Thank you so much for this awesome post! We did think about scientific papers and journals but are not phd level scientists ourselves. We thought more in terms about how hard it is for journal writers to spread their knowledge to a broader audience. Your point is very interesting and novel. Really wish we could discuss further about it and possibly implement it! Please get in touch!
Not sure which answers you are referring to because there only about 3 or videos in the site. May be you were talking about the demo and the help videos. The demo video has been taken down.
You were very right macspoofing, the video was watched to the end by only a handful of the people and have been removed. The video was a bad idea in hindsight since those who could've got a feel for the sight by using it for themselves and then given an opinion about it never did. And now that chance to get the smart people here to do that is gone. But thanks for your input and have a great day!
Thank you kindly Joebo and thank you for your awesome ideas. In fact we have thought about this exact thing, and there is a set height to the answer window to encourage short answers beyond which the users will have to scroll down and there is a page numbering system to show you how many pages there are/are left. We didn't go all the way and put a hard limit though but it is a very interesting idea and will see if others like it as well. The idea of the competition for succinct bullseye answers is also awesome! Since answers can be voted up and those with long answers requiring the scrolling may not be read as much or questioned more, there is an indirect route to this end effect currently implemented but may need improving. Please check it out and give feedback if possible.
Ah the "curse of knowledge"! That is such a bulls eye, home run, out of the park, spot on, accurate assessment and perfect read on your part! The curse of knowledge alienates most of the brightest minds from the rest us which is really sad and simple access to structured questioning could help remedy that age old problem.
As far as I remember the "five whys" should end in a feeling. Right now I feel really energized and inspired by your input since I now know that there are those out there like you who I really need and hope will get directly involved in helping this thing grow in the right direction! Do please keep in touch will ya!?
Thank you so much for that as it is really well thought out and it is so refreshing to find someone instantly "get it"! I would like to personally invite you to create those questions sometime in Quetree and then we can figure out how to invite the whole global community to solve them! But please do keep in touch as it is very valuable to have people aligned with our vision from the very beginning! With help from people like you we hope to reach out to a broader audience and once we do, who better to help run things than those who were there from the start. Thanks again for your valuable input and hope to communicate with you again soon!
Thank you for your very intelligent, thought provoking and inspiring comment. Building a great community around knowledge is the dream. And I really appreciate your curiousities!
About voting: we really thought really hard about this very hard thing and it is a very hard problem to solve. As you said earlier, we need more experimental communities to really be sure as there may be limited unadulterated evidence as to its effectiveness currently. But we looked at review sites as a guide - they seem to work pretty good. So the argument is: if people can help each other choose products or services they could theoretically also help with choosing ideas. But we know its not as easy as that.
We are starting by catering to the good members, those with only good intentions and not to game the system, and then to worry about how the bad or unsuspecting ones can spoil it for everyone. So given such a group of good members we thought it more beneficial for everyone if each person could make it easier for the next one by making a good choice and voting up. It would be better to use their time and efforts. This is contrasting to where no one is trusted and each person has to start from the beginning and go through all choices thus not benefitting from the time and thoughts spent by those who went through the same thing before.
But you hit at a deeper problem here which is really really hard to answer: how do you make something popular while giving equal importance to every other thing. By giving something precedence, e.g. calling it a better apple, aren’t you by definition making all the other apples worser? And if you call all of them equal then do you do justice to the already ripe ones?
But this problem really kept us up at nights: what will happen to the the poor and specially bright genius who can achieve transcendental insights but is against huge hoards who simply “don’t get it”. Because it is indeed a beautiful aspect of humankind. And that brings us to your last point - namely the supporting, conflicting feature. That one was designed with this very thing in mind. So that the inspired can create a conflicting idea to what has been accepted by the majority - and those who see that there is a conflicting answers to the prevailing accepted one, will hopefully take a closer look then and then spend more time deciding. Those who voted earlier on the prevailing one can change their minds and vote on the new insightful one and slowly the acceptance rating will sway to the new one as will the ranking and medals (it is all implemented already). A big part of Quetree is identify what is the popularly accepted so that we at least know if that needs to change and have a shot at changing it. Quetree is incepted to may be help change what is popular to take us closer to a world where the majority is wiser and more adaptive.
But the supporting and conflicting feature is not meant to quadratically complicate answering - it is served as an extra feature to be used when needed as exampled above but is safely tucked away hidden, and have to be expanded to use.
To address your other good point about hierarchy, that one is truly experimental. The idea is to encourage the path towards hierarchy-izing ideas and may be even over-hierarchy-izing them over over-hierarchy-izing men and kings that us humans have been doing naturally for eons. If we can have a hierarchy of ideas we can constructly move them around (ideal mobilization vs social mobilization ;), they won’t mind nor fight back, unlike the kings or authoritative figures who hold on for dear life.
I like how your brain thinks and I suspect we could’ve hung around and have long philosophical conversations that would be both enjoyable and inspiring. Please keep in touch, thanks and have a great day!
Yes thank you very much for detailed and helpful comment. You are very right in your well written points. Discovered “The Lean Startup” book only very late in the game lol. But I doubt it would have changed our course much since we are true rebels and any Tried and Proven Strategy is probably not exciting enough ;) !
Thanks again and have a great day!
Thank you very much mirimir for your profound comment. There are some differences with Quora - more emphasis on knowledge rather than celebrities to follow, less noise, discover new questions with new knowledge gain... There is a points system with medals and trophies for moderation and verification (also followup questions :) (Had the idea before Quora back in 2008). Please keep in touch through the contact-us page! You're awesome!
This is what is so great about HN and the members here. You even went through the trouble of finding the longest thread. Thank you very much for your valuable input and for your kind wishes! Will try the best to refine the soonest and best we can. Please keep in touch through quetree.com/contact-us.
Thank you for checking out our new site. We have worked really hard on this for a very long time (years) to bring you something very new and exciting. Included a video tour before posting here to HN so that you can view some of the main features without having to sign up. But please do sign up if you like as your engagement and opinion is highly valued! Thanks and have a great day!