How Quora Onboards New Users
useronboard.com
useronboard.com
I got it for w3schools, though.
http://www.webmonkey.com/2013/03/google-discontinues-site-bl...
The reason is that Quora has a lot of really reputable, valuable, and domain-specific contributors, and it's easy to identify answers from people who have credibility on a subject. On HN there's a lot of noise, and there's a really common phenomenon of people bullshitting about subjects where they really have no credibility (usually the most controversial topics on HN like politics, economics, venture capital). The same is true for Quora, but on Quora you can identify people's domain-expertise better (it's posted next to each answer), and the best contributions percolate to the top much better than on HN. It's interesting to note that one thing people have always wanted on HN is the ability to follow certain users and certain topics, which is something Quora does.
For just the startup/tech world, there are tons of contributions from experienced VCs, angel investors, experienced entrepreneurs, etc. Outside of tech, you get pleasant surprises like former police officers answering questions about policing, movie directors answering questions about movies they've directed, etc.
Quora is still young, so there are a lot of quality early adopters. Going forward, it remains to be seen whether the quality will degrade as Quora gets more popular.
The biggest problem with the onboarding is that most of my value is through following "famous" (credible) people, I get very little value from following topics or questions, because when you start doing that you get lot's of noise (random or semi-credible people answering). This doesn't seem to be something emphasized in the current flow.
EDIT (reply to below): There's a lot of noise. There are a lot of gems, too, but it's easier to identify the gems. I don't think of things in terms of inside vs. outside the so-called SV bubble, so I don't really share that sentiment. An experienced entrepreneur is still credible to me, even if they are in SV.
I haven't been back to Quora for a couple of years, but there seemed to be a lot of astro-turfing by people who self-appointed themselves as "credible people". I also found that it was difficult to discover interesting content by genuine experts who exist outside of the "valley" VC/entrepreneurial bubble.
The whole community on Quora also seems uncomfortably obsessed with wealth and being/getting rich. I can't browse through it for too long before I tire of that atmosphere.
After signing up, I realised that its much more than just a QnA website.
Quora is a great place to find interesting discussions about a wide variety of topics.
The QnA part is mostly an excuse for domain experts to blow you away with interesting content.
its a community where experts can discuss interesting topics in their field, and I believe the "google spam" thing is helping keep the community this way for 2 reasons:
1. People coming from Google are expecting a "yahoo answers" type of website (public opinion, not expert advice). They want their answer and they are out.
If they could see all the results, the trolls (of which there are many) they would probably be tempted to signup with a fake account, just to add their throll-y whimsical answer or comment and never return.
2. If you go through the pain of being on-boarded, you probably care about the topic enough to become an engaged member of the community. Which will help maintain the quality of the website.
You can roll your eyes at me all you want, but I'm bring cantankerous for a reason: I have had an account for years and they locked me out, and I find that really rather offensive. I now have a worse experience than an anonymous user, which is just silly.
Personally speaking, I'm also not a fan of dark UX patterns and such, and have found myself frustrated with their UI decisions at times, as well.
That said, I'm strongly considering "* { display: none; }" for quora.com.
No, it's not that fucking annoying. It's worse.
1. Quora make it hard to begin accessing content when arriving from Google search results for the first time.
2. Seems to be filled with pointless echo chamber people like Scoble and cliques of so called "thought leaders"....I have a hard time understanding the point of Robert Scoble and self-appointed "thought leaders". I hate to use the term, but there's a lot of "circle jerking" going on in Quora with "famous people".
3. Even when I did sign up with a throwaway account, everything about their navigation and page layout is hard. Questions and answers are jammed into a narrow sliver of content area. On a 24" 1920x1200, with a browser window occupying just half that width, it looks crap.
4. When I last used Quora (about two years ago) it was hard to just randomly leap around looking for interesting content. there didn't seem to be a 10000 foot view of what I can look at and randomly dip into.
5. Dark patterns.
But then I was spoiled by Stack Overflow which allows me instant access to content which is well laid out and easy to comprehend and consume. Yes, SO may have 6.5 million+ questions, but their tagging feature alone (including tag synonyms) makes it a piece of cake to see just the stuff I want to see, but also hop around. I truly hope SE's philosophy of zero friction user onboarding, easy access to content and sensible moderation constraints burn Quora.
I short, I just can't bring myself to use Quora, I really did want to, I truly did, but everything about the way they operate is hostile/icky. As someone who, after suffering years of internet loonies (on usenet, mailing lists, phpBB), and can appreciate the need for well managed and curated content, and constructive and intelligent discourse, I find Quora has failed to engage me on so many levels.
I also don't know a single person in my circle of close and near friends who bother with Quora (both technical and non-technical clever, and internet savvy people). They too are fatigued with the whole "gotta sign up to see our content" thing.
Quora isn't any better than Experts Exchange which I stopped using even before SO came on the scene back in 2008. It's just a high-falutin' incarnation of EE, I truly hope Quora fails.
...
But then I was spoiled by Stack Overflow which allows me instant access to content which is well laid out and easy to comprehend and consume.
I would point out that Stack Overflow also has a fixed-size content area. It is a bit bigger (660 px vs. 485 px), but at 1920x1200, you're looking at 25% vs. 34% of the screen for the Q&A which will look rather empty. Plus the font size is actually larger on Stack Overflow so the information density is probably about the same.
I rarely go to Quora myself, but it has nothing to do with stylistic choices.
http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/93457/419
That said, like yourself, I also avoid Quora for reasons other than just stylistic choices.
Google needs to give the entire Quora site a large negative ranking Rapgenius-style.
For those that haven't seen it: http://i.imgur.com/vbLTXYz.png
Edit: Sry for that repeat-comment, kind of redundant.
Onboarding is so important to breaking the ice with users, and providing with a clear sense of what to do after they register. They got sold about some value proposition before they registered, and chances are they probably need to do some work before they start seeing that value: adding friends, installing a client, setting preferences, etc.
Users need their hand held in those first few screens. It's easy to get tunnel vision about a product when you've been building a product for weeks, and obvious steps don't seem so obvious to fresh eyes. Asking strangers to sit down and complete tasks while you watch is one of the best learning experiences you can have about your own product.
I learned the hard way a few times when I got registrations and no repeat visits. I was able to cut it significantly by guiding users on what to do next (I took some lessons from Twitter's onboarding), and following up via auto email if they still didn't get started. Copy made a big difference, too.
Also, 100% agreed on all the point you make. That's not far from being a blog post unto itself!
The awesome thing about Twitter is they let me use their service exactly how I want to and don't force me to do anything else, like randomly click 5 topics I couldn't care less about. I wish Quora were similar in that respect.
Quora has done a good job figuring out what I like based on links I click from other sources, why do I have to tell them more? I wouldn't be annoyed by the topic page if it came up one time, I could click "skip" and it goes away forever.
I am not sure I would actually pay $5 to skip that page, I live perfectly fine without Quora, but I'd at least respect the "be annoyed or pay" attitude.
Having said all that, maybe this doesn't annoy many people and I'm simply a grumpy old-ish man.
The only comment I'd have is that I found the "zoom in on mouseover" to actually be really confusing at first, and I don't really get any utility from it. I suspect this is because I'm primarily interesting in what you have to say about the site, and not the zoomed-in details of a particular page.
Thanks for the site!
Samuel, great stuff. Another solid teardown!
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7106091
Which, I suppose, makes this site a "scummy, low-quality content farm farm."
1) "What was the most awesome thing a teacher ever told you?"
2) "Is coffee bad for you?"
3) "What is it like to live in Berlin?" ...
and so on.
The answers are usually very shallow essays instead of to the point, clear and competent answers. The search facilities on Quora are super-bad - it is virtually impossible to find something on there. The voting is as already mentioned a popularity contest.
In my opinion each end every Stackexchange web-site is more useful and (intellectually) entertaining than Quora which is indeed nothing else than a highbrow Yahoo! Answers.