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Quora engineers accused of vandalizing a clone’s website

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Re: Quora engineers accused of vandalizing a clone’s website

#51

Post by joshu »

darklajid wrote: post #43
joshu wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quora has a lot of passionate users.

I've got a hard time not writing "Quora has a lot of trolls" FTFY with that kind of comment. Impersonation is crap and childish behavio(u)r and not about being "passionate" about a site or a technology. I don't think Quora guys are to blame, but - These comments should be moderated/removed/shouldn't have been allowed in the first place - Calling idiots that do things like that "passionate users" does both the service…

I am making an observation.

You seem very angry.

Re: Quora engineers accused of vandalizing a clone’s website

#52

Post by joshu »

joshu wrote: post #13

I just left the following comment: -- It's pretty lame to copy the design and trade dress of another product. It does not bode well for your skill or ability. Backstory: A long time ago I wrote Delicious. We had hundreds of copycats and competitors. The ones that weren't direct copies were the ones that did better. I'm sure this doesn't apply to you for whatever reason.

Huh. This comment has been deleted. Was it the admins or did Rick not enjoy the criticism?

Re: Quora engineers accused of vandalizing a clone’s website

#53

Post by bigiain »

JeremyBanks wrote: post #49
bigiain wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Precisely my point. I shouldn't be hearing "Oh, the Quora skin is just a prototype", I should be hearing something like "the dev site the Quora prototype skin was being developed on was running a 6 month old branch of our engine software, check out out github history to see all the security changes made in the "production ready" branch since November".

I believe he mentioned in response to people's complaints that the site looked like Quora; I don't think he meant to relate it to security at all.

Yeah, I suppose there was a "Quora engineers vandalized a Quora-clone site (with an xss vulnerability)" discussion going on, and my attention immediately zeros in on the xss enabled vandalization as being "the important news", and the response I saw (and commented on) was all about the "Quora clone" accusation (which I don't find very interesting).

(see my other comment downthread for clarification)

Re: Quora engineers accused of vandalizing a clone’s website

#54

Post by fmavituna »

teaspoon wrote: post #42
fmavituna wrote: post #21

Same thing happened in my friend's company and they fired the engineer who identified and exploited the permanent XSS in their competitor's website. Personally I would do the very same thing. 1. It's against the law 2. Extremely unprofessional and childish 3. There are better ways to report security vulnerabilities

It's against the law? Where?

Pretty much everywhere, For UK - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Misuse_Act_1990 I'm sure US got an equivalent of this

Re: Quora engineers accused of vandalizing a clone’s website

#55

Post by joshu »

rhizome wrote: post #48
joshu wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because they are unoriginal followers. If they had any sense of direction they'd be able to build something of their own.

Originality is overrated. Various sites with CSS-only layouts and minimal interfaces are best described as an emergent aesthetic. Expect more like this. There are simply too many people drawing from the historical experiences and examples laid by e.g. Metafilter, Digg, image boards, etc. for it to consititute individual acts of copying. That there are so many whitelabel apps & plugins ready for the implementing only…

There is a big difference between convergent evolution and wholesale copying.

Re: Quora engineers accused of vandalizing a clone’s website

#56

Post by hackinthebochs »

joshu wrote: post #15
mgrouchy wrote: post #5

I certainly don't think the Quora Engineers were right to vandalize the clones website in this case. I'm all about people making Q/A websites and releasing products that are clones of other products. Ideally this kind of competition can make the original product better. That being said, I find making a clone of someones product and then releasing said product at least in this sense, distasteful. Seeing that it has su…

Design clones are super lame.

Why? What separates design clone vs functionality clone, making one legitimate and the other distasteful?

Re: Quora engineers accused of vandalizing a clone’s website

#57

Post by rhizome »

joshu wrote: post #55
rhizome wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Originality is overrated. Various sites with CSS-only layouts and minimal interfaces are best described as an emergent aesthetic. Expect more like this. There are simply too many people drawing from the historical experiences and examples laid by e.g. Metafilter, Digg, image boards, etc. for it to consititute individual acts of copying. That there are so many whitelabel apps & plugins ready for the implementing only…

There is a big difference between convergent evolution and wholesale copying.

It's not convergent evolution when people are copying, but copying doesn't obviate emerging aesthetics. Once upon a time, websites did not all have menu bars across the top, is this a result of despicable copying, or of lots of people simply deciding it was a good idea? Whether or not I think a given UX trope is useful is irrelevant to others choosing so.

Re: Quora engineers accused of vandalizing a clone’s website

#58

Post by joshu »

rhizome wrote: post #57
joshu wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a big difference between convergent evolution and wholesale copying.

It's not convergent evolution when people are copying, but copying doesn't obviate emerging aesthetics. Once upon a time, websites did not all have menu bars across the top, is this a result of despicable copying, or of lots of people simply deciding it was a good idea? Whether or not I think a given UX trope is useful is irrelevant to others choosing so.

Straw man.

We are discussing wholesale duplication.

Re: Quora engineers accused of vandalizing a clone’s website

#59

Post by rhizome »

joshu wrote: post #58
rhizome wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not convergent evolution when people are copying, but copying doesn't obviate emerging aesthetics. Once upon a time, websites did not all have menu bars across the top, is this a result of despicable copying, or of lots of people simply deciding it was a good idea? Whether or not I think a given UX trope is useful is irrelevant to others choosing so.

Straw man. We are discussing wholesale duplication.

My assertion is quantity-neutral. I simply don't think it matters how much is copied, just the fact that any copying is going on at all signals that the look and functionality is having an influence.
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