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The early days of Quora was incredibly high quality content from experts in all sorts of fields. Was probably my favorite website, then they decided to start p

The early days of Quora was incredibly high quality content from experts in all sorts of fields. Was probably my favorite website, then they decided to start paying people for questions / answers and it all went to shit so incredibly quickly. The site today is completely unrecognizable from it's origins, really sad.

dredmorbius 2y ago
This is incidentally an endemic problem of online discussion sites. There is only one possible quality flow gradient, and that is downwards. If a site begins well, with high-quality and relevant content, then those who wish to exploitatively extract value from that factor will be attracted to it. Eventually the clue up and leaves. If a site begins poorly, with low-quality and irrelevant content, and quite often, abuse, disrespect, fraud, crime, and disinformation to boot ... the clue leaves early and the site rapidly becomes a cesspit. There's a third option, of course, though one still consistent with the quality flow gradient: holding a steady state. Site quality doesn't improve, but it doesn't markedly deteriorate either. I'd put a small handful of online sites in that category, HN, LWN, and Metafilter top my own list, though I suspect there are others. What's key is that there's a sufficiently small community that norms enforcement is significantly socialised, there's effective and diligent moderation, and crucially (and possibly not the case with my examples) there's fresh blood introduced over time consistent with quality standards. Absent this last, such fora can continue for a time, even over many decades, but eventually stale, often becoming incestuous, and ultimately dying out. Among real-world institutions which seem to manage to find similar stable points, I'd include most especially academic institutions, which balance a high flux of students with a far more stable faculty and staff cohort. Selective-admissions schools have retained high rank for many decades or centuries, in some cases millennia. Cities, larger political units (states and/or empires), some businesses (including especially professional services firms) and professional organisations (e.g., not-for-profits rather than businesses) may also succeed, at least over the decades-to-centuries span. (Charles Perrow includes a discussion of several noncommercial / nongovernmental organisations with significant changes, we'd now call them "pivots", over the 20th century, in Complex Organizations (1972, 1984).) The media-quality-gradient is largely a result of scaling laws, the fact that elite cohorts (high degrees of expertise, sociability, and intelligence) tend to be small, and that once an interaction grows beyond the size of such a cohort it will incorporate participants less able, willing, and/or interested in maintaining original standards. I've posted occasionally on large-scale detailed studies of literacy (in the US) and computer skills (OECD) which show that at a population level only about 15% of the population has high literacy, numeracy, and/or computer skills, and that as much as half operate at poor or "worse than poor" levels. As I've discussed previously, this is both discouraging to those who consider themselves among the higher levels, and of significant concern in constructing systems which must and can be used by large portions of society, including those with low intrinsic capabilities (very young, old, sick, injured/traumatised, and the intrinsically less able). Ideally I'd prefer to see elite support where appropriate, but common accessibility where at all possible.
- ForTheKidz 2y ago
  Yes. This also holds for my favorite community on the internet, /r/AskHistorians on reddit. It's the mod team that holds it all together despite the rest of the site being a general dumpster fire. (Curiously, the least competent moderation I've ever witnessed on the internet is on the front page of reddit, specifically /r/worldnews)
  - brookst 2y ago
    /r/AskHistorians is a case study in well-managed community at scale. Sadly I don’t think it would work for standalone business that had to pay the bills.
    - dredmorbius 2y ago
      As good as AH is, and it is, it's still got some grave issues. I'd bailed after links to LibGen / SciHub were getting my comments moderated. Which incidentally points at a problem with moderation: no matter how well-intended, or overall effective, people take issue with their contributions being penalised and removed, especially if they sense unfairness. (Also, especially, if there's a social- or political-group bias detected, again, regardless of merits, but that be 'nother can of worms.) I'm left with David Weinberger's observation: "Conversation doesn't scale". <https://dweinberger.medium.com/the-social-web-before-social-networking-a-report-from-2003-3e8fe109cf0c https://dweinberger.medium.com/the-social-web-before-social-...>
- skeeter2020 2y ago
  Not just online discussion sites; any community system. It feels like the typical growth & decay function of a lot of systems, just at internet speed. My experience: the only way to stay good is to stay small and exclusive, but the internet attacks this defense directly and destroyed it, and at the same time destroyed itself. You need to find the "golden age" of all these systems, enjoy them while you can, try and protect them but recognize their transient nature, and then aggressively cull and move on. Hold onto values not manifestations.
nyarlathotep_ 2y ago
Feels like it had a very short lifespan. I recall it being good from 2011-2013-ish and then it seemed to have totally degenerated. I'm surprised it still exists at this point. Who is it for now?

dredmorbius 2y ago

This is incidentally an endemic problem of online discussion sites. There is only one possible quality flow gradient, and that is downwards. If a site begins well, with high-quality and relevant content, then those who wish to exploitatively extract value from that factor will be attracted to it. Eventually the clue up and leaves. If a site begins poorly, with low-quality and irrelevant content, and quite often, abuse, disrespect, fraud, crime, and disinformation to boot ... the clue leaves early and the site rapidly becomes a cesspit. There's a third option, of course, though one still consistent with the quality flow gradient: holding a steady state. Site quality doesn't improve, but it doesn't markedly deteriorate either. I'd put a small handful of online sites in that category, HN, LWN, and Metafilter top my own list, though I suspect there are others. What's key is that there's a sufficiently small community that norms enforcement is significantly socialised, there's effective and diligent moderation, and crucially (and possibly not the case with my examples) there's fresh blood introduced over time consistent with quality standards. Absent this last, such fora can continue for a time, even over many decades, but eventually stale, often becoming incestuous, and ultimately dying out. Among real-world institutions which seem to manage to find similar stable points, I'd include most especially academic institutions, which balance a high flux of students with a far more stable faculty and staff cohort. Selective-admissions schools have retained high rank for many decades or centuries, in some cases millennia. Cities, larger political units (states and/or empires), some businesses (including especially professional services firms) and professional organisations (e.g., not-for-profits rather than businesses) may also succeed, at least over the decades-to-centuries span. (Charles Perrow includes a discussion of several noncommercial / nongovernmental organisations with significant changes, we'd now call them "pivots", over the 20th century, in Complex Organizations (1972, 1984).) The media-quality-gradient is largely a result of scaling laws, the fact that elite cohorts (high degrees of expertise, sociability, and intelligence) tend to be small, and that once an interaction grows beyond the size of such a cohort it will incorporate participants less able, willing, and/or interested in maintaining original standards. I've posted occasionally on large-scale detailed studies of literacy (in the US) and computer skills (OECD) which show that at a population level only about 15% of the population has high literacy, numeracy, and/or computer skills, and that as much as half operate at poor or "worse than poor" levels. As I've discussed previously, this is both discouraging to those who consider themselves among the higher levels, and of significant concern in constructing systems which must and can be used by large portions of society, including those with low intrinsic capabilities (very young, old, sick, injured/traumatised, and the intrinsically less able). Ideally I'd prefer to see elite support where appropriate, but common accessibility where at all possible.

ForTheKidz 2y ago
Yes. This also holds for my favorite community on the internet, /r/AskHistorians on reddit. It's the mod team that holds it all together despite the rest of the site being a general dumpster fire. (Curiously, the least competent moderation I've ever witnessed on the internet is on the front page of reddit, specifically /r/worldnews)
- brookst 2y ago
  /r/AskHistorians is a case study in well-managed community at scale. Sadly I don’t think it would work for standalone business that had to pay the bills.
  - dredmorbius 2y ago
    As good as AH is, and it is, it's still got some grave issues. I'd bailed after links to LibGen / SciHub were getting my comments moderated. Which incidentally points at a problem with moderation: no matter how well-intended, or overall effective, people take issue with their contributions being penalised and removed, especially if they sense unfairness. (Also, especially, if there's a social- or political-group bias detected, again, regardless of merits, but that be 'nother can of worms.) I'm left with David Weinberger's observation: "Conversation doesn't scale". <https://dweinberger.medium.com/the-social-web-before-social-networking-a-report-from-2003-3e8fe109cf0c https://dweinberger.medium.com/the-social-web-before-social-...>
skeeter2020 2y ago
Not just online discussion sites; any community system. It feels like the typical growth & decay function of a lot of systems, just at internet speed. My experience: the only way to stay good is to stay small and exclusive, but the internet attacks this defense directly and destroyed it, and at the same time destroyed itself. You need to find the "golden age" of all these systems, enjoy them while you can, try and protect them but recognize their transient nature, and then aggressively cull and move on. Hold onto values not manifestations.

nyarlathotep_ 2y ago

Feels like it had a very short lifespan. I recall it being good from 2011-2013-ish and then it seemed to have totally degenerated. I'm surprised it still exists at this point. Who is it for now?