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Tell HN: Add ?share=1 to Quora URLs to display content without login
- Piskvorrr 13y agoSo, essentially, Quora is now expertsexchange, with page cloaking and whatnot? Good to know. (I hope they won't remove this method now that it's publicized...)
- jaredsohn 13y agoIt has been for over a year now. http://www.quora.com/Quora/Why-hasnt-Google-banned-Quora-for-hiding-answers-from-search-engine-visitors?share=1 http://www.quora.com/Quora/Why-hasnt-Google-banned-Quora-for... Edit: Link fixed :)
- justincormack 13y agoOf course I tried clicking on Android and it refuses to show stuff without me installing the app. Ban them Google!
- acdha 13y agoThe more people who report webspam, the more likely that is to happen…
- RyanMcGreal 13y agoAhem. http://www.quora.com/Quora/Why-hasnt-Google-banned-Quora-for-hiding-answers-from-search-engine-visitors?share=1 http://www.quora.com/Quora/Why-hasnt-Google-banned-Quora-for...
- gregclermont 13y agoThey actually officially communicated about this method: Open any Quora URL. If you come across a Quora link anywhere and you want to read it without being asked to join Quora, you can add the text "?share=1" to the end of the URL. http://blog.quora.com/Making-Sharing-Better http://blog.quora.com/Making-Sharing-Better
- eeeeeeeeeeeee 13y agoexpert sex change
- colemanfoley 13y agoIt's really not. Once you sign up, there are no pop-ups, nor are there advertisements of any kind.
- Piskvorrr 13y agoNope. Even if this promise were to hold true, I have no intention of supporting such scammy tactics as content cloaking (which I would by implicitly supporting the company which engages in them, thus validating it).
- silencio 13y agoThe problem everyone had with expertsexchange was most definitely not ads and popups.
- ohwp 13y agoSame with vBulletin™ boards. Change showthread.php?1234-title to printhread.php?t=1234 and suddenly you can read all the content (except for attachments) without login.
- thejosh 13y agoIt's really scummy that I land on these pages to be presented with a login box and need to do this trick to see the contents.
- JonnieCache 13y agoNice! Thanks for the tipoff. Another good one is simply to load the google cache. Often these sites want to turn up in search results, so they allow the googlebot to see the content, and then show the user a paywall. Obviously this means the full content ends up in the cache. This works for the Financial Times, and probably many other such places.
- AznHisoka 13y agoI wonder why Google doesn't do anything about it. It seems these big companies/brands get to get away with anything.
- fourstar 13y agoTried it on: http://forums.offtopic.com/printhread.php?t=5190971 http://forums.offtopic.com/printhread.php?t=5190971 And got redirected to the homepage instead.
- ssafejava 13y agoInterestingly, they used to just blur their text with effect, and the actual text was available in the source. I am not certain what prompted the change, but they now screenshot the text, blur it, and put the screenshot (!) in the page, preventing view source snooping. Since that started, I stopped reading Quora entirely and I always avoid their links. Occasionally there is some great content I can't find elsewhere, and I won't sign up to a service that is so abusive. This is a great trick. Thanks.
- benjaminwootton 13y agoYes, Quora are really quite obnoxious and spammy in many ways. It's a shame they went down this route after a promising start. They could have taken the StackOverflow route but chose to be Expert-Sex-Change instead.
- pestaa 13y agoIn case some people are not aware, Benjamin refers to the closed and paid Experts Exchange community, whose domain name is particularly easy to misread.
- chrismorgan 13y ago... and so, eventually, they moved to http://experts-exchange.com/ http://experts-exchange.com/.
- pc86 13y agoI'm still trying to figure out what a s-ex change is.
- PLenz 13y agoThat's what you need the expert for
- _quasimodo 13y ago
- bsullivan01 13y agoGreat hack but unless absolutely necessary I'll just keep searching to find the answer on other sites. Let them keep their info
- benologist 13y agoTrafficking their site is supporting their site and practices.
- zizee 13y agoOr better yet, install personal blocklist and never see Quora results in your search results again: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/personal-blocklist-by-goo/nolijncfnkgaikbjbdaogikpmpbdcdef https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/personal-blocklist...
- thejosh 13y agoGoogle having this as a feature for a while was great, annoying that they removed that....
- Kerrick 13y agoWell, the aforementioned extension is by Google, they just took the functionality out of Google Search and put it into an extension because it was easier to maintain for the number of users that used it.
- silverwind 13y agoAnd they "forgot" about Firefox users, it seems. I still hate Google for that move.
- deletes 13y agoI couldn't before but now i can see all the answers without ?share=1. Did they change their policy? I can't find any blurred answer anymore.
- voidiac 13y agoIf you have been on any answer with ?share=1 they're setting a cookie and you get no blurred answers until you remove the cookie or it expires.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- tech-no-logical 13y agofunny, I'm browsing with latest opera with some plugins (notably addblock plus and disconnect) and I can read everything without logging in and without adding the ?share=1 still not using that site though. edit : my mistake. it seems that once you've used a ?share=1 link, that changes some cookies so after that you seem to always see everything
- hearty778 13y agoMost likely, they have to meet VC benchmarks on the number of registered users. Sad what that site has become.
- joeblau 13y agoI see that a lot of people aren't happy with Quora, why is that? I've only asked one or two questions on there but the answers I've received have been alright.
- voidiac 13y agoThey are blurring the answers. If you search for something and end up on quora, it can get a bit frustrating , due to the fact, that you can't read the answers and are forced to sign up. That's just rude.
- gergles 13y agoThey abuse rel=canonical to increase their search engine rank but slam a registration wall in your face when you try to go read the content on their site. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6301280 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6301280
- waxjar 13y ago- They blur their answers for non-registered users. They're wasting my time when I think I find what I'm looking for only to find a blurred image. Just tell Google you don't want to be indexed if you don't want to share the content. - You can't use their website without using your real name. They're really persistent in this. A pseudonym won't do, they'll ask you to identify yourself with a scan of your ID before they let you participate. It's ridiculous.
- bdg 13y agoWebsites are growing in their nuisance of DOM-level UI breaking. I'm increasingly using the Inspector dev tool just to delete entire chunks of elements on websites. "Oh, you need me to click LIKE on your page? ... Deleted!" "Oh, your news article is 25% of the width of the page and the other 75% is navigation, ads, and other unrelated articles? Deleted!" "Oh, you have the annoying chat box that hovers in the bottom corner and hides things I actually wanted to see? Baleted!" I keep telling myself that eventually I'll add a deletion option to the right-click context menu but I never actually bother with it.
- mavhc 13y agoThere should be an adblocker list for popups, survey requests, etc
- Sprint 13y agoJust disable Javascript by default, it will protect your sanity.
- Dirlewanger 13y agoBut also nearly cripple a site's functionality aside from static content pages.
- Sprint 13y agoAs you can easily re-enable it with any decent browser (Opera 12 is great) that is no issue since if you actually want to have a site to have interactive features on its pages, just enable it. Otherwise, you get soothing, plain, static content. Most sites to not require Javascript for reading text or looking at images.
- k3n 13y agoIt is pretty refreshing to load a page and have it usable within fractions of a second, instead of it having to go and fetch an untold number of external scripts, initialize and create the widgets and objects, etc. Not to mention that sites with auto-play A/V are prevented from blaring at you without your permission.
- logicallee 13y agoJesus H. the lengths people go through not to register a throwaway astounds me. "How to get into a library without having to fill out a registration form" where the library doesn't care what you write in it, including Dicky McDick. Honestly. Just register under some kind of pseudo. The sense of entitlement here... why do you think people write great answers there? You're taking for granted the resource - which wouldn't exist if Quora didn't create and encourage a platform - and want to not give back to an uttely inane extent: even the idea of registering a pseudonym is abhorrent to you.
- darxius 13y agoYou're honestly asking why someone would rather take the quick and much more anonymous way out instead of registering? It makes perfect sense to me.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- anirudhrata 13y agoExactly. Quora doesn't even need a valid email for registering.
- gergles 13y ago> why do you think people write great answers there? Well, I certainly don't think it has anything to do with the fact that they require registration. People write great content on 4chan. > Jesus H. the lengths people go through not to register a throwaway astounds me. Have you ever actually been to Quora? The registration modal doesn't even give you the offer to register with a pseudonym that you so casually throw out. You get smacked in the face when you go to the site with a demand to link to your (real-name required) Google or Facebook accounts before you can so much as read 'their' precious content. To sign up with just an email address (that you then have to verify, which automatically opts you in to literally over 30 different 'newsletters' and notifications and other bits of spam that you have to manually opt out of individually). It certainly isn't just "type something into this form to shut up" as you suggest.
- Sagat 13y agoHow did you figure this out?
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- seanp2k2 13y agoThis is awesome; thanks for sharing. I still feel that Quora should promptly go die in a fire, Google should de-rank them, Stack Overflow should supersede them, and users should abandon them for the good of the internet, but what do I know.
- seiji 13y agoSO doesn't allow talky SV navel gazing opinion threads though.
- enscr 13y agoWhy the hatred? Quora isn't that bad. They fixed what google/yahoo answers couldn't
- krelian 13y agoThe tactics they are using basically mean they are dead. It's expertssexchange all over again.
- buncle 13y agoAgreed. There is some great content there, but its just such a shame it is hidden by a wall of frustration. SO/SE seems to have it pretty much nailed, but I guess Quora wanted to monetize quickly... to the detriment of its users.
- davej 13y agoTypo there. The original domain had potential to be misread too though! :-)
- codezero 13y agoIt's not funny unless it's a malapropism.
- astrodust 13y ago"Isn't that bad" and "Yahoo Answers" in the same sentence probably explains why. It's like saying dollar-store dog food isn't that bad...compared to malaria.
- yalogin 13y agoRather than that I have trained myself to never click on Quora links. I never understood why they became popular in the first place but then they went and thought forcing people to register to view pages is somehow needed for success on a Q&A site.
- seiji 13y agoThey became popular because of Founder Fame by Association. They started requiring registration because they belong to The Cult Of Registered User Metrics and they forgot the internet is 98% read and 2% contribute.
- a3n 13y agoYeah, I never click anymore. I have a login, I could probably ask them for it, but I'd have to log in every time because I never stay logged in to anything but HN, so meh.
- marchra 13y agoI don't understand how Google's algorithm doesn't understand that when I click on a Quora link on my phone it insists I install an app I already have. That's a negative reflecting on my search experience. I would imagine the ton of immediate bounce backs could tell it that.
- jentulman 13y agoThis is handy and all but have the last 12 months not taught us all that this sort of unauthorised access to systems can land you a period of state funded accommodation?
- wpietri 13y agoIt is authorized. They have published this and encourage people to use it. The main goal was, from what I could tell, to get popular writers to stop bitching about their interface all the time.
- rlf 13y agoI stopped going to Quora long ago because the site was just to annoying to use. It felt too dictorial.
- reginaldjcooper 13y agoor better yet just don't share links from Quora, let them die their shameless death, and instead post answers to things that want to be and remain open like Stack Overflow or your own blog.
- mofle 13y agoI wrote a Chrome [1] extension and UserScript [2] which does this automagically: [1]: https://github.com/sindresorhus/quora-unblocker https://github.com/sindresorhus/quora-unblocker [2]: https://github.com/sindresorhus/quora-unblocker-userscript https://github.com/sindresorhus/quora-unblocker-userscript
- mkolodny 13y agoThis fact was reported on the official Quora blog back in February (http://blog.quora.com/Making-Sharing-Better http://blog.quora.com/Making-Sharing-Better). > If you come across a Quora link anywhere and you want to read it without being asked to join Quora, you can add the text "?share=1" to the end of the URL.
- slig 13y agoThey're too big to fail, they have some very nice friends at Google or they're some kind of big shot AdWords client. Google should come out and do their thing banning them.
- nollidge 13y agoAlternatively, I could just not read Quora.
- colemanfoley 13y agoThe hostility to Quora seems a little excessive. Is it so bad to just sign up, then be able to use it from then on? I don't see why someone would actually be offended by this kind of thing.
- Piskvorrr 13y agoYou are attacking a straw man argument. The problem lies not with registration, but with purposeful degradation of content a la expertsexchange, for the purpose of _forcing_ registration just for viewing. I'm _not_ interested in registering into every walled garden out there on the Internet, just for the purpose of reading a result of a web search. (All right all right, you can do the "but it's technically not content cloaking" quora astroturf dance now; but you know the saying: if it walks like duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck...)
- cpeterso 13y agoI'd like a Firefox add-on that can rewrite URLs that "fix" sites. This Quora fix is one. Another is "&pagewanted=1" on nytimes.com to force single-page article view.