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The downfall of Quora (2013)

thegoodones.quora.com

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Re: The downfall of Quora (2013)

#51

Post by hnriot »

dozenal wrote: post #42
junto wrote: post #35

Quota. ?share=whatever That to me sums up the site in its entirety. A content SEO Google cheater that tries to con people into signing up to boost its user numbers They should have looked to StackOverflow as a good example of how you build a proper community, and more importantly, nurture it. Good ridance.

Stackoverflow has of a lot of terrible answers that get voted up by people who aren't equipped to evaluate them properly, and closed threads when anyone starts actual substantive discussions. It also suffers from lack of decent rewards for contribution. That's not what I would consider a good community.

this is absolutely not true, stackoverflow is an invaluable resource and what you say might happen very occasionally, but the vast majority of upvoted answers actually helped a lot of people.

Despite what you claim as lacking rewards it seems to have thrived and attracted contributions. I don't really care what you consider a good community, or even accept the premise that there needs to be any notion of community. Why attribute labels, the model seems to work just fine.

Re: The downfall of Quora (2013)

#52

Post by mmahemoff »

dozenal wrote: post #42
junto wrote: post #35

Quota. ?share=whatever That to me sums up the site in its entirety. A content SEO Google cheater that tries to con people into signing up to boost its user numbers They should have looked to StackOverflow as a good example of how you build a proper community, and more importantly, nurture it. Good ridance.

Stackoverflow has of a lot of terrible answers that get voted up by people who aren't equipped to evaluate them properly, and closed threads when anyone starts actual substantive discussions. It also suffers from lack of decent rewards for contribution. That's not what I would consider a good community.

While I also whine about Stack's broken moderation, I still contribute because its heart's in the right place as a site that genuinely wants to help people learn and get answers. The problems you mention are more like implementation details that are subject to ongoing experimentation and can't be changed overnight.

The good thing about Stack is anything I write there will be as easily accessed as if I'd posted it on my own blog, not re-purposed as SEO-bait and blurred or hidden until the user signs up. Furthermore, it's licensed under Creative Commons instead of serving as a donation to the site owner.

Quora is actually a great site once you're logged-in and I find a lot of the content fascinating, but I also wonder why people continue to contribute to such a closed system.

Re: The downfall of Quora (2013)

#53

Post by orlybadass »

Communitivity wrote: post #8

"Quora's philosophy can be summed up as why should the serfs get a share if they were dumb enough to work for free in the first place?" Different currencies. The owners of Quora are being paid in US dollars, the content creators in both attention and reputation. Both attention and reputation are currencies that will translate to dollars more and more as we progress towards an, in-part, reputation-based economy. With…

"progress" towards "reputation-based economy"? wtf is this anyway? Sounds like sucker-economics to me, just like "we don't have a lot of money to pay you right now but this project will be great for your career!". To hell with that.

Re: The downfall of Quora (2013)

#55

Post by nether »

Calling the users "Quorites" is a dead ringer for a lack of familiarity with the site. This guy has barely used Quora, why care for his opinion? It's "Quoran,"'which he mentions later on for some reason.

Re: The downfall of Quora (2013)

#56

Post by tejon »

jbinto wrote: post #44

I mentally blacklisted Quora when it was proudly US only (I'm Canadian). Their reasoning was extremely dubious: something about "cultural differences" and "language barriers" preventing "high quality content". Foolishly, I gave them another chance when they opened registration worldwide. The second strike was when I found out that they showed the Googlebot different content, à la Experts Exchange. And the third strik…

> As others have noted here I think the web could use an improved version of "Yahoo Answers"; something with a StackOverflow feel.

It's odd that nothing fills this gap. Slant.co comes close, but is built around "what" rather than "why" or "how" -- useful in its own right, but not the same.

I wonder if the problem is simply that Yahoo! Questions, Ask.com and Quora are all just too well-known and nobody wants to take them on, despite how terrible they are? Considering the celebrated audacity of startup culture I'd honestly be surprised if this is the case, but on the other hand I'm not finding a lot of other compelling explanations.

I suppose one other possibility is that aforementioned sites have soured the public on the genre to the point that when someone says, "It's kind of like Yahoo Questions or Ask.com," the immediate response is "Ick."

Re: The downfall of Quora (2013)

#57

Post by lutusp »

nether wrote: post #55

Calling the users "Quorites" is a dead ringer for a lack of familiarity with the site. This guy has barely used Quora, why care for his opinion? It's "Quoran,"'which he mentions later on for some reason.

> This guy has barely used Quora, why care for his opinion?

That would be on a par with dismissing atheists' views on religion, or the reverse, i.e. not a very good idea if the goal is to hear a wide spectrum of views.

Re: The downfall of Quora (2013)

#58

Post by tptacek »

idlewords wrote: post #13
vezzy-fnord wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've found that HN is overall tolerant of the occasional bit of humor or even snark, definitely to a point where you do not feel constrained.

I've found it to be a viper pit of humorless aspies

Are humorless aspies really all that dangerous?

Re: The downfall of Quora (2013)

#59

Post by dlysenko »

> Youwill find yourself blocked from seeing content unless you first invest 15 minutes registering through your Facebook or Twitter account.

I can't understand why people constantly hyperbolize how long it takes to sign up for a website or app. For me it'll never take more than 120 seconds, probably 60 of which are spent waiting for the activation email.

Re: The downfall of Quora (2013)

#60

Post by derwiki »

parkov wrote: post #40
iamben wrote: post #32

Some of the comments here are really interesting. A lot of general Quora negativity? I think the weekly (semi personalised?) Quora 'digest' is one of the only bacn emails I'll open pretty much without fail, almost always ending up on the site. Some of the questions/answers are fascinating.

I also enjoyed the Quora digests until one day the links stopped going directly to the threads but all pointed to a feed page. I assumed this was another dark pattern to boost pageviews and unsubscribed.

I prefer the feed page. There's usually more than one interesting link in a Digest and the pages aren't exactly lightweight on my phone. I wouldn't be so quick to call it a dark pattern; could be a reasonable UX decision based on how people use the emails.
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