
Hasta la Vista, Quora - raganwald
https://raganwald.posterous.com/hasta-la-vista-quora
======
jodrellblank
I answered a question on StackExchange yesterday, and once I had Googled and
read through some threads and dug up some answers with links to post, I
noticed the question had been edited by a moderator.

Looking at the history, I saw that this neat and tidy question was originally
a sloppy mess. Suddenly I felt cheated - here I was answering someone who had
asked a sensible well written question ... except they hadn't.

I had a similar realisation that I wasn't answering to help someone, but to
help future search engine results, which is less endearing.

~~~
kjksf
Think of it this way: instead of helping one person who can't even phrase a
question properly, you're helping thousands of people who will find your
answer in the future by searching for the version of the question that was
properly phrased (and the one you actually answered).

~~~
fedd
AND helping yourself, making your name known on the web

so that you'll be easier to be hired or funded! :)

------
kmfrk
Recently, one of my Quora questions was suddenly deleted.

The moderator answer I got was "Not a serious question". End of message.

Um, okay?

I'm sure Quora will make an interesting case study, once it's dead.

~~~
getsat
What was the question, if I may ask?

~~~
kmfrk
Eh, it was a little sensitive, and it would probably make the staff able to
identify me. :)

~~~
getsat
No worries. I was just curious. :)

------
ChuckO
The first problem is your answer is condescending. To my reading your starting
with probably some insider BS about what he's asking. He wants to know where
he can find a capable or "rock star" developer. You interpret "Rock Star" as
someone with bona fides of a whole different magnitude and then take the
opportunity to bitch slap the guy in public. He's not thrilled and takes the
opportunity provided to slap you back. There's not a lot of mystery here.
Don't not answer questions in order to preen around in public by taking a shot
at someones possible misuse of a term that might mean something different to
an insider than someone trying to get in or in other words don't be an a-hole.

~~~
raganwald
You seem to be sincere, so thank you.

~~~
ChuckO
I am sincere. I think you could have handled this better by making the point
you made and educating the person about your understanding of what a "rock
star" developer is vs what you understood he needed in a less high handed
manner.

------
jdp23
Yep. "Not Helpful" really sends a negative message.

Interestingly, one of the Quora moderators did an experiment about three
different ways of getting people to give more information on partial
answers.[1] None of them worked well. Collapsing was the worst, leading to no
improvements and provoking one "aggressive response". Nonetheless the
moderator decided that collapsing was the approach to use going forward. Umm
...

[1] [http://www.quora.com/Does-asking-people-to-explain-their-
ans...](http://www.quora.com/Does-asking-people-to-explain-their-answers-to-
Whats-the-Best-X-questions-actually-work)

~~~
raganwald
I didn't take it as particularly negative. The person flagging it explained
that it would be more helpful if I answered the question directly. I agree
with them: This type of answer is an Internet Cliché: Person asks, "How do I
X?" and the first twenty responses are "You are an idiot for trying to X, you
ought to Y instead."

~~~
jdp23
Maybe "negative" isn't exactly the right word here. It devalued your
contribution, and after you thought about it you decided it wasn't the kind of
contribution Quora wanted, and that it wasn't the right site for you.

The way I look at it, your answer _was_ helpful. Sure, it could have been more
helpful to more people if it had been different; and there may well have been
other better answers. Calling "not helpful" focuses on what it isn't, not what
it is.

~~~
davidmathers
_It devalued your contribution ... The way I look at it, your answer was
helpful._

It's more useful to think in terms of signal to noise ratio rather than a
binary helpful/unhelpful. It may have been helpful when considered in
isolation but was it helpful _enough_ to be valuable?

Raganwald nails it with: _This type of answer is an Internet Cliché_

When the ratio of advice and/or opinions and/or theories is 10:1 relative to
actual answers to the question being asked (which is common) it's not enough
to say those non-answers might be helpful. They have to meet a higher
standard. Because they have a built in noise-cost they need to have a signal-
value that is very very high.

A individually helpful answer can have a negative value when viewed in the
context of the whole system.

~~~
jdp23
So you think that raganwald's leaving is more valuable than allowing his
highly-rated answer that a moderator didn't approve of to continue to display
on the site?

~~~
davidmathers
That's not why he left.

------
crux
I really appreciated this blog post. At first I thought it was going to be a
Scoble-style 'I got my first moderatorial slap and now my blogger ego is
bruised' blogger poutathon, but raganwald clearly delineates between the sort
of bonding, community building social sites that he prefers (and might have
acted as though he was using), and the content-focused, at times unprecious
with other people's writing repository that wikipedia or Quora are aiming for.
Quora is so much more obviously social than wikipedia, which I think gives a
lot of people the impression that it's more like the former and less like the
latter. That might be a problem for them. But I don't think that the inherent
lack of sanctity for any given user's contributions is a problem. I think it's
a feature.

~~~
billswift
I have avoided Quora because it seems to combine the drawbacks of Wikipedia
with the drawbacks of social sites. It has the lack of respect for
contributors of Wikipedia and the lack of respect for reality of social sites.

ADDED: My time is limited and I heed to apply it how I think it will be most
useful. Since my major interest is in learning, I have been reducing my
internet usage back toward books anyway.

------
marcc
I hate that people use Q&A sites as forums. If I ask a question on
StackOverflow.com such as "how do i do x on the iphone", I'm pretty much
guaranteed to get responses (in the "answers" section) which state that i
shouldn't do that. Q&A sites are for questions and answers. How is "it won't
get approved for the appstore" a relevant answer? Maybe I don't even care
about the appstore. If you think this is a concern, but still have an answer,
include it as a footnote. Or just list it as a comment, but it's not an
answer.

This actually drove me away from heavily contributing on SO recently.

~~~
m_myers
If you see answers on Stack Overflow that are simply noise, like "it won't get
approved for the app store", _please_ flag them.

To some extent a "don't do it that way" answer is acceptable, but it's better
if if also answers the question as written. See:
[http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/8891/is-dont-do-
it-a...](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/8891/is-dont-do-it-a-valid-
answer)

------
bertil
This is non-sensical: a similar response to a similar question was up-voted to
the roof. It could be Not helpful because it wasn't as cheeky as expected (a
hacker over-estimating his tact isn't exactly new), or because that question
was trapped in a cluster of users that had negative feelings toward its
answers.

I've been trying to make sense of the Question/Follower bi-graph on Quora.
Based on very different reactions to similar, but unconnected questions it
appears strongly clustered by normative takes, from narrow political
frameworks to attitude to entrepreneurship, food, etc. I can't seem to have
access to relevant data from outside, though.

~~~
raganwald
FWIW, my answer did receive many upvotes. But that is really the point of
moderation: to flag or steer the process when something is popular but
nevertheless not in the site's long-term best interests, just as it is my duty
as a parent to moderate the amount of candy my children eat :-)

~~~
kjksf
The assumption you seem to be making is that moderation is perfect i.e. that a
single moderator marking an answer as unhelpful means that it reflects some
absolute, unified judgement of Quora and all other moderators.

We all know that it's not how it works: there's a difference of opinions
between moderators. Not all parents deny candy to their children and those
that do have different quotas.

So extrapolating from a single data point, like you did, is not really valid.

------
rodbegbie
If you email moderation@quora.com and ask for "the Full Blake Ross"[1], they
will delete all your questions from the site and replace all references to
your username with "User".

[1]
[http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=full%20Blake%...](http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=full%20Blake%20Ross)

------
DanielBMarkham
I've been a member of Quora for a while, but I never got around to
participating. There was always something about it that struck me as strange.

I think the problem is that there is an assumption that asking a question and
receiving an answer is somehow a valuable experience in itself, and for basic
bits of factual information it is. But much of what constitutes "interesting"
questions, like the one in this article, do not fit that pattern.

I teach teams how to be agile. For many, an honest question they have is: why
do we need you? Can't we just read the book and know all we need to know?

It turns out the answer to that question is very interesting, because mostly
no, you probably can't. At least not in the way you think. There is factual
information and then there is mastery of a complex skill. I look at it this
way: I can show you a movie of a great piano player, you can meet him and get
his autograph, we can even read books on how to play the piano.

Will any of that make you a piano player? No, it will not. So when you ask a
seemingly straightforward and honest question like "How come I can't play this
Bach piece?" I'm unable to give you a straightforward answer that you are
going to find helpful. It's going to sound something like "Because you don't
know what you are doing. First you must do all this other stuff". Of course,
you don't want to do all that other stuff, you want to play the Bach piece.
And so there we are.

This touches on another problem -- not knowing what you don't know. When I
learned to fly, I found a good instructor and told him about the things I
would like to do.

"We're not doing any of that," he said, and then explained what we would be
doing. You see, I didn't know what questions to ask first. I simply had some
goal.

The worst problem I can see is folks getting answers they are not ready to
process. For example, sticking with my agile coach example, somebody might ask
me why a team takes so long trying to figure out what it's doing. The "answer"
might be something like "Because you've restricted their machines and tools in
such a way it's taking ten times longer than it should." but good luck in
giving it to somebody in that direct a fashion. They'll throw you out of their
office -- especially if they were the ones all along pushing for more controls
and complexity. This is a case of wanting a solution to one thing, but having
a second thing that cannot be touched. And of course, the second thing is
directly involved in the first thing. In situations like this you have to help
people figure out for themselves where their own internal model is flaky.
Sometimes that takes a while. (Interesting side note: many technologists
ardently refuse to believe they could be this way, saying things like "just
tell me bluntly". I have found that these folks are the worst to deal with,
because instead of seeing life as a journey, they are caught up in black-and-
white reasoning. So they are the last people you want to treat that way,
because to do so you're basically telling them their thinking is broken -- a
concept many cannot process)

~~~
zby
Comparing viewing a piano player and getting his autograph to learning from a
book is not fair at all. It is a straw man constructed to ridicule all
autodidacts.

~~~
ricefield
No, he isn't comparing the two, he's grouping them together. Watching a piano
player, meeting him and getting his autograph, _even_ read a book. (roughly
paraphrased).

I think he's trying to point out that besides "just reading the book" (as was
given in his example with his customers) there are other ways people think
they can learn and master complex skills - talking to famous, successful
people, or watching how they work. While there's certainly value in doing so,
his point is that that is probably not what you really need to improve.

~~~
zby
Let's take the quote:

"Can't we just read the book and know all we need to know? It turns out the
answer to that question is very interesting, because mostly no, you probably
can't. At least not in the way you think. There is factual information and
then there is mastery of a complex skill. I look at it this way: I can show
you a movie of a great piano player, you can meet him and get his autograph,
we can even read books on how to play the piano. Will any of that make you a
piano player? No, it will not."

Isn't that comparing learning from a book to watching a movie of a great piano
player? This "we can even read books on how to play the piano" is just a minor
addition. It should be the main point, but it is not because the other example
is more ridiculous and scores more points. He puts forward an obviously stupid
example of learning on your own and insists that it explains why learning on
your own in general is stupid.

------
edanm
I agree with your main point, that sites like StackExchange and Quora are
_not_ about discussions. From the get-go, Stack Overflow have made it very
clear, through their writings and policies, that it is about answering
questions, not talking.

Having said that, I disagree with your example. Oftentimes, when people ask a
question, questioning their motives _is_ a good idea. I know that when I ask a
question, I often discover that I'm trying to solve the wrong problem.

A very common pattern on SO is that the accepted answer is a practical
solution to the problem, and the highest-rated answer is a longer talk about
whether this is something the questioner even needs to do.

------
kovar
Oddly enough, I just posted a enhancement request to HN asking for comments to
be required for down voting. I can tell that I said something that wasn't
appreciated, but I don't know why - style, phrasing, bad phase of the moon,
just "not helpful"?

Getting no feedback other than a downvote doesn't help me adapt to the
community. I may not agree with why my post wasn't accepted by the community
that is HN, but at least I'll have more information to work with.

~~~
scott_s
There are two cases. The first case is if your comment deserved a downvote. In
that case, yes, one downvote on one comment makes it difficult to adapt. But
if the behavior that caused the downvote appears in other posts, those will
get downvoted, and you should be able to discern a pattern in what is not
appreciated.

The second case is if your post did not deserve a downvote. This happens,
particularly as our community grows. Some people downvote comments merely
because they disagree with what the person said. We don't want it to happen,
we (the community) try to correct for it when it does, but it does happen. And
in large threads, such posts can get "stuck" at the bottom in a place where no
one sees to correct it. In that case, don't worry about it. It happens to
everyone.

How do you know which case it was? Keep posting and you'll be able to find
out.

~~~
kovar
Thank you, this makes sense, and is appreciated.

------
l0c0b0x
Sounds to me like your answer should have been entered as a comment. At least
on stackexchange sites (sorry, don't use Quora, but I notice there is a
comment option) I like to leave comments that are not going to be directly
answering the question. Looks like in Quora there you can't vote up a
'comment' though, pitty.

------
freddealmeida
I was hoping for link to the discussion. But clearly the issue was not your
answer it was the way you answered. The answer is clear from your opinion: to
find rockstar developers, you also need to be a rockstar
entrepreneur/business/marketing/money guy.

I do not think that in this case it is about Quora Though I find it difficult
to participate effectively there. But that is not a effective or valid reason
to argue that discussion can not occur there. It can, and does. But you need
to follow its own style. Much like stackoverflow.

dissent is not about escaping the system. It is about participating in order
to change the system.

Of course, I am already hoping you take this frustration and build something
better.

------
gojomo
The boilerplate comments from moderators are kinda creepy, too, like
shibboleths uttered by cult members.

 _Your biological and technological distinctiveness will be added to our own.
Unhelpfulness is futile._

------
kstenerud
Personally, I love sites like SO and Quora. When I'm digging into something
outside of my experience/expertise (which is almost daily in my current job),
I'm consistently landing on pages that have answers written to my questions.
That's great.

What's NOT great, is having some esoteric need, landing on a bunch of pages,
and finding that most of them have an "are you sure you want to do this?"
response with no effort made to answer the question, ahm, in question.

The author is right in this respect. You are NOT just answering the person who
asked the question. Stuff on the internet STAYS. For YEARS. That means that
you're answering EVERYONE who EVER asks that question, and chances are that a
lot of them DO know what they are doing. All they lack are the mechanical
steps to take, which you have denied them by your second guessing of
intentions. And that is MASSIVELY frustrating. Sites like Quora understand
this, thus the "not helpful" button.

If you must question the judgment of the person asking, do so AFTER answering
the question. Otherwise your answer is, in fact, NOT useful. Oh, it may be
useful if you've successfully guessed the intentions of the asker, but for a
great number of other people who will land on that page in the years to come
it is nothing more than condescension.

I participate because I find it a godsend whenever I get stuck on some
esoteric API or poorly documented technology, or I just want to use something
in a way that it's not actually meant to be used BECAUSE I HAVE A DAMN GOOD
REASON TO DO IT. And I want to extend the same courtesy of answering without
prejudice so that some other soul can be similarly helped by my answer.

------
arnorhs
This might be a coincidence but either I remember seeing that question on
Quora, or it simply gets asked a lot.

I also remember the answer about how things didn't work like that and I
thought to myself "hmm, I agree, but he's not really answering the question
though" - It might also be because the answer came off very negative and
degrading

So I actually flagged the answer as "not helpful".

I'm guessing more people did, so it wasn't any single person.

Personally, I'm pretty happy with how these Q&A sites work. I don't feel that
it's just to serve the search engine results. I think they genuinely help
people.

------
msg
_Do not answer a fool according to his folly, or you will be like him
yourself._

 _Answer a fool according to his folly, or he will be wise in his own eyes._

I guess Quora suffers fools gladly.

------
elvirs
Though I agree with you on that even Quora did not get social Q/A thing right
it feels like making stunts about deleting accounts is catching on.

------
shalinmangar
What the author said is true, Quora and Q&A sites in general are more about
accumulating knowledge than helping individuals. So, trying to help someone
with an XY problem can get you penalized.

One service that I really liked was Aardvark which for a long time did not
have public Q&A pages. Also, connecting people through IM allowed for a very
personal and instant help.

------
gavanwoolery
@raganwald -

I commend you for your decision. Quora should not even have a down-vote button
-- the best answers will go to the top anyway through up-votes. Also, I think
there is just as much (if not more) intellectual value in answers that are
funny or slightly off-topic. If I wanted purely factual answers, I would ask
Google.

------
mbesto
Quora assumes a world full of absolutes. It's not.

------
iterationx
You answered a question with a question, its a QA site, not a philosophy
course.

------
georgieporgie
If I want to feel like I've helped someone, I'll volunteer at a soup kitchen.
If I want to spread knowledge, I'll write it in my blog. If I want to increase
ad revenue by generating content, and fool myself with a false sense of
socialization, I'll go to a Q&A site.

~~~
ique
But what do you do when you want a question answered that you can't google?

Isn't that the idea that all the Q&A sites stem from?

I feel roughly the same as you. But I have actually asked questions both at
StackExchange sites and Quora (and answered others in return for the help I
received). And it certainly has it's uses to me.

~~~
bergie
Since the stuff I work with is generally software, this is quite easy: either
read the source code, or ask the person who wrote it on IRC.

Admittedly, this approach has the downside of not producing something that
others encountering the same issue can find by Googling. Unless I blog it, of
course.

------
pitdesi
Scoble agrees that "not helpful" is not helpful: [http://www.quora.com/Robert-
Scoble-1/Youre-not-helpful-Quora...](http://www.quora.com/Robert-
Scoble-1/Youre-not-helpful-Quoras-worst-designed-feature)

~~~
bertil
I wouldn't go to Scoble for an insightful take on Quora.

~~~
citricsquid
After all, he thinks it's a blogging platform...

------
dbrown26
If you can't take criticism, don't post in a public forum designed for exactly
that.

~~~
raganwald
How is it that I can't take criticism? I thought about the response and I
agree that my answer was not helpful. How much more accommodating should I be?

------
mg1313
For one flagged answer you quit...that's good...it shows you how big your ego
is and how perseverent you are. Good "qualities"... I had answers collapsed
there in the beginning...but I persevered and now I am a quite power user. You
should try that sometime...

~~~
raganwald
The post specifically says that one flagged answer prompted me to think about
_why_ the answer was flagged, which led me to think about the difference
between HN and Quora, which led me to deactivate my account.

I've said plenty of unpopular things here on HN, yet I persevered. And if you
really want to see negative responses to things that I have written, you
should look at the comments on my old blog. If you want to present a theory
that my character can be determined from my response to downvotes or flagged
comments, I suggest your theory be amended to explain why I persevere with HN
and blogging, but not with Quora.

And congratulations on being a Quora Power User.

~~~
blauwbilgorgel
Got the same vibe from the article: the whiny quitter.It's not constructive
and not even interesting (who are you and why does your opinion on Quora even
matter?). All-in-all HN is lot more unwelcoming to users than Quora is. Here
people downvote because they don't agree, even if it is a thoughtful quality
reply.

What struck me the most was your wish to delete all your content. Taking your
ball, and going home. That shows how you approach the community: with ego over
sharing knowledge.

~~~
raganwald
1\. Absolutely my ego is involved, it always is, even when I claim that it
isn't.

2\. I only answered one question, and as that one answer was flagged, I don't
actually think it was still visible on the site to other users. And even if it
was, everybody (especially myself) seems to agree that it was not helpful. So
what would be the harm if I had the option of deleting my account?

3\. Who am I and why does my opinion matter? I can't answer that. I blog. You
like it, you don't like it. You upvote or you don't. There are no rules about
who is and who isn't fit to opine about anything at all. That's the beauty and
the hideous reality of the Internet. I would never suggest that I have any
particular qualification for writing words except that I do write. The same
goes for software.

4\. I have no problem whining about how Quora isn't a community in my blog.
And you have no problem whining about my blog post in a public forum. We seem
to have a lot in common, maybe we should be friends.

UPDATE: I should make something clear: I have nothing against Quora. I am not
predicting its demise. From what I have seen of SO, such sites have a lot of
potential and perform a valuable service. All I am saying about Quora is that
I realize that I am looking for a social experience, and Quora is looking for
answers to questions. That's not a bad thing, just not the same thing.

~~~
slowernet
You answered a question with a question, possibly a wise question, but
nevertheless an obtuse reaction to the questioner's want of tactical
knowledge. You were downvoted once and decided that one person's lack of
appreciation of nuance meant the service as a whole has none, and that it
wasn't for you.

I quickly conclude from this that you are quick to conclusions. I've found
many topics on Quora which have accreted answers which encompass a range of
nuance and even questions in kind. I may have even downvoted some of those
answers, but I didn't do so in hopes that anyone would stop using the service.

In re: whether you just don't want to be on Quora or you are predicting its
demise, the title of your post does allude to a certain implacable finality...

