Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

hanselman.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 276 posts

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

#91

Post by dclowd9901 »

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…

>Quora has now spent several years training me to be bummed out every time I click on a link to their site.

"Bummed". Yeah that really describes it perfectly. Especially with how immaculately their digest emails are constructed, to be hit with that asinine wall is a straight-up bummer, and stops me dead in my tracks.

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

#92

Post by volandovengo »

I really don't understand why people are so up in arms.

First everyone was in love with Quora, now everyone hates them? What changed?

Yes - they want you to join their community because their ecosystem depends on people signing up. I signed up for Quora once and since then it's never forced me to sign in again.

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

#93

Post by walkon »

MatthewPhillips wrote: post #36

This was posted an hour ago and still no one has released a bookmarklet to circumvent? Come on HN!

That's not a bad idea. Here is some bookmarklet code that retrieves and displays the actual answers when hovering over the blurred out answers. The downside is, it cannot do anything about the answers that do not have a permalink (clickable datestamp).

  javascript:(function($) {
    var $answerTextDivs = $("div.answer_text:has(.blurred_answer)");
    function heal() {
        $answerTextDiv = $(this);
        $answerLink = $answerTextDiv.find("a.answer_permalink");
        if ($answerLink.length === 0) {
            showError($answerTextDiv, "could not find answer - no permalink.");
            return;
        }
        $.get($answerLink.attr("href"), function(d) { 
            var $permaAnswerDiv = $(d).find(".answer_text");
            $answerTextDiv.empty();
            $answerTextDiv.append($permaAnswerDiv.first());
        }).fail(function(e) {
            showError($answerTextDiv, "ajax call failed - " + e);
        });
    }
    function showError($container, message) {
        var $errorDiv = $("");
        $errorDiv.text(message);
        $errorDiv.css({
            'background-color': 'red',
            'color': 'white',
            'padding': '2px 6px',
            'position': 'absolute',
            'margin-top': '38px',
            'z-index': 2000
        });
        $container.prepend($errorDiv);
    }
    $answerTextDivs.one('mouseenter', heal);
    $.ajaxPrefilter(function(options, originalOptions, jqXHR) {
        /* this is to prevent annoying UIX usage tracking POSTs to Quora */
        if (options.type === 'POST') {
            jqXHR.abort();
        }
    });
  }(jQuery));

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

#94

Post by semilshah »

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…

I am a huge Quora fan and user but would have to agree with this assessment. Most of Quora's traffic "lurks" and this will be the search audience they need to get. What they're doing now is trying to make sure they have your account credentials to monitor what you "lurk" for. At some point, my guess is that they'll remove this tactic. I will say, however, that the web created "inside" Quora is some of the richest, most high-fidelity information on the entire web, and it may not exist elsewhere.

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

#96

Post by bitcartel »

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…

Quora is now 3 years old and has taken $61 million from investors. Are there any numbers publicly available to show user growth over this period?

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

#98

Post by davidandgoliath »

binarycrusader wrote: post #71
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…

Same. It takes a lot to get on my blocklist and the only site that now populates it is quora.

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

#99

Post by d0gsbody »

volandovengo wrote: post #92

I really don't understand why people are so up in arms. First everyone was in love with Quora, now everyone hates them? What changed? Yes - they want you to join their community because their ecosystem depends on people signing up. I signed up for Quora once and since then it's never forced me to sign in again.

I, too, signed up for Quora once. But I don't want to sign in every time I want to browse the site.

The ironic thing is that, if they'd just let people browse, they'd sign in on their own.

Post reply on HN