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The downfall of Quora (2013)

thegoodones.quora.com

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Re: The downfall of Quora (2013)

#91

Post by antr »

This issue hits a home run with me: "Ideological Moderators".

I was a very active Quora user on 2010-2011, I'd visit the site over 10 times a day, I would write any answers on Word, make sure they were thorough, well written, etc, before I replied to question. I made an effort, both offline and online. What I really enjoyed was the initial community, the well thought questions and answers. During this 18-24 month period I also got thousands of upvotes, lots of thank you messages for my answers, etc.

One day an army of moderators came along. These moderators weren't Quora staff, but volunteers. I get it, it takes considerable man power to go through many of those questions and answers. I can work with that.

It was when I asking a question on movies & documentaries that I had my first encounter with them. I can't recall the exact question I asked, but it something along the lines "what are the most interesting documentaries released in 2011?". One moderator, without contacting me, changed the question to something more specific, he added a sub-genre to the question. I got notified of the change, went back, and changed it to the original question. After a couple of hours I get a message from the moderator telling me that that question isn't a "good/relevant" question (I'm paraphrasing). I ask why, and I get told that "You can't ask generic questions". Once more, I change the question to the original one and ignoring the random argument by the moderator. Then this moderator contacted a second moderator in order to gang-up on me, supporting each other random policies in order to make a statement.

It was then that I realised that these people didn't like to moderate Quora for the content quality, but for the feeling of 'power' and control moderation creates. I noticed that these guys liked being moderators because they enjoyed telling others what to do, with no regards for the content, quality, or users. That same day I deleted all of my questions, answers, and Quora account. I haven't used it again since then, and it feels great.

Re: The downfall of Quora (2013)

#92

Post by DanBC »

troymc wrote: post #74
tejon wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 t…

What about all the Stack Exchange communities (e.g. Mathematics Stack Exchange, English Language & Usage Stack Exchange)?

"What's a list of good books about programming language X?"

"I'm switching from this programming language to that programming language; what are the important gotchas?"

Re: The downfall of Quora (2013)

#93

Post by tptacek »

swartkrans wrote: post #66
tptacek wrote: post #46

This piece starts out teasing some kind of business or market analysis about Quora, which would be interesting to read, but it almost immediately descends completely and permanently into Drama, some of which seems like it's only really intelligible to people who spend a lot of time on Quora. It's not a worthwhile read, and we'd be better off discussing Quora based on virtually any other story about it.

I noticed you get unwarrantedly defensive when it comes to negativity surrounding popular individuals or well-known companies. I say unwarrantedly because you usually write very awesome posts with lots of detail, but when you spring to the defense of the GitHub founder who fell from grace, or in this case Quora (and there are other instances I remember to some degree), you peremptorily want to end the discussion with…

Weird. I know next to nothing about Quora. I was actually hoping to read a well-reasoned takedown of a company that I don't think generates all the much value. This just isn't that.

"Spring to the defense of the Github founder who left in disgrace"? Another really weird thing to have said.

Re: The downfall of Quora (2013)

#94

Post by tptacek »

bronbron wrote: post #71
swartkrans wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I noticed you get unwarrantedly defensive when it comes to negativity surrounding popular individuals or well-known companies. I say unwarrantedly because you usually write very awesome posts with lots of detail, but when you spring to the defense of the GitHub founder who fell from grace, or in this case Quora (and there are other instances I remember to some degree), you peremptorily want to end the discussion with…

> I noticed you get unwarrantedly defensive Uhh I don't think he was defensive at all. I think he made a very good point. I would bet large amounts of bitcoins that no VC wrote any of this, save MAYBE part of the opening. It's extremely verbose and the business analysis ultimately is a smaller part of what amounts to just a rant about the quora community. And if you want to read that, that's great. I don't. I've read…

I would have a very hard time believing that an investor wasted 5 minutes writing several paragraphs about "PC" and "social justice" and stuff like that. Like I said, I think most of this writeup makes sense only if you spend a lot of time on Quora. Who does that?

Re: The downfall of Quora (2013)

#95

Post by pja »

Karunamon wrote: post #17
treehau5 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this case, looks up definition of mansplaining Yes. Yes it is. It is necessary to show his point. Not saying it is necessary in society. Cool your jets.

Sexism is never necessary. And what point would that be?

I thought it was an amusing way of referencing the fact that wikipedia editors are 90% male. But perhaps that's just me?

Re: The downfall of Quora (2013)

#96

Post by tptacek »

cloakandswagger wrote: post #69
tptacek wrote: post #46

This piece starts out teasing some kind of business or market analysis about Quora, which would be interesting to read, but it almost immediately descends completely and permanently into Drama, some of which seems like it's only really intelligible to people who spend a lot of time on Quora. It's not a worthwhile read, and we'd be better off discussing Quora based on virtually any other story about it.

That's because Quora is a social platform, and it's flaws are primarily cultural. You may or may not be able to make a legitimate business case for the site, but the point is that Quora will still fail due to its toxic, insipid culture.

Of the substantive criticisms in this piece, most of them have been leveled even more vehemently at Stack Exchange, which from what I can tell is doing just peachy.

Re: The downfall of Quora (2013)

#97

Post by mullingitover »

Karunamon wrote: post #2

This struck me as more representative of other sites. Like, the one we're on now: The No Humor Rule: Humor is a de facto taboo on Quora. While the occasional demonstration of witwill evoke no more than a scowl and shake of the head from the community, more regular use will draw a barrage of down votes and risk the possibility of banishment. The staff attempts to deny that this istrue but fails to convince anyone. Man…

> Honestly? I think they're reading far too much into that.

I honestly hated them for their login policy. They deserved to fail purely for that stunt alone.

Re: The downfall of Quora (2013)

#98

Post by DanBC »

richardw wrote: post #89
adventured wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's essentially impossible to build something as high-quality as Stack Overflow for an all-purpose Q&A site. The expertise required per category is incredibly high, to match the level of quality Stack has, and then the moderation has to be equally up to that bar. That has to occur for a thousand different categories (far more really, but you get the point). So you need tons of users per sub, with very high level exp…

I think Wikipedia has managed to be hugely general with a relatively high quality level so it must be possible. There might well be an underlying difference that can't be overcome but I can't see it from here.

Wikipedia is a terrible example to use for a community.

Wikipedia is a great guide of things to avoid.

Take signing up for an account: the software has some control over what username you can create. Then there is some level of admin on top. So, as well as the software limits there is the username policy.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Username_policy

That page has nice advice about what to do with bad usernames - starting with do nothing.

There are two templates for bad usernames (templates are generally a bad idea) -- {{subst:uw-username}} or {{subst:uw-coi-username}}

Then there is a Request for Comments http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:RFC/N

And then there's an admin noticeboard http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Usernames_for_admin...

But the noticeboard has two parts - a holding pen and the main board.

The RFC/U is the problematic part. Children rapidly post all possibly risky usernames as part of their gamified run to adminship.

You kind of expect editing topics like Palestine or Ukraine to be risky. You really don't expect simple uncontroversial punctuation gnoming to be horrible but it can be a really nasty toxic experience.

Re: The downfall of Quora (2013)

#99

Post by DanBC »

slantyyz wrote: post #79
avn2109 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, very often I will click through to SO from Google to a closed thread that got downmodded like crazy, but that nevertheless exactly solves my problem in less than a minute from the first answer. Perhaps on some level SO knows this, and also knows that their mods are perhaps somewhat overzealous, and therefore has adopted the current state of affairs as a sort of compromise/duct-tape solution.

This. I too, have found so many downmodded questions to have the exact answer I needed for a particular problem. It's by far the most frustrating part of using Stack Overflow. The overzealous modding has had a chilling effect on my desire to ask a question on SO, because nobody wants their question to be downmodded as a stupid or pointless question.

The overzealous modding is a feature not bug of SE sites.

I find some of the moderation really frustrating but it's worse when the people closing threads and answers are also the ones leaving zero-content comments.

Re: The downfall of Quora (2013)

#100

Post by hawkice »

defen wrote: post #73
idlewords wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Your comparison of non-neurotypical people to deadly venomous snakes is not only dehumanizing but also incorrect. Sure, if a person bit you, the wound might get infected and eventually cause problems, but it would almost certainly be treatable with a standard first aid kit. A viper bite would require immediate treatment with antivenom to prevent necrosis, limb amputation, or potentially even death.

I feel this is precisely the type of post HN needs. Faux-sanctimonious high-wire-act humor. I hope you get millions of upvotes.
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