5 Reasons Why I Stopped Writing on Quora

#latepost

Well, at least you shouldn’t want it.

Inspired by another post on Medium by Antonio Kowatsch, I think I’m going to iterate some of my own experience writing in Quora back then, mostly between late 2016 and throughout 2017. I stopped writing new contents earlier this year, but I was very active last year, writing over 800 answers, in which some have been deleted as they no longer fit my preferences after — what I called — the “Quoraphoria” have subsided.

Originally, I wanted to write a longer, more comprehensive post explaining the minutest details about my experience and why I decided to stop, about few days ago. I do think it would be quite impressive if I got to finish it at all, but on a second thought, I think this matter shouldn’t really take any more of my attention. So I’d opt to a simpler version of it, just so I can get some things off my chest.

These are the top 5 reasons why I decided to stop writing on Quora.

Anyone who have been writing long enough on Quora, especially on regional, country-based topic will eventually realize that there are indeed politics at play. The shape of this politics I’m referring to usually takes form of a cult. This means that there usually be one or more cult leaders, usually Quora power user(s) with at least a few thousand followers leading a pack of thousands of mostly “inactive” users, who are there for god knows why.

When I say inactive, I’m talking about users who spend very little time writing any meaningful answer or contribute to Quora at all, but will be more than ready to flock answers of particular user(s) and barrage them with dozens of praises, whether warranted or not. I’ve been conducting a lot of my own research on this one and unsurprisingly I’ve seen a pattern over and over again. It does indeed look like a cult without stretching my imagination too much, judging by the pattern of similar faces of users who are always there voting up certain answers from certain users. If you did the same research as I did, you will definitely see what I meant.

For one thing, I’ve seen this happening on one of the topic that I was active on, which was “Indonesia” topic. Since they really bugged me out at some point, I eventually came up with a name for them, namely “Brigade Upvote Nusantara”, which is an Indonesian name for National Upvote Brigade. Because that seems to be the sole purpose of them being there — to mass-upvote certain content without a clear reason why. It’s really tough to feel good about my writings with these people going around there, seemingly avoiding my answers deliberately. But that was just my speculation.

Looking at some of the numbers on certain types of answer, any user with some common sense would, at some point, wonder, “What makes this particular answer/user so interesting that they could gather so many votes and views?”

No matter where I look, on whatever topic, there seems to be a weird pattern on the site where certain answers, usually rather dumb in nature, could get more votes than the more well-written one. This particular problem is one of many problems about the site which are all too well-documented throughout Quora and have been brought up too many times by many users, so I’m sure I’m not alone at all in this.

Several other reasons why people are turned off by the site summed up on the Wiki. As per time of writing, the numbers topped at those figures you see at right-bottom.

Personally, even after doing all the necessary reading on my part, I still couldn’t come up with a satisfying conclusion without being too salty about everything. So I rest my case on this one. Nevertheless, this is one major thing that discouraged me from writing any further, which in some ways related to reason [1]. It gets tiring after awhile to write when you don’t even know what people really want out of you or out of the site.

If point no [1] is not bad enough, to make matter worse the same group of users will, in some form or another, actually try to recruit people, whether publicly or in private. Of course a cult being what it is, making the cult grow even bigger is probably the only natural way to go with it.

However, this particular point is fairly interesting, because I was actually invited in once into the group through a private message at one point, but I declined it, since I really don’t know the guy or what he wanted. I won’t say names here, but I can’t help but to wonder why did I have to be invited through PM, when so many other users were invited by all-too-public invitations in form of name tags and public answers. I certainly wasn’t all too happy about that, and it gave out very secretive vibe that made me think there could be ulterior motives at play.

Just as a bonus content: after a particular effort on my part trying to figure out what’s going on, another person actually tried to invite me again into the big group through a name tag on a fairly well-obscured comment on one answer. I noticed that, but I decided to ignore it since by that time I already know what was going on.

I think the site itself actually has one major problem with the way it manages the question tags. I started to notice this after I wrote on the site for about 4 or 5 months, if I remember correctly. The tagging system, in my view, supposedly is there to help questions to be found by the community and help writers to find those questions, which then lead them to be answered. But since such a fundamental system wasn’t even managed properly, it really made me wonder whether Quora is taking their site seriously at all.

For one, the behaviors of the Quora tag managers, namely Quora Content Review and Quora Topic Bot, are very unpredictable, and there are way too many times I was just so tired seeing some important tags removed automatically and randomly without any notice at all. I actually made an answer about this, pointing out how screwed up the moderation can be, but the question that had the answer was deleted at some point. To this date I’m not really sure why that is and I don’t want to waste my time figuring it out. You can still check out a copy of the original answer here if you want.

Whelp, too bad. I ain’t have no time to do appeal.

5. I don’t want to have Quoraphoria anymore

This is partly inspired by another Medium post, “The Dark Side of Quora”, made by another Quora user named Loy Machedo. Although his content isn’t exactly my cup of tea, he made a lot of good points on the post, pointing out namely the kind of rush and euphoria people can get out of seeing their written answers suddenly went into a “viral” state.

The sensation you’ll get out of this indeed feels like you’re “The Chosen One”, like you’re on top of the game, or — even — on top of the world, depending on how your numbers develop over time. If one is to indulge in this feeling over an extended period of time, snobbery is simply the natural result, which would at some point impair your judgement when you write even more answers to get more of the rush. Of course you’d never thought you’ll write something so outrageously preposterous at that point of time, but from my experience, I would say that you will realize, eventually, when you look back at your older answers and especially if you began to detach yourself and your identity from the platform.

How do I know this? Because I was there at some point myself. I had this … thing, what I dubbed the “Quoraphoria”. The kind of thing you’ll get when you see your answers are getting tons of viewers and upvotes. It did feel as if you’re under some kind of spell, some sort of Arcane Intellect. You feel bedazzled and mesmerized. You’re drunk in sapiogasm.

It sure felt so good, as if you’re such a big damn deal, writing random answers for god knows who and for god knows why. I won’t lie, I got this … ‘disease’ as well at a certain point when my audience was getting bigger on Quora. It really did get into my system so slowly that I didn’t realize it as it happened. This of course have never occurred to me, until one point, I actually snapped at few people in my real life just because of this stuff. It felt like I was having a hard time listening to others back then. I dreaded that, and I already apologized to everyone involved on the matter. I hope you know who you are, if you ever read this at all.

Final Words

I think I made the right decision to bail out from that site earlier this year. It does feel like I miss something by not being included in the community anymore, but I’ve decided that I should focus more on other things than just typing away and spending hours in front of my computer while being obsessed with numbers. Honestly it’s tough now to organize my thoughts having no media to express myself like this, but I think it was for the better.

All in all, after I stopped writing new answers on Quora, I am gradually getting myself back, and I found that some of the things I wrote there are either very crude, outrageous and not too entertaining to begin with. The site really feels like a drug in some ways, as much as other social media nowadays.

If you ask me, I think it’s rather scary how things like Views, Likes, Upvotes or Loves could really get into our heads and make us do unimaginable things, for the sake of more of those things. I think we really ought to be careful with our virtual lives, especially today. At least I feel like I have to do that from this point onward.

Last but not least, to all my loyal readers that have been supporting me either openly or silently, I want to thank all of you during my active year writing on Quora. I really do hope you get some value out of my writings. Whether I’ll write anything anywhere in either near or far future, is something I’ve yet to decide. At least for now.

Thank you if you read this far.

Teguh Li

Saturday, 16 June 2018.