One of Our Best Websites Died While No One Was Looking
slate.com
The once-thriving site used to answer our most specific questions. But users are fleeing.

“Why Do So Many Music Venues Use Ticketmaster?” “What’s It Like to Train to Be a Sushi Chef?” “How Do Martial Artists Break Concrete Blocks?” If you were looking for answers to such questions 10 years ago, your best resource for finding a thorough, expert-informed response likely would have been one of the most interesting and longest-lasting corners of the internet: Quora.

  • d3Xt3r@lemmy.nzEnglish
    166·
    11 months ago

    If you were looking for answers to such questions 10 years ago, your best resource for finding a thorough, expert-informed response likely would have been one of the most interesting and longest-lasting corners of the internet: Quora.

    I disagree, the best place for such answers used to be Reddit, and Stack Exchange for the techy stuff. Quora always felt like cancer for some reason and I never really used it.

    • Gork@lemm.eeEnglish
      81·
      11 months ago

      I think that’s because Quora paywalls responses from volunteers, preventing others from seeing them unless they pay a subscription. Pretty scummy.

      • stoy@lemmy.zipEnglish
        20·
        11 months ago

        I wouldn’t call it scummy, just bad business, give people one premium answer per week, so they know the quallity and at incentivised to pay.

        • ahornsirup@sopuli.xyzEnglish
          17·
          11 months ago

          Do they pay the people who answer the questions? I genuinely don’t know. But if they don’t then, yes, it is scummy to just profit off of someone else’s work and not pay them.

          • FinishingDutch@lemmy.worldEnglish
            8·
            11 months ago

            I’ve contributed to sites like Wikipedia.

            Not everything needs to be measured in money though. There’s inherent satisfaction in the work with things like this. And at the end of the day, we all benefit from having platforms with accurate, well thought out answers. Today you’re answering, tomorrow you’re the one with the question.

            • ahornsirup@sopuli.xyzEnglish
              24·
              11 months ago

              Wikipedia is run by a nonprofit. They don’t monetise volunteer contributions and they don’t paywall the knowledge on their site, they run on donations. It’s not really a comparable situation.

        • AA5B@lemmy.worldEnglish
          4·
          11 months ago

          It is though, because they gamed search engines well enough to frequently be in the top results yet never had an answer you could see. Annoying as fuck

    • ConstipatedWatson@lemmy.worldEnglish
      12·
      11 months ago

      Here’s hoping at some point search engines will return Lemmy links when people look for answers, but we’re not there yet

      • db0@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        8·
        11 months ago

        search engines are thoroughly crap right now. Abandon all hope that they will become better.

      • OsrsNeedsF2P@lemmy.mlEnglish
        5·
        11 months ago

        The problem with Lemmy is the federated content gets duplicated on multiple sites, word for word, which isn’t good for SEO

      • crazyCat@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        3·
        11 months ago

        Have we said anything useful yet? Just kidding, but I just look for casual commentary on here, all surface level and meme stuff when tired at the end of the day.

      • Russ@bitforged.spaceEnglish
        3·
        11 months ago

        Kagi now has a lens for focusing results from the Fediverse, I’ve seen it pull Lemmy links before!

      • RecallMadness@lemmy.nzEnglish
        2·
        11 months ago

        I think Something will have to change quite significantly.

        Search engines give heavy weighting to uniqueness of content. And with Lemmy content being replicated across the fediverse that doesn’t exactly happen.

        And I’m not sure you can set a canonical URL that’s off site. And then, if it does and that site goes down, you “lose” the content.

        • AA5B@lemmy.worldEnglish
          3·
          11 months ago

          It’s not just that it’s not unique, but any single instance is less heavily viewed, even if the overall response is

    • Haus@kbin.social
      7·
      11 months ago

      I’d say there was a period before reddit hit its pinnacle where Quora was significantly better. Probably more than 10 years ago, though, and only for a few years. I remember when I started spending more time on Reddit than Quora.