
Quora pays thousands for posting questions - manigandham
https://quorapartners.quora.com/The-Quora-Partner-Program-in-2018
======
Havoc
What happened to Quora anyway? When it started I recall it being super hot
with crazy high quality answers.

Then they started with logins being required and it all seemed to go downhill
at an amazing speed.

~~~
madamelic
>What happened to Quora anyway?

It became marketing. Almost every question turns into blatant and unhelpful
pitches for the responder's startup.

Same with Medium.

Once the startup bros say a site is good for "native marketing", that's when
the begins to die.

~~~
notacoward
> Almost every question turns into blatant and unhelpful pitches for the
> responder's startup.

They break _all_ of their own rules for the sake of clicks. I was a Top Writer
there for two years. I finally got sick of trying to write informative high-
quality answers only to see them buried beneath flippant image-heavy crap
(rules violation #1) that didn't even get one tenth as many upvotes (rules
violation #2). Then they started getting on my case for not having topic bios,
even though other people's were blatantly _false_ , for not responding nicely
when their favorites were being dicks in comments, etc. So I just quit cold
turkey and haven't posted since. I only go back to read sometimes when I'm
_super_ bored, and that's about it.

~~~
dmoy
Do you know of any good replacement sites? (If you were to answer longform
somewhere now, where would it be?)

~~~
hyperpallium
well... [http://stackoverflow.com](http://stackoverflow.com) for programming,
and the family of [http://stackexchange.com](http://stackexchange.com)
websites for many other fields.

~~~
hopler
Quora's whole model is "like Stack Exchange, but with venture capital for a
big IPO".

Everything after the comma explains why Quora is junk.

~~~
Fire-Dragon-DoL
Quora is (was) open ended and allowed discussions. Most tech questions I have
can't be written on stackoverflow. The most stupid one is "what book can I
read to learn xxx".

Now they removed descriptions from questions, hide comments by default, so
they are heading the same direction.

Stackoverflow is helpful as documentation with examples, but for engineering
problems is of no help anymore. I usually have to ask in some dev chats and
discuss there

------
manigandham
$27k for 8000 questions, that's basically admitting they paid for spam. I
don't see how this is a good product decision at all and the content quality
has declined severely.

Meanwhile being a Top Writer has done nothing for me other than getting the
opportunity to buy quora branded swag from their store. Saying that this
system is imbalanced and unfair seems to be an understatement.

~~~
nikkwong
The mind blowing fact is that they're advertising this metric as if it's a
stat to be proud of. I think the average person browsing the internet would
see this and instantly question the site's credibility. I would _maybe_
understand this statistic being shared internally or in an email to partners--
but published publicly on the internet? They're just looking to invite
criticism and a loss of trust.

~~~
fourthark
Or they just want more people in the partner program and don't care about
their reputation.

------
outsidetheparty
> The top earning partner has earned $26,897 and asked over 8,000 questions,
> averaging about _45 questions per day_

> The top 10 earning partners earned an average of $9,189 and asked 11,256
> questions each, _averaging 61 questions per day_

This explains quite a bit about the quality of the content on that site....

~~~
perlgeek
That's $0.82 per question for the top 10 earning partners, in case somebody is
too lazy to do the math :)

And yes, advertising this fact seems misguided to me.

------
minimaxir
> The top earning partner has earned $26,897 and asked over 8,000 questions,
> _averaging about 45 questions per day_

That average metric is more _suspicious_ than an indicator of scale/impact.

------
dec0dedab0de
Im still wondering why Quora is allowed in google results. They're like the
new expertsexchange. Plus it completely baffles me that anyone would use it
for a topic that has a stack exchange.

~~~
theossuary
More than anything I want a search engine I can blacklist domains in.

~~~
grecy
Just putting "-quora.com" (no quotes) on the end of a search seems to do it
just fine.. you could have a long list of them you copy/paste in every time,
or I imagine you could write a grease monkey script to do it for you
automatically every time you click "search"

~~~
artwr
Or -site:quora.com if you are OK with pages with links to quora but you just
do not want a result from that domain.

------
p1esk
I quit Quora after they deleted my account by mistake - in the process of
merging my two accounts with different emails, they managed to delete both -
and then said "sorry, we screwed up, but unfortunately we can't undo it". All
my answers were gone. I put many hours into writing those answers and I still
don't understand the policy of automatically deleting all content when the
account is deleted.

~~~
Aeolun
That policy is actually good.

If someone goes through the trouble to delete their account it makes sense
that they’d want their content gone too (privacy).

~~~
p1esk
No it does not. When you decide to delete your account it should be up to you
if you also want your content deleted. The company should not make that choice
for you one way or another.

------
yumario
With Quora I learned how real filter bubbles are. During the 2016 elections I
used to click on a lot of anti-trump questions. The site painted me a picture
that trump was a "joke" and that he no one seriously believe he had a
"chance". I was genuinely chock he started winning the primaries.. and then
the elections. Looking back I still can't believe that I was so out of touch
with reality. I haven't use Quora since them. Nowadays I actively try to
ignore Quora when it shows up in search result. But when don't the answers are
often short and wrong, or blatant self promotion.

~~~
codezero
For what it's worth, despite the very strong liberal bias on Quora, (I worked
for Quora 2012-2014), they tried very hard to reduce bias from their feed
algorithms and tried to remain very neutral in rankings and distribution.

I think there was a conservative chilling effect that went above and beyond
what they could have done to help.

------
wetpaws
At some point Quora become so metric driven, so focused at maintaining their
growth and retention and hell knows what, that it turned into a very user
unfriendly place, akin to Yelp.

No, I don't need to login. No, I don't need 50 more notifications and an email
digest, no, I don't need to install the damnt app.

------
arduinomancer
Two comments:

1) Why wouldn’t the people answering the questions get that money? Aren’t they
the ones adding value to the site?

2) I’ve noticed a ton of spam answers recently where the answer is just a link
to another site, didn’t used to happen like 2 years ago

~~~
julienreszka
Turns out good questions are sometimes more valuable than good answers

~~~
rurban
But in fact the quality of the new questions go down, while the quality of
answers is still better than elsewhere.

For sure good answers are more valuable than good questions.

~~~
julienreszka
What do you mean

------
tinyhouse
A few years ago I thought Quora was the biggest threat to Google. There were
many questions I would go straight to Quora to find answers. I was wrong.

~~~
codinghorror
you and many, many other venture capitalists

------
danso
I'd be interested in knowing the thought process/analytics that inspired the
idea to pay for questions, and not (highly-upvoted) answers? My main reason
for joining Quora was that it seemed to be the social network that Dave
Baggett [0] (at the time) was actively using.

[0] [https://www.quora.com/profile/Dave-
Baggett](https://www.quora.com/profile/Dave-Baggett)

------
bilal4hmed
Im so glad I deleted my account on that site

------
RickJWagner
Quora is a little addictive. I get an email daily with several questions (and
links to the answers.)

Some I like, some I don't. But it is interesting to read.

~~~
anonytrary
I used to enjoy getting Quora digests. I remember seeing famous people and
even some of my professors using Quora.

Jimmy "your premise is flawed" Wales was famous on Quora for his shutdowns.
The site slowly started turning into a platform for marketers to pump their
self-help/motivational channels.

------
faitswulff
Aside, but I get all my Q&A jollies from
[https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/)
these days. The moderation is unparalleled and the questions as well as the
answers are interesting. There will be unanswered questions, which is
frustrating, but the quality remains high.

------
techsin101
When you ask question you get zero answers and it get flagged as "badly
worded"?

And when you search a question you get 50 questions asking the same thing and
each has 90 answers each but most are complete bs, or spam or like 20 people
saying the same thing or copy paste from top Google search results.... You
can't scroll long enough.. Also 20 paragraph stories from Indian person.

------
SergeAx
If we look at Quora as a marketplace connecting users in need of information
and experts, then paying for questions means oversupply of experts. This is a
bad sign: if a lot of people are ready to work for free, there is another
incentive behind. I believe it is either marketing or vain. If so, it seems
irrational to me to seek any kind of information anything on Quora.

------
Cyclone_
Would be curious to know how much revenue for the company the top earner
generated

------
ada1981
I just got invited to the partner program. I opted in but didn’t pay much
attention.

What is the best way to maximize the revenue / opportunity here?

------
NoblePublius
Still No API, right? So no care.

------
randomacct3847
I wonder what motivates Adam D’Angelo to keep on as founder and CEO after 10
years of running Quora. Here is someone who got rich off FB and could do
anything. Maybe early on that “anything” was Quora but I really can’t believe
that what Quora is now is anything close to what he envisioned when he first
started the site. At this point it feels like a Zombie co that keeps chugging
along because it has no other choice but to do so?

Quora embodies what I fear most about the idea of ever starting a VC-backed
co...that once you accept money it is very hard to return it and if your burn
rate is low you could just “exist” for years without actually succeeding or
accomplishing much at all.

~~~
codezero
Have you thought about this a lot?

Quora is Adam's baby. He owns most of it and has been involved as a primary
investor for... I'm not sure how long. Before that he was CTO of Facebook and
an early investor in Instagram. He's made immense returns on these
investments. I don't have numbers, but I would bet money he could buy back
Quora from investors with cash and still be a several-hundred-millionaire.
With that said, why would he do anything but his pet project?

~~~
manigandham
Having so much success though can also mean that you don't have as much drive
to make a great product because you're already set. Not that it must be the
case here, but passion is hard to maintain when it doesn't really have much
effect on your life.

Also, if the site can be run completely independently (and it looks like
operational costs are rather low) then why even take VC in the first place?
Surely the effects of hundreds of millions requiring a return could easily be
predicted as eventually causing problems?

~~~
codezero
I agree with your first point, but Adam is also one of the sharpest people
I’ve ever known. It’s hard for me to resolve the idea that he’d be complacent.

As for funding, he wasn’t liquid when Quora started afaik, but also even smart
wealthy people take loans and get VC.

------
diN0bot
content quality aside, at least this makes users customers. why shouldn't
folks creating content on sites like this be part of the profit sharing?

~~~
manigandham
The only valuable content are the answers, some that have taken hours to write
and kept up to date by passionate folks who are willing to share their
expertise and knowledge.

They don't pay for answers though, and this is making writers turn into unpaid
workers generating money for spammers who just post questions all day. Many
writers I know have stopped because there is no upside.

~~~
vasilipupkin
I wish someone would make a for profit site that is a mashup of hacker news,
quora and twitter and paid people for posting content, specifically for
upvotes. I would invest in this personally

~~~
manigandham
I think paying for content is the problem because it skews everything, unless
there is very tight control over submissions.

~~~
vasilipupkin
Why ? What’s the difference between paying for upvotes in dopamine hits or
money ?

~~~
manigandham
Because people will do anything for even trivial amounts of money while
upvotes are controlled by users which is self-correcting when the community
and controls are well managed.

~~~
vasilipupkin
I’m proposing leaving the upvotes in the hands of users but paying users for
high karma

~~~
manigandham
Sure, but the overall point is that as soon as you introduce money people will
spend inordinate amounts of time to game the system. Paying for high scores
will mean people doing anything they can to get upvotes unethically that will
eventually hurt the community, similar to what's happening on Quora right now.

~~~
vasilipupkin
agree that there are complications but I think there are also advantages. All
these sites depend on quality content and creating an explicit incentive to
provide it is not so bad, is it ?

------
sigi45
No one thinks that's unethical?

------
the_other_guy
Pathetic. You rarely see an authentic answer in Quora these days. It's all
self-promotion, direct and indirect advertising, fake wisdom and "life hacks".

~~~
atomical
I agree with you. Many of the popular writers seem interested in internet
points.

Many of the answers have the same storytime format. The writer takes us back
in time, introduces a concept that on first inspection seems wrong, and
eventually gives us an example of why it is correct by using an example of
someone else's misfortune.

It gets old fast.

------
vishnu_ks
Reminds me of the site Mahalo.com which used to pay users for posting answers.
Anyone heard of them lately?

