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> I will soon be gone from Quora. Were people ever in Quora? Isn't it one more of those 'free' sites that exploit the free labor of random people to sell quest

> I will soon be gone from Quora. Were people ever in Quora? Isn't it one more of those 'free' sites that exploit the free labor of random people to sell questionable content? I don't get how someone can get so attached to his own image that considers himself to be part of a company that he s clearly not a part of.

freedomben 5y ago
It's been a long time since I went to Quora but they used to have some really high quality answers from real experts. Quality was always a little hit and miss but the good answers were really good.
- fault1 5y ago
  It basically was the anti-Yahoo Answers. Over time, it became just like Yahoo Answers.
  - wyclif 5y ago
    There should probably be a Zawinski-like law for this. "Over time, all question-and-answers sites attempt to expand until they become Yahoo Answers."
- smoe 5y ago
  What killed Quora for me was their push towards canonical question/answers, not allowing for any context to a question, ridding it of a lot of the nuance that made many discussions actually interesting. Now there seems to be just more and more rehashing of the same questions that have already been beaten to death waiting to get merged together. I was somewhat active for a while writing answers, but every time I wanted to ask a question the algorithm "forced" me to generalize it more and more to the point where I'm no longer interested in the answer. And I also felt the same with the questions Quora wanted me to answer.
  - pizza234 5y ago
    > What killed Quora for me was their push towards canonical question/answers, not allowing for any context to a question, ridding it of a lot of the nuance that made many discussions actually interesting I've stopped using Quora because of that move, too. I remember it was actually done in two parts - first they limited the context (to something like 300 characters, I think), then entirely removed it. Sigh. The new anti-feature of blending different questions/answer is... one of the worst functionalities I've ever experienced. I guess they're trying to focus on the addict/timewasting audience at the expense of the more balanced one.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- unity1001 5y ago
  It still has quality content. You just have to pay attention to interact only with the type of content you want. Otherwise social network algo kicks in and starts spamming your feed with 'undesirable' content you interacted with. My feed is so full with stuff that I have real interest in that I avoid visiting the main feed to avoid getting stuck reading stuff.
fullshark 5y ago
People like helping people, it gives them a sense of self-worth. Answering questions also can make you feel smart. Now think about how many important websites are functionally built by free labor due to this: Wikipedia, Stack Overflow, subreddits you like, this site etc. It doesn't seem sustainable does it?
- ternaryoperator 5y ago
  How not? I think the desire to share expertise is inexhaustible in some people. God bless them for that!
- Anthony-G 5y ago
  It’s not all altruism. Answering interesting questions is a fabulous way of improving your own knowledge of a particular topic. It’s not until you start to explain something to someone else that you realise all the gaps in your own understanding. Many times, I would see a Stack Exchange and think “that’s a quick and/or easy question to answer” – only to discover there are more subtleties and possible edge cases to consider once you really start thinking about it. Before you know it you’ve spent over an hour trying to answer the question as comprehensively as possible. > Answering questions also can make you feel smart. Not so much. Though, when I read answers that I wrote years ago, I think my past self was a lot smarter than my present self. I’d also view Wikipedia and Stack Exchange with their GFDL and Creative Commons licenses as being the textual equivalents of the FOSS world. Both are projects that I’ve benefited a lot from so it’s nice to be able to give something back.
  - teh_klev 5y ago
    > Though, when I read answers that I wrote years ago, I think my past self was a lot smarter than my present self. I was trawling back through my Stack Overflow answers which go all the way back to the closed beta. Some of them I looked at and thought "am I getting old or stupid, past me seems super decent at this stuff". I wondered if it was just me but it's a relief to know someone else has these feelings.
Havoc 5y ago
>Were people ever in Quora? It briefly had hn like quality to it. Then they got acquired (I think) stuck a login wall in front of it and the spark died.
- logicalmonster 5y ago
  The login wall probably marginally increased whatever signup metrics they were tracking and some middle manager at Quora probably patted themselves on the head for a job well done for that genius idea, but it killed my interest in Quora too. I can't be bothered to try and login every single time and I just started purposefully avoiding Quora links going forward once that was implemented. And it's a shame because the content is pretty great and a site geared around answering questions could be the most amazing source of human knowledge out there. But it doesn't work if you purposely try and restrict the content.
  - toss1 5y ago
    seconded, every point.
sdo72 5y ago
In the early days, Quora has exceptionally high quality content. I enjoyed the experts writing answers on Quora platform. It was not only just gaining some random knowledge, but it was also entertaining reading from them. I read pretty much every night before sleep during that time. Then it gradually degrades (maybe the pressure of putting ads on to make money), the quality has gone downhill dramatically. It's been a few years, I have no longer considered answers from Quora as worthy.
- larrywright 5y ago
  Agree 100%. Quora in the very beginning was great. It gradually became less useful as they tried to monetize and prioritized engagement over everything else. It’s now something I actively avoid. I unsubscribed from their digest email a while back, it had devolved into clickbait - mostly thinly veiled prompts for salacious responses, most of which were Letters to Penthouse style fiction. It’s something that had a lot of potential, but like so many other things it fell victim to the quest for profit and engagement.
colechristensen 5y ago
It’s a game, winning feels good. They also do pay top contributors.
unity1001 5y ago
300 million monthly users as of this point in time. Were you living under a rock.
aaron695 5y ago
> Were people ever in Quora? Unless you own ycombinator you are not in HN either by that strange logic. The same for computer games, which is what Quora is/was to many people. Almost no one is in anything by these rules. Is a child even in a family if they have zero say on family matters under this logic?
vintermann 5y ago
In as much as quora connected you with other real people, of course it was worthwhile. The problem was that quora paid people to flood the site with "quality" questions they didn't really care about the answer to. So the other people were often an illusion.

freedomben 5y ago

It's been a long time since I went to Quora but they used to have some really high quality answers from real experts. Quality was always a little hit and miss but the good answers were really good.

fault1 5y ago
It basically was the anti-Yahoo Answers. Over time, it became just like Yahoo Answers.
- wyclif 5y ago
  There should probably be a Zawinski-like law for this. "Over time, all question-and-answers sites attempt to expand until they become Yahoo Answers."
smoe 5y ago
What killed Quora for me was their push towards canonical question/answers, not allowing for any context to a question, ridding it of a lot of the nuance that made many discussions actually interesting. Now there seems to be just more and more rehashing of the same questions that have already been beaten to death waiting to get merged together. I was somewhat active for a while writing answers, but every time I wanted to ask a question the algorithm "forced" me to generalize it more and more to the point where I'm no longer interested in the answer. And I also felt the same with the questions Quora wanted me to answer.
- pizza234 5y ago
  > What killed Quora for me was their push towards canonical question/answers, not allowing for any context to a question, ridding it of a lot of the nuance that made many discussions actually interesting I've stopped using Quora because of that move, too. I remember it was actually done in two parts - first they limited the context (to something like 300 characters, I think), then entirely removed it. Sigh. The new anti-feature of blending different questions/answer is... one of the worst functionalities I've ever experienced. I guess they're trying to focus on the addict/timewasting audience at the expense of the more balanced one.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
unity1001 5y ago
It still has quality content. You just have to pay attention to interact only with the type of content you want. Otherwise social network algo kicks in and starts spamming your feed with 'undesirable' content you interacted with. My feed is so full with stuff that I have real interest in that I avoid visiting the main feed to avoid getting stuck reading stuff.

fullshark 5y ago

People like helping people, it gives them a sense of self-worth. Answering questions also can make you feel smart. Now think about how many important websites are functionally built by free labor due to this: Wikipedia, Stack Overflow, subreddits you like, this site etc. It doesn't seem sustainable does it?

ternaryoperator 5y ago
How not? I think the desire to share expertise is inexhaustible in some people. God bless them for that!
Anthony-G 5y ago
It’s not all altruism. Answering interesting questions is a fabulous way of improving your own knowledge of a particular topic. It’s not until you start to explain something to someone else that you realise all the gaps in your own understanding. Many times, I would see a Stack Exchange and think “that’s a quick and/or easy question to answer” – only to discover there are more subtleties and possible edge cases to consider once you really start thinking about it. Before you know it you’ve spent over an hour trying to answer the question as comprehensively as possible. > Answering questions also can make you feel smart. Not so much. Though, when I read answers that I wrote years ago, I think my past self was a lot smarter than my present self. I’d also view Wikipedia and Stack Exchange with their GFDL and Creative Commons licenses as being the textual equivalents of the FOSS world. Both are projects that I’ve benefited a lot from so it’s nice to be able to give something back.
- teh_klev 5y ago
  > Though, when I read answers that I wrote years ago, I think my past self was a lot smarter than my present self. I was trawling back through my Stack Overflow answers which go all the way back to the closed beta. Some of them I looked at and thought "am I getting old or stupid, past me seems super decent at this stuff". I wondered if it was just me but it's a relief to know someone else has these feelings.

Havoc 5y ago

>Were people ever in Quora? It briefly had hn like quality to it. Then they got acquired (I think) stuck a login wall in front of it and the spark died.

logicalmonster 5y ago
The login wall probably marginally increased whatever signup metrics they were tracking and some middle manager at Quora probably patted themselves on the head for a job well done for that genius idea, but it killed my interest in Quora too. I can't be bothered to try and login every single time and I just started purposefully avoiding Quora links going forward once that was implemented. And it's a shame because the content is pretty great and a site geared around answering questions could be the most amazing source of human knowledge out there. But it doesn't work if you purposely try and restrict the content.
- toss1 5y ago
  seconded, every point.

sdo72 5y ago

In the early days, Quora has exceptionally high quality content. I enjoyed the experts writing answers on Quora platform. It was not only just gaining some random knowledge, but it was also entertaining reading from them. I read pretty much every night before sleep during that time. Then it gradually degrades (maybe the pressure of putting ads on to make money), the quality has gone downhill dramatically. It's been a few years, I have no longer considered answers from Quora as worthy.

larrywright 5y ago
Agree 100%. Quora in the very beginning was great. It gradually became less useful as they tried to monetize and prioritized engagement over everything else. It’s now something I actively avoid. I unsubscribed from their digest email a while back, it had devolved into clickbait - mostly thinly veiled prompts for salacious responses, most of which were Letters to Penthouse style fiction. It’s something that had a lot of potential, but like so many other things it fell victim to the quest for profit and engagement.

colechristensen 5y ago

It’s a game, winning feels good. They also do pay top contributors.

unity1001 5y ago

300 million monthly users as of this point in time. Were you living under a rock.

aaron695 5y ago

> Were people ever in Quora? Unless you own ycombinator you are not in HN either by that strange logic. The same for computer games, which is what Quora is/was to many people. Almost no one is in anything by these rules. Is a child even in a family if they have zero say on family matters under this logic?

vintermann 5y ago

In as much as quora connected you with other real people, of course it was worthwhile. The problem was that quora paid people to flood the site with "quality" questions they didn't really care about the answer to. So the other people were often an illusion.