4 ms·

If There Are No Stupid Questions, Then How Do You Explain Quora?

35 points by samizdis 3y ago

subjectsigma 3y ago
The article is all about how Quora is useless because of the lack of quality content. Interestingly, I could say the same thing about this article, and most reporting from the Atlantic. I read a few paragraphs where the author complained about spam and then hit a paywall. Seriously, if you didn’t know about Quora before today - what useful takeaways could possibly be derived from this?
PaulHoule 3y ago
See https://archive.ph/jb8oe https://archive.ph/jb8oe All I can say is that some reporters seem very slow to catch on to enshittification. In my opinion Quora was clearly pretty bad within two years of its start.
- duskwuff 3y ago
  I don't remember exactly when, but I remember some point a while back where Quora started incentivizing users to ask and answer questions, and users responded by creating tons of low-effort arithmetic questions (like, on the order of "what is two plus three"). I don't know offhand exactly what they did to stop it, but it was a half measure at best. Once the dam broke and "stupid questions" were accepted, it was only a matter of time until it ended up right where Yahoo Answers used to be.
dirtyhippiefree 3y ago
One observation: No quality threshold. The stupid question is one you already know the answer to. Fits a lot of their questions…
- jfengel 3y ago
  The site worked for some time with no sort of quality threshold. Some sites manage to do ok based largely on the goodwill of its user base, including HN here, as well as Wikipedia. In both cases it had someone with a banhammer who stomps on the worst offenders fast. And Quora is definitely lacking that right now. A smallish number of trolls create accounts in bulk and seem to spend considerable free time thinking up new variations of the same obscenities. Quora doesn't even pretend to be proactive about stopping that. At best the automated moderation will take action eventually, but often not. That's not even taking into account that Quora has welcomed white supremacists. As long as they keep to their own sub groups Quora doesn't care how violent the racist rhetoric is. But of course such things leak out.
cratermoon 3y ago
See also Yahoo! Answers. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo!_Answers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo!_Answers>, made infamous by the "How is babby formed" question. <https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/how-is-babby-formed https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/how-is-babby-formed>
fullshark 3y ago
Genuinely baffling "article." Just seems to be a Quora user complaining about how the website stinks now. No insights into the economics that drives that, and how it's a reflection of the economics of advertisement/referral based media on the internet in front of paywalls.
loughnane 3y ago
Quora was a breath of fresh air at first--I think it was '10 or '11. Too soon though it was flooded with meme questions and SEO-smelling answers. Ironically then they wouldn't let you view answers without being logged in. I moved answers I was proud of to my website and I moved on.
- gs17 3y ago
  It's gotten worse, now (and the article mentions it) you get a ChatGPT answer first, which often is completely hallucinated. It's really great when you get a result where the AI answer and human answer totally disagree.
  - duskwuff 3y ago
    The worst part about that is that the ChatGPT answers are indexed by Google and can appear as featured snippets. I've seen some cases where this can end up showcasing an inept or downright nonsensical generated answer on SERPs.
  - JambalayaJim 3y ago
    What in God’s name were they thinking placing ChatGPT answers in there? Can users not just go to Chat GPT to get those answers?
    - jfengel 3y ago
      Adam D'Angelo is on the board of both ChatGPT and Quora. Quora has hitched its star to AI and has little interest in its human contributors. Expect it to jettison them entirely at some point.
microtherion 3y ago
In addition to stupid questions, Quora also seems to be an unceasing fount of tall tales in the answers.
chauzer 3y ago
Quora was amazing the first couple of years. The experience is now terrible. Perhaps intentional to drive more views. I can't tell if there's actually an answer to a question or not. It's bloated with ads, related questions, answers to related questions, all within the same feed where I expected an answer to the question I'm viewing.

35 points by samizdis 3y ago

The article is all about how Quora is useless because of the lack of quality content. Interestingly, I could say the same thing about this article, and most reporting from the Atlantic. I read a few paragraphs where the author complained about spam and then hit a paywall. Seriously, if you didn’t know about Quora before today - what useful takeaways could possibly be derived from this?

PaulHoule 3y ago

See https://archive.ph/jb8oe https://archive.ph/jb8oe All I can say is that some reporters seem very slow to catch on to enshittification. In my opinion Quora was clearly pretty bad within two years of its start.

duskwuff 3y ago
I don't remember exactly when, but I remember some point a while back where Quora started incentivizing users to ask and answer questions, and users responded by creating tons of low-effort arithmetic questions (like, on the order of "what is two plus three"). I don't know offhand exactly what they did to stop it, but it was a half measure at best. Once the dam broke and "stupid questions" were accepted, it was only a matter of time until it ended up right where Yahoo Answers used to be.

dirtyhippiefree 3y ago

One observation: No quality threshold. The stupid question is one you already know the answer to. Fits a lot of their questions…

jfengel 3y ago
The site worked for some time with no sort of quality threshold. Some sites manage to do ok based largely on the goodwill of its user base, including HN here, as well as Wikipedia. In both cases it had someone with a banhammer who stomps on the worst offenders fast. And Quora is definitely lacking that right now. A smallish number of trolls create accounts in bulk and seem to spend considerable free time thinking up new variations of the same obscenities. Quora doesn't even pretend to be proactive about stopping that. At best the automated moderation will take action eventually, but often not. That's not even taking into account that Quora has welcomed white supremacists. As long as they keep to their own sub groups Quora doesn't care how violent the racist rhetoric is. But of course such things leak out.

cratermoon 3y ago

See also Yahoo! Answers. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo!_Answers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo!_Answers>, made infamous by the "How is babby formed" question. <https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/how-is-babby-formed https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/how-is-babby-formed>

fullshark 3y ago

Genuinely baffling "article." Just seems to be a Quora user complaining about how the website stinks now. No insights into the economics that drives that, and how it's a reflection of the economics of advertisement/referral based media on the internet in front of paywalls.

loughnane 3y ago

Quora was a breath of fresh air at first--I think it was '10 or '11. Too soon though it was flooded with meme questions and SEO-smelling answers. Ironically then they wouldn't let you view answers without being logged in. I moved answers I was proud of to my website and I moved on.

gs17 3y ago
It's gotten worse, now (and the article mentions it) you get a ChatGPT answer first, which often is completely hallucinated. It's really great when you get a result where the AI answer and human answer totally disagree.
- duskwuff 3y ago
  The worst part about that is that the ChatGPT answers are indexed by Google and can appear as featured snippets. I've seen some cases where this can end up showcasing an inept or downright nonsensical generated answer on SERPs.
- JambalayaJim 3y ago
  What in God’s name were they thinking placing ChatGPT answers in there? Can users not just go to Chat GPT to get those answers?
  - jfengel 3y ago
    Adam D'Angelo is on the board of both ChatGPT and Quora. Quora has hitched its star to AI and has little interest in its human contributors. Expect it to jettison them entirely at some point.

microtherion 3y ago

In addition to stupid questions, Quora also seems to be an unceasing fount of tall tales in the answers.

chauzer 3y ago

Quora was amazing the first couple of years. The experience is now terrible. Perhaps intentional to drive more views. I can't tell if there's actually an answer to a question or not. It's bloated with ads, related questions, answers to related questions, all within the same feed where I expected an answer to the question I'm viewing.