I’m not sure what people think of Quora these days. The only time I hear it mentioned is when friends annoyed they can’t read much on it without logging in.
I quite like it, especially since they let you opt back in to their weekly newsletter. When Jason Kottke mentioned the newsletter I’d already opted out and there was no way to opt back in. Now you can do so in the preferences somewhere. There are always several things I want to click through and read, which is unusual for any other regular email I’ve ever subscribed to.
Like the rest of the web there is a high signal-to-noise ratio so finding an existing answer to something can take time, but there’s often good stuff in there. It’s handy for asking things that (in my case) aren’t technically specific enough to be asked on Stack Overflow or similar.
Whenever I do go there to read I also find myself getting sucked in to writing. When answering a question I try not to simply repeat what others have said, or increase the noise by rambling on about stuff I don’t know much about. And yet I still find myself writing things. Here are some recent answers I’ve posted there (YES YOU’LL PROBABLY HAVE TO LOG IN TO READ THEM, WHATEVER):
It feels unusual for me to write much on a third-party site, but somehow Quora encourages me to do that just enough to make it seem easy and worthwhile. And this post is partly just an excuse to link to things that I’ve written there.
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