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.
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.
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.
Forced login with massive popups is retarded, would have been so in 1999, and is extra-so today.
But yes, Quora has gone down the road of Yelp and Pinterest, becoming web cancer. I hate it.
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...
Its niche has been filled by a mix of Reddit, Stack Exchange and even us here at Hacker News.
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.
doesn't seem to be that dead https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=quora.com
For the users, possibly. Not for someone who wants to start 'Quora, but a little different'.
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.