Confessions of a Quora Newbie

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“Quora is a continually improving collection of questions and answers created, edited, and organized by everyone who uses it.” It’s founder, Charlie Cheever, led Facebook Connect, Facebook Platform, and worked at amazon.com. Soon after Cheever launched Quora in June of 2010, the site was being hailed as the next biggest thing in social media.

I am an assistant professor of social media in Florence, Italy, serving American study-abroad students from some of America’s most
prestigious universities. I likely represent a large group of potential new users, as do my students. Needless to say, I was curious about Quora, so I solicited an invitation-still required for international users-and signed-up.

At first glance, Quora is a vast repository of knowledge created by an intelligent, eclectic mix of individuals being upstaged by turf-wars and stubborn and too often subjective ideas of identity and decorum by self-proclaimed elitists who are smug about their power and privilege.

So much for first impressions.

One of the first questions I found on Quora asked if tech evangelist, Robert Scoble, was right to admit that he was wrong about Quora, which led me to his original blog post. “Turns out I was totally wrong [about Quora]. It’s a horrid service for blogging where you want to put some personality into answers,” said Scoble. “It’s just fine for a QA site, but we already have lots of those…” Minutes later, I read a scathing retort by Quora insider, Dan Kaplan, cross-referenced in The Quora Review. The public airing of one’s dirty laundry is as shameful as shameless self-promotion (abhorred on Quora) and runs contrary to Quora’s own guidelines pointing to civil discourse, such as being “nice.”

Dropping the invitation requirement in the U.S., Canada and Sweden, and promotion on sites like Mashable.com, opened the floodgates to new Quora users-naturally more people signed-on. But wasn’t that the point? Plus Quora automatically imports each user’s social graph (from Twitter, Facebook, etc.), expanding the user base even further. People like Robert Scoble, with more than 165,000 followers on twitter, bring a loyal following with them. Quora insiders were outraged by how easily Scoble swooped in, amassing upvotes by the thousands and rising to best answerer in categories like technology.Quora has subsequently reinstated their invitation-only policy in the U.S.

The onslaught of new users has stirred resentment among some of Quora’s early adopters and has fueled debate surrounding community identity, standards and guidelines. Some new users are being bullied or intimidated into silence, or simply shown the door. Those who are encouraged to stay are also encouraged to keep their activity to a minimum. Shall I take my students on a neighborhood tour? In such an atmosphere, Quora risks losing some of tomorrow’s wheat along with today’s chaff. It takes time to find one’s footing on Quora, and new users should not be fearful of experimentation, or overwhelmed by feelings of having to choose among opposing camps.

Signal-to-noise ratio and scaling discussions abound on Quora. Early-adopters have huddled together, sidestepping and lamenting newcomers who might pose a threat to the elite core. Scoble was chastised for something he had nothing to do with, Quora’s own methodologies. Hindsight is 20/20, but Quora administrators were ill-prepared for the surge, and did not prepare the core community for changes or disruptions, nor acclimate its newest members to existing guidelines and expectations. The result is a splintering of the wider community into subcategories with different objectives and ideas. Quora lacks a clear vision that is understood and adhered to by all.

Even if newer users’ accusations of Quora higher-ups using intimidation tactics are misguided, and most reviewers and editors act in the interest of consistency and initiating newcomers to community standards, some methods, by their very nature-ignoring, editing, collapsing, marking answers as Not Helpful–are all-to-easily taken as snubs and, with only these to go on, new users are likely to become paranoid. Still, is it realistic for users to expect explanations from an overworked Quoran each time she makes an executive decision?

My first two Quora questions were swiftly tagged with Questions That Contain Assumptions and Conspiracy Theories (when I wasn’t implying conspiracy). Yikes. Offering official posts regarding standards, guidelines/tips, and encouraging users to read them at the starting gate, will add clarity and humanity. Users should be told that their questions belong to the Quora community and may not be deleted (perhaps when adding the first question–which would provide disclosure and prompt users to think carefully about their contributions), and they should understand what is appropriate for posts and answers. Collapsing the masses into oblivion will do little to bring Quora out of the Valley.

Wit is exalted on Quora, humor less so. Here is how Charles S. Brooks defines the difference between wit and humor:

I am quite positive that of the two, humor is the more comfortable and more livable quality. Humorous persons, if their gift is genuine and not a mere shine upon the surface, are always agreeable companions and they sit through the evening best. They have pleasant mouths turned up at the corners. To these corners the great Master of marionettes has fixed the strings and he holds them in his nimblest fingers to twitch them at the slightest jest. But the mouth of a merely witty man is hard and sour until the moment of its discharge. Nor is the flash from a witty man always comforting, whereas a humorous man radiates a general pleasure and is like another candle in the room.

In Florence, irony is appreciated among the intellects, but neither wit, nor humor, nor irony, lend themselves easily to impressive algorithms (see PeopleRank).

How does personality cheapen the value of knowledge? And how does snuffing out personality build community? There is a danger in taking ourselves too seriously. Does a question with endless debate and discussion about whether men would rather be Superman or Batman somehow advance the elitist agenda? Even the elitists, it seems, like to have a little fun now and then.

While lengthy answers are encouraged on Quora, many users find value in brevity–that fabulous one-liner that makes you smile or scratch your head, that succinct paragraph that packs a punch and saves you time. Providing context and interpretation is necessary and useful at times, but information overload, modern attention-spans and multitasking require clear, concise answers (which are also more difficult to write). No matter how convincing or eloquent your prose, the more you write the more you risk being skimmed over.

Follower counts are given less importance on Quora, while voting, both up and down, takes precedence; both have an element of ego and can serve as a subtle form of grandstanding. Some of the same people who tout the benefits of “listening,” are already aspiring to celebrity status based on follower counts. How is following a handful of people–whilst being followed by thousands– a conversation? The voting system determines quality (or most popular) answers (see PeopleRank), but is vulnerable to brown-nosing, cliquishness, and domination by Quora insiders. Questions regarding impartiality naturally arise.

Editing is another issue widely discussed on Quora. Personally, I am grateful for such an invaluable free service by interested others. And many of Quora’s finest welcome edits to their own work. But if comma misuse and failing to capitalize are punishable misdemeanors on Quora, I’m sure my crimes are closer to felonies. The credibility of a question begins with its being understood–in its correct use of grammar, that is to say in it’s form–but really sinks or swims based on its substance. Some people needlessly split hairs about grammatical issues that are irrelevant to the question’s substance–even though they’ve understood perfectly well what the question is asking they prefer to correct its orthographical errors rather than answer it or consider what it is asking them. At what point, if any, does editing threaten to change intended meaning or cloud a more authentic version of the original contributor? And what is the criteria for trashing a question?

Does editing follow a certain style, such as AP? Is it encouraged to edit a question such as, What is the most in common problem in life people learn to live with? to, What is the most common problem in life with which people learn to live? Is removing the preposition at the end of the sentence necessary, clunky, offensive? (I messaged an editor who apparently “listens” regarding this question, but have yet to hear anything back).

Writing for Digitaltrends.com, Molly McHugh reports, “From explaining Mark Zuckerberg’s mysterious trips to China to the sudden death of UberTwitter, the best Quora topics highlight social media insiders spilling the secrets outsiders were never meant to know.” Some of the most insightful and revealing social media revelations McHugh points to are Why did Twitter suspend UberTwitter? and Why was Mark Zuckerberg in Beijing?

It’s true Quora is one of the few places people can read thoughtful answers composed by the CEO of Twitter himself, but many more answers are composed by Quora insiders on a soap-box or narcissists to deep in their own disorder to even know or care that they are invisible to the elites. Peripheral others make occasional contributions that pass without much notice. Quora has attracted accomplished and educated people in professions and pursuits outside of social media-such as screenwriting, literature, medicine, law, even dairy farming-but the majority of questions and answers still revolve around technology.

Indeed, social media is often regarded as a derogatory term on Quora. Social media scholars and practitioners are lumped into one dreaded category of internet marketers and self-promoters. Quora risks alienating some of its own. And while Quora rallies around protecting it users from spam and hard-sells, not many Quorans miss out on an opportunity to sing their own praises.

Quora shares similarities to other social media platforms, but its uniqueness lies in mixing the best of what already exists in social and informational media while surpassing the limits of each. Quora is not a blogging platform or a soap-box; the collective can wield more power than the individual by way of editing, downvoting and collapsing. I often turn to Twitter for breaking news, but Quora can provide deeper analyses and interpretation of issues.

Quora is closer to Wikipedia than Facebook or Twitter (despite its profile, following and posting features) because of crowd-sourcing and the preference for lengthy answers that often point users to vital information and research. But Quora is less static than Wikipedia, and embraces its community more explicitly, both to its betterment and to its detriment. *Seb Paquet explains in The Quora Review Why Quora is Not Wikipedia

Quora is young and in need of deeper knowledge repositories in order to be a viable alternative to Wikipedia, Q&A sites, social bookmarking services like Digg, even search. Welcoming–rather than resisting–an expanding user base will serve to that end, as will embracing the international community. As it stands now, foreign language use is not permitted.

Suspicious of making haphazard first impressions based on happenstance, I returned to Quora, and with a little bit of effort, I tapped into a wider world inhabited by engaging and thoughtful people acting in the true spirit of a gift economy.

At my urging, and invitation, my students were encouraged to try Quora with an open-mind. But the majority reported feeling too self-conscious or intimidated to participate fully. Those whose prose is less eloquent should not be fearful of contributing. As it is, a majority of students try to temper the amount of time they spend on Facebook, few have twitter accounts, let alone blogs. They frequent places like Youtube, music/tv/cinema streaming sites, travel and food blogs, online newspapers and magazines. Some use foursquare (the last biggest thing in social media). With so many new media choices available in every niche from fashion to football, why would they spend their time and energy-most of which is involves multi-tasking-seeking out acceptance on Quora?

It’s also interesting to note that I messaged Marc Bodnick-the most welcoming and accessible of Quora insiders and a site administrator. I asked Bodnick if he could provide me with any information as to whether Yishan Wong, editor of the Quora Review, was interested in this post, explaining that I’d written to Yishan, twice, and hadn’t heard back. His response? “The Quora Review is not affiliated with Quora, so we don’t have any control over what is posted there. Sorry about that!” Wong is also a Quora reviewer. Perhaps the contents of my post and newbie status prevent me from contributing to the democratic debate and discourse that underscore a healthy, vibrant community, in that community’s own public forum.

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