Why are there so many Quora haters? | Hacker News Reader

Why are there so many Quora haters?

5 pointslooper8888 comments

Maybe im just reading into it but I sense a very negative vibe to Quora on HN. I've certainly seen worse startup ideas. What gives?

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I think the main reason is the general feeling that Quora is being hyped into unexplainable proportions.

I also think that's a big part of it -- especially since so many HN'ers look at StackOverflow and see something much farther along than Quora.

That's a big part of it for me. Nobody seems to be able to explain what makes Quora new and different, or why I should care about it at all, and yet articles about it keep on coming up as though the site is self-evidently a big deal.

It makes me wonder whether the people who enthuse about Quora have ever heard of a question-answer site before; maybe they don't know how to explain what makes it interesting because they don't realize this is already a well-established format.

There's also the fact that there does not appear to be any way to browse the site to find out what it's about - the front page is a completely off-putting sign-up form.

You're right, Q&A sites have been around for a while. Was Quora the first one to get the community aspects right? No they weren't. StackOverflow figured that out first. What Quora accomplished that was a really really hard problem was how to make the social aspect work across all subject areas while at the same time getting area to stay on topic. That's impressive. The only reason I can imagine someone not finding that impressive would be because they've never tried to manage and build a community.

If it can still stay on topic when it becomes mainstream then people might be impressed.

I don't like the social aspect to it actually so I don't think I will ever use it. I much prefer how stackexchange works.

That and I feel like the actual QUALITY of the content is pretty low, a la Yahoo answers with (mostly) correct grammar. Some of the answers are "insightful", or maybe I'm not looking at the right topics, but for the most part, I don't see much value in it.

Here are some common reasons people don't like Quora:

1. They don't like all the (perceived) hype, especially when they see it on TechCrunch.

2. They don't like the rules. Quora definitely challenges the rules of how we interact online, and who is an expert, and that scares people.

3. They think it's just another "Q&A website" and why would we need another one like that?

4. They don't trust mechanisms around voting and the use of anonymity to troll?

5. They don't like that its founders were able to raise Series A money at such an attractive valuation.

6. They don't like the sites plan to boost signal over noise as the user base grows, which includes vigilance among community members and ranking users.

I am a heavy Quora user and biased toward the site. I understand why some of these items above irk people, but I also believe that most of them, upon investigation, turn out to be mostly unfounded. Briefly -> TechCrunch and other tech outlets are in the business of writing about new technologies and trends, even if vocal parts of their audience hates it. The rules around Quora scares many people who already have carved out little pieces of land online, especially "experts." One of the biggest fallacies around Quora is that it's a "Q&A site" -- that is just the tip of the iceberg. I'll admit that there are ways to lurk anonymously on Twitter, but I'm pretty sure that people behind the scenes monitor for unsavory behavior and vandalism, and that those in charge would and will ban users for foul play. The Series A valuation now seems like a bargain, but what many don't realize is that the technology built under the hood at Quora is itself unique and very valuable, as well as the team and SEO juice. Finally, their most complex UX problem -- keeping signal high using humans and algorithms -- is a challenge that not many teams can tackle.

Personally, its because of the arrogance they have with they way they did their UX implementation -- to the point that any criticism of it is brushed off as though the comments are made by morons who don't understand the vision.

Further, the tidbits of information on the site are captured and displayed in a way that makes it very unruly to manage if you want to know a lot about any given topic.

You have a TOPIC - which is effectively a big ass bucket to throw everything. They try to oversimplify data classification making it seem as though tagging etc is too complex. I am not saying that it is an easy problem - I am saying that there is not the deep level of experience being brought to the table to solve these issues.

I do feel that there is a hell of a lot of Facebook Alumn echo-chamber cock-sucking that occurs in the valley. Quora falls square into this area.

Sure, Facebook is an amazing success - but to say, categorically, that all of the alumn who came from facebook out of college - and have that as their only experience ever are going to have messianic vision to every other aspect of online experience is just plain stupid.

Everyone has had the co-worker who's only frame of reference to anything is "their last company" -- and even if your last company is big, and successful - its still just one data-point.

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