hell away from social media in all its forms. Okay, granted. For me, I don't see the point of privacy for privacy's sake. Oh no! An advertiser might know what I like! Oh no! The government might know what I like! Oh no! An ex might know what I like! And I care.... why?

Put another way, I can become some sort of privacy super-advocate which means hamstringing myself socially and professionally, making my online life more difficult in just about every fashion, (No social networking, no hosted anything.. have fun with that!), or I can pick my battles and realize that I'm not a spy and more likely than not have no reason to worry about targeted ads.

Rant off - I've needed to unpack this for a while. Quora is a great resource, and I'm sick and tired of seeing people slag on it for a feature they can turn off.

And I'd like to respectfully ask that any downvoters at least bother to explain themselves before clicking. I realize this is probably a highly controversial stance, but the least you could do is contribute to the discussion.

Re: This is a bit f'd, Quora

#203

Post by SeanDav »

jrockway wrote: post #51
its_so_on wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blhack, I ran across this comment of yours - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4377315 - and certainly appreciate your privacy concerns. A healthy private life is undoubtedly everyone's personal choice. At the same time, HackerNews is YCombinator's tech blog, and highly visible. Frankly, your opinion comes off as somewhat paranoid. It's not that it isn't justified, I'm not saying that one way or another, but I woul…

What? I'm not sure what's going on here. If you want to send blhack an email, do that. This personal letter is not an appropriate use of HN comments. And sending private messages in public is quite non-cool.

In general Americans tend to take things very literally and don't "get" online sarcasm/irony very well.

I have bumped into this on numerous occasions in MMO's.

Re: This is a bit f'd, Quora

#204

Post by spinchange »

mcphilip wrote: post #24
olalonde wrote: post #2

Also, you can't view some answers anonymously anymore (blurred out a la expertsexchange.com). Seems they are desperate for new users...

I really hope this blows back hard on Quora. We need dramatic examples of companies' valuations being hit for making such privacy violations on a whim. Google and Facebook can mostly get away with similar violations since the large majority of users simply don't care and/or don't understand the privacy concerns, but maybe it's not too late to lash back at relatively insignificant companies like Quora for blatant disr…

>We need dramatic examples of companies' valuations being hit for making such privacy violations on a whim.

They don't exist. Only a small subset of users even care and investors and stakeholders just want their site to succeed any way it can. While not expressly privacy-related, take a look at charts of LinkedIn stock after their massive security breach where it was revealed they weren't salting password hashes. Not only did it not dip, it rose on the news and held those gains until after the story was out of the news.

Re: This is a bit f'd, Quora

#206

Post by sciurus »

meritt wrote: post #111
cletus wrote: post #91

I can't help bit feel vindicated by moves like this because they're a sign that Quora isn't the Next Big Thing that many inside the bubble that is Silicon Valley seemed to think it is (eg [1]). Actually Quora is better than that (for me) in that it's a double hit on the hype on both Q&A and social. These kinds of moves: - requiring login to view content; - partially obscuring content on Google results to maximize sig…

Quora is simply turning into ExpertsExchange. I haven't found anything terrible insightful on Quora that I can't find at the top of an HN, Reddit or StackOverflow thread. Never quite understood the hype centered around it.

Don't forget Ask Metafilter (http://ask.metafilter.com/), going strong since 2003.

Re: This is a bit f'd, Quora

#207

Post by achompas »

Karunamon wrote: post #202
mkolodny wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I upvoted your post for the same reason that you posted it - in hopes that Quora will decide not to kill privacy on the site. Now I kind of wish I hadn't since the sentiment on this thread is so anti-Quora. I love Quora, too. The amount of knowledge you gain from even a few minutes there is truly incredible. If HN'ers could get over the fact that Quora is a social site started by Facebookers, I truly believe they wou…

I don't have much to add other than "yeah, that", and the fact that the breathless cry of "zOMG PRIVACY!" and the sanctimonious hand wringing about "Well what about people who don't want (some dangerous person) to know what they're doing" is starting to get irritatingly old. There are a few people for various reasons who should stay the hell away from social media in all its forms. Okay, granted. For me, I don't see…

Agreed 100%. HNers belly-ache about Quora all day, but there is an incredible amount of information on there. If you doubt me, just go look at the best answers under the Machine Learning topic.

Part of Quora's value comes from identifying answerers' identities. HNers see this as a plight on the social web, yet they can (a) still turn off views in their settings at any time, and (b) use other forums with relaxed views on privacy if they wish.

Re: This is a bit f'd, Quora

#209

Post by chefsurfing »

It seems to me there is only one good response to this type of corporate behavior: remove yourself from the equation. ou are free to quit and have them remove your data from the system. I did this last week and I feel much better now. To Quora's credit it only took 24 hours to be removed from the system. If you consider it abuse, staying in an abusive relationship is just plain stupid :)

Re: This is a bit f'd, Quora

#210

Post by yelloweye »

krickle wrote: post #158
ceol wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know well of the niche communities in reddit. I frequent most of them to hide myself from the default subs. However, the same problems still exist. For instance, I enjoy the show Adventure Time , so I subscribed to the /r/adventuretime subreddit. It was fine for a while, but then a submission popped up on my front page. It was a photograph of a group of kids cosplaying as Adventure Time characters at a local conven…

If people acting like jerks offends you that much, you are going to have a bad time on the internet. Although if you know of anywhere besides HN that is mostly reasonable, please PM me :) nitpick: just as you are offended by rude comments, I am offended by advocating violence as a response to rudeness. I don't think you were serious, but I have to say there's nothing you can say or write that actually warrants a punc…

For that matter, HN is heavily biased towards YC companies as well. Posts and websites of competing companies get killed or moderated out. Just saying. I would rather prefer reddit way.
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