Is Quora Finished?

In my opinion, driving traffic was a success.

It came at a steep cost.

Very poor signal to noise ratio. Reputable or notable contributions do not rise above the noise well enough to preserve the initial reputability Quora began with.

Spaces are a mixed bag. Mostly good. Depends on the space, and the better ones are asking for features that make a lot of sense. It could get worse.

Quora does still retain a nice fraction of the initial top writers, and a fair number of those really still care.

Finished?

I don't think so. Time remains to improve.

If they do not decide what Quora is intended to be, then yes. Finished, and it will trundle along for a good while yet.

There does need to be a cleanup pass done, and with it very clear intent. Throughout the history of Quora, intent, to a large but not inclusive degree, culture, and overall site management have gone through multiple transitions.

Each of these netted some great ideas.

It appears few of those were given the attention and focus needed for it all to play out better than it currently has.

The high value leave behinds are disappointing.

The only differentiator I ever saw with Quora is the presence of known public figures answering questions about their own work or area of expertise. Really, it's not a whole lot different than a Reddit AMA in theory, but it at least felt like these people maintained a real presence and weren't just promoting their latest books or films.

But that is inherently not scalable. There are a limited number of celebrity subject matter experts.

Heck, I even used to use it myself for a while. It was fairly interesting being able to give detailed meaningful answers to questions about how government budgeting and defense contracting works in a totally non-political context where you just give the technical details and people seem to actually care. But I feel like it didn't last? I don't know what Quora could have done. Seemingly, the wave of utter nonstop political toxicity just took over the entire Internet. Being completely general purpose, they don't have the narrow niche appeal like the Stack Exchanges, Hacker News, and the few hobbyist sub-Reddits still worth going to that allows them to keep out the people just looking to shout and be heard.

The reality of the world these days seems to be you either go for quality but guarantee you're never going to get big, or you go all-in trying for a payday knowing you're almost certain to become a cesspool of toxic pointlessness, but hopefully addictive toxic pointlessness you can use to sell ad space.

They were so heavy handed with the login rules. I probably would have been a regular user but it felt like a personal victory to not make an account.

Quora is hot garbage at this point. Is it dying? I would say yes. The original attraction of having world class people actively participate and contribute a lot seems long gone. They've incentivized posting with rewards. They also have a major spam and moderation problem which will be the long slow death into becoming yahoo answers.

Personal story, I used to spend a lot of time on there answering questions. My niche (web hosting) is awful. It's just bluehost affiliate link after some company you've never heard of self promo. It's obviously fake accounts using stock photos, fake names, networks of upvotes that are easy to detect. And yet... even after reporting many of them. It takes ages, if any action ever gets taken.

The worst experience which made me really stop using it for the most part. "Quora moderation has collapsed your answer for violating terms of service: be nice."

What was the problem?

I posted a long answer to a question asking about a fake company that clearly had spammed quora. I got 3 questions about a company I'd never heard of within 45 minutes from fake accounts using fake pictures/names. I researched the company, it doesn't legally exist. They were lying about when they were created (claiming to be 10 years old or something with a domain registered in last 2 years). There was no legal company in the state records with anything even close to their name (I actually had them reach out to me later and try to get listed on my review site and their representative even admitted they aren't legally incorporated). It was clearly spam and fraud. I posted all my evidence and reported the accounts.

The result? I was punished for exposing fraud and spam on Quora. Somehow that's not nice to point out and save people from falling victim to signing up for a company that doesn't exist, posts fake reviews and generates fake interest using Quora.

For the curious: https://www.quora.com/Who-is-the-ARZ-host/answer/Kevin-Ohash...

Quora lacks user moderation in a form that can effectively punish clickbait and trolling. Similarly the lack of discussion threads prevents effective criticism of a popular reply.

Its niche has been filled by a mix of Reddit, Stack Exchange and even us here at Hacker News.

I do believe Quora has declined significantly. My personal issue with it is that it seems to be filled with low-quality promotional/SEO answers.

Quora, along with Pinterest, are the bane of my search results.

It has a lot of pointless content and it seems like there are always better sources than it. Maybe their user base grows but the quality of answers drops.

i suspect not.

they seem to show up a lot for me, still, for....almost any search i do.

and looking thru a lot of posts on idiehackers and related, it seems to be the number one place that small companies go to to get attention.

so, the quality may be 'finished', but...they're still highly relevant for most of the web.

Idk never used it. The paywall makes me flee every time a search leads me there.

Asking this question on HN certainly helps! Let’s go for cc-by-sa collaboration faq sites.

if you see a flaw why not change it? be specific. competition is good

doesn't seem to be that dead https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=quora.com