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Comment by mickhagen | Hacker News Reader

Here comes the mob. Really? Are we all gonna throw up our arms because of this? We use their service, we consume, read and digest their content like blood-suckers and now we get mad they're asking us to sign up? PG you've been reading Quora for "several years" and you think it's unjust they are asking you to sign up?

Quora has let us eat at their house for years and now all they're asking is we take off our shoes before entering. Let's not forget, we're in their house!

As an entrepreneur, how will we ever convince users to actually pay for products when the mob and pitch forks come out when they ask us to sign up?

We are so entitled it's sad. Really hope Quora doesn't bow down here. They aren't asking for your first-born. If you wanna be a member of their community, then be a member. Nothing unfair about that.

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Their content? I don't think even Quora would claim that.

And how exactly is creating an account taking off one's shoes before entering? I would not be contributing anything to the Quora community by creating an account. I'm not depriving the community of anything by not creating one.

I believe the reason Quora tries to force people to create accounts is not because this helps the community, but simply because this is the first step of the funnel of their viral spread mechanism.

I think we both agree on why Quora does this (viral spread mechanism, juicing numbers, etc). That's besides the point.

When we are guests in someone else's home, seems only fair that we honor their requests. Asking you to simply create an account shouldn't be such a massive chore.

I believe this attitude is dangerous for our community. I fear for what happens when we ask you to pay.

I will certainly not pay a dime to read anything on Quora, but I'd be less upset if asked, because it would seem to make some sense.

Asking to download an app to do the exact same thing as without the app is upsetting because it seems completely pointless.

> When we are guests in someone else's home, seems only fair that we honor their requests.

This is a ridiculous analogy. It's not a home, it's a business. If my friends want me to take my shoes off when I visit them, no big deal. If Best Buy does, that's frigging insane.

What if there was a competitor to Best Buy, where everything was free, but only if you took your shoes off when entering?

[And no, I'm not saying that that's a true analogy either — I'm just exploring what makes this one right or wrong, and where you think the insanity lies]

> When we are guests in someone else's home, seems only fair that we honor their requests. Asking you to simply create an account shouldn't be such a massive chore.

Or we can choose not to enter at all. They aren't asking us to just create an account, but to download an android/iphone App.

Read his comment again. He's describing the same frustration I and apparently many others have experienced clicking on a link (from a search engine, a blog, etc.) only to hit a wall. At this point I'm not a user of the site yet. The gist of your argument is how we're using a service, etc. That's fine, they can setup their service however they choose. And we, as potential users, can point out what a poor setup they have chosen.

The irony is I have an account... linked to my Facebook profile. But I can't log in with that from work. There may or may not be a way around this (perhaps a new account or linking my account to an email login), but I'm so irritated by their antagonistic approach that when I see the wall appear I just close the browser tab.

It's now gotten to a point where I don't even bother using Quora from home because I so strongly disagree with their policy.

It's good to see a dissenting point of view, but I disagree with your point about a collective sense of entitlement. It's more of a shared set of expectations about how the web works. In fact I'd argue that perhaps this point could be turned back on itself: it's the entrepreneurs who are guilty of a sense of entitlement because they want to build a closed system on top of an open one out of some perceived "right" to acquire signups.

If everybody on the web were using this tactic it would be a valueless platform. The only rational reaction, then, to those that use it, is rejection.

I disagree with your point but also disagree with the downvotes. (are people downvoting commenters who disagree with pg?)

Anyway, you're forgetting something important: We're completely entitled to not use a sucky service and blog about it. That's what going on here: there's people who decide to vote with their feet, and tell others about it.

I have no problem with people voicing an opinion -- it's America. But what I think people are complaining about in this case is just ridiculous.

I'm nitpicking, I know, but it's not America. You're on the internet, you know. It's the world.

Lol true.

Yeah, I think it's pretty common for Americans to believe anyone else who can type english is probably also living in America.

I guess it's still not a bad heuristic for them in 80% of cases, so this attitude prevails. HN, however, is quite multinational, so one has to watch out ;).

It is not a matter of "heuristic", it is a matter of basic respect you have for other people living in other places.

"Americans", you mean Cubans? Equadorians?

Really, you do not seem to be aware of the fact that or people leave in either Nothern or Southern amercian continent, and many of them do not speak English.

Each time any US citizen calls US citizens "Americans" it hurts the heart of hundreds of millions of people.

Shit.

The problem is that they work hard to appear in the top page of Google and then don't show the answer unless you sign up. I'm not going to be signing up and I very much resent that they've taken a position that could have been filled with a resource I want to use.

I agree with this argument, but not necessarily the tone of it.

Quora is a business as much as it is a consumer facing service with a strong mission to uphold. But the reality is, if Quora didn't keep its numbers out of the red and into the black by doing "annoying things" like forcing app downloads or account creation, then they would run out of capital and cease to exist. So, take your pick. Or better yet, just stop complaining.

Also, their mobile website isn't fully functional or in some cases usable. I beta test it, and it's riddled with bugs and missing features. Frankly, a lot of services today are skipping mobile web all together, and focusing on driving app downloads to provide a richer experience.

Bottom line: Services valuable to end users are also running a businesses. We must learn to give and take.

The StackExchange network does very well without resorting to any of these tactics.

Exactly. Assuming what GP wrote would be true about Quora going out of business, maybe it would be better to just let them die? At some point someone will come who will strike the right balance between providing quality, earning money and not being annoying. They will survive, and we'll be better off. StackExchange network proves that it is possible in this case.

"Run out of capital and cease to exist" works for me.

You are 100% right. I think we (readers of HN) are the wrong demographic for any company to be profitable. We are "everything should be free because we are cool" demographic. Do we like Oracle Database? No - because it is not cool (even if all our money and investment is managed using that evil database). Do we like Mongo? No - because it is not PostgreSQL. Do we like Facebook? Hell no - they are evil. Do we like Google? Not really - even they are a lot people from Google here. And so on...

And, I have to admin: I'm the same demographic and really hate what Quora is doing but nobody outside Silly Valley really cares.

I take exception to that! I think everything should be free and I'll take Posgres over Mongo, but I'm still most definitely not cool.

I believe the argument is not that the Quora team should be incarcerated for putting up a wall, but rather that this setup may not be the best way to build a large community and, in the long term, a profitable company.

There are answers sites that require registration. There are answers sites that don't. If one of those models outperforms the other -- say, by producing a more profitable company -- then that's that. It's not my job, or anyone else's job other than a business owner's, to make it easy to get paid customers.

You got downvoted but I wanted to address one of your questions:

"As an entrepreneur, how will we ever convince users to actually pay for products when the mob and pitch forks come out when they ask us to sign up?"

Ah, but the mob don't attack with pitchforks when you charge for a service. What they object to is bait & switch. Only a handful of random weirdos from the bowels of the internet have complained about me charging for my software.

Here's why:

Because I only have one audience -- my customers -- my job is making them happy. If I don't make them happy, they take their money elsewhere. This doesn't mean I have to do everything they ask, and for sure I don't. But the nature of our relationship is clear: Customers are the butter to my bread.

My job is simple. I do not have competing interests. Thoughts that will never arise: "Gee, I need this data for advertising, but users don't want to give it to me." "Gee, we use all this bandwidth for our free service… we need to put ads on it… but they won't like that if we tell them… I know, let's phrase it really confusingly and maybe they won't notice!" or my fave "Gee, we need to make money… I know, let's claim the rights of everything people post on our service, and stop third-party developers from distracting people from our proprietary interface."

That temptation is what leads these apps to ruin. That temptation is nearly impossible to resist… they do want & need to make money, after all.

Better to avoid temptation altogether by creating a business where charging is natural, expected, and welcomed by the would-be customers.

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