Former two-time Top Writer here. I agree. I quit when I realized that Quora were routinely manipulating answer rankings and selectively enforcing their community rules to maximize clicks. Now it's full of stupid questions and clickbaity non-answers, with any real information pushed far down the page if it's visible at all.
Yeah, Quora was useful to me in dark times; it was nice to be able to feel like I could sincerely help a single person. And sometimes those answers helped a lot more than one person. I wrote some things I'm really proud of there. But eventually I felt used and a bit addicted, so I got out.
In retrospect, I'm glad I did. Every time I look it seems sadder, farther from what drew me to it.
I literally had to block parts of Quora's website using AdBlock to stop it from bothering me.
Whenever I want to just read an answer it keeps pushing these notifications and asks me to answer questions. It was this aggressive behavior by Quora that made me quit contributing.
I wonder if there is something inherently wrong with online business models that doesn't allow good old sites like Quora to sustain their quality.
GP: I agree. Although I don't accept how Medium forces readers to sign up and subscribe, sometimes there is good content on it.
> I wonder if there is something inherently wrong with online business models that doesn't allow good old sites like Quora to sustain their quality.
For content sites, definitely. You get value from reading things relevant to you. But they get paid when they distract you from that and trick you into reading whatever advertisers want. From a short-term revenue perspective, the optimum is just enough content to trick you into visiting the page and staying there long enough to get distracted by an ad that you click on.
This is in contrast to sane businesses, where there's a close correlation between delivering value and getting paid. E.g., a coffeeshop makes money when you buy a cup of coffee, and continues to make money when you like it enough to keep coming back.
