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Scribd and Quora considered harmful

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Re: Scribd and Quora considered harmful

#91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, you can turn off those emails. All you have to do is un-click 25 checkboxes! http://cl.ly/image/3J2Q3o1M213h/quora-email-settings.png

Is this legal after the can spam act??

Every email they send includes a link to unsubscribe from all emails in one click.

Re: Scribd and Quora considered harmful

#92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quota is evil (your word, not mine) because they make it seem, though eg Google, that you can access the information immediately. Further, they are breaking the norms of Q&A sites that viewing information doesn't require more than passing interaction with the site (a norm many people who provide Q&A content tend to agree with). Finally, it brings back strong memories (as mentioned in TFA) of Experts Exchange, which w…

So they do something slightly different from Stack* and they're "considered harmful"? The screenshot I linked should be enough to immediately disprove any accusations of "spam".

> The screenshot I linked should be enough to immediately disprove any accusations of "spam".

Really? You have to uncheck something like 20 checkboxes to avoid spam. And they used to have a tendency to re-enable all of them each time they add a new option; so you had to repeat the process on and off. (Hopefully that last bit has tapered down)

Re: Scribd and Quora considered harmful

#93
post #35

My opinion on Quora is totally different (note, I have no interest, nor I think my point of view is right or wrong, simply different). I don't 100% support the idea of putting a barrier before content, but I understand their need to grow in terms of registered users (i.e. users for whom they have email or social account). It's a mere strategy for fast growing, a sort of compromise that they chose to do. I don't see t…

Kind of a dumb strategy in my opinion. A lot of times I'll see a post on quora I want to share on facebook or whatever, but I don't because I know I'll just be irritating my friends when they see a "Signup to read this article" page.

The links from their "Share" feature bypass the login wall (though only for the specific piece of content you link to).

Re: Scribd and Quora considered harmful

#94
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Someone please explain to me again how this arrangement is evil? Well, if they let you know ahead of time that you needed to sign up to access the content, that'd be no big deal. And, of course, I wouldn't bother to ever visit the site. Instead, through Google, they make it appear like the information is accessible, then nag you to sign up to see it. From the article and the look of this thread, it appears quite a…

I had the impression that Google penalizes websites for giving its crawler substantially different information than a visitor would receive, and that it has done so for quite some time. I wonder why Quora is not penalized in to irrelevance.

Because they abuse rel=canonical instead of outright showing different content. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6301280.

Re: Scribd and Quora considered harmful

#95

What is a good alternative to Scribd? One that allows viewers to download the source file without too much hassle and displays the text properly? Google Drive?

I'm very fond of the Internet Archive's book viewer: https://archive.org/details/etsi_ts_100_940_v07.08.00

Re: Scribd and Quora considered harmful

#96
I couldn't agree more. I have long though Scribd was toxic and a terrible idea in an age where browsers render PDFs flawlessly and that was before I knew of the find issues and DRM font. I have avoided Scribd links like the plague as every time I have accidentally go to their website I have found navigating (scrolling) the PDF to be nearly unusable and I despise how small the view port is. To be honest I have no clue what other content surrounds the document which I attribute in part to "Ad blindness" and I won't be checking now because I don't want to give them the page view.

As for Quora it is Experts Exchange 2.0. Hiding community sourced knowledge behind a login is shameful and disgusting. Especially since, if memory serves, they started out allowing you to see all the content then later added the blurring and popup. Thankfully I didn't pay much attention to Quora prior to this change and so I don't have any knowledge of mine locked up in. If I had I would delete my responses and repost the question and my answer to the appropriate Stack Exchange site.

I'm on mobile right now but once back at my computer I plan on adding both of these sites to my hosts file as I refuse to be an accomplice to or support their shady practices.

Thank you for highlighting what I have long thought about Quora and fully opening my eyes to the sins of Scribd which I have long disliked but lacked the interest to fully investigate.

Re: Scribd and Quora considered harmful

#97
post #6

I think my continued use of these sites rigged with all dark patterns are just a nod of acceptance. Deleted Quora app from phone long ago and logged out. It's probably time I delete my account. Update: Oh well. There's no delete feature implemented. You have to email Quora support. https://www.quora.com/Quora-product/How-do-I-delete-my-Quora...

I signed up, spent a day on it where it would keep trying to force me to select categories to subscribe to, and then I could not delete it. Sent them an email, never heard back.

Re: Scribd and Quora considered harmful

#98

While I usually find the businesses funded by Y Combinator awesome I think Scribd is a bad apple. Not only is the user experience terrible it also has the smell of a bad neighborhood with all the pirated content it offers. Today I incidentally read the current (March 2014) "Gutenberg 3.5 - Ebook Piracy Report"[1]. It seems to be from an anti-piracy lobbying group, so its obviously biased, but it mentions Scribd even…

I wonder if you could add a condition to a document's license, CC or whatever, forbidding it being hosted behind any kind of pay- or signup-wall?

Re: Scribd and Quora considered harmful

#99
Scribd is one of YC's flagship companies, and rightfully so I think. People forget how painful PDF viewing used to be: the viewers were slow to load, crashed browsers a lot, and spread viruses. I remember how some forums considered linking to a pdf without adding something like [pdf] after it to be a form of abuse (more technically sophisticated forums just added that on their own).

Scribd, and things like google viewer that followed, helped get us through a rough patch until browsers started implementing better pdf viewers on their own.

Re: Scribd and Quora considered harmful

#100
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PDF hosted anywhere? Dropbox for instance, or github.

Dropbox doesn't expose your PDFs to search engines, so it doesn't work as a public reference dump. (Github does, I think, but it's not so easy to use - can you imagine ordinary people trying to use git to expose documents to the world?)

Aye, if I wanted to publish my pdfs, Dropbox would be a bad choice.

Sharing to a select group of people (e.g. a link in a mailing list, or on a small online community - it's perfectly valid in my opinion.

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