Show HN: Chrome Extension to automatically block the annoying Quora login prompt | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Chrome Extension to automatically block the annoying Quora login prompt

chrome.google.com

51 pointsniftylettuce40 comments

I'd love it if someone would make something that would let me see answers past the first without creating an account. Presumably it could be done with an extension plus a database of accounts a la (or even from) Bugmenot.

Incidentally, does anyone know why Quora wants to force me to create an account? They can already use cookies to tell which pageviews are from the same user. What difference does it make if there's a username and password associated with them?

Maybe this has to do with the default for new accounts to be included in the "these people viewed this page" feature. Maybe because of that no one wants to log into their account in fear of sharing what they view, so this requirement is to reverse the trend of users logging out as a result of that fear?

Higher user count => more $$$

How do they make more money if my pageviews are associated with an account?

They can show more registered users. I imagine they will turn around and show investors the inflated count when they raise more money ...

I was thinking the same, but don't investors look into the companies they're investing in, investigate the statistics and information the company provides? I would think that investors would see the people have to sign up and realise the registration numbers are artificially inflated.

You would think, but I imagine some will be swayed by the numbers even if they do think about that.

I think getting you to sign up is the start of a process that culminates with you inviting all of your contacts. The username/password step is just the top of the funnel.

Ah yes, that could be it. I don't think I would advise a startup to do that though. If you have to be that heavy-handed to make it spread, what that really means is that the site isn't good enough.

Once you have an account, they can start contacting you, and increase the probability of you participating/contributing content/inviting your friends.

BugMeNot already has an official Firefox extension, FWIW: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/bugmenot/

pg: did you mean auto-opening the other answers that were "collapsed"? -- b/c it looks like they allow us to see past the first now

normal example: http://www.quora.com/Asana/Why-does-Asana-host-its-DNS-with-...

example w/popup: http://www.quora.com/Asana/Why-does-Asana-host-its-DNS-with-...

need something to recursively open all comments too?

While I appreciate this extension, I think a better tactic would be to not visit Quora if you don't agree with the way the site is run.

Between the blurred answers and the login prompt, I will never visit Quora, for any reason, ever.

The site is popular with established start-up founders and has some very good information. If you really don't want an account; http://bugmenot.com/view/quora.com

I understand the alternatives, but it is more the principle of the matter.

I regard Quora as a more technical focused Experts Exchange; Slimy, and not really worth the effort.

I'm curious what's going on there. Is it investor pressure? Why would they repeat the same tactics as EX that only prompted extreme user negativity?

This is how I feel about people who religiously use AdBlock.

If they didn't want to see ads on site X, they just shouldn't go on site X?

How do you feel about people who change the TV channel when a commercial comes on? What about PVRs that automatically skip commercials on playback?

Yeah. The website owner makes a conscious decision to fund their website using ads, and if the ads are so offensive that you literally need to block them, why go to the site? What sites are so crucial that you absolutely must use AdBlock?

I also don't pay for cable TV partly for similar reasons - I buy shows I like directly on Amazon, and use Netflix as a filler.

Do you disagree with nickpresta's comment? The less traffic Quora gets, the more likely it is that people will move to a more open platform. The solution isn't to just bypass their design choices.

This mentality bothers me a bit. Not everything is all or nothing. Things can be made to be better, or worse.

It's like if you had a jetski, but it was the wrong color. From your approach, you'd say "I'll never ride on that jetski! I'm perfectly fine not riding it."

Yes, clearly you are. You totally, completely, without question have the right to go on living without it. No problem. But the real question isn't whether or not you'll be fine without it. The real question is: are you missing out on pleasure you could be experiencing?

But if you were rented a free jetski for the day from someone who had painted some ads on the sides to cover his expenses would you go and tape over the ads before riding? Oh, you would?

To make that comparison more fair, the ads need to be canvas that flapped in the wind, slowing you down occasionally (as ads on websites will do) and every once and a while one would lift up in front of the control panel so you had to clear it out of your view (popups).

If that was the case, I wouldn't rent a jetski from that company.

Now, if that was the only company offering jetskis at that particular location, and there was no paid option available.. well, I'd question whether or not they're owned by YouTube, who I sincerely wish I could pay a few bucks a month to, to get rid of their awful ads.

I'd just get my ideal tape out (waterproof, no residue) and strap those ads down and enjoy my free jetski time. But this comparison will always be flawed, like so many digital/real world ones are today.

I don't see running AdBlock as immoral. If I can change something in my browser to better suit my browsing experience I will, and I feel that's my right. A site can serve up content, but it's my choice as to what portion of that content I choose to view, just as people with PVRs or VCRs can choose to skip ads. Impressions are shit for revenue anyway and I don't think I've ever intentionally clicked on a banner ad so I'm not taking much away from content owners.

I skip sites that have an interstitial ad with a 5 second countdown, so I'm choosing to not ride that jetski.

And agreed on YouTube.

It's not that they're offensive, it's that they slow my browser down and often distract from the content of the site itself. I'm also wary of third party cookies and scripts running that don't strictly need to be.

I don't disagree with his comment, but I don't feel like I need to be an activist to get people off of Quora. Quite the opposite of harming Quora, I'm changing my own preferences so I still want to use the site, instead of participating in a move to a more open platform (although I support that move).

I see it as part of a negotiation process.

There are certain ads I'm willing to put up with. There are plenty I'm not. If a publisher is going to force dancing monkeys and video bullshit on me and not give me an option to pay for the content in cash, I will happily block their ads until they get a clue.

If this were a neighborhood business, I'd just have a pleasant discussion with the owner and we'd work something out. But since their publishing and customer service is automated out the wazoo, so is my approach to negotiating which ads show up on my screen.

I don't look at ads or register them, why should I let them destroy the page layout?

I was on a public computer recently and was shocked to see almost half the screen of a newspaper site was full with ads.

I would very much like a pay-to-remove-ads business model on free sites.

Protip: If people find your site's UI so irritating that they bother to write browser extensions to "fix" it (and said extensions become popular), you might want to rethink your site design.

I'm sure they're aware of the conflict. My guess is that they aren't growing fast enough to justify all the money they raised, so they're eager to get more people involved, and are willing to do that even at the expense of annoying some people.

If they were smart about this (and they are very smart in general), this is something where they would have done some A/B tests with cohort analysis and discovered that they sufficiently larger growth with the dickish pages.

Not that I still don't hate them for it. I still enjoy writing and reading answers there, but they've totally killed my willingness to share answers outside of Quora.

I'd prefer a plugin to block all links to Quora. I will not support a website that uses tactics to get ranked in Google for content they aren't going to show human browsers.

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/nolijncfnkgaikbjbd...

This is a step in the right direction, thanks :)

You can add these lines:

    0.0.0.0 www.quora.com
    0.0.0.0 quora.com

to your hosts file located in c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc

Thanks for the tip, but I'm in no actual danger of clicking a Quora link :)

After accidentally reading a few articles from TC, I have acquired the habit of checking the domain of everything before I click through. I'd really like something to edit the DOM and just take links out or replace them with a black box.

Source: https://github.com/niftylettuce/block-quora-login-popup

could also redirect to window.location w/o ?ref=fb

Could this be expanded to including UX fixes for other sites?

To get the feature request going, I'd like those click-through slideshows to be replaced with a single (scrollable?) grid-based gallery.

Make a list of the worst offenders (it would have to be done per site) and a userscript could easily be made for them.

Having "UX fixes for various sites" is too generic and varied in description - it would be a hard sell.

However, I could see it working if you were to drill down to one specific feature, like hiding the login prompt for a selection of sites.

Adblock can fix arbitrary sites to a certain extent (only through removing elements, but it could have accomplished what this extension does). Select an element to hide, and if enough people do then it gets added to the blocklist.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com