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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

#141

Post by hmbg »

mickhagen wrote: post #119
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…

Here comes the mob. Really? Are we all gonna throw up our arms because of this? We use their service, we consume, read and digest their content like blood-suckers and now we get mad they're asking us to sign up? PG you've been reading Quora for "several years" and you think it's unjust they are asking you to sign up? Quora has let us eat at their house for years and now all they're asking is we take off our shoes bef…

I believe the argument is not that the Quora team should be incarcerated for putting up a wall, but rather that this setup may not be the best way to build a large community and, in the long term, a profitable company.

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

#142

Post by silencio »

MatthewPhillips wrote: post #36

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

I wrote a script that would unblur Quora answers (that one of my friends turned into an extension) a while back. Turned out that Quora started to just substitute blurred images instead of just blurring text via CSS soon afterwards.

I'm pretty sick of this constant cat and mouse game, and I just used the Google Personal Blocklist extension for Chrome to remove Quora from my Google search results.

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

#143

Post by megablast »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #107
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 funny, I'm more likely to fiddle about with chrome's inspector to try to remove just the right divs to get a quora page to be readable than to spend however long it takes to sign up. It's personally grating to me that they take such a boneheaded tack to content in the 21st century. Did they learn nothing from expertsexchange? It grates even more that they are putting crowd sourced content behind a wall.

Ah yes, firebug is also great for stuff like this. Click on firebug, click on the overlay, press delete. Bam, you have your page.

Doesn't work so well on mobiles though.

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

#145

Post by skrebbel »

mickhagen wrote: post #139
skrebbel wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree with your point but also disagree with the downvotes. (are people downvoting commenters who disagree with pg?) Anyway, you're forgetting something important: We're completely entitled to not use a sucky service and blog about it. That's what going on here: there's people who decide to vote with their feet, and tell others about it.

I have no problem with people voicing an opinion -- it's America. But what I think people are complaining about in this case is just ridiculous.

I'm nitpicking, I know, but it's not America. You're on the internet, you know. It's the world.

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

#147

Post by mickhagen »

skrebbel wrote: post #145
mickhagen wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no problem with people voicing an opinion -- it's America. But what I think people are complaining about in this case is just ridiculous.

I'm nitpicking, I know, but it's not America. You're on the internet, you know. It's the world.

Lol true.

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

#148

Post by pg »

mickhagen wrote: post #119
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…

Here comes the mob. Really? Are we all gonna throw up our arms because of this? We use their service, we consume, read and digest their content like blood-suckers and now we get mad they're asking us to sign up? PG you've been reading Quora for "several years" and you think it's unjust they are asking you to sign up? Quora has let us eat at their house for years and now all they're asking is we take off our shoes bef…

Their content? I don't think even Quora would claim that.

And how exactly is creating an account taking off one's shoes before entering? I would not be contributing anything to the Quora community by creating an account. I'm not depriving the community of anything by not creating one.

I believe the reason Quora tries to force people to create accounts is not because this helps the community, but simply because this is the first step of the funnel of their viral spread mechanism.

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

#149

Post by jamiequint »

To steal a quote from Chris Dixon (http://cdixon.org/2010/01/22/techies-and-normals/):

"1. If you are loved first by techies and then by normals you get free marketing and also scale. Google, Skype and YouTube all followed this chronology. It is startup nirvana.

2. The next best scenario is to be loved by normals but not by the techies. The vast majority of successful consumer businesses fall into this category..."

This is a case of #2. I know many "normals" who really don't care and just sign up or download the app. It is probable that Quora alienates some percentage of its content writers by doing this but probably not enough to account for the absolutely massive increase in lift it is seeing as a result (I would guess 3x minimum conversion improvement to account creation from just this one change.) If they don't break out of the tech minority the company is not going to be valuable anyway so it does not seem to make sense to optimize for that audience.

All comparisons to Experts Exchange (where you had to pay to sign up) are totally overblown, signing up for Quora takes less than one minute and its free. It's just not that difficult to even be worth complaining about. You are not entitled to the Internet your way as the user of a free product. As the saying goes "if you are not the customer, you are the product".

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

#150

Post by greglindahl »

kintamanimatt wrote: post #32
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 forgot about Experts Exchange! I used to love them, but when they broke their shit all I had was a medley of frustration and rage every time I bumped into their site until they went away. Shame they screwed up so badly. On a side note, what does Quora achieve by forcing people to view the data using a native app rather than through the browser? It seems a little ... pointless, or perhaps I'm being unduly myopic wit…

Quora is an iPhone-only app. Too bad for all those retina iPad users, you paid for all those pixels in vain.
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