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> Quora should not be underestimated

I don't have much of an opinion on Quora and want it to succeed, but your claims seem rather... grandiose. From what I've seen Quora fairs well in very specific situations (where it has a large userbase of people knowledgeable in that specific niche) and then it's mediocre everywhere else. I've never thought "this is the future" while using Quora.

Do you have any examples of Quora that show the potential you talk about? I guess it can be argued "If Quora has a large userbase that are knowledgable in every niche then it will take over the world!" but that sort of argument can extend to almost any service. I see Stackexchange as the biggest competitor to Quora and in my experience Stackexchange is fairing much better (both in users and interfaces, I'd much rather ask a question on a SE site vs. Quora, for example).

StackExchange still has the pseudonym problem. It is also about 10x as harsh and severely limits itself, by well, limiting the actions of their participating clientele. Stack Exchange has relegated itself with it's strict standards to little more than a technical help resource - for the vast majority of use cases.

You don't go to StackExchange to hang out - you go there to ask answer/ask questions. It's like Wikipedia.

On extrapolations:

All large future extrapolations appear, by definition, to be grandiose. If they weren't - well then it would be bloody well bleeding obvious what was about to happen then wouldn't it :D - and it would go without me having to say so.

> Quora fairs well in very specific situations (where it has a large userbase of people knowledgeable in that specific niche) and then it's mediocre everywhere else.

Same with anything else. This is a truism.

The only thing I can say to people is this:

Whenever people tell you to look into something that appears curious - try it for 2 weeks and make your own judgement.

> StackExchange still has the pseudonym problem.

You mean the Psuedonym feature. I participate on various stackexchanges with different aliases (sometimes on the same stackexchange) because I don't want anyone to be able to profile me.

I don't contribute on Quora, even though I have a lot to contribute.

What do you feel could happen if somebody profiled you?

Oh, you'd be amazed at the number of times I managed to get an edge on a competitor by googling - e.g. knowing where their technical problems are, how they are going to approach a prospect, etc -- and all of that without having to leave my keyboard.

You're welcome to try to figure out what line of business I am in, which company, etc. There are a few posts I made on several stack exchanges which would give my competitors a big advantage while competing for a client.

If they only knew it was me.

On the other hand, having a consistent identity also helps people help you.

It does?

Can you give an example?

Sure. At Citrix we use the Haskell compiler ghc. I mention that quite often, and also that we have problems with cross-compiling. Recently I've been approached by one of the people involved in developing the cross-compiling capabilities of ghc of how they can help. (We want cross-compiling, they want people using their code and reporting bugs.)

Basically, you want to be known to people who you have opportunities to win-win interactions with (aligned interests), and avoid being known to people who could exploit you to your disadvantage (opposed interests).

Depending on what you want to optimize for, or what kind of interactions you feel are prevalent, having a consistent identity will help or hinder you. Of course, it's not a binary choice.

    You don't go to StackExchange to hang out - you go there 
    to ask answer/ask questions. It's like Wikipedia.

Maybe I'm missing some portion of Quora then, but that's exactly how I use Quora. I've never found any indication on Quora that I can do anything other than ask and answer questions.

    Whenever people tell you to look into something that 
    appears curious - try it for 2 weeks and make your own 
    judgement.

That's what I've been trying to do, I've even gone out of my way to ask questions on Quora just so I can understand the experience, my problem seems to be that how you're describing it (as some form of community?) does not match how I've experienced it.

Perhaps there is a feature or section of the site I'm not aware of? As I mentioned, some sort of example on Quora or Quora being this fascinating and valuable community experience would be great, because I just can't find it.

My experience with Quora mirrors your own. However a friend of mine was absolutely nuts about it, he chalked it up to having found a group of people to follow who were asking and answering interesting questions.

This difference made Quora less of a Q+A site and more of an interesting news, facts and opinions site to him.

Ditto. Quora's strength is only the competencies of the people who contribute. With any Q/A site that deals with subjective content that isn't moderated by knowledgeable/qualified persons in those matters, it's more of a rush to see who can answer the question first with the most words and inflated vocabulary to warrant upvotes more than it is a place to get real responses. When anyone and everyone is allowed to pour in their two cents, and especially when credence is given based on popularity or place of employ, the results cannot be taken as seriously as they could be. Doubly so when it is used as a means to advertise your half-baked startup initiative.

But SE has a business and make revenue + profit no?

So does ExpertsExchange - what's your point?

If profit were the only things that mattered then Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Google could never have gotten off the ground. Those things hemorrhaged cash for years.

It's how startups work. They are risky. They are unlikely to succeed. They often look like complete jokes.

And that's why you have to watch them carefully. Because it's the stuff you don't notice that really gets you.

My point is that I don't understand what your point is when you keep talking about the pseudonyms.

Imagine Facebook without real names and you'll see my point.

Names are just a way to tie you to an identity, if you can rely on someone to always be under the same name you can treat it just as if it were their real name (even if it isn't). I run a large forum (a community) and a huge number of people have formed value relations through it and they exist under pseudonyms.

For me personally most people that know of me know me by my username (citricsquid) and wouldn't be able to tell you my real name, so if I appear on a website as "Samuel Ryan" they're not going to have a clue who I am and would gain a lot more value if I was displayed under the identity they know me as (citricsquid).

The reason Facebook uses real names is just because it's how people are known in real life, Facebook exists as an extension of real life and so using real names is the sensible decision that provides most value to users.

Exactly.

It doesn't matter what you call yourself. What matters is whether you build a history, integrity and value around that name.

And even then, some people sign up to Facebook using a fake name, so that they can connect to some people they know in real life while avoiding other people they know in real life. (e.g. to talk to friends while avoiding colleagues and clients.)

I don't actually.

Real names work for facebook. That does not mean that pseudonyms do not work for others.

That's not hard to imagine, people did it on MySpace and Friendster. These days, Facebook isn't really much better or different from those earlier social networks.

_why the lucky stiff

I think the real problem is that a lot of people don't understand the value of a billion dollars.

Quora may be a great company, but is it worth that much?

Mentioning poor, useless Quora when the topic is billion dollar companies makes me laugh.

Or Reddit? Which is the hackernews for everything else?

Still uses pseudonyms. Sounds like a small difference. It isn't.

Facebook existed before, on millions of forums, blogs, websites and various accounts. But what changed everything was using real names. It was the real names and social proof that changed everything from something a bunch of nerds used (like IRC/various chat services/various forums) - to something everyone needed to be on and used daily.

Reddit/HN will remain non-mainstream for the foreseeable future.

Reddit is already mainstream. It had 3.8 billion pageviews and 46 million uniques in October (http://thenextweb.com/insider/2012/11/08/expenses-mounting-r...)

Websites using pseudonyms use karma, upvotes etc. as social proof.

If we're going by page views then I'm sure many unsavory sites have many more. Still not mainstream - or not in the way that you think.

My point with mainstream was not views. My point with mainstream was that it will become something normal people could potentially use.

I like to think of reddit/StackExchange as the mid point between the completely disparate forums and a Facebook like interest based real-name social network.

They are like IRC.

You have a skewed perspective on Reddit. It absolutely is mainstream already, and will become more so over time.

When your website has that many uniques, and its subculture has been referenced by mainstream brands, TV shows, and continually shows up in real life (I just saw a local pizza shop that used an Advice Animal on a sandwich board outside), you are mainstream. When the President of the United States holds a Q&A session on your site, you are mainstream. When the internal drama of your website makes it onto the NYTimes and CNN, you are mainstream.

It's grown far, far beyond the internet-nerd stronghold it was a few years ago. Hell, at this point my humanities major friends are on Reddit, even if they don't comment.

Compare with Quora - which has made few inroads to any community besides "Silicon Valley Insider". The vast majority of content there is still about the tech industry and startups, and even on other topics the vast majority of commenters have tech industry/startup backgrounds. Mainstream? Really?

It may be that in the future a real-name-driven community will take the crown from Reddit as biggest community on the internet, but that's a long way from today, and I seriously doubt it will come in the form of Quora.

Shit, I just visited my Quora profile and one of the top 3 questions in my feed is "Quora Employees: Are Kah Seng Tay and Kah Keng Tay related?". This community is self-absorbed and self-referential in ways that even Reddit can't match.

Shh, some people just need to keep believing Reddit is still "underground". Let them live in their fantasy world, if that is what they need. :)

I think your whole arguments seems driven by your desire to show quora is potentially great company.

Do you work there or own shares there.

Quora is just an expertexchange clone, deal with it.

What nonsavory forums have more pageviews or uniques than Reddit? And are you seriously saying that "normal people" don't use Reddit? Where is traffic coming from?

I'm not convinced that using real names gives such a massive benefit, in general. It's true that they brought Facebook into the mainstream and cause people to be on their best behavior. But are you 100% certain that this is what you want for a community like Quora?

At the very least, there is a strong case for keeping anonymity around, because this leads to good discussions about subjects that can't be discussed under real names - for one reason or the other. This is why I don't see reddit displaced in the near or medium term.

I'm not sure if this refutes your point, though. But real names make people keep their mouth shut in situations that might put them in a bad light, or might come back to bite them in the ass. How can you be sure that this isn't something that will limit Quora as well? Like I said, I'm not sure if I disagree with you. But the advangates of real-world online identities don't seem as obvious to me as you claim.

I think the biggest impact of real names on Quora is their impact on quality and personal branding. People post on Quora a lot more for vanity/business promotion than they do on Reddit. So from that standpoint, Reddit is much richer in what people will say but also a lot noisier. What it implies to me is that Quora has a much lower ceiling for engagement, especially since everything is public (unlike Google+ or Facebook) so people are especially careful about what they say there. In other words, Quora simply can't take over the world because the vast majority of people don't want to have their thoughts so publicly available.

Pseudonyms have been proven to improve dialogue because anonymity means honesty or at least a willingness to communicate without concern of reputation. No one wants their real names attached to their opinions on the internet, as those opinions are likely to change or come back to haunt them in the future, just like nobody wants to be doxx'd even if they haven't done anything wrong. It's just an invasion of privacy that doesn't need to exist for conversation to happen. I feel like I've cited the Blizzard RealID debacle a lot lately, but it fits the bill here too.

"Pseudonyms have been proven to improve dialogue because anonymity means honesty or at least a willingness to communicate without concern of reputation."

Have you been to Reddit lately? Pseudonyms has brought out the worst in many people, mostly because they know it's not attached to a reputation.

"No one wants their real names attached to their opinions on the internet"

Why? If you really can't stand behind your opinion, what's the point in having it in the first place?

People being assholes on the internet isn't new, nor is the fact that administrative failure in the form of moderation is the reason why communities of all sizes go down the drain. While Reddit wants to thrive on the fact that there are very little limitations to the platform as a whole, the problems they are facing are due in part to the fact that there are no repercussions for trolls, doxxing and the like.

There are a lot of reasons people want to stay anonymous that has nothing to do with cowardice, and that's why I cited the RealID case, because it sprouted a lot of conversation on why we prefer to remain unknown and separate our real selves from other personas. The [wonderful] acceptance speech Lana Wachowski gave last month during the Human Rights Campaign Awards went into why both her and her brother preferred staying out of the spotlight, but what it specifically meant to her as someone that was susceptible to unwanted attention and criticisms. As a woman, I can relate, and that's why I am so adamant about this issue.

> Why? If you really can't stand behind your opinion, what's the point in having it in the first place?

This is a really naive way of looking at opinions. They change. People grow. Why do people post anonymously to begin with? To avoid witch hunts by people that don't believe what they do, potentially dangerous people who are willing to trace that name to your workplace, your address or even just use your likeness to propagate lies. How many services are there to de-rank unsavory Google results under your name? It's truly better to be safe than sorry.

> If you really can't stand behind your opinion, what's the point in having it in the first place?

What's the point of knowing something most people don't or of having a belief, unless the credit for it can be connected to your address or mother's maiden name?

I don't understand this sentiment at all. When I'm complimented for something that I've said anonymously from someone who has chosen to remain anonymous - I'm happy that I could help someone, or that I made someone smile. It doesn't matter who that someone is, and it doesn't matter whether they know where I work, or where my sister works.

In fact, I would prefer that they not know any of that stuff. I'm not sure why people don't understand pen names, why they are useful, and why they always have been.

> Why? If you really can't stand behind your opinion, what's the point in having it in the first place?

If you can't stand behind your vote by writing your real name directly on your ballot, what's the point in voting in the first place?

Your identity and standing behind your opinion have no correlation, just like they don't when you vote. History shows that unnecessarily joining them has dangerous consequences, however.

I'd be interested to see that proof if you have scientific studies supporting it - sounds fascinating!

It's been my experience that communication quality has more to do with initial culture, growth rate, and ability to inculcate newcomers to social norms than with naming policies. Of course, the need to grow a community slowly to maintain social norms conflicts with the imperative placed on VC-funded companies to grow as fast as possible.

I tried to find it for the previous post, but couldn't recall the name (though I think I found it here on HN). I will keep searching when I have a few minutes as I've needed to cite it before.

I don't understand why this is important in the bigger scheme of things.

Social proof is important where social proof is important. But there are plenty of areas where it has very little meaning or value.

Like where exactly?

Like WOW just to name one example.

Or on Github or SE or your email address.

Is there really anything to underestimate in an expertexchange clone. I doubt there is but you can prove me wrong.