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I'd like to use the web my way, thank you very much Quora

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Re: I'd like to use the web my way, thank you very much Quora

#211

Post by tomjen3 »

beaumartinez wrote: post #160
eropple wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. My favorite trick? I was going to sign up for a Quora account today, finally knuckling under to the stupid ExpertsExchange fuzzing crap. So I click "Sign Up With Google" (because the register page on the answer page doesn't show Twitter). They demand permission to "manage my contacts". This is a throwaway email, so I say sure, okay. They go back to the registration screen and still want an email and password…

I think it's in case Google's auth (or even Google itself!) goes down—Facebook's was down the other day, and if you don't provide alternative sign-in mechanisms, users can't sign in.

The reason you I on those sign in with x is because I am either too lazy to type an email or because I don't trust the site.

Re: I'd like to use the web my way, thank you very much Quora

#212

Post by jim_shook »

pg wrote: post #49

I think Adam's mistake here is to go too much by the numbers. He presumably has numbers that show that Quora ends up net ahead if they force people to create accounts to read answers. He grew Facebook very effectively by following the numbers. But he may not realize how different this case is from Facebook's. It may well be that for a site like Quora, at this stage in its life, users are not all equal. It may be a mi…

Another reason this is dumb is that this is the kind of thing that Google doesn't much like. They don't want to index and rank content highly just for it to be mostly inaccessible.

I have no idea how much new traffic to Quora comes from organic search, but I have to imagine its not unsubstantial.

Re: I'd like to use the web my way, thank you very much Quora

#213

Post by T-hawk »

xefer wrote: post #64

I've never understood how anyone thinks they can be successful by making the web worse.

Because "successful" is defined as baiting users into yielding their personal information in order to force-feed them ads and other marketing junk. Success isn't defined as users finding what they want or otherwise having an informative or pleasurable experience.

The ur-example: Zynga and their addiction-center manipulators that masquerade as games. Zynga succeeds if they pay, not if they enjoy it.

Re: I'd like to use the web my way, thank you very much Quora

#214

Post by pseut »

thejosh wrote: post #186
davidandgoliath wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same. It takes a lot to get on my blocklist and the only site that now populates it is quora.

That and mirrors of google groups such as gmame

Gmane doesn't mirror google groups -- it mirrors public mailing lists and originally was made to reformat them for news readers[1]; some mailing lists use it intentionally as their public archives (emacs org-mode for one) so you might be missing out if you blacklist it. I don't have any affiliation with them, but they don't seem too bad.

[1] http://gmane.org/about.php

Re: I'd like to use the web my way, thank you very much Quora

#216

Post by ceejayoz »

nwh wrote: post #7

It's one sucky business model. Force people to sign up in the hopes that they'll stick around. It sounds fun, but the existence of services like BugMeNot says otherwise.

> Force people to sign up in the hopes that they'll stick around.

Not just that. It's also done knowing that they default you into a half dozen different types of notification e-mail.

Re: I'd like to use the web my way, thank you very much Quora

#217

Post by DenisM »

kamaal wrote: post #190
arocks wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an oversimplification of the situation. A Q&A based site like Quora can be compared to it's predecessors like Experts Exchange or Stack Overflow because the content is simply enhanced by greater participation of experts. The early adopters could be techies or otherwise, but they will notice the increase in friction for sharing and using content. Also the problem is not really "signing up". As the article point…

Frankly speaking I don't see the problem at all. If you are a rare user/reader at Quora not installing the App won't hurt you or Quora. If you are a regular user you will install anyway! Besides these days who worries about login's when there is unlimited supply of free email accounts.

Most frequent users start off as infrequent users. By discouraging infrequent users, you prevent formation of frequent users. That's the business argument.

Personally, I just hate it when I click a google link and land on a blurred page. It's deceptive to promise an answer and then make me jump through the hoops before telling me what it is, all of which happens before I even know if the answer was good.

Re: I'd like to use the web my way, thank you very much Quora

#218

Post by eropple »

beaumartinez wrote: post #160
eropple wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. My favorite trick? I was going to sign up for a Quora account today, finally knuckling under to the stupid ExpertsExchange fuzzing crap. So I click "Sign Up With Google" (because the register page on the answer page doesn't show Twitter). They demand permission to "manage my contacts". This is a throwaway email, so I say sure, okay. They go back to the registration screen and still want an email and password…

I think it's in case Google's auth (or even Google itself!) goes down—Facebook's was down the other day, and if you don't provide alternative sign-in mechanisms, users can't sign in.

Except that's not what they do: you never log in with Google, it always asks you for the email/password pair.

It's manifestly dishonest.

Re: I'd like to use the web my way, thank you very much Quora

#219

Post by rhizome »

pseut wrote: post #214
thejosh wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That and mirrors of google groups such as gmame

Gmane doesn't mirror google groups -- it mirrors public mailing lists and originally was made to reformat them for news readers[1]; some mailing lists use it intentionally as their public archives (emacs org-mode for one) so you might be missing out if you blacklist it. I don't have any affiliation with them, but they don't seem too bad. [1] http://gmane.org/about.php

If their purpose is so focused on newsreader formatting, they should tweak their robots.txt to keep from polluting SERPs.

Re: I'd like to use the web my way, thank you very much Quora

#220

Post by hollerith »

codelust wrote: post #168
pg wrote: post #49

I think Adam's mistake here is to go too much by the numbers. He presumably has numbers that show that Quora ends up net ahead if they force people to create accounts to read answers. He grew Facebook very effectively by following the numbers. But he may not realize how different this case is from Facebook's. It may well be that for a site like Quora, at this stage in its life, users are not all equal. It may be a mi…

I'll keep aside the logic of whether I like what they are doing or not and ask if they have any other option. The die has already been cast in Quora's case, from what it looks like from the outside (I'm speculating wildly here), it looks like the company realized a while ago (around the time of the Charlie Cheever ousting saga) that they're growing at a pace much slower than what is expected out of them. A $11 millio…

>I'll . . . ask if they have any other option.

The other option would have been to choose not to take VC money -- or to have chosen a "business model" not heavily dependent on high-quality uncompensated contributions from users.

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