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Why do some users who seem to dislike Quora keep coming back?

This is a follow-up question to What turns people off about Quora?

Given other sources of direct information like Wikipedia, alternate Q&A services (like Yahoo! Answers, Facebook Questions, & LinkedIn Answers) and countless other online communities, why do people who don't like Quora continue to invest their time?

Some points:
#1: This question is not a passive-aggressive way of telling anyone to quit complaining. It is genuinely intended.
#2: This question is not seeking issues or complaints about Quora. You can provide thoughts on that at a question like What turns people off about Quora?
#3: I'm interested in first person answers from people who aren't satisfied with what they find here -- but seem to be repeat visitors when you check their profile. (In other words: active users, please refrain from hypotheses and just listen if you're curious.)
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categorytechnology
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tynamite
tynamite's avatar Short Answer
Good question. I take it that you already know why I prefer Yahoo! Answers to Quora. I am clearing out my drafts then quitting this website. This will take a long time for me to do. This is why I haven't left yet, and why I keep posting new answers. (For all you noobs Adisa Nicholson's answer to What turns people off about Quora?)

Why I dislike the questions on Quora
I joined Quora in 2009, and I loved the site. The website was a breath of fresh air as it was filled with lots of intelligent questions. It got to a point where I answered every question that I could, so I left. I came back in 2011.

Now that I'm back in 2011, I notice that the quality of the questions has got significantly worse. I notice that there are 4 types of questions on this website.


  • Personal questions
  • Stupid questions with obvious answers, and ones easily answered by Google
  • Opinionated questions
  • Intelligent and other useful questions


1. Personal Questions
Most of the questions here are personal survey questions. These are questions such as Quora Community: What do Quorans see when they look out of their windows at home?, which have been marked as a featured question [omg]. The problem with personal questions, is that each individual person can answer the question with their unique personal response. This is not what the Quora admins want to happen to their website. Why doesn't Quora like Polling Questions? If I get better personal questions from Yahoo! Answers.

2. Obvious questions and ones easily answered by Google
This gets on my bloody nerves!
I am sick of going on Quora to see stupid questions with obvious answers, and ones that can easily be answered with Google.

When people ask a stupid question in real life, I give them a stupid answer. When people online ask questions they could easily get the answers to, I present them with a Lmgtfy link or this image. It's so good, I use it on my free hosting clients ask me for help on my webhost forum.

use google search

3. Opinionated questions
I don't mind.

4. Intelligent and other useful questions
There's too little of them on this website.
=====================

I don't like the questions on this website anymore. The questions are getting worse.

Why my many answers don't compel me to stay

Three weeks ago, I had 2 people tell me that most of my answers are really short, and that I should provide insightful answers that are knowledgeable about certain topics. I replied both times that I already do that, and gave examples. I told them that I only answer the questions I see, so I don't choose what calibre of questions I answer. I was in around 30th place for who had written the most answers out of Quora, around 850-900, and my Community Circle pitifully looked like this. I must not be favoured on this website. (I've also been blocked twice XD. My immaturity must not be liked.) I'm more likely to get a best answer on Yahoo! Answers on a day, than get upvoted on Quora, which is sad.

my upvote wheel

So I'm not happy with the questions on the website. I prefer to get personal and opinionated questions off Yahoo! Answers as they make them fun. Yahoo! Answers better suits the personal question format.

How I see Quora, and why I like it somewhat (except the questions put me off)

I see Quora like a radar chart that shows all the questions I can answer.

I'm at the center point. The spokes are the topics I'm folllowing. This
causes shapes of the graph. Once I've answered so many questions that I
run out of questions to answer, I would have shaded in the graph, and
completed! I've done it in 2009, and I can do it again in 2011.

My experiment is to find out what significant things happen if I continually do this. I find this experiment really interesting.
I find the way society works, and how easily relationships are formed and broken to be really interesting. I do not find psychology [people] interesting though. My experiment was to no avail. I only got one comment and few upvotes on answers.

There is no general consensus on what
Posts are to be used for, so my experiment is to combine all 3 personal, topical, and promotional things in one post; and see what happens. I find posts to be stupid as there's no email notifications for them.
Why I prefer Yahoo! Answers
I'll tell you something about me. Most of the time I have nothing to say, and nothing to ask. I rarely ask questions. I hardly ever ask people questions in conversations. Quora seems to satisfy a desire for people who compulsively love asking questions, and maybe reading them too. I don't know what you lot get out of Quora, because I just don't see it. I'm not that sort of person.

What I love about Quora
I love how the website is identity centric, so that my answers don't seem faceless. I congratulate Quora for getting me to express my personality traits on their website. I even got diagnosed on this website too! They took something boring, and managed to compel people to express themselves as well as extracting countless information from their minds, that no other person probably would. I notice that I see the world differently to everyone else. I seem to put a slant on things. Not only do our answers help others, they also provide an insight to how we think, so we can help ourselves. Having said that, the more I use Quora, the more I hate it. I spend my time answering questions I mostly don't enjoy, just to help others; but that makes me want to help others less.

The only way I would want to go on a Q&A website unless I have a question to ask, is if I could learn something. I've learnt more off Yahoo! Answers with 136 answers than I have from Quora with 1040+ answers. If I want to learn something there, all I have to do is browse a category. Over here I can't browse topics to learn so much.

I like personal questions on there as have the fun ones, and the opinionated ones, I can either tell them to use Google or get the best answer.

Here's a comment I got from someone who follows me.

The thing is that some people don't like Yahoo Answers and don't want
the same kind of site as this. I can understand why you prefer Yahoo
Answers as your answering style works well for it.

I can also see the benefit of having both sites with their separate styles. I do think a lot of people that are currently active here would not be happy if the
style of this site was more aligned with Yahoo Answers though, so it
would be a shame to dilute the style of this site when Yahoo Answers
already exists.
I do not understand why my answering style is better suited for Yahoo! Answers. I wish I knew why it was.

I do not understand what style Quora has. Quora is of a very similar style to Yahoo! Answers.

I'm clearing out my drafts, and then I'm gone from this website. The only good thing about Quora, is that I have 81 followers and am worth 70 points. I might do another post when I reach 100 followers to continue my experiment.

My questions don't get any or good answers on Quora but they do on Yahoo Answers. I got better legal advice there compared to Do employees have any protection from businesses that continually pay them nothing because the employees can't afford legal fees once they leave the job? who stole the CAB and SCC advice from YA when trying to help me. YA rules with asking questions!

legal question on yahoo answers

Further Reading

Adisa Nicholson's answer to If Quora gets more users and more activity, will it get even more uncontrollably addicting?
Have a guess what my answer is.
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