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Scribd and Quora considered harmful

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Re: Scribd and Quora considered harmful

#101

Post by gojomo »

gwern wrote: post #78

For avoiding using Scribd for public PDF hosting, I've been looking at http://pdf.yt/ (I keep wondering when the powers that be at HN will finally remove the Scribd autolinks on submissions, and keep being disappointed.)

Another potential option is DocumentCloud: open-source, with support from major journalistic outlets.

http://www.documentcloud.org

An example from Minar's post, the Elliot Rodger 'Twisted Life' document, has been uploaded there by a NYDailyNews reporter:

http://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1173655-elliot-rodger...

Perhaps a bit easier to read than the Scribd version, with a 'text' tab for accessing raw copyable text, and a download link for the PDF original.

Re: Scribd and Quora considered harmful

#102

Post by ronaldx »

Karunamon wrote: post #63
SoftwareMaven wrote: post #47

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 you link seems to me indicative of a dark pattern:

User unsubscribes from all categories (one-by-one-by-one) = invent a new category and auto-subscribe the user.

Re: Scribd and Quora considered harmful

#103

Post by cordite »

ddw wrote: post #87
infinitone wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, you keep doing this until you get 'acquired.'

Yeah, I think Quora only makes sense if they are bought and a piece of it is implemented within one of the giants like Google. It's an interesting new business model I guess.

Yahoo Answers is already scary enough.

Re: Scribd and Quora considered harmful

#104

Post by mkempe »

It is quite puzzling that YC invests in and promotes companies that implement essentially DRM for documents and DRM for Q&A, with all the evil techniques that DRM requires and incites.

It appears that the movie and music industry are considered harmful, but imitating them in other domains is wonderful.

Re: Scribd and Quora considered harmful

#105

Post by dredmorbius »

venus wrote: post #98
weinzierl wrote: post #44

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?

The GNU GPL generally requires works be provided in the "preferred form" for making modifications. That might well be a hack around Scribd's methods.

Re: Scribd and Quora considered harmful

#106

Post by dredmorbius »

bsenftner wrote: post #10

Quora is dangerously close to being a nuisance with all the pointless emails they send. I think I browsed the site a half dozen times max, and contributed to two-three questions. Now I get daily emails about distant friends activity on Quora. LinkedIn this the only site I've been tricked into joining that is worse with their spammy emails.

Quora's principle crime is breaking the sharing nature of the Web and polluting search engine results with inaccessible content. Pretty much precisely what Scribd does.

Re: Scribd and Quora considered harmful

#107

Post by dredmorbius »

lolnope wrote: post #68
weinzierl wrote: post #44

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…

This is somewhat off topic, but I've always thought of Library Genesis as a modern-day Library of Alexandria. Both contain vast stores of priceless knowledge, and both employ(ed) somewhat less than optimal means of obtaining their books. I wonder if the individuals who wrote that report can see the similarities too. It's going to be a sad day if they manage to raze LibGen as well.

Interesting insight. I've only recently found LibGen, and it's simply amazing for conducting research.

I expect it will be attacked, possibly successfully, but other alternatives will rise to take its place.

Re: Scribd and Quora considered harmful

#108

Post by [deleted] »

shurcooL wrote: post #20
tambourmajor wrote: post #14

It would actually be great to have something like a web services donation flat rate. Basically something like http://flattr.com but but also for web services and apps, not only for creators and artists. A place where you can spend some money on the places you enjoy online without having to think too hard about it. For example, I would happily pay maybe $10 a month for reddit, Less Wrong and HN, just to cover independ…

What if I told you that already exists, and you can be giving $10 a month or whatever to many websites or individuals right now? Most people who say "wouldn't it be great" like above end up changing their minds about donating after they find out it's actually possible. Anyway, if you're still interested, feel free to reply here and I'll forward you to what I'm referring to. FWIW, I do think it would be great and I'm…

[deleted]

Re: Scribd and Quora considered harmful

#109

Post by notduncansmith »

tonywebster wrote: post #89

I hate pay-walls and even login-walls, so I genuinely disagree with Scribd's payment model. However, I do think the service provides value in that users are able to upload a PDF and it renders in a pretty widely-compatible viewer format (in HTML5). Embedding PDFs across multiple platforms are still a terrible native experience, and on some systems it launches tons of painful Acrobat toolbars or just doesn't show up a…

Just out of curiosity, what is it about pay-walls that you hate so much?

I don't hate them (my wallet does, when the content I want is behind them of course), but I find it to be a pretty reasonable model. Have a bite of the content, if you enjoy it then pay for the rest. It doesn't seem crazy to me that people should be compensated for their work, and while the "pay what you want" model is a lovely ideal, some people are more comfortable putting a fixed price on it.

I'm not asking to be combative, I'm genuinely curious on whether or not you have a better solution, and I'm totally open to having my opinion of pay-walls changed if I've overlooked some flaw in that model.

Re: Scribd and Quora considered harmful

#110

Post by Karunamon »

shadowfox wrote: post #92
Karunamon wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

Your spam is someone else's notification from a service they use.

Can we stop torturing the definition of words, please? Spam is unsolicited commercial email. A service you registered for emailing you when one of your questions is answered or commented on, or a digest of interesting questions from the week, and so on is not spam by any possible definition.

Now, where have I seen that behavior before? Is this spam too, by your definition?

http://gyazo.com/df79d094acec54257a6d06b331664f5a

And here's the control UI

http://gyazo.com/db7e83881331c7dde7f028af3411f917

This is something I wish i could do over on Stack* - I'd love to be emailed when a question is answered or commented on. But alas, I have a newsletter, and a single checkbox that turns a bunch of stuff on and off. But you don't earn hate on hacker news for having too few features, apparently you earn it by having too many?

The worst thing you can accuse Quora of is being very, very granular as to what you can turn on and off... Hence why I call it confirmation bias. People have been told the site is crap and so go looking for reasons to confirm it.

Behold! The email settings UI is over-engineered! Let's imply a huge amount of mustache-twirling negativity into their motivations for doing so! The horror! They send an email once a week with interesting questions! It must be spam! Nevermind the fact that Stack* does the exact same thing!

All of this Quora hate is really, really unjustified for the simple difference of having a registration requirement to view their content.

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