Early Quora Design Notes

[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.

[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.

[muratmutlu]

I think Quora has improved loads, there's a real diverse set of users (including San Quentin Prisoners) I wrote about it last month

http://www.mobileinc.co.uk/2012/12/quora-initiative-allowing...

[timjahn]

My thoughts exactly. Not sure what the point of Quora is and don't see it being around in a year or two personally.

[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.

[jspthrowaway2]

That was a recent change, and undoubtedly one driven by a Growth team that wants to keep a certain graph going upward so another graph will as well.

[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.

[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.