Quora is in the same boat as FB (and to a certain extent, Twitter)
They think that the experience of their largely 20-something staff is anything short of revolutionary.
A bunch of kids running a digital media company with questionable morals and no connection to digital history.
I will delete me Quora account. So far I have gotten little value from it. Time for it to have no data on me.
Deactivated!
Edit:
I followed up with an email to [email protected] asking them to delete my account and data.. will see what happens. I dont like the idea of a limbo account that can be reactivated/mined.
I have to take the minority position and stand up for Quora here. I'm a huge fan of the service, and though I agree this latest move was a mis-step, I remain a loyal Quora user.
Unlike you, I've gained a ton of value from it. Unlike the trivial discussions or content spam posted on Facebook or Twitter, Quora features tons of interesting conversations. The closest comparison to it might actually be Wikipedia, at least in terms of general scale of ambition.
It's the one online community I've found that I think is better than Hacker News (though admittedly the quality of discussing has slid as the audience has grown wider). There's few other places where a question about politics might be answered by a Washington insider, or a question about startups might be answered by a top name Valley VC, or a question about snipers answered by an actual sniper.
Their real name policy has generally been fairly sensibly and sensitively implemented (http://www.quora.com/Why-has-there-been-an-outcry-against-re...) - they've always allowed anonymous posting, and they've been more flexible on the definition of "real name", than, say, G+. For example, danah boyd is able to post with the legal, lowercase form of her name.
Whether they'll begin bowing to advertisers once they need to monetise of course remains an open question -- but I'm hoping they can find alternative revenue streams. For example, a lot of consultants post answers on there to gain clients -- that's an example of the concrete monetary value Quora creates, and if they can capture some of that value they can build a great company without stooping to Facebook-style data mining controversies.
apparently you have to e-mail [email protected] to get your account deleted completely. That in itself is reason to delete your account btw. It speaks volumes of their regard for users and their privacy.
Absolutely. Their policy to force your true_full_name is an absolute no-go for many users. A friend of mine from south India has a very lengthy name. Few parts of his name are direct reference to his ancestors and the villages they come from. Sort of like this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._D._Deve_Gowda where H. D. parts of his name are references to ancestry, places etc.
My friend was denied permission to use Quora, rather insultingly blocked, for not revealing his ancestor name. We thought it was plain stupid on part of Quora to behave this way, so didn't bother to follow up with them either. What's amazing here is that even Government passports don't force revealing names of ancestors like they do.
Quora has gone the way of expert-sexchange, showing up in Google search results for interesting questions, but then overlaying/replacing most answers with blur and "sign up to read".
> Quora has gone the way of expert-sexchange, showing up in Google search results for interesting questions, but then overlaying/replacing most answers with blur and "sign up to read".
This shit doesn't fly with Google. Delivering different content to Google bot and the user coming through search makes Google looks like a fool, since the user is unable to find the content he searched for. That is why expert-sexchange shows answers at the bottom when Google is your referrer.
If Quora is pulling up this shit, Google will penalize it. I think it's more likely Quora is simply hiding content behind css.
I have always assumed this was what Quora is about, but I have never seen a Quora result show up in a Google search? Is this supposed to be the case for a company with that focus, or am I just not using the right queries?
I don't think that should be the case here. They have blurred answers enclosed in googleoff/googleon tags - which should make sure that they don't get indexed.
I am unhappy with the new Views feature, which is enabled by default. I do not wish to be part of a website that prevents its users from browsing pages anonymously, especially if it also requires them to use their full names.
Can you please delete my Quora account and all associated data as soon as possible, including my public and anonymous answers. Please also send me a confirmation email once this data has been erased.
My account page is located at www.quora.com/XXXXXXXXXXXX.
Since this can be turned off in the Quora preferences, you might add an explanation why this is not good enough, e.g. they subverted an expected trust of anonymity by turning a new feature on without asking first, and that defaults matter.
Hi,
Please *delete* all data associated with my account.
My registered email address is: ______________
I would keep my account except there's no way to
actually delete my content and actions myself.
All you can do is *hide* stuff.
I want my stuff *deleted* permanently without a trace.
You actually have to disable your account and then not log in (logging in re-enables), and then send that email. That's what I had to do when I deleted my account. Not sure if their process has changed since a few months ago when I did it.
Early last year, when I was starting to get into using Quora, I stopped using it abruptly when I realised how limited their privacy features are.
Basically, I wanted to contribute quite heavily to the Depression topic. I'm a sufferer and I wanted to be able to help other people. But on Quora you have a choice of answering a question either Anonymously or as yourself, the problem with answering as yourself is that all your activity gets published to the feed of people who follow you, and with Quora being heavily integrated with Facebook I wasn't comfortable with this.
Which meant I was forced to answer questions anonymously, which I was equally uncomfortable with. I felt like I couldn't make an valuable contribution if I was hiding behind anonymity each time.
I don't mind people knowing things about me, which is why I don't mind saying this here, using my real name, but that's very different to being willing to shout from the rooftops.
I emailed Quora to suggest being able to decide what information gets published to the feed on a per-topic basis. I didn't get a response, which is hardly surprising, but if basic privacy-controls are outside of their plan for the site, I can't be part of it.
Great point. I've noticed this trend on other sites, as well. Usually you have an option of facebook/google plus-integrated account, and maybe an anonymous option. You've laid out the core problem with this binary view. In your case, for legitimate reasons, you don't want to advertise certain aspects of your health to search engines, but you still want to have standing with the community. I've had a similar dilemma with politically-oriented sites. I don't hide my political views in "real life" especially when asked, but I don't want to have them associated with me whenever someone google searches my name.
Well, I don't think its about the money. Its a desperate move. Heres my theory on what happened:
Quora was started by an elitist group. They made content policies that were very elitist (similar to HN in a way) emphasizing quality and trained their early adopters to vote only the VERY BEST of content.
They then moved away from the gated status and allowed others to enter their community. The new-comers were however not as qualified to write as the old user base and obviously most of them never got any upvotes for the content they created. So the new users got programmed to believe that up votes are scarce on quora and therefore they themselves stopped up voting on quora.
Well the only problem with this was, up voting also meant sharing. So by training users to not up vote in a way, they cut off their sharing. So now old content stopped circulating and that explains why most people think quora is dead.
To solve the problem of content circulation slowing down, which would heavily impact the discovery of content, Quora first launched a feature called 'Boards' some time back. (Even though this invited comments on how Quora is just copying pinterest).
That probably got the engine up and running for some while.
However this still did not fix the problem. I think the most popular board on Quora has something like 5000 followers. Thats it! So the content is still not circulating well.
So then they came up with the Views feature - a feature turned on by default and which would convert every view into a vote and could turn on their content engine back up again.
What people don't get is - The guy who started eHow is an investor at Quora. It has always been about long tail content, getting traffic for long queries on google, content circulation etc...
Quora is not innovative at all, there is no great model there.
eHow is garbage content though. They might target search traffic in the same way but the answers on Quora are actually good. Perhaps thats what you meant by 'cleanly' but I took that to mean design only.
I essentially deleted my account a long time ago, which involved unsubscribing from every single question, and anonymizing every single comment I had ever made. It was the only thing close to deleting my account, and yet I still see my content, follows, and upvotes there. Gaining a sense of privacy is an abstruse and opaque task. And I'm sure that's intended.
One of the things that really bothered me was that I could tell who had made a thread about a sensitive or taboo-ridden subject[1], although this was not at all obvious to the person who posted the question. The site creates the impression that you are - sort of - anonymous when asking a question, but have to explicitly choose to anonymize, when you post an answer.
To think that this company raised at a $400M valuation in April pisses me off.
The concept of privacy can quickly get very semantic, but I think Steve Jobs summed it up perfectly:
Privacy means people know what they are signing up
for.
— Steve Jobs, D8 2010.
Anyone in their right mind will see that Quora don't give two shits about privacy - probably because the abolition of it helps their business model.
[1]: In the list of portraits of people following a question, the first of the portraits is the person who posted the question.
The greatest thing about Quora is that it doesn't really "exist" outside of the valley. I stayed in Georgia for 3 months. Everyone in the startup scene out there (except for my friend who runs a successful website) doesn't know what Quora is. When I explained it to them, they thought they could get the same answers from Google.
To an extent, they are correct. I'm getting tired of these self-entitled startups who think they are running the show.
"get the same answers from Google" - well, I signed up for a Quora account out of curiosity some time ago and started receiving their weekly emails, which generally I delete or unsubscribe from with most companies but something about Quora's community has kept me subscribed, for example answers to questions such as 'What wass it like to grow up insanely rich' and 'What is it like to lose an Olympic event'. I checked my account and the default is still No for "Allow others to see what content I've viewed in feed" but I'll certainly be considering deleting my account should this be activated without my consent.
Headline: Thanks to Quora, now you can’t read anonymously.
Reality: Quora launched a feature called "views", announced to everyone upon logging in that it was automatically enabled, and is disabled with three clicks from any page on the site.
I wasn't particularly happy when I was opted in, and immediately turned it off. Then, after a few hours, I turned it back on and saw that it was actually a pretty useful feature to see how people were getting to my content. I noticed that a few of my followers were "connectors" of Quora, through which half or more of my views on an answer came. This, I feel, is useful and relevant information.
Yes, being opted into a less private setting is unsettling, but I trust Quora at least as much as any other company. This is the first time I've been opted into anything, their settings are incredibly easy to figure out and are granular, and I trust the people that run the site.
I'll add that this seems to bother non-users more than people who actually use the site regularly.
This is misleading, as you CAN read anonymously if you disable the feature.
Personally, I read stuff for amusement or interest all the time that I would not want a large portion of my acquaintances knowing that I read, and certainly not without explanation. For instance, if I read an article about child abuse and get curious about the age of consent in Massachusetts, I don't want that showing up to random acquaintances in my feed anywhere.
Enabling this feature surreptitiously and without an opt-in is insanely stupid and insensitive to users. Given that Quora has very good support for anonymous questions and answers, you'd expect them to be more savvy than this.
I'm going to sound like a broken record here, but Quora users are the product, not the customer. Quora wants to make money and they can make more of it by showing everyone who is looking at what. If they can go to advertisers and say, "See, we know every single question people are interested in, so you can get better value out of your clicks! We show this information to everyone, so we have no problem letting you tailor your placements to exact criteria."
Then they can charge more. It's simple as that.
Quora was a darling. It was started from the inside. We didn't expect this one did we?
Why oh why do we keep creating content/value for random people we don't know when we could create a blog on our own website? When we could create a product that has value to us and others and benefits us in a direct and measurable way?
Creating that content is work. Answering those questions is work. It takes time. It takes energy. It takes concentration and value away from work that benefits YOU.
I'd forgotten what Quora was, or that it had existed. Now I'm very glad that's the case, since I wouldn't want to have to stop using something I actually liked.
What's more stupid is their desperation for you to interact with their site. I went to remove my unused account, and this is what I got when I typed www.quora.com:
You'll notice that I couldn't do anything else - I "had" to choose 5 extremely broad subjects that I'm supposed to be interested in, in order to be able to view my profile. I selected 5 subjects randomly, and...
Only after that they kindly allowed me to view the main page and my profile. I deactivated my account, and won't ever click on a quota link again (and would add them to my spam list so they won't show up in my Google results).
To me, the fact that Quora feels it needs to share passive views means they're failing to get enough people to actively engage with their content.
If I don't care enough click a button, either A) I have no meaningful opinion, B) I don't want Quora to know what I think, or C) there's a "problem" with the button.
Quora, if you're going to just make assumptions about why I'm looking at an answer, you will very often be WRONG.
Honest question, why is Quora still relevant? I thought after the initial hype for what ever reason their traction is gone (as expected). They are nothing but a glorified version of yahoo answers. HN, Reddit and Stackoverflow do a better job at what they do.
One thing I can't understand with this "real name" stuff - why can't sites like quora charge a one time fee, like Metafilter? When people pay real money, you know who they are, they are less likely to troll, no? This has been successful with Metafilter, why can't other sites copy this? It'll also be another (small) source of revenue
I really have the feeling we're all merely getting sold to advertisers. Where are the real innovations from tech people? It is not about "social interaction", in many ways it's only about getting as much data from the user as possible, to sell it.
I can't say how much i hate the "social trend" in this era of the internet boom.
"Yeah, our Product is a ripoff of Product X (proof concept, existing since 2000) BUT WE ADDED SOCIAL TO IT, ZOMG!!11"
What's bugging me even more is the fact, that there're so many stupid VCs who think they'll invest in the next big thing and support stupid ideas, too blind to see real innovations.
> I can't say how much i hate the "social trend" in this era of the internet boom.
It angers me greatly. I attribute it to tech going mainstream in a big way. It waters down the entire industry. Worse, it feels like it has slowed down R&D because everyone's so complacent with what we have.
The immediate solution is simple: Settings -> Views:
Allow others to see what content I've viewed in feed: No (yes) -- change to no.
It's creepy and disrespectful that they would turn this on by default and it looks extremely desperate which makes me doubt quora's financial stability. Which in turn makes me not want to spend time contributing to it (not that I've made many contributions).
But this is the sort of thing FB would've done in their place... So I don't know, maybe their staff simply has no understanding of how people feel about privacy.
One thing that stuck out to me in the article is the whole concept of "anonymous reading."
When did the need to make the distinction of anonymous vs non-anonymous reading arise? Anonymity was assumed for something as simple as picking up a book or a newspaper. It sounds as awkward and unnatural to me as taking an "anonymous shower" or anonymously picking my nose. Pretty scary that we're headed down this path where fewer and fewer things are private.
This is bad, bad juju on Quora's part. The Facebookisation of Quora is something that makes my Spidey sense go off as well. Forcing "real" names. Forcing reads into the public without warning. Lots of "hey, we're the coolest social startup on the block."
Quora is overrated. They need to get it together, dial down the hype, and show some freaking humility. To do that they'll need to stop abusing the users they have.
[+] [-] samstave|13 years ago|reply
They think that the experience of their largely 20-something staff is anything short of revolutionary.
A bunch of kids running a digital media company with questionable morals and no connection to digital history. I will delete me Quora account. So far I have gotten little value from it. Time for it to have no data on me.
Deactivated!
Edit:
I followed up with an email to [email protected] asking them to delete my account and data.. will see what happens. I dont like the idea of a limbo account that can be reactivated/mined.
I'd prefer to have it deleted.
[+] [-] IsaacL|13 years ago|reply
Unlike you, I've gained a ton of value from it. Unlike the trivial discussions or content spam posted on Facebook or Twitter, Quora features tons of interesting conversations. The closest comparison to it might actually be Wikipedia, at least in terms of general scale of ambition.
It's the one online community I've found that I think is better than Hacker News (though admittedly the quality of discussing has slid as the audience has grown wider). There's few other places where a question about politics might be answered by a Washington insider, or a question about startups might be answered by a top name Valley VC, or a question about snipers answered by an actual sniper.
Their real name policy has generally been fairly sensibly and sensitively implemented (http://www.quora.com/Why-has-there-been-an-outcry-against-re...) - they've always allowed anonymous posting, and they've been more flexible on the definition of "real name", than, say, G+. For example, danah boyd is able to post with the legal, lowercase form of her name.
Whether they'll begin bowing to advertisers once they need to monetise of course remains an open question -- but I'm hoping they can find alternative revenue streams. For example, a lot of consultants post answers on there to gain clients -- that's an example of the concrete monetary value Quora creates, and if they can capture some of that value they can build a great company without stooping to Facebook-style data mining controversies.
[+] [-] tijs|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] debacle|13 years ago|reply
I think you mean nothing short of revolutionary.
[+] [-] unimpressive|13 years ago|reply
127.0.0.1 quora.com www.quora.com
[+] [-] JoelSutherland|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lifeinafolder|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] monsterix|13 years ago|reply
My friend was denied permission to use Quora, rather insultingly blocked, for not revealing his ancestor name. We thought it was plain stupid on part of Quora to behave this way, so didn't bother to follow up with them either. What's amazing here is that even Government passports don't force revealing names of ancestors like they do.
[+] [-] mozan_sykol|13 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] 0x0|13 years ago|reply
Borderline SERP cloaking, to say the least.
[+] [-] irahul|13 years ago|reply
This shit doesn't fly with Google. Delivering different content to Google bot and the user coming through search makes Google looks like a fool, since the user is unable to find the content he searched for. That is why expert-sexchange shows answers at the bottom when Google is your referrer.
If Quora is pulling up this shit, Google will penalize it. I think it's more likely Quora is simply hiding content behind css.
[+] [-] swanson|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kmfrk|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] theballwatcher|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chrisacky|13 years ago|reply
---------------------
Please can you delete my account.
I'm unhappy with your recent changes that would allow anyone to see the topics I follow and read.
My registered account is set up at <email address>
Please can you send me confirmation when you have done this. Many Thanks.
---------------------
I've fired an email off. Re: http://www.quora.com/How-do-I-delete-my-Quora-account
[+] [-] Auguste|13 years ago|reply
--
To: [email protected]
Subject: Account deletion request
--
Hi Quora,
I am unhappy with the new Views feature, which is enabled by default. I do not wish to be part of a website that prevents its users from browsing pages anonymously, especially if it also requires them to use their full names.
Can you please delete my Quora account and all associated data as soon as possible, including my public and anonymous answers. Please also send me a confirmation email once this data has been erased.
My account page is located at www.quora.com/XXXXXXXXXXXX.
Regards,
XXXXXXXXXXXX
[+] [-] Gring|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pirateking|13 years ago|reply
---------------------
Quora,
Your lack of respect for privacy is unfortunate.
Delete my account and all associated data immediately, and send me a confirmation email once this is done.
My account: www.quora.com/xxxxx
- xxxxx
[+] [-] staunch|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] iterationx|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hk__2|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|13 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] Buzaga|13 years ago|reply
to: [email protected]
Subject: Delete my account
the e-mail for it is: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
thats the link: www.quora.com/xxxxxxxxxx
--------------------------
[+] [-] andrewingram|13 years ago|reply
Basically, I wanted to contribute quite heavily to the Depression topic. I'm a sufferer and I wanted to be able to help other people. But on Quora you have a choice of answering a question either Anonymously or as yourself, the problem with answering as yourself is that all your activity gets published to the feed of people who follow you, and with Quora being heavily integrated with Facebook I wasn't comfortable with this.
Which meant I was forced to answer questions anonymously, which I was equally uncomfortable with. I felt like I couldn't make an valuable contribution if I was hiding behind anonymity each time.
I don't mind people knowing things about me, which is why I don't mind saying this here, using my real name, but that's very different to being willing to shout from the rooftops.
I emailed Quora to suggest being able to decide what information gets published to the feed on a per-topic basis. I didn't get a response, which is hardly surprising, but if basic privacy-controls are outside of their plan for the site, I can't be part of it.
[+] [-] macspoofing|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bornhuetter|13 years ago|reply
Why is that?
[+] [-] driverdan|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tronronin|13 years ago|reply
Quora was started by an elitist group. They made content policies that were very elitist (similar to HN in a way) emphasizing quality and trained their early adopters to vote only the VERY BEST of content.
They then moved away from the gated status and allowed others to enter their community. The new-comers were however not as qualified to write as the old user base and obviously most of them never got any upvotes for the content they created. So the new users got programmed to believe that up votes are scarce on quora and therefore they themselves stopped up voting on quora.
Well the only problem with this was, up voting also meant sharing. So by training users to not up vote in a way, they cut off their sharing. So now old content stopped circulating and that explains why most people think quora is dead.
To solve the problem of content circulation slowing down, which would heavily impact the discovery of content, Quora first launched a feature called 'Boards' some time back. (Even though this invited comments on how Quora is just copying pinterest). That probably got the engine up and running for some while.
However this still did not fix the problem. I think the most popular board on Quora has something like 5000 followers. Thats it! So the content is still not circulating well.
So then they came up with the Views feature - a feature turned on by default and which would convert every view into a vote and could turn on their content engine back up again.
What people don't get is - The guy who started eHow is an investor at Quora. It has always been about long tail content, getting traffic for long queries on google, content circulation etc...
Quora is not innovative at all, there is no great model there.
Its just eHow done more cleanly.
[+] [-] lubujackson|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wilfra|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kmfrk|13 years ago|reply
One of the things that really bothered me was that I could tell who had made a thread about a sensitive or taboo-ridden subject[1], although this was not at all obvious to the person who posted the question. The site creates the impression that you are - sort of - anonymous when asking a question, but have to explicitly choose to anonymize, when you post an answer.
To think that this company raised at a $400M valuation in April pisses me off.
The concept of privacy can quickly get very semantic, but I think Steve Jobs summed it up perfectly:
Anyone in their right mind will see that Quora don't give two shits about privacy - probably because the abolition of it helps their business model.[1]: In the list of portraits of people following a question, the first of the portraits is the person who posted the question.
[+] [-] fourstar|13 years ago|reply
To an extent, they are correct. I'm getting tired of these self-entitled startups who think they are running the show.
[+] [-] marquis|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ericdykstra|13 years ago|reply
Reality: Quora launched a feature called "views", announced to everyone upon logging in that it was automatically enabled, and is disabled with three clicks from any page on the site.
I wasn't particularly happy when I was opted in, and immediately turned it off. Then, after a few hours, I turned it back on and saw that it was actually a pretty useful feature to see how people were getting to my content. I noticed that a few of my followers were "connectors" of Quora, through which half or more of my views on an answer came. This, I feel, is useful and relevant information.
Yes, being opted into a less private setting is unsettling, but I trust Quora at least as much as any other company. This is the first time I've been opted into anything, their settings are incredibly easy to figure out and are granular, and I trust the people that run the site.
I'll add that this seems to bother non-users more than people who actually use the site regularly.
[+] [-] aneth4|13 years ago|reply
Personally, I read stuff for amusement or interest all the time that I would not want a large portion of my acquaintances knowing that I read, and certainly not without explanation. For instance, if I read an article about child abuse and get curious about the age of consent in Massachusetts, I don't want that showing up to random acquaintances in my feed anywhere.
Enabling this feature surreptitiously and without an opt-in is insanely stupid and insensitive to users. Given that Quora has very good support for anonymous questions and answers, you'd expect them to be more savvy than this.
[+] [-] chimi|13 years ago|reply
Then they can charge more. It's simple as that.
Quora was a darling. It was started from the inside. We didn't expect this one did we?
Why oh why do we keep creating content/value for random people we don't know when we could create a blog on our own website? When we could create a product that has value to us and others and benefits us in a direct and measurable way?
Creating that content is work. Answering those questions is work. It takes time. It takes energy. It takes concentration and value away from work that benefits YOU.
OMG, I'm doing it right now!
[+] [-] SwellJoe|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pooriaazimi|13 years ago|reply
What's more stupid is their desperation for you to interact with their site. I went to remove my unused account, and this is what I got when I typed www.quora.com:
http://d.pr/i/WcMl
You'll notice that I couldn't do anything else - I "had" to choose 5 extremely broad subjects that I'm supposed to be interested in, in order to be able to view my profile. I selected 5 subjects randomly, and...
http://d.pr/i/P7ex
Only after that they kindly allowed me to view the main page and my profile. I deactivated my account, and won't ever click on a quota link again (and would add them to my spam list so they won't show up in my Google results).
[+] [-] flipside|13 years ago|reply
If I don't care enough click a button, either A) I have no meaningful opinion, B) I don't want Quora to know what I think, or C) there's a "problem" with the button.
Quora, if you're going to just make assumptions about why I'm looking at an answer, you will very often be WRONG.
(views disabled)
[+] [-] yalogin|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vijayr|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] axx|13 years ago|reply
I can't say how much i hate the "social trend" in this era of the internet boom.
"Yeah, our Product is a ripoff of Product X (proof concept, existing since 2000) BUT WE ADDED SOCIAL TO IT, ZOMG!!11"
What's bugging me even more is the fact, that there're so many stupid VCs who think they'll invest in the next big thing and support stupid ideas, too blind to see real innovations.
[+] [-] mattgreenrocks|13 years ago|reply
It angers me greatly. I attribute it to tech going mainstream in a big way. It waters down the entire industry. Worse, it feels like it has slowed down R&D because everyone's so complacent with what we have.
[+] [-] lrei|13 years ago|reply
It's creepy and disrespectful that they would turn this on by default and it looks extremely desperate which makes me doubt quora's financial stability. Which in turn makes me not want to spend time contributing to it (not that I've made many contributions).
But this is the sort of thing FB would've done in their place... So I don't know, maybe their staff simply has no understanding of how people feel about privacy.
[+] [-] oth3r|13 years ago|reply
When did the need to make the distinction of anonymous vs non-anonymous reading arise? Anonymity was assumed for something as simple as picking up a book or a newspaper. It sounds as awkward and unnatural to me as taking an "anonymous shower" or anonymously picking my nose. Pretty scary that we're headed down this path where fewer and fewer things are private.
[+] [-] wyclif|13 years ago|reply
Quora is overrated. They need to get it together, dial down the hype, and show some freaking humility. To do that they'll need to stop abusing the users they have.
[+] [-] peto123|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] waterlesscloud|13 years ago|reply
Nothing would kill Facebook quicker than then implementing this, for example.