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I have a strong memory that Quora used to be quite good, and then was suddenly horrendous. Is this just me?

by permo-w 3y ago

ConSeannery 3y ago
Not just you, it used to have solely high quality Q&A...then the yahoo answers folks migrated over
- permo-w 3y ago
  if this was the main cause, the expected result would be lots of highly-upvoted bad answers, as opposed to lots of scarcely-upvoted bad answers that somehow rank highly in Google searches
dwighttk 3y ago
Quora used to be good but then they had to try to make revenue
- permo-w 3y ago
  Quora has plenty of potential for making consistent profit without whoring itself out, but consistent profit isn't enough in the post-Freedman world that we live in
rjh29 3y ago
They started monetizing it by paying people to write answers, so it's now full of blogspam.
rchaud 3y ago
Quora was excellent for SEO, so brands and companies started using Quora answers to pump their own products and services. It's completely useless now.
- permo-w 3y ago
  I wouldn't say that's the problem I've observed. around 2015 or so I remember consistent useful Quora answers from Quora. it was Yahoo answers but better because people could justify with qualifications. I actually had an account briefly then I'm not exactly sure when, but definitely by 2018, every answer I ever see on Google is either incorrect, answering the wrong question, or in broken English. commonly all three at once I don't recall ever seeing a product placement, although admittedly I stopped clicking a long time ago my educated guess is that due to some likely seo-related concern they deleted/archived/unlisted their old good quality answers in favour of newer more seo-friendly answers it may not even be their fault, it's possible that Google's algorithm just doesn't drag up older answers from their website, but given my experience with the decision-making in the brief time I was a user there (e.g. removing the ability to add a description to questions) I suspect not

I have a strong memory that Quora used to be quite good, and then was suddenly horrendous. Is this just me?

ConSeannery 3y ago

Not just you, it used to have solely high quality Q&A...then the yahoo answers folks migrated over

permo-w 3y ago
if this was the main cause, the expected result would be lots of highly-upvoted bad answers, as opposed to lots of scarcely-upvoted bad answers that somehow rank highly in Google searches

dwighttk 3y ago

Quora used to be good but then they had to try to make revenue

permo-w 3y ago
Quora has plenty of potential for making consistent profit without whoring itself out, but consistent profit isn't enough in the post-Freedman world that we live in

rjh29 3y ago

They started monetizing it by paying people to write answers, so it's now full of blogspam.

rchaud 3y ago

Quora was excellent for SEO, so brands and companies started using Quora answers to pump their own products and services. It's completely useless now.

permo-w 3y ago
I wouldn't say that's the problem I've observed. around 2015 or so I remember consistent useful Quora answers from Quora. it was Yahoo answers but better because people could justify with qualifications. I actually had an account briefly then I'm not exactly sure when, but definitely by 2018, every answer I ever see on Google is either incorrect, answering the wrong question, or in broken English. commonly all three at once I don't recall ever seeing a product placement, although admittedly I stopped clicking a long time ago my educated guess is that due to some likely seo-related concern they deleted/archived/unlisted their old good quality answers in favour of newer more seo-friendly answers it may not even be their fault, it's possible that Google's algorithm just doesn't drag up older answers from their website, but given my experience with the decision-making in the brief time I was a user there (e.g. removing the ability to add a description to questions) I suspect not