Between Hacker News and Quora I may never do anything productive again. Still, much as I love Quora for its salon-esque feel, there are a few things about using it that really grate.
1. Why can’t I import my Twitter profile and avatar?
Seeing as I signed up to the service using my Twitter account, it seems remarkably inconvenient to have to create a Quora-specific profile. There’s even an official question about it – no answer yet from the Quorans.
2. Why does Quora make me work so hard?
Like most of the world, I’ve been on holiday so I haven’t really been paying attention to the web services I follow. Quora notifications have piled up and there’s no way of pinning the notifications window in place so that I can work through them in one batch. No, I have to click to view all 57 notifications, perform 1 action, watch with frustration as the notification window collapses, then repeat. Not fun.
3. *41* email preference settings?
I understand that there are many ways for Quora users to interact with each other. I get that you can create, edit, curate and follow a discussion or a person or topic. But is there really any need to expose the inner workings of the service as much as this? This interface smacks of someone clever wanting to show off just how clever they are.
It’s strange how addictive a site it is. Just answer questions….who would have thought
Hi Basheera,
I was watching the Growing Knowledge exhibition video from the British Library and decided to look you up. Glad I did, interesting blog! I did my graduate studies at the University of Michigan’s School of Information – focused on social computing and incentive centered design. I’d love to chat more about the whole field if you ever have time.
As for this post, I figured I’d give my 2 cents on points 2 and 3.
#2 Why does Quora make you work so hard
Another way to look at it would be is it in Quora’s interest to make you work hard? And I’d say yes. It’s not in their interest, other than keeping you as a user, to make it easy for you to sift through which notifications to look at and which not to look at because then you wouldn’t look at all the notifications. And since interaction rates are important metrics it seems like they’re getting you to interact more because of this inconvenience. So it’s basically a misalignment of incentives.
#3 *41* Email preferences
I had never looked at my email preferences until I read your post (mainly because they get sent to a junk email account) but what I noticed was that there are a portion of those already checked.
I’m assuming that as you interact more certain boxes will automatically become checked (e.g., if you become an admin or moderator). So from what I see there are so many options because Quora will make you opt-out of options as you go along. And just like other opt-outs majority of people never do opt-out, they stick with the norm.
So why so many options? Most likely because all the options will eventually be checked as your user participation increases. The boxes are just there so that you have the *option* of opting out – though majority never will.
Cool post! And I look forward to reading more.
Best,
Nate