

The mistakes I made in Quora - justnearme
http://scobleizer.com/2011/01/31/the-mistakes-i-made-in-quora/

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josefresco
I think it's hilarious how one person ... one registered user of a web startup
can completely derail all positive discussion about the service and spawn so
many blog posts and news articles.

This strikes me as one of those "lord of the flies" moments where we all need
to stop and ask what we're all doing here exactly.

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andymatic
I'm just glad we didn't kill Piggy.

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coderdude
He has displayed some very poignant insight into his own behavior in that
particular online community. I was able to take away some good lessons about
my own activities elsewhere. It's definitely important to keep your ear to the
ground, as he has apparently learned. I don't think I've read a lot of what
he's written; An article or two over the last several years, maybe. That said
I have an image created in my mind about the kind of person he is (very self-
promotional) but this has shown me another side of the guy. Something I can
relate to.

Good on him for being humble enough to lay his own flaws out there for
everyone to see.

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StavrosK
Isn't the TL;DR here "I was basically being a Karma whore"? It sounds like he
was mostly trying to get upvotes rather than answer the questions...

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coderdude
That wasn't my take-away. He answers a ton of questions and made a conscious
effort to maximize his return on that work (in this case, karma). He knew how
to get what he wanted, but in order to get what he wanted he still had to be
helpful in the process. If he wasn't being helpful then he wouldn't have
gotten the votes in the first place.

If he actually wasn't being helpful but yet still received a lot of votes then
that is a flaw in the community's voting habits. For example, people
automatically up-voting him because of who he is after seeing other people do
that countless times "so he must be insightful, right?" The guy knows how that
place works so it seems logical that he might make the most out his time spent
on there. There are power players in every community -- even this one -- who
can relate to Scoble in this regard.

His problem was that he was playing too hard IMO. This ticked a lot of people
off. Now, he does mention that some of his practices were annoying to other
community members. That was also his flaw.

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StavrosK
The definition of karma whoring isn't posting irrelevant things just for
upvotes, it's focusing on getting upvoted rather than answering. His posting
low-quality questions quickly just so he can get upvoted while refining them,
posting irrelevant pictures just so the posts look nicer, etc, all points to
karma whoring, not just answering a lot.

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coderdude
>The definition of karma whoring isn't posting irrelevant things just for
upvotes, it's focusing on getting upvoted rather than answering.

Why is there a negative stigma around wanting karma and seeking it out even in
the case where you're being helpful? It seems as though karma is something
good to have but if you want it, that's bad. This seems similar to how wanting
to be cool makes you so uncool.

>His posting low-quality questions quickly just so he can get upvoted while
refining them, posting irrelevant pictures just so the posts look nicer, etc,
all points to karma whoring, not just answering a lot.

Fair enough, my definition of karma whoring might be a bit off from the norm.
I always took it as trying to gain karma from a community while basically
doing nothing to further the quality of the community. I wasn't aware from his
post that the pictures he was adding to the answers were entirely irrelevant.
I must have missed where he said that (and I don't use Quora).

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StavrosK
I don't use quora either, I just saw his example post where the photo seems to
be an airport whereas the post is about some other issue. There's a difference
between being minimally helpful to maximise karma gain and being helpful and
getting karma as a side-effect. The things he posted weren't about getting the
highest quality posts possible, they were about getting the highest amount of
upvotes.

The fact that he posted low quality answers to gain karma while he refined
them is a prime example of that, in my opinion. If you just care about helping
you don't do that.

Karma is a reward for helpful users, it's not the goal (that's why you can't
redeem it for anything). When users act in this way it stops being an
indicator of helpfulness and turns into an indicator of who's the best at
raking in karma.

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michael_dorfman
Wow, that was surprisingly insightful. I have to admit I didn't expect Scoble
to be that self-aware.

~~~
tim_iles
I did. It seemed to me he was trying to emulate Jon Skeet's Stack Overflow
reputation (ref: [http://scobleizer.com/2011/01/02/crack-for-technical-
recruit...](http://scobleizer.com/2011/01/02/crack-for-technical-recruiters-
best-stackoverflow-users-handed-over/) ) but looks like he misjudged his
effort.

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erikstarck
The interesting thing here, I think, is how obvious it is that it's the
community and the rules of the community that shapes a service like Quora, not
the feature set or the web design or the copy used etc.

Not that this is very surprising, it's just a reminder to not just look at the
feature list of your startup but also its.... well, soul.

Hacker News is itself an example of this.

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andymatic
It's the people not the software? >shudders< ;)

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jdp23
It's the people _and_ the software.

Great points by Erik. I quoted this exchange at
[http://www.talesfromthe.net/jon/?p=2374&cpage=1#comment-...](http://www.talesfromthe.net/jon/?p=2374&cpage=1#comment-127082)

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asanwal
Hate to sound negative (and prob will get downvoted), but why is this news at
all?

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uptown
I know your question was rhetorical, but I'll give an answer anyway. Because
unfortunately (in my opinion) news has become as much about whos delivering
the information as what's being said. And I use the word "said" because many
times whats written or spoken isn't even what I'd call reporting. Take
Wikileaks for example ... much of the main stream media reporting on Wikileaks
has placed as much prominence (or more) on Julian Assange as they have on the
trove of information thats been exposed. Cable-"news" has built brands around
their personalities that pass off editorializing as reporting. This has
resulted in viewer loyalty to the point where many of their viewers threaten
to go elsewhere if their favorite newsreader isn't retained. This "story" has
all the ingredients to fit into that model ... two prominent internet
personalities (Arrington & Scoble) without enough followers, fans and haters
to ensure that there'll be people on either side to fuel the fire using their
platforms to promote their opinions about stuff.

Is it news? I guess about as much as what you see presented as news elsewhere.

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asanwal
Thanks for the thoughtful response. And I tend to agree. In the case of
Wikileaks, the guy did something substantive at least (whether you agree or
disagree with it) so I can understand the fascination with the man behind the
story as his motivations, methods, etc are potentially interesting.

In this case, this whole thing appears void of any real "substance" which I
guess is what led to the question.

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sushrutbidwai
These are the self-ware posts by scoble which have made his respected in
tech/startup circles.

Perhaps this clarifying post will lead to better discussions on quora. Any new
service, when explodes, some one out there misses crucial point of using the
service. But in the long run those mistakes become new yardstick to rate
content and hence leads to better discussions.

So Scoble - thanks again!

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atgm
I've had his problem before -- being completely addicted to a service or forum
and posting constantly just because I'm always there and am so enthusiastic
about it. It's really hard to spot in yourself and deal with when you're
just... so enthusiastic!

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joshu
There is something wrong with him. Slight case of narcissistic personality
disorder?

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jimboyoungblood
If so, I'd hate to see what a severe case looks like.

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davidu
Damn, 400 answers on Quora... no wonder why Scoble is so passionate about it.
Scoble is a content creation machine, and unlike most answer sites and other
bloggers, his content is high-signal.

