4 ms·

I stumbled across academia.edu trying to grab a syllabus from some university to find books to supplement my learning. It was so spammy. I didn't get why the

I stumbled across academia.edu trying to grab a syllabus from some university to find books to supplement my learning. It was so spammy. I didn't get why the professor website point all his research towards academia.edu. He could have posted it on his website or github. The website demand from the get go your info and you have to create account to even get stuff. It's similar to quora. Quora survived with its quality like posts/answers but I still disagree with this type of model.

vog 9y ago
Pardon my ignorance, but is Quora still a thing? I thought it was largely made obsolete by the various StackExchange sites and networks.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- Insanity 9y ago
  There are differences though as far as I am aware. I am not a Quora user but I believe that Quora is okay with more subjective questions whereas the StackExchange network does not really like that. If you take a look here: http://stackoverflow.com/help/dont-ask http://stackoverflow.com/help/dont-ask you can find more of the type of questions you can not ask. Take a question like this: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/16318868/books-or-other-resources-for-java-to-cocoa-transition http://stackoverflow.com/questions/16318868/books-or-other-r... And a question like this: https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-best-development-tools-for-a-Java-Developer https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-best-development-tools-fo... :-)
  - cormacrelf 9y ago
    But that's also true of almost every other place on the internet; if you'll pardon the pun, StackOverflow is the Exception. Quora's utility is a tiny subset of, for example, Reddit's /r/AskReddit. Except it does away with the community vibe and what is at least somewhat a meritocracy on Reddit and replaces it with being an already-well-known figure or someone who can sell their reputation well enough. Half the questions are directed at specific people anyway, which is quite bizarre: 'What was Elon Musk's GPA at UPenn?'. If you want to have a Q&A session with a famous person, /r/AMA is much better. In general, there's nothing stopping you from asking and collecting questions and answers anywhere else on the internet, so why do we need a specialist? Quora's Q&A implementation has nothing to set it apart from SO, or even Twitter threads. More importantly, in terms of user base, most conceivable questions have a better place to be asked than Quora. For some of them, that place is Reddit or StackExchange, or even your favourite Elon Musk fan-fiction club. For the rest, there is probably a community out there that isn't limited to the open Q&A format that users on Quora try to shoehorn everything into. The one topic that seems to do inordinately well on Quora is questions about startups, because respondents can tout how successful they are when they give you an answer and be upvoted according to how well they do that. This is the rare case that people are actually looking for reputation rather than content. If you're looking for people with life experience, AskReddit does a great job of promoting answers where people take the time to tell a story. Subreddits (like /r/malefashionadvice, for example) do a great job of organising communities around common interest with lots of Q&As and beginner guides thrown in. If you want what Quora purports to provide, just find any old community online with the people you want to hear from and ask it there instead.
- mks40 9y ago
  You are not wrong. Of course, this is personal perspective, but in 2014-15 there was still a fairly academic tone to many questions, as in, you could ask actual science and math questions and get a knowledgable academic to answer them. Today, if I open my feed, most of it is questions on personal experiences (from just now): 'What is the craziest thing you ever did when you were a teenager?', 'What surprised you most about attending graduate school in the US?, 'What is the most brutal death?'. I never specified interest in any of these topics. What is worse to me is that I do not see any way to disable topics quickly so I have to perpetually mute high-impact posters who have attracted a large enough audience to be asked about their personal lives and seemingly enjoy answering the same things about themselves over and over. Like any web forum, the majority of replies comes from a relatively small amount of posters who keep retelling their personal story about their admission to MIT/their high IQ. I suppose Quora is paying the price of growth and I realise my interests are not aligned with Quora's in attracting a large audience. It just means I am not personally interested in writing any content for it any more and I think many early users feel the same.
  - GoodbyeEarl 9y ago
    That's exactly the reason why I left Quora. It used to be such an amazing place to read interesting stuff now it's only about meaningful questions.
    - mks40 9y ago
      Upon further consideration, I suspect this was a very intentional move and not just a growth effect, because they could just as well have kept moderation strict. People do like to answer questions and be acknowledged for their know-how, but what people love is to talk about themselves and have their experiences validated. Sure, Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook give a way to have your social existence acknowledged, but Quora offers anyone to have their individual life experiences validated, no matter if they have the lifestyle or looks typically associated with social media fame. That is a very powerful attractor but unfortunately brings out the result described above - users beginning to talk incessantly about themselves as a topic, the more one answers, the more one has the chance to convert to a topic oneself and have even more explicit opportunity to tell one's story. Combine this with low traffic in topics of maybe more serious interest and Quora will suggest any popular content ('topics you might like). This is how one ends up having these stories in your feed without ever expressing interest in them.
- mgiannopoulos 9y ago
  Quota seems to be going well, just raised funding at a 1.8$ billion valuation and with now "190 million monthly users, up from 100 million a year ago" https://techcrunch.com/2017/04/21/uniquorn/ https://techcrunch.com/2017/04/21/uniquorn/
  - 0xcde4c3db 9y ago
    They don't seem to say what they're counting as "monthly users". I wonder how many of that 190 million are people who skim one page from a Google search and then flee when the site tries to get them to register to read anything else.
    - mgiannopoulos 9y ago
      I don't know but lately I keep getting mails from Quora that a new Facebook friend has joined the site and I should be his friend on Quora as well. It could be that they keep getting people to sign although with unknown amount of actual use.

vog 9y ago

Pardon my ignorance, but is Quora still a thing? I thought it was largely made obsolete by the various StackExchange sites and networks.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
Insanity 9y ago
There are differences though as far as I am aware. I am not a Quora user but I believe that Quora is okay with more subjective questions whereas the StackExchange network does not really like that. If you take a look here: http://stackoverflow.com/help/dont-ask http://stackoverflow.com/help/dont-ask you can find more of the type of questions you can not ask. Take a question like this: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/16318868/books-or-other-resources-for-java-to-cocoa-transition http://stackoverflow.com/questions/16318868/books-or-other-r... And a question like this: https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-best-development-tools-for-a-Java-Developer https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-best-development-tools-fo... :-)
- cormacrelf 9y ago
  But that's also true of almost every other place on the internet; if you'll pardon the pun, StackOverflow is the Exception. Quora's utility is a tiny subset of, for example, Reddit's /r/AskReddit. Except it does away with the community vibe and what is at least somewhat a meritocracy on Reddit and replaces it with being an already-well-known figure or someone who can sell their reputation well enough. Half the questions are directed at specific people anyway, which is quite bizarre: 'What was Elon Musk's GPA at UPenn?'. If you want to have a Q&A session with a famous person, /r/AMA is much better. In general, there's nothing stopping you from asking and collecting questions and answers anywhere else on the internet, so why do we need a specialist? Quora's Q&A implementation has nothing to set it apart from SO, or even Twitter threads. More importantly, in terms of user base, most conceivable questions have a better place to be asked than Quora. For some of them, that place is Reddit or StackExchange, or even your favourite Elon Musk fan-fiction club. For the rest, there is probably a community out there that isn't limited to the open Q&A format that users on Quora try to shoehorn everything into. The one topic that seems to do inordinately well on Quora is questions about startups, because respondents can tout how successful they are when they give you an answer and be upvoted according to how well they do that. This is the rare case that people are actually looking for reputation rather than content. If you're looking for people with life experience, AskReddit does a great job of promoting answers where people take the time to tell a story. Subreddits (like /r/malefashionadvice, for example) do a great job of organising communities around common interest with lots of Q&As and beginner guides thrown in. If you want what Quora purports to provide, just find any old community online with the people you want to hear from and ask it there instead.
mks40 9y ago
You are not wrong. Of course, this is personal perspective, but in 2014-15 there was still a fairly academic tone to many questions, as in, you could ask actual science and math questions and get a knowledgable academic to answer them. Today, if I open my feed, most of it is questions on personal experiences (from just now): 'What is the craziest thing you ever did when you were a teenager?', 'What surprised you most about attending graduate school in the US?, 'What is the most brutal death?'. I never specified interest in any of these topics. What is worse to me is that I do not see any way to disable topics quickly so I have to perpetually mute high-impact posters who have attracted a large enough audience to be asked about their personal lives and seemingly enjoy answering the same things about themselves over and over. Like any web forum, the majority of replies comes from a relatively small amount of posters who keep retelling their personal story about their admission to MIT/their high IQ. I suppose Quora is paying the price of growth and I realise my interests are not aligned with Quora's in attracting a large audience. It just means I am not personally interested in writing any content for it any more and I think many early users feel the same.
- GoodbyeEarl 9y ago
  That's exactly the reason why I left Quora. It used to be such an amazing place to read interesting stuff now it's only about meaningful questions.
  - mks40 9y ago
    Upon further consideration, I suspect this was a very intentional move and not just a growth effect, because they could just as well have kept moderation strict. People do like to answer questions and be acknowledged for their know-how, but what people love is to talk about themselves and have their experiences validated. Sure, Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook give a way to have your social existence acknowledged, but Quora offers anyone to have their individual life experiences validated, no matter if they have the lifestyle or looks typically associated with social media fame. That is a very powerful attractor but unfortunately brings out the result described above - users beginning to talk incessantly about themselves as a topic, the more one answers, the more one has the chance to convert to a topic oneself and have even more explicit opportunity to tell one's story. Combine this with low traffic in topics of maybe more serious interest and Quora will suggest any popular content ('topics you might like). This is how one ends up having these stories in your feed without ever expressing interest in them.
mgiannopoulos 9y ago
Quota seems to be going well, just raised funding at a 1.8$ billion valuation and with now "190 million monthly users, up from 100 million a year ago" https://techcrunch.com/2017/04/21/uniquorn/ https://techcrunch.com/2017/04/21/uniquorn/
- 0xcde4c3db 9y ago
  They don't seem to say what they're counting as "monthly users". I wonder how many of that 190 million are people who skim one page from a Google search and then flee when the site tries to get them to register to read anything else.
  - mgiannopoulos 9y ago
    I don't know but lately I keep getting mails from Quora that a new Facebook friend has joined the site and I should be his friend on Quora as well. It could be that they keep getting people to sign although with unknown amount of actual use.