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I'd like to use the web my way, thank you very much Quora

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Re: I'd like to use the web my way, thank you very much Quora

#71

Post by binarycrusader »

pg wrote: post #49

I think Adam's mistake here is to go too much by the numbers. He presumably has numbers that show that Quora ends up net ahead if they force people to create accounts to read answers. He grew Facebook very effectively by following the numbers. But he may not realize how different this case is from Facebook's. It may well be that for a site like Quora, at this stage in its life, users are not all equal. It may be a mi…

It's so utterly broken. At the beginning I was just annoyed because you could select the blurred text and still read it, but now (for the desktop site) they actually substitute the text with dynamically generated images that are a blurred version.

I became so enraged over this that I decided to install the "Personal Blocklist (by Google)" Chrome plugin and then added quora.com to the blocklist just so that I wouldn't see them in results when I searched for things on Google.

Like you, they've trained me to never want to contribute to their site, and to never, ever want to consume the content they provide.

Re: I'd like to use the web my way, thank you very much Quora

#72

Post by wilfra »

paulgb wrote: post #70
wilfra wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't care if the Google bots can read what I write, I care about clients, family members etc who Google me. If they REALLY want to read my answers, they can create an account. Most people wont bother though.

Quora seems to only whiteout searches that land on an answer page. When I search for a user's name in incognito, I can see their whole answer history unobscured. You can disallow search engine indexing from your settings under Settings -> Account -> Allow Indexing (disallow) if you're worried about it.

Try clicking around. They still obscure answers that aren't the top answer, though you're right there is a fair amount of content visible.

Re: I'd like to use the web my way, thank you very much Quora

#74

Post by visualcsharp »

andymcsherry wrote: post #13
niggler wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would google determine that the content being served to other users differ from what the crawlers see?

Probably if enough people report them for cloaking: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/spamreportform?hl=en

Reported. Thanks!

Re: I'd like to use the web my way, thank you very much Quora

#75

Post by paulgb »

wilfra wrote: post #72
paulgb wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quora seems to only whiteout searches that land on an answer page. When I search for a user's name in incognito, I can see their whole answer history unobscured. You can disallow search engine indexing from your settings under Settings -> Account -> Allow Indexing (disallow) if you're worried about it.

Try clicking around. They still obscure answers that aren't the top answer, though you're right there is a fair amount of content visible.

When I click the "answers" tab on the sidebar of a user profile, I can see the entire user's answer history unobscured. Is this not the case for you? Maybe we're caught on different sides of an A/B test, although I keep getting the same results in new incognito windows.

Re: I'd like to use the web my way, thank you very much Quora

#76

Post by vegashacker »

Nitpick on the NY times stuff: In my experience at least, they do not paywall you for links that come from an email, as the author claims. It's only links that originate from clicking to articles when you are already on the site that count against your monthly limit of 10. Links from Google, Twitter, email, etc all take you straight to a paywall-free article.

Re: I'd like to use the web my way, thank you very much Quora

#77

Post by niftylettuce »

pg wrote: post #49

I think Adam's mistake here is to go too much by the numbers. He presumably has numbers that show that Quora ends up net ahead if they force people to create accounts to read answers. He grew Facebook very effectively by following the numbers. But he may not realize how different this case is from Facebook's. It may well be that for a site like Quora, at this stage in its life, users are not all equal. It may be a mi…

This is the same reason why I wrote this Quora Login Prompt Block that was on HN a while back...

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/block-quora-login-...

254 users and growing, quick hack is to add ?ref=fb

Re: I'd like to use the web my way, thank you very much Quora

#78

Post by RoboTeddy »

astrodust wrote: post #2

Once Quora started blurring answers like Experts Exchange, I had no use for it. You're holding user-contributed content hostage? Go away. Complaining about usability on Quora is like complaining about not having privacy on Facebook.

I used to happily contribute answers where I could, as a public service.

When Quora gated my pro-bono work for their short-sighted purposes, I turned elsewhere.

Re: I'd like to use the web my way, thank you very much Quora

#79

Post by markdown »

pg wrote: post #49

I think Adam's mistake here is to go too much by the numbers. He presumably has numbers that show that Quora ends up net ahead if they force people to create accounts to read answers. He grew Facebook very effectively by following the numbers. But he may not realize how different this case is from Facebook's. It may well be that for a site like Quora, at this stage in its life, users are not all equal. It may be a mi…

Who's Adam, and what is his role in all this?

Re: I'd like to use the web my way, thank you very much Quora

#80

Post by codeka »

dylangs1030 wrote: post #42

Yep. In the past month or so, I've been conditioned not to click on Quora links for disappointment-avoidance. "Oh, look at that, someone had my exact problem on Quora!" ... "Fuck this nonsense, I'm going back to Stack Exchange/Google." ...Which then prompts this response: http://xkcd.com/979/ The answer might as well be that far away. This drives me up a wall. I hate it when websites try to restrict their readership…

Worse than http://xkcd.com/979/ is when the only answer is the OP saying "never mind, I figured it out."
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