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Comment by kccqzy | Hacker News Reader

What's wrong with Quora? Now I don't use Quora for any serious source of information, but it's just a site with lots of fun anecdotes. Reading these anecdotes isn't a bad way to pass the time; it's IMO much better than mindlessly watching videos on Instagram or TikTok (which I don't do at all).

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Maybe 1% of the time they're gossiping about people like Jeff. But the rest of the time Quora is like Stack Overflow except the top answer is unrelated promoted content which fools me every time and it makes me so unhappy to feel like a fool after reading several sentences into something I didn't intend to read. Usually when Quora does have answers they aren't very good. If Quora isn't intended as serious then it'd be the uncanny valley of knowledge, so I'd feel more comfortable sourcing from Uncyclopedia.

My experience with Quora is it's extremely unpredictable. Sometimes you get lucky and get a high quality answer by a subject expert. Sometimes you get junk answers.

On many topics top answers are completely false.

Its just like reddit with no threading, more annoying site with unblockable ads.

>much better than mindlessly watching videos on Instagram or TikTok (which I don't do at all).

How can you definitively say that? If I said this thing I never tried is worst than what I do, wouldn't you at least suggest I try it? Good stuff you might really like exists too: https://www.tiktok.com/tag/programmerhumor?lang=en

It's better in the sense that you're not demolishing your attention span with low quality ~30 second videos that usually aren't even funny or entertaining. It requires some level of cognition to read Quora comments, it requires none to sit and watch Tiktok for hours.

Sure, that's one part of tiktok, but its like saying all facebook is bad. With sites like HN or Reddit, I don't see its benefits. If you think you need zero cognition to watch videos, you are watching the wrong kind.

>Its just like reddit

It most definitely isn't like reddit which, similar to HN, is about topical discussions rather answers by "experts". Frequently I add "reddit" as keyword in my searches but I'ld gladly nuke Quora out of the results.

The fact you quoted “experts” is why it’s just like those two sites. The answers are just as dubious.

Quora would be awesome if it weren't for the constant pestering to install the app.

For me "better than Instagram" is not sufficient

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