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Comment by mcphilip | Hacker News Reader

I'm still unable to get a clear answer to the basic question "Why should I use Quora?"

I work at a startup in Austin, I read HN daily, I enjoy news about SV startups, etc. Still, I haven't found a compelling reason to spend any substantial time on Quora. I'm happy to read a particularly insightful answer when I see the occasional link pop up on another site, but that doesn't make me want to search Quora for other information.

I wonder if my disinterest in Quora is common among developers outside of SV?

If I, a tech savvy developer at a startup, don't find the idea of Quora particularly interesting, why would Average Joe be interested in joining the community?

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You don't need it, cause you've got StackOverflow and GitHub to build your rep, leaving aside the 'just launch' of putting your own technical talent out there.

If you're not in a tech field, say as a screenwriter in Hollywood—excellent Quora use case, btw—it's a great way to build your brand and increase your chances of discovery/personal breakout. Quora helped me launch my career, working with Startup Visa. It's gotten me political meetings and was warmly received as I'm applying for a fellowship.

Quora's a publishing platform with an increasing number of ways to get into publications. Right now, the two big ones are Forbes, Huffington Post, but I'm sure they're expanding in that direction, based on the utter awesomeness of their weekly and daily digests in contrast with the eh launches of most of their technical additions, from credits on to views.

As a political person, I love it, definitely the best place for thoughtful, civil political discussion on the web, even if that has its failure modes.

You're joking, right?

I've been a user since 1/10, I'm an admin, and I 'live' in a non-technical topic space on Quora. You can see why my user experience has been amazing, yeah?

I agree with most of Christie's points, though I've seen quite a few new users make similar points and get welcomed in much more easily, Christie provoked this response: http://www.quora.com/Lucretia-M-Pruitt/Posts/Welcome-to-Quor...

I think she's very insightful, and as a community we have a lot to learn from her experience, at least testing the edge cases and failure modes she's tripped through.

by the way, the post you link to was on Quora before I signed-up. I mention it in a post last year called, Confessions of a Quora Newbie. Many thanks!

...so actually, I did not 'provoke' that post, but was rather 'provoked' by it (just a little). It was the first thing showing in my stream upon signing up.

Thanks for your kind words :)

Quora is just so much better than Ask MetaFilter, Reddit's Q&A/advice subreddits (/r/askreddit, /r/answers, /r/doesanybodyelse etc.), or (dare I say it) Yahoo Answers for nontrivial, factual answers dependent on expertise. Quora is for people who benefit from or enjoy such questions and answers. The longtime existence of all these Q&A communities shows that there is a market for it. There's the most overlap with Ask MeFi I think, but Quora is far better at zeroing in on a good answer, when it exists.

" for nontrivial, factual answers dependent on expertise. "

I would modify that to be "dependent on certain very limited areas of expertise".

There are entire realms of questions not well served by Quora at present, and we have yet to see evidence that they're ever going to be.

I have a lot of bad things to say about Reddit, but certain focused subreddits are excellent for getting good answers from experts. AskHistorians and AskScience are among the best available forums of their kind on the internet.

/r/startups /r/entrepreneur among others are excellent as well.

Part of my reluctance to use it is i'm not sure it's ever going to give the investors the return they demand, and I don't see it surviving or staying wholesome in the process.

This is increasingly my bar for participating in crowdsourced or user generated content based startups. How much is my investment of time and energy going to be squandered when they don't make it; how likely are they to make it.

I'm still pissed off at all the DailyBooth pictures just stuck in limbo because the management team lost interest post acqui-hire and haven't done anything to help folks get their data - valuable pictures capturing moments in time in some cases - back from the zombie company.

If I, a tech savvy developer at a startup, don't find the idea of Quora particularly interesting, why would Average Joe be interested in joining the community?

Have some reasons :-)

* Many people like helping people and answering there questions. Techie folk have hackernews and stackexchange and perlmonks and whatever. This is a place for everybody else.

* It's not subject-specific which makes it more attractive and useful to people who have expertise in multiple areas

* The combination of the multiple-areas-of-expertise and the social-network stuff means that I can very easily come across fun/interesting stuff

* It's fairly open and friendly compared to some Q&A communities. My impression has been that, because it's not subject specific folk, seem to give greater leeway on "dumb" questions that would be given on a narrow "expert" forum.

* <motivation class="selfish">I have had work via Quora. Because it covers all areas of expertise, and gives some kind of levelling information on expertise, it is a market to some extent. Folk who need - for example - expertise if folk who do agile/ux transitions and integrations it's pretty easy to find the people who answer questions around that topic. And hire 'em.</motivation>

I've no idea if they have a sane business model. The hiding answers thang is icky. You may be better served by other communities for the stuff that you're interested in. But I do think there are lots of reasons for folk to use the current site, and those people aren't well served by any other Q&A service that I've played with.

I don't use Quora often, but it's one of the top 5 referrers for http://ignitiondeck.com, one of my company's flagship products.

Doesn't mean I think this situation is OK...still trying to discern whether I should care.

There is actually a question on Quora: How Should I Use Quora? It's been answered only once. It should be made into a board and employees, admins and reviewers encouraged to answer it (as well as users). It could be sent to all new users, who have the option to opt out of following it. I link to it in the follow-up, The Quora Crisis: How Long Can The Center Hold? Have you read it? Yay, Hacker News! Grateful for the conversation... Grazie mille http://socialtimes.com/the-quora-crisis-how-long-can-the-cen...

Indeed. Who really gives a damn about Quora?

Being a tech-savvy developer at a startup doesn't have a lot to do with whether you'll like Quora.

Quora appeals to people whose intellectual curiosity about a certain set of topics is strong enough that they will endure a bunch of crap from egomaniacal Quora power-brokers.

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