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Thanks to Quora, now you can’t read anonymously

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Re: Thanks to Quora, now you can’t read anonymously

#21

Post by monsterix »

samstave wrote: post #9

Quora is in the same boat as FB (and to a certain extent, Twitter) They think that the experience of their largely 20-something staff is anything short of revolutionary. A bunch of kids running a digital media company with questionable morals and no connection to digital history. I will delete me Quora account. So far I have gotten little value from it. Time for it to have no data on me. Deactivated! Edit: I followed…

Absolutely. Their policy to force your true_full_name is an absolute no-go for many users. A friend of mine from south India has a very lengthy name. Few parts of his name are direct reference to his ancestors and the villages they come from. Sort of like this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._D._Deve_Gowda where H. D. parts of his name are references to ancestry, places etc.

My friend was denied permission to use Quora, rather insultingly blocked, for not revealing his ancestor name. We thought it was plain stupid on part of Quora to behave this way, so didn't bother to follow up with them either. What's amazing here is that even Government passports don't force revealing names of ancestors like they do.

Re: Thanks to Quora, now you can’t read anonymously

#22

Post by jopt »

grose wrote: post #5

What value does this have over, say, an anonymized view count? While it's nice to know that people have seen what you've written, does their identity really need to be known?

Perhaps it is more attractive to advertisers then to users. Demographic tracking etc.

Re: Thanks to Quora, now you can’t read anonymously

#24

Post by wilfra »

michaelbuckbee wrote: post #14
wilfra wrote: post #7

I've learned to go with the flow and trust them when they make changes like this. My first impression is usually to want the 'old Quora' back but once I get used to them, the changes do nearly always improve the experience. I would imagine this will be the same. They are very skilled at interpreting needs and desires we didn't know we had and quickly correcting themselves the times they do make mistakes (like the rec…

I'd be curious to know what/how you use Quora. I've had an account on there forever, but it just doesn't quite seem to hit the right level of utility for me to go back to it.

It's all about the feed. You need to follow people who are interested in things you're interested in.

Re: Thanks to Quora, now you can’t read anonymously

#25

Post by muyuu »

Quora seems nice but I cannot possibly feel comfortable with their policies, even before this. I can only participate very selectively because of this. I like the service and it has traction, too bad their invasiveness thresholds are too lax for me to accept.

I'd rather just pay a small quantity to be honest. I'm not sure if an alternative site working on subscriber money would be feasible.

Re: Thanks to Quora, now you can’t read anonymously

#26

Post by onwardly »

jaredsohn wrote: post #6

You can turn it off, but then you can't see who viewed things. (Similar to how LinkedIn and OkCupid work with anonymous browsing.) And if you really want to see I'm sure you can do so via another account. (I think it is possible because okc and linkedin hide private data but quora hides public data.) Instructions: http://www.quora.com/Views-on-Quora/How-do-I-turn-off-the-Vi...

This move by Quora pissed me off, but the only reason I'm keeping my account is because they allowed me to turn it off.

Quite an effective way to destroy some goodwill they'd built up with me over the past couple of years.

Re: Thanks to Quora, now you can’t read anonymously

#27

Post by [deleted] »

houk wrote: post #18
mikebracco wrote: post #8

Well as Eric Schmidt said, “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place." ;) http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2011/01/21/top-10-the-quotable-e...

Bullshit. That quote is based on the (false) premise that privacy is there to conceal illegal/shady activities. It puts you in one of two groups; You're either guilty of something and have a reason to hide it, or you're not guilty and have no reason to hide anything. It doesn't include the possibility that you might not be guilty of something but may still want to keep something hidden. I'll give you an example. You…

[deleted]

Re: Thanks to Quora, now you can’t read anonymously

#28

Post by flipside »

To me, the fact that Quora feels it needs to share passive views means they're failing to get enough people to actively engage with their content.

If I don't care enough click a button, either A) I have no meaningful opinion, B) I don't want Quora to know what I think, or C) there's a "problem" with the button.

Quora, if you're going to just make assumptions about why I'm looking at an answer, you will very often be WRONG.

(views disabled)

Re: Thanks to Quora, now you can’t read anonymously

#29

Post by pooriaazimi »

This is stupid.

What's more stupid is their desperation for you to interact with their site. I went to remove my unused account, and this is what I got when I typed www.quora.com:

http://d.pr/i/WcMl

You'll notice that I couldn't do anything else - I "had" to choose 5 extremely broad subjects that I'm supposed to be interested in, in order to be able to view my profile. I selected 5 subjects randomly, and...

http://d.pr/i/P7ex

Only after that they kindly allowed me to view the main page and my profile. I deactivated my account, and won't ever click on a quota link again (and would add them to my spam list so they won't show up in my Google results).

Re: Thanks to Quora, now you can’t read anonymously

#30

Post by tijs »

samstave wrote: post #9

Quora is in the same boat as FB (and to a certain extent, Twitter) They think that the experience of their largely 20-something staff is anything short of revolutionary. A bunch of kids running a digital media company with questionable morals and no connection to digital history. I will delete me Quora account. So far I have gotten little value from it. Time for it to have no data on me. Deactivated! Edit: I followed…

apparently you have to e-mail privacy@quora.com to get your account deleted completely. That in itself is reason to delete your account btw. It speaks volumes of their regard for users and their privacy.
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