Why do you think Fluther is a much better QA website than Quora?

I hadn’t even heard of that site till now.
I like that you think Fluther is more friendly. I don’t need to add pictures.

I already like the name better.

I’ve heard good things about Qyora but as you said, Fluther is home. And besides, Ben and Andrew made it.

One thing Fluther does better: you don’t need an account to search the archives.

I’m not sure I care about pictures. They make some things easier but unless they’re well moderated it’s too easy to just rely on them to make thoughtless points back and forth. As I don’t have a Quora account, I can’t actually judge how they’ve implemented it, so I’m just speaking generally.

I could not imagine the tedium of moderating eleventy billion photos. How much penis-spam could one mod team handle? ((that’s what she said, yeah))

I like browsing Quora from time to time. I think the questions asked and answers given are a lot more intelligent than over here but the sense of humor and homeliness is greater for me here on Fluther. The one thing stopping me from ever getting an account over at is the fact that you NEED a FB or Twitter. And well since I pretty much hate both FB and Twitter I’m not going to go make an account just to use one site, so I’ll never be a member over there.

You don’t have to have a FB or Twitter account to join Quora, @uberbatman. That is to log in using those accounts. I have a Quora account and I don’t have either FB or Twitter.

Edit: Quora

Because i’m here!!

@bkcunningham they must have changed it, you used to need one about a year ago when I came across the site.

Seems like a reasonable place to go if this place ever closes.

Last time I tried Quora, I found it difficult to use; haven’t been back.

Oh, @wundayatta Don’t be such a doomsday prophet.

@Seek_Kolinahr I’d rather not be, but I can’t help but notice how traffic around here is getting sparser and sparser. I don’t think the founders have the money to keep it going indefinitely without sufficient income to pay for the servers and everything else that costs money.

I think we have to do something and pretty soon, if we want fluther to survive. But then, maybe they do have the money and the commitment to keep it going as a hobby. That’s still not good enough. We need new people. We are rapidly descending into mutual belly button gazing. You can see this as well as I.

I’d love to see an influx of new, good users. I just don’t want any of them to be people I know. ^_^

Okay, just our of brutal curiosity, I signed up for an account over there.

Plain. White. Everything. It’s visually the most boring Q&A site I’ve ever seen. I’m sure it’s great for mobile users, but for me, it just seems like there’s nowhere for the eye to land.

There’s an infinite scroll-down, instead of pages. That’s annoying enough on Facebook without adding another site. That page would benefit from some form of tabbed browsing.

I do like the “Answer Questions” feature. Used to be called “Orphans” on Answerbag – questions that have not yet been answered.

I DON’T like the fact that they allow anonymous users to post answers:
“Is it creepy that a woman in her early forties hits on a guy in his very early twenties? Why or why not?”
——Anon User——
if you have saggy boob fetish then its not creepy

I do like the comment on answers function. It was something I enjoyed on Answerbag, because it allowed people to have side arguments without derailing an entire thread.

I’m torn on the downvote option, because there isn’t really a “flag” – instead, you can “suggest edits” or simply “downvote”. But the “suggest edits” only pops up when you hover over its space, while the downvote button is right there. BUT – a downvoted answer gets hidden from view. Not cool. Also not cool – they list who voted what for each answer/comment. Very, very not cool.

A personal dislike – they encourage you to be real you, as in your real name, real job, whatever. Not that that is necessarily a bad thing, but I do cherish the relative anonymity I enjoy here. I know none of my friends are going to stumble over the page and see something I’ve whined about regarding them in a post or two.

All in all, Fluther is much more friendly seeming.

@Seek_Kolinahr I’m surprised you mentioned anonymous answers. One of the main features I have always liked about the site is that they do NOT allow anonymous users. YOu must register your true name and personal info.

I have been on Quora for over a year, and I find the questions and answers to be more professional and less personal for the most part.

@YARNLADY I wonder if anon users are only allowed in the “dating and relationships” type questions. In the one question I mentioned above, there were at least ten responses by “Anon User”.

Seems to me there’s no requirement to enter your real name. But some people do seem to enter a real name. Others don’t.

@wundayatta Not related to this question, but I’d like to follow up on what you said, about the potential demise of Fluther. Now I don’t see a demise in the site, but one can’t deny what you stated. Only a handful of questions a day, and very little traffic. Very little amount of users using the site daily. We also scare a lot of new users away, I’ve seen it happen. What could we do? No idea. As regular members, perhaps we could try and participate more, like ask more questions…however asking questions just for the sake of it when one isn’t really wondering something or needing to know something might indeed decrease the quality that has been known to mark our site.
This to say, I sometimes wonder myself how long the site has…what if the founders do indeed decide that because there isn’t so much going on as before, that it isn’t worth the money to keep it up? No clue how much it must cost…but it’s a thought I’ve also had in the past months. :/
Besides that though, so far, I don’t see any sign of Fluther shutting down. Staff or founders have made no news regarding this, and I’m guessing that they would do so, and not just close the site out of nowhere.

@wundayatta No, no requirement (I just used Seek Kolinahr), but it does encourage linking to Facebook and Twitter. Too personal for my taste. I only let certain Jellies through that blood/brain barrier. ^_^

@Seek_Kolinahr sounds like that site changed quite a bit since I visited last time (like i said above about a year ago) I tried to register my name as Uber Batman and it came back telling me that wasnt a real name lol

Because.

duh

I don’t think one or the other is necessarily better, they’re just different. In the past, you did have to use your real name at Quora, and I wouldn’t have liked that.

Just an FYI, so far, revenues outpace costs on Fluther. We’re safe for the time being. :)

@augustlan yay for revenues!!

@augustlan Damn well better be safe.

please don’t hurt me

@augustlan That’s a relief. Can we sustain at this level of activity? How much lower can we go before we’re in danger of shutting down? It does worry me.

@wundayatta I honestly don’t know the answers to your questions. I just know that we’re ok for now. I’d love to see a big influx of new members, though!

I think we all would. The question is—what do we have to do to make that happen?

Well, the big thing would be to convince Google to rate us as they did in the past, when were were “first hit” on many subjects. However, since they claim nothing has changed, I don’t know how we can do that. :(

Alternatively, tell your friends! I know, I know… anonymity.

You should ask a question, @augustlan.

Never heard of the site, so I went to the homepage and right off the bat, I don’t like it. You have to have an account to even use it. I hate it when sites use that requirement.

I don’t actually. I like Quora a lot, and it’s sans all the “does he like me” questions.

Well, as long as we’re all talking about some other site (and thank the FSM this time that it isn’t AnswerBag or Wis.DM or Yahoo!Answers) ...

I’ve always been surprised that no one here ever references Answerology, especially considering its much larger size and longevity. I was there (and still am, only rarely) long before I was on AnswerBag. The format is a lot different, because answers are scored differently (but the Post-On-Post feature is a big hit in my opinion). Unfortunately, the “ban” is active there, and that really shuts down a lot of what could be some nice little dust-ups.

Oh they have “does he like me” questions, @Rarebear. I suspect you didn’t sign up for the topic. Just sign up for dating, and you’ll have all you want.

@augustlan , What revenues Fluther has?
I saw only google ads for none register users. Thats all.

Wow. I just signed up for Quora and was dizzy. My initial thoughts are that it’s pretty awful. But I’ll check it out.

Out of curiosity, why Quora over reddit?

@CWOTUS Wow. Answerology is head and shoulders above Quora. It’s almost too busy, and the complete obsession with classifying people by gender, twice, on every screen is kind of insane. But I could get used to it.

@Ranimi23 Yes, that’s how we make our money. Ads for non-members only.

It’s simple. We have @augustlan. They don’t. :) Those poor unfortunate souls. (cue Little Mermaid Soundtrack)

It’s so interesting how their characters differ. Quora is a bit more genteel, and answerology is more no-holds-barred. They have some weird practices that they don’t explain, so clearly they don’t give a shit about newbies.

Both seem to have serious scoring systems and people who love to compete. Weird. Fluther seems like the hippy of the bunch.

Fluther is better than any other Q&A site, simply because of Auggie and a few other fabulous jellies. =0)

@WillWorkForChocolate There is NO question in my mind the mods are better here, I agree.

On behalf of the mod team, thanks!

I just signed up for Quora (with a false but real-sounding name) to see what it’s like. One thing I do like about it is being able to follow a particular topic and have related questions show up on your feed on the home page. But it all seems very impersonal. I doubt there’s as much community spirit there as there is here.