How Quora Died

Comments

• d3Xt3r@lemmy.nz ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  If you were looking for answers to such questions 10 years ago, your best resource for finding a thorough, expert-informed response likely would have been one of the most interesting and longest-lasting corners of the internet: Quora.

  I disagree, the best place for such answers used to be Reddit, and Stack Exchange for the techy stuff. Quora always felt like cancer for some reason and I never really used it.

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  • Gork@lemm.ee ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I think that’s because Quora paywalls responses from volunteers, preventing others from seeing them unless they pay a subscription. Pretty scummy.

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    • stoy@lemmy.zip ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I wouldn’t call it scummy, just bad business, give people one premium answer per week, so they know the quallity and at incentivised to pay.

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  • ConstipatedWatson@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Here’s hoping at some point search engines will return Lemmy links when people look for answers, but we’re not there yet

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    • db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      search engines are thoroughly crap right now. Abandon all hope that they will become better.

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    • OsrsNeedsF2P@lemmy.ml ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      The problem with Lemmy is the federated content gets duplicated on multiple sites, word for word, which isn’t good for SEO

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    • russjr08@bitforged.space ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Kagi now has a lens for focusing results from the Fediverse, I’ve seen it pull Lemmy links before!

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    • crazyCat@sh.itjust.works ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Have we said anything useful yet? Just kidding, but I just look for casual commentary on here, all surface level and meme stuff when tired at the end of the day.

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    • RecallMadness@lemmy.nz ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I think Something will have to change quite significantly.

      Search engines give heavy weighting to uniqueness of content. And with Lemmy content being replicated across the fediverse that doesn’t exactly happen.

      And I’m not sure you can set a canonical URL that’s off site. And then, if it does and that site goes down, you “lose” the content.

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  • Haus@kbin.social ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I'd say there was a period before reddit hit its pinnacle where Quora was significantly better. Probably more than 10 years ago, though, and only for a few years. I remember when I started spending more time on Reddit than Quora.

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• Sterile_Technique@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I’ve been pouring my life into the Internet since before Quora existed.

  There was never a time I recall Quora not being shit. All it ever did was dilute search results.

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  • teamevil@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Any time Quora results come up my search gets an instant -Quora. That site is a wet fart… terrible

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    • ArghZombies@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      It’s like the text version of Pinterest.

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    • SoleInvictus@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I only pull up Quora when I want to know the most common wrong answers to questions.

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    • UNWILLING_PARTICIPANT@sh.itjust.works ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I would pull it up if it seemed directly related, but just the UX was so awful that even if it answered my question, it felt bad the whole while. Though most of the time it was the most awful LinkedIn-esque winemaking m wind bagging by people desperate to be considered professionals in their field

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  • Rusty@lemmy.ca ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Before Quora it was yahoo answers and it was just as shitty as Quora. The only Q&A sites that are not a waste of time are stackoverflow and other stackexchange sites.

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• maness300@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I think it’s so fucking stupid how it it always defaults to “similar questions” instead of just showing us the actual answers.

  Just another example of throwing as much shit at an audience to drive up “engagement.”

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• ShustOne@lemmy.one ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  A horrible user experience with an insufferable userbase. I can’t believe it even lasted this long.

  Who thought it would be great if similar questions overpowered the one you searched for?

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  • Telodzrum@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Stack Exchange

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  • Feathercrown@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    “Hey Quorans, how many carrots go in a carrot stew?”

    Answer to a similar question: “Why does Bugs Bunny eat carrots?”

    unfunny joke “I have an IQ of 128” sarcasm Anyways to answer the question, it’s because he needs good eyesight.

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• magic_lobster_party@kbin.social ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  For me I hated Quora because of how locked down it is. Want to view another question on the site? Must register an account first! No fucking thanks. It was always nagging about creating an account.

  Because of this I actively ignored Quora results anytime I googled something.

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  • squiblet@kbin.social ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Yep, I can’t speak on the decline of quality because it was a site that was early to dark pattern bullshit. It would show up prominently in Google search and then tease “you have to sign up to read the answers”. Uh, no. Reminds me of expert sexchange or whatever that site was that got smashed by stackoverflow for similar reasons.

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    • eatthecake@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Umm… expert sexchange?

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    • BearOfaTime@lemm.ee ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Oh damn, experts exchange. Takes me back!

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  • Icalasari@kbin.social ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I finally cracked and made an account

    It's not worth it, you basically get alerts on the account for everything to the point of uselessness

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    • magic_lobster_party@kbin.social ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      That’s what I have been told and that’s why I have been avoiding creating an account

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  • THEDAEMON@lemmy.ml ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I found a work around for this even though i don’t use quora anymore here it goes :

    • click the question you want to see from the web page . then when the question thread link you want to see appears on your search bar click your search bar and load it manually . Also you have to be in incognito mode for this to work .

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• callouscomic@lemm.ee ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  It was always a garbage site, and it hid behind a requirement to login just to view more than like 1 question, amd it was full of creepy discussions.

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  • Tangent5280@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    People who fucked their mothers, how did it happen? How was the experience? (In great detail) ((Asking for a friend)) (((Only serious answers)))

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• db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Another social media site which followed the enshittification paradigm. This playbook has played out so many times until now. Start it with “good intentions” as a for-profit startup. People join and volunteer their time because the founders say all the right things and the site culture is so new and exciting. Once the site gets popular though, all the fancy talk from the founders goes out the window.

  When will people learn this lesson. Don’t ever volunteer your time on a for-profit proprietary social network. You will get rugpulled!

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  • CurlyMoustache@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    We could call it Fedora!

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    • ClockworkOtter@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Cute, but already taken by the OS.

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    • VampyreOfNazareth@lemm.ee ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Haha well played

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  • abhibeckert@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Would be interesting to get a fediverse version of Quora

    A Fediverse version of Stack Exchange would be easier - since the content is creative commons you could start with the full archive of questions.

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  • corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Volunteer your time, but do it with your eyes open.

    If you’re okay with how it’s going to end up, it’s all good.

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  • linearchaos@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    You mean like /c/asklemmy or /c/nostupidquestions?

    I think we just need more biomass.

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  • captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    You mean like c/asklemmy?

    I think Reddit almost had it for awhile. There was a point when stuff like r/askhistorians and the like actually worked, and you’d get fairly good answers. That’s one place where the Fediverse isn’t up to speed yet, for that sort of thing you need a critical mass of “everybody uses it” to really achieve.

    So far Lemmy is at its best in the hobby subs because three people with the same hobby will still have fun talking, but if I say “nutritional anthropologists of Lemmy: when and where did humans begin eating cheese?” it’s gonna be crickets because there’s probably not a nutritional anthropologist to be found among us.

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• gwildors_gill_slits@lemmy.ca ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I don’t ever remember people taking Quora very seriously.

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  • linearchaos@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I think the main stay of taking Quora seriously mainly consisted of reddit posts citing Q articles from Google searches.

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• QuaternionsRock@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  This article links to a Tweet of a screen recording of a TikTok of a screenshot of a Reddit post as proof that Quora is “hateful”. Yeesh.

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  • Feathercrown@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Image

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  • KneeTitts@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Have you been there? It doesnt take long to come across the exact same thing they are highlighting.

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    • QuaternionsRock@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I’m not debating the premises or conclusions of the article lol

      Mistakes like this are merely clues as to how much time and effort the author actually puts into their journalism

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• lvxferre@mander.xyz ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Modern Quora reminds me a lot Yahoo! Answers when I was a kid - it’s mostly a trolling playground. You can technically get some useful info out of it, but odds are that you won’t be able to sort it out.

  I’m from the firm belief that anyone using a chatbot to directly reply questions either 1) never interacted with chatbots enough to conclude the obvious (that their answers are often unreliable crap), or 2) doesn’t care about reliability at all.

  BNBR is never enough to create a nice and respectful community. You need to go a step deeper and analyse why and when users are hostile towards each other.

  “The A.I. thing, the terms of service issue, has been a massive drain of top talent on Quora, just based on how many people have said, Downloaded my stuff and I’m out of there,”

  One thing that corporate social media struggles to understand is that not all the users have the same impact in a platform. It’s extremely easy to take a mildly unpopular decision that only pisses off 0.5% of your userbase, and the platform becomes ruined because that 0.5% were damn important.

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  • db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    One thing that corporate social media struggles to understand is that not all the users have the same impact in a platform. It’s extremely easy to take a mildly unpopular decision that only pisses off 0.5% of your userbase, and the platform becomes ruined because that 0.5% were damn important.

    Pretty much what happened with reddit which lost all its power users.

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    • lvxferre@mander.xyz ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Yes, with a difference: Reddit knows it but doesn’t care due to the imminent IPO.

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• IphtashuFitz@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Quota was just Ask Jeeves 2.0… Both relied on human “experts” and neither could figure out a long term monetization plan.

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• weew@lemmy.ca ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I think the greatest thing that Quora provided was the “Pregananant???” video

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  • aeharding@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Yahoo answers

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    • SkaveRat@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      What is a Luigi board?

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• metalsonic00@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Yahoo answers used to be great

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  • nonfuinoncuro@lemm.ee ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    how is babby formed

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    • Tangent5280@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      gerganant?

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  • frezik@midwest.social ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Only for being laughably awful. Quora was in this place where the answers were just good enough that you probably wouldn’t be able to dispute any obvious flaws without being a subject matter expert already. Yahoo Answers only provided memes.

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• user224@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Heh, I requested my Quora account to be deleted just 16 days ago. It was finally deleted.

  Image

  I left because it got filled with far right-wings, conservatives and pedophiles. Also many answers are now paywalled.

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  • pewgar_seemsimandroid@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    why not troll the heck outta them

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• yamanii@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Was it ever alive? When I found it the site was already trash asking for an account just to see content, yahoo answers was the shit.

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  • kevincox@lemmy.ml ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    It definitely was. I remember finding some amazingly insightful answers from people with proper experience. But that must have been nearly a decade ago now. Some of the most memorable ones were reflections from prisoners as IIRC some prisons had some sort of program where the prisoners could write answers and someone would post them on Quora. Interesting insights from murders, con artists and whoever else.

    But it has been so long since that was the case. I’ve had it blocked from my search results for years now. Utter trash.

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• dust_accelerator@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  But even then, there were issues plaguing Quora that would continue to fester. First, an anonymous former Quoran told me, the site started “shortening the length of questions.” The professed reason was to increase Quora’s visibility on Google, but that brevity came with a cost: It also made it difficult for users to ask the types of complex questions that could be addressed by specialists

  Ah, I see they started the enshittification very early. It might’ve been a good LLM database, but the good quality content would be outdated by now and the more recent is infested with troll and bot garbage and AI writing. Sad.

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• egitalian@lemm.ee ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Good riddance honestly, never have I gotten a good answer from Quora, seems like they’re all trolls. So for the past decade+ I overlook ANY Quora links related to my search

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  • psud@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    If you had a question that attracted an expert in a relevant field, you’d get a good answer. If your question didn’t attract them you’d get a random internet stranger

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• Imgonnatrythis@sh.itjust.works ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Anyone else getting a massive wave of spam from quora lately? They have completey gone to shiite

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  • UNWILLING_PARTICIPANT@sh.itjust.works ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Either they’ve forgot about me or I blocked them and forgot about it

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• Cyberjin@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Never used it, noticed it was infected with Chinese and Russian propaganda.

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• RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  The once-beloved forum is now home to a never-ending avalanche of meaningless, repetitive sludge, filled with bizarre, nonsensical…

  Oh, so like Reddit or yahoo answers, too?

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• Tristaniopsis@aussie.zone ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I’d love a plug-in to block all Quora results.

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  • DasSkelett@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    If you are using Firefox, check out addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/hohser/ You can block certain domains from your search results, works great for me

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    • RecursiveParadox@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Saved, thanks.

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    • Tristaniopsis@aussie.zone ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Thanks.

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  • Imgonnatrythis@sh.itjust.works ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Just use kagi

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    • crazyCat@sh.itjust.works ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      +1 for Kagi, am loving it.

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    • Tristaniopsis@aussie.zone ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I’ll check it out but have never heard of it.

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  • CosmicTurtle@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    It’s sad that so many plugins like this exist.

    Remember ExpertsExchange? They charged people for the correct answer but was in the top 10 results. They got blocked very quickly when Google, yes Google, allowed you to block any site from your search. That feature is now gone and you have to specify that in your search terms.

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  • Anafabula@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Brave search has a “No Quora” filter

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    • Tristaniopsis@aussie.zone ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Marvellous.

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• milkjug@lemmy.wildfyre.dev ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Poster: <Asks some random tech question> 100 Quora replies: Hi, I’m <generic name>, creator and founder of <some failing startup/product>, here’s <10 totally meaningless> reasons why you should subscribe to my product that does nothing for your question.

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• vodkasolution@feddit.it ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  And here we go again: Earlier this month, the A.I.–accelerationist venture capital hub Andreessen Horowitz blessed Quora with a much-needed $75 million investment—but only for the sake of developing its on-site generative-text chatbot, Poe.

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• lemmesay@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  for those who have no choice but to quickly look for an answer on quora, there’s an alternative frontend that makes quora bearable.

  @UNWILLING_PARTICIPANT@sh.itjust.works, @magic_lobster_party@kbin.social

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• altima_neo@lemmy.zip ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Yeah nah. I didn’t need to know how babby was formed

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• Eideen@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I used to feel opening a Quora page was okay, and useful.

  No i dread opening a Quora page. You get spammed by “do you like to login with Google”. There is a AI bot on top, befor the top replay. There is a AD/sponsor spot that looks like the rest of the page, you get Related questions, then you get other answers. So now you need to think to open the page.

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• Retro_unlimited@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I think it died when they started paying people For answers. People asked the most stupid questions just so they can be the top answers

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• vodkasolution@feddit.it ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I disagree, quora at the beginning was a place to find quick answers to a lot questions on many different themes, a bit like reddit. But it rapidly became full of “pro replier” just like the Microsoft forums and it was unbearable, then, my 2 cents, it was confusing because of subscription, layout, suggested q&a totally unrelated to the topic I was looking for and a lot of questions that nobody would ever even post on /No Stupid Question (I don’t want to judge, but for a lot of them it was easier, faster and you’d get an immediate answer with a plain Google search)

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• gsf@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Kinda sad neither the article nor comments here mention ask.metafilter.com

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• pineapplelover@lemm.ee ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Quora still has answers to some old math problems so it’s not all that useless.

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