This does not read like it was written by a VC, at least not in an investment context. An investor would not express concern that a user-generated content company was not sharing economics with its contributors. In fact, a company's ability to attract contributors without sharing economics with users (e.g. Facebook) would impress an investor.
The downfall of Quora (2013)
101–110 of 123 posts
Re: The downfall of Quora (2013)
#102I 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…
You do need an account, but you don't need to link it to Facebook.
Re: The downfall of Quora (2013)
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
The community is typically a pretty big aspect of a business running a community answers site. Would you have been satisfied if there was a pie chart?
> The community is typically a pretty big aspect of a business 'The community' is an extremely nebulous term, and unlikely to be influencing any business decision, largely because any individual's perception of the community is heavily subjective and influenced by the subject of the content you consume (which can vary widely on any large, similarly nebulous site). I highly, highly doubt 'the community' came up in any…
>Super salty about it.
Yes obviously you are
Re: The downfall of Quora (2013)
#104Earlier 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.
It would be quite interesting to know which topics you find this happening. I don't tend to see this kind of toxicity on SO. I'm frequenting C# and .NET. Maybe Jon Skeet drags the C# community up to his level!
Re: The downfall of Quora (2013)
#105After thinking about this for a while it struck me that Quora is simply this decades version of expertsexchange.com.
It has the same "register to read what we slyly showed Google but not you, unless you bump our daily user sign up rate to impress investors" dark pattern going on.
Re: The downfall of Quora (2013)
#106This 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.
What "stunt"? Why is this such a big deal to people? I've never found a login to be a particularly onerous thing.
Re: The downfall of Quora (2013)
#107Re: The downfall of Quora (2013)
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?"
Followed immediately by the question being flattened by administration as "not a good fit" despite the previous existence of these types of questions producing excellent discussion and answers.
I think SE is awesome in spite of its rules, not because of them. The whole "discussion is bad mmkay" thing seems to be cargo-culted by the staff of these sites despite many examples to the contrary.
Re: The downfall of Quora (2013)
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
What "stunt"? Why is this such a big deal to people? I've never found a login to be a particularly onerous thing.
Easy to answer -- a website that doesn't require a login (for casual reads) hopes to attract visitors. A website that does require a login hopes to control and exploit visitors.
Re: The downfall of Quora (2013)
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
It would be quite interesting to know which topics you find this happening. I don't tend to see this kind of toxicity on SO. I'm frequenting C# and .NET. Maybe Jon Skeet drags the C# community up to his level!
I see a lot of this in the web development oriented areas. So mainly in the CSS/JS areas.