Ask HN: Is Quora Finished?
Somehow it looks like the wheels have fallen off the bus for Quora especially compared to Reddit which seems to offer everything that Quora should have been.
21 comments
if you see a flaw why not change it? be specific. competition is good
doesn't seem to be that dead https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=quora.com
doesn't seem to be that dead https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=quora.com
Most of those are from old links, and they're not generating a lot of content. On the first page of results, the longest comment thread is 12.
The highest engagement is from a fairly recent answer by a retired celebrity developer (Alan Kay), perfectly targeted to HN, but several more of his threads got much less engagement. Similarly, a thread on the second page of HN results got over 200 comments, reminiscing about the NeXT.
One "hit" per three months is definitely not dead, but questions like this one are inspired by the way the site used to be a Silicon Valley darling and is now widely considered passe.
The highest engagement is from a fairly recent answer by a retired celebrity developer (Alan Kay), perfectly targeted to HN, but several more of his threads got much less engagement. Similarly, a thread on the second page of HN results got over 200 comments, reminiscing about the NeXT.
One "hit" per three months is definitely not dead, but questions like this one are inspired by the way the site used to be a Silicon Valley darling and is now widely considered passe.
> competition is good
For the users, possibly. Not for someone who wants to start 'Quora, but a little different'.
For the users, possibly. Not for someone who wants to start 'Quora, but a little different'.
Quora lacks user moderation in a form that can effectively punish clickbait and trolling. Similarly the lack of discussion threads prevents effective criticism of a popular reply.
Its niche has been filled by a mix of Reddit, Stack Exchange and even us here at Hacker News.
Its niche has been filled by a mix of Reddit, Stack Exchange and even us here at Hacker News.
In my opinion, driving traffic was a success.
It came at a steep cost.
Very poor signal to noise ratio. Reputable or notable contributions do not rise above the noise well enough to preserve the initial reputability Quora began with.
Spaces are a mixed bag. Mostly good. Depends on the space, and the better ones are asking for features that make a lot of sense. It could get worse.
Quora does still retain a nice fraction of the initial top writers, and a fair number of those really still care.
Finished?
I don't think so. Time remains to improve.
If they do not decide what Quora is intended to be, then yes. Finished, and it will trundle along for a good while yet.
There does need to be a cleanup pass done, and with it very clear intent. Throughout the history of Quora, intent, to a large but not inclusive degree, culture, and overall site management have gone through multiple transitions.
Each of these netted some great ideas.
It appears few of those were given the attention and focus needed for it all to play out better than it currently has.
The high value leave behinds are disappointing.
It came at a steep cost.
Very poor signal to noise ratio. Reputable or notable contributions do not rise above the noise well enough to preserve the initial reputability Quora began with.
Spaces are a mixed bag. Mostly good. Depends on the space, and the better ones are asking for features that make a lot of sense. It could get worse.
Quora does still retain a nice fraction of the initial top writers, and a fair number of those really still care.
Finished?
I don't think so. Time remains to improve.
If they do not decide what Quora is intended to be, then yes. Finished, and it will trundle along for a good while yet.
There does need to be a cleanup pass done, and with it very clear intent. Throughout the history of Quora, intent, to a large but not inclusive degree, culture, and overall site management have gone through multiple transitions.
Each of these netted some great ideas.
It appears few of those were given the attention and focus needed for it all to play out better than it currently has.
The high value leave behinds are disappointing.
Asking this question on HN certainly helps! Let’s go for cc-by-sa collaboration faq sites.
Isn't that basically what Wikipedia is? The format isn't question-answer, but a search engine will probably hook you up with the correct Wikipedia link if you type in your question.
I do believe Quora has declined significantly. My personal issue with it is that it seems to be filled with low-quality promotional/SEO answers.
They were so heavy handed with the login rules. I probably would have been a regular user but it felt like a personal victory to not make an account.
I came here to say this, in these words.
Forced login with massive popups is retarded, would have been so in 1999, and is extra-so today.
Forced login with massive popups is retarded, would have been so in 1999, and is extra-so today.
Protip: if you add ?share=1 to any Quora URL on mobile, it bypasses the sign-up wall. It's annoying but it works. Sometimes I just want to know how many bones Jackie Chan has broken in his life.
But yes, Quora has gone down the road of Yelp and Pinterest, becoming web cancer. I hate it.
But yes, Quora has gone down the road of Yelp and Pinterest, becoming web cancer. I hate it.
The only differentiator I ever saw with Quora is the presence of known public figures answering questions about their own work or area of expertise. Really, it's not a whole lot different than a Reddit AMA in theory, but it at least felt like these people maintained a real presence and weren't just promoting their latest books or films.
But that is inherently not scalable. There are a limited number of celebrity subject matter experts.
Heck, I even used to use it myself for a while. It was fairly interesting being able to give detailed meaningful answers to questions about how government budgeting and defense contracting works in a totally non-political context where you just give the technical details and people seem to actually care. But I feel like it didn't last? I don't know what Quora could have done. Seemingly, the wave of utter nonstop political toxicity just took over the entire Internet. Being completely general purpose, they don't have the narrow niche appeal like the Stack Exchanges, Hacker News, and the few hobbyist sub-Reddits still worth going to that allows them to keep out the people just looking to shout and be heard.
The reality of the world these days seems to be you either go for quality but guarantee you're never going to get big, or you go all-in trying for a payday knowing you're almost certain to become a cesspool of toxic pointlessness, but hopefully addictive toxic pointlessness you can use to sell ad space.
But that is inherently not scalable. There are a limited number of celebrity subject matter experts.
Heck, I even used to use it myself for a while. It was fairly interesting being able to give detailed meaningful answers to questions about how government budgeting and defense contracting works in a totally non-political context where you just give the technical details and people seem to actually care. But I feel like it didn't last? I don't know what Quora could have done. Seemingly, the wave of utter nonstop political toxicity just took over the entire Internet. Being completely general purpose, they don't have the narrow niche appeal like the Stack Exchanges, Hacker News, and the few hobbyist sub-Reddits still worth going to that allows them to keep out the people just looking to shout and be heard.
The reality of the world these days seems to be you either go for quality but guarantee you're never going to get big, or you go all-in trying for a payday knowing you're almost certain to become a cesspool of toxic pointlessness, but hopefully addictive toxic pointlessness you can use to sell ad space.
Quora, along with Pinterest, are the bane of my search results.
append -quora.com in your search queries and Google will hide search results from it.
i suspect not.
they seem to show up a lot for me, still, for....almost any search i do.
and looking thru a lot of posts on idiehackers and related, it seems to be the number one place that small companies go to to get attention.
so, the quality may be 'finished', but...they're still highly relevant for most of the web.
they seem to show up a lot for me, still, for....almost any search i do.
and looking thru a lot of posts on idiehackers and related, it seems to be the number one place that small companies go to to get attention.
so, the quality may be 'finished', but...they're still highly relevant for most of the web.
Quora is hot garbage at this point. Is it dying? I would say yes. The original attraction of having world class people actively participate and contribute a lot seems long gone. They've incentivized posting with rewards. They also have a major spam and moderation problem which will be the long slow death into becoming yahoo answers.
Personal story, I used to spend a lot of time on there answering questions. My niche (web hosting) is awful. It's just bluehost affiliate link after some company you've never heard of self promo. It's obviously fake accounts using stock photos, fake names, networks of upvotes that are easy to detect. And yet... even after reporting many of them. It takes ages, if any action ever gets taken.
The worst experience which made me really stop using it for the most part. "Quora moderation has collapsed your answer for violating terms of service: be nice."
What was the problem?
I posted a long answer to a question asking about a fake company that clearly had spammed quora. I got 3 questions about a company I'd never heard of within 45 minutes from fake accounts using fake pictures/names. I researched the company, it doesn't legally exist. They were lying about when they were created (claiming to be 10 years old or something with a domain registered in last 2 years). There was no legal company in the state records with anything even close to their name (I actually had them reach out to me later and try to get listed on my review site and their representative even admitted they aren't legally incorporated). It was clearly spam and fraud. I posted all my evidence and reported the accounts.
The result? I was punished for exposing fraud and spam on Quora. Somehow that's not nice to point out and save people from falling victim to signing up for a company that doesn't exist, posts fake reviews and generates fake interest using Quora.
For the curious: https://www.quora.com/Who-is-the-ARZ-host/answer/Kevin-Ohash...
Personal story, I used to spend a lot of time on there answering questions. My niche (web hosting) is awful. It's just bluehost affiliate link after some company you've never heard of self promo. It's obviously fake accounts using stock photos, fake names, networks of upvotes that are easy to detect. And yet... even after reporting many of them. It takes ages, if any action ever gets taken.
The worst experience which made me really stop using it for the most part. "Quora moderation has collapsed your answer for violating terms of service: be nice."
What was the problem?
I posted a long answer to a question asking about a fake company that clearly had spammed quora. I got 3 questions about a company I'd never heard of within 45 minutes from fake accounts using fake pictures/names. I researched the company, it doesn't legally exist. They were lying about when they were created (claiming to be 10 years old or something with a domain registered in last 2 years). There was no legal company in the state records with anything even close to their name (I actually had them reach out to me later and try to get listed on my review site and their representative even admitted they aren't legally incorporated). It was clearly spam and fraud. I posted all my evidence and reported the accounts.
The result? I was punished for exposing fraud and spam on Quora. Somehow that's not nice to point out and save people from falling victim to signing up for a company that doesn't exist, posts fake reviews and generates fake interest using Quora.
For the curious: https://www.quora.com/Who-is-the-ARZ-host/answer/Kevin-Ohash...
What they have become sort of reminds me of this Experts Exchange site back in the day. That site use to have the best SEO on search results. You would see the answer to a tech question, but it was behind a paywall.
Worse than that. They charged a (yearly?) fee to get behind the paywall only to find out that the question had no answer!
Idk never used it.
The paywall makes me flee every time a search leads me there.
It has a lot of pointless content and it seems like there are always better sources than it. Maybe their user base grows but the quality of answers drops.