

Early Quora Design Notes - danzuri
http://artypapers.com/ap.log/thread.php?346

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bulletmagnet
Do people outside the start up / technology world really use Quora? I've never
seen anything there that's of value to "real people", and worse, Quora pages
seldom (if ever) are returned when I search for something on Google (while
other Q&A sites like StackExchange and others come up all the time). I
personally find Quora confusing and the content in there more on the
navelgazing side. Not sure I get it.

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riffraff
The question gets asked all the time quora is discussed, my 2c:

I guess it's hard to tell, but I don't know anybody who isn't a techie who is
on quora.

On the other hand, I don't know anyone non-techie using *.stackexchange
either.

And TBH, I don't even know anyone using yahoo answers, but judging by the
number of results from YA I still get in random google searches, I'd assume
way more people find it useful than we may expect.

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runemadsen
I find that the Quora email digest is the only newsletter I'm looking forward
to reading EVERY time it's in my inbox. I can't come up with anything that is
as insightful, interesting, and fun on the internet. It takes the
enlightenment of a TED talk and removed the bullshit. That alone makes for
Quora to be a survivor.

~~~
untog
Survivor in what sense? E-mail newsletters are not the stuff of huge cash
profit.

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fabian2k
Quora would make a better first impression if they didn't force users to sign
up to be able to read more than the first answer.

I also find their real name policy annoying, as they disable your writing
privileges if you use a name that doesn't look real enough.

~~~
OriginalSyn
After having my account locked down because I didn't want to use my full name
I closed my account, shortly after they turned into a more modern looking
experts exchange and I wasn't so sore about not being able to contribute to
the site.

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samstave
I was an early and very active user of quora. I deleted my account when they
mucked with privacy settings among other things.

I had a number of issues with the site: I think the UI is horrid. The site
admins are complete dicks and they have a heavy censorship hand with no
recourse. The ability to find various topics is difficult (it got better - but
in the beginning it was abhorrent).

They are arrogant. They kept patting themselves on the back exclaiming how
amazing their UI/UX was and effectively told people who didn't like it that
they were too stupid to understand their methods.

I recently recreated my account to specifically ask Yishan some questions
about reddit, and quora censored that post as well.

Personally, I think they are too arrogant and I choose not to participate.

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mnicole
I'm just not impressed with Quora's design; I think her initial mockup (which
was essentially a StackExchange clone) was better than where it's ended up.
Every time I go there I get frustrated with something; having to click to read
each threaded comment, having to manually remove new notifications because
instigating the drop-down or just going to the notifications page aren't
enough, clicking to expand a user's description within their own profile, no
less on the answer pages.. just a lot of little annoyances combined with poor
typography, consistency and use of color.

