Quora and Quartz are two of my least-liked websites. Quora because it obscures content, Quartz because its layout is just so utterly execrable that it gets in the way of reading the content.

Another trick for me is to have Readability's "Read Now" bookmarklet on by bookmarks toolbar, which renders unreadable pages readable ... most of the time.

But as with OP, I find this trend hugely annoying and very regrettable.

http://blog.quora.com/Making-Sharing-Better "Open any Quora URL. If you come across a Quora link anywhere and you want to read it without being asked to join Quora, you can add the text "?share=1" to the end of the URL."

Works for me the first time and then no longer have to manually add it in for subsequent quora links.

Is that strategy working for them ? I dont think so, so why are they doing that ? user would naturally register if they have questions to ask, so why do that? i cant understand this UX (or lack of...). I did not register on quora for that reason Unless your content is behind a paywall ,dont do that , that's stupid.

Yeah when I saw this I was immediately reminded of these threads:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6300856

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6658995

I'm adding them this morning. This all got a little viral before I'd finished adding the content I'd collected.