After being mistreated by the moderators at Quora for the 3rd time, I started looking for an alternative. Yahoo answers isn't to my taste, several of the others I found in searches are no longer up...is Fluther the best Quora alternative? The layout is ok, but it seems pretty slow compared to Quora.

At some point, you need to look more critically at the common denominator and less at others. If you are still blaming others at your age, Fluther may be uncomfortable for you. Or comfy, considering all of the youth.

I much prefer Fluther to Quora, personally, and I don’t know of any better, though I also have not looked much, as Fluther is about as much Q&A site as I want, apart from StackExchange, which is great for technical questions with limited answers, but not useful for hanging out and casual/social discussions nor for open-ended questions or questions with subjective or many creative answers.

I don’t think Fluther will treat you poorly, though we do have a pretty non-conservative majority.

I think Fluther could get more traffic if some of us bothered to swim to other sites and mention Fluther to people frustrated with the annoyances of other forums. We do tend to be a pretty nice intelligent helpful site for the most part, I think.

Just give it a try. There are perfectly wonderful people here as well as some prickly people like me.

@AGRSAV8R Welcome to Fluther. Judging from your list of topics, there’s probably something to keep you at least mildly engaged. We have at least a few vets, musicians, and
retirees here. There were also a couple of law enforcement types, but I haven’t seen either of them active for awhile.

Squirbel, there are a LOT of people on the internet raising hell about the moderators at Quora- mine is far from an unusual case. If you google it, you will find that the moderation at Quora is considered blatantly unfair and biased, and that individual mods have their own agendas. That would be the common denominator, not my behavior.

Quora will lash out at you if you are openly conservative in any way. There is still some intolerance to that here but not so much by the moderators. For the most part they are fair. Usually this place is civil. We don’t really have many hard line conservatives though. We have some closer to the center such as myself.

I like you am pretty damned conservative. Fluther is pretty damned liberal. I like the interaction and have never had an issue with the Mods. If you are looking for a site where everyone agrees with you, this isn’t it. If you’re fairly thick skinned and enjoy the debate, you’ll be happy here.

> How can we make Flutter more active?

Without prejudice, because I don’t know you at all (although an all-caps username does seem loud to me), I would comment that when a newcomer starts a Fluther career by proposing to change the site, he or she is going to meet some sharp resistance.

The best advice is always to allow a little time to learn the culture. People who do that seem to get along very well here, and we do definitely encompass a range of personalities and persuasions.

As a long-time member of Q&A sites going back nearly 20 years, Fluther is the one I keep coming back to.

We’re not the biggest, we’re not the most active. If you’re looking to have the same argument every 5 seconds all day and night, this really probably isn’t your place.

But if you want some laid-back discussion with the occasional heated flare-up, this is a good place to be. More of a neighbor’s front porch than a city council meeting.

Pretty much what others have said above. We’re not the biggest site, and because of that we may have a somewhat slower pace. I think this has a plus side, though, in that you have a chance to get to know the other users’ personalities/perspectives better. And we’re always eager for some new users to come and share their perspectives, too :)

More users lean left than right, but we’ve got a spectrum of political positions represented. People tend to get fired up around political discussions in particular, so just be ready for that and have some fun with the discussion as it unfolds, however it unfolds.

About the mods: our mods do a good job of letting people know what was modded, why, and how to fix or change it. They follow the Guidelines on the site (which, if you haven’t seen yet, are worth perusing), they don’t make arbitrary decisions, and they don’t play favorites. They are also very willing to explain their decisions through PM (private message). It’s a small group of moderators, though, (and only some of the mods deal with non-spam queries), so you have to make sure to give them some time to respond. Just know that they will get back to you as soon as they can—they volunteer their time to keep this place running smoothly. (Also, they’re pretty darn awesome.)

What I mean is, you won’t run into the same issues here you experienced at Quora. If you have a question or answer modded—and we all have—you will know why.

Welcome to Fluther! Stay a while.

I will either like you or play with you like a cat does a mouse it really is up to you which course of action I take :)

Sometimes it’s slow; sometimes it’s not. Anyway, welcome. Check out the Guidelines to avoid running afoul of the moderators.

@jeruba I did not in any way try to change the site, I just asked about growing the popularity…which is, I suppose, a change, but a positive one.
My user name is in all caps because that’s how it is supposed to be written….it isn’t an indication that I am “loud”. What an odd thing to say…
I have no problem with debate or argument- I enjoy a good argument, as long as everyone stays on topic and handles themselves in a mature manner. I never had any problems at all on Quora…I was never “written up” (warned) at all, I never had any sort of large arguments and I never was in any way abusive, but suddenly I would try to log on and it would say I had a ban for XXX days. No explanation, and they would not give one other than “violating site policies”. None of my friends on Quora could figure out what I had done either.
They did that twice, about 3 months apart. Then, a few days ago, I got an email saying I had been banned forever. No explanation. I emailed my Quora friends and none of them could find a single violation…anywhere. Apparently a mod took a dislike to me and just booted me. It happens there a LOT.

Fluther is the only social networking site I belong to, although if you google “Fluther is not a social networking site” you’ll find a lively and sometimes heated discussion on here once about it.

I, too, would love to find another site that’s easy to navigate and not too nasty but there don’t seem to be many out there. I know Reddit is huge but has all kinds of sub-groups, but I haven’t really checked it out. There’s a page on FB called “Social Q’s” which is similar to some of the discussions you’ll find on Fluther, mostly about etiquette and social situations. Fluther has a more rounded variety of discussions – from cooking to technical to etiquette.

What I like about Fluther is that we’re an intimate community. There are less than 100 really active members. There are more than that, of course, but if you stick around you’ll find the same names posting over and over on a regular basis. I think people here are more polite than I see on a lot of FB pages and groups.

By the way, we refer to ourselves as “Jellies.” I’m a Jelly, you’re a Jelly, @marinelife is a Jelly, @Muad_Dib is a Jelly. That’s because a Fluther is a group of jellyfish.

Welcome and stick around. If you decide it’s not for you, at least you tried it.

As others have mentioned, it’s highly suggested you familiarize yourself with the guidelines. We value correct grammar here, and it is very common for newcomers to run afoul of this guideline. Many questions are sent back to editing for simple typos.

One important difference between Fluther and Quora is how we ask questions. The first visible question is called the title question. It is normally short. There is then a large space available for details, and this is considered more important than the title. I use Quora, and I’m very disappointed in the very small space allowed for details.

We value good writing, too. You will gain high marks for your ability to write coherently.

This site is completely run by volunteers. The site basically exists because of the good graces of the founders who have moved on to other business. If you see room for improvement in the way the site runs, there’s extremely little that can be done. The volunteers have very limited means to make changes to the site.

Fluther has a distinct advantage over Quora. This little site has grown to host a real community. Many of us know each other rather well.

If you are looking to just click reload all day and be entertained Fluther isn’t the best. It is slow but it is slow like a thanksgiving dinner. After a bit you get to know people. I know a bunch about Hawaii_Jake and I don’t want him fixing my computer. But I would be fine with him him doing my taxes.

@johnpowell: he’s pretty good as a lunch companion, too! :-)

@jca Thank you! I was confused by all of the “jelly” references and hadn’t gotten around to trying to figure out where they originated or why. I think I knew “fluther” at some point in the past, but I couldn’t remember what it was, it just rang a vague bell.
I’ve checked out most of the Q&A type sites now, and Fluther is the only one that didn’t turn me off, for one reason or another. I don’t want a strict Q&A site with no social aspect, and I don’t care for sites that are too rigid when it comes to topics, and other than Quora and Fluther, they all failed in one of these areas, for me.
Quora has the potential to be an excellent site- I was very active there for over a year, and it became an important part of my day- but the biased and unfair moderation really ruined it. What’s funny is that there are a lot of complaints about the moderation, and quite a few prolific writers who made very positive contributions who have left, citing these moderators as the reason why, and the owners of the site do nothing.
Another problem is that Quora sells the database and is currently worth right at one BILLION dollars…yet they offer no compensation for the most active contributors, not even some type of gift expressing their appreciation (in fact they may suddenly get banned for no apparent reason) and many people are beginning to take issue with that paradigm.

Fluther also has its share of detractors that believe that their prose is deathless and the moderation is too strict and biased as well.
“Banned for no reason” may indeed be a problem sometimes, but waaay more are probably banned for reasons that they simply don’t agree with.

There is no $ compensation on fluther, either, no matter how prolific you are.

I’m sorry you had such a bad experience with Quora, try to come in here with an open mind and you’ll enjoy it.

Welcome.

@canidmajor There is a difference between people just whining and moderation being widely considered unfair and biased…I can’t imagine a valid reason why, (using myself as an example) a person with over a year as a valued contributor, based on my followers and reputation, would be banned with no warnings, no explanations, and no chance to defend myself from whatever the alleged issues were. I couldn’t tell you if I disagreed with the reasons for my ban or not- I wasn’t given any.

I don’t care about the compensation issue, but there are a lot of people who have taken issue with it in Quora’s case because of their $1,000,000,000,000 net worth…and I can understand that, I suppose.

So far I like Fluther, other than there not being much support for some of my areas of interest, at least, not yet.

Yes, @AGRSAV8R, I know what the difference is.

If you don’t care about compensation, then by all means, don’t worry about it. Unless they promised compensation, their net worth shouldn’t be a factor. I have utilized products from high value firms and expect no compensation.

Your primary concern here seems to be that you feel that Quora treated you unfairly, but I’m afraid that that really is not something any of us can address. It’s a shame it so upsets you, but bringing the upset here will achieve no resolution that I can see.

Again, welcome, but you will be happier if you leave your preconceptions behind.

That’s 1000x Quora’s supposed valuation, and yeah, with that much supposed value (WTH?), I would hope they would do a lot better job of moderating, policing their moderators, and several other things.

I find Quora rather annoying in many ways, but sometimes there are interesting posts by people.

It also has an awful lot troll questions making it to their broadcast emails.

Sounds like you are probably right that some rogue moderator targeted you for some inappropriate reason.

@AGRSAV8R: The notion of being compensated for participating in a social network is new to me. Are there websites that do that?

@AGRSAV8R

”...Quora sells the database and is currently worth right at one BILLION dollars….”

”...Quora’s case because of their $1,000,000,000,000 net worth….”

Apparently Quora became 1,000 times as valuable after you left. Perhaps that was the real reason they banned you. ;-)

^^Ha, ha, ha. I love that.
@AGRSAV8R Fluther is a small, friendly, family-like, site so you will see more personal entries than you see on Quota. I am on both, as well as Yahoo Answers, Answer-mug and a couple of others. I am also a reference checker on Wikipedia.

Ban me if you want. The best Q&A site is still ASK MEFI.

I’m not “upset” about it, perhaps a little pissed off because I had over a year invested in my account there…and I was a hugely popular writer, if I do say so myself :) (based on my statistics) as well as quite prolific…you would think that would make me a valuable asset to them, not someone to be tossed aside like old gum.

From Business Insider:

Last week, when we were reporting for our story on how Quora is going to take a funding round at a huge valuation, one of our sources told us something remarkable.

He said that he had heard gossip that Quora had already turned down $1 billion acquisition offer.

This piece of gossip seemed improbable to us – nuts, really.

But we reached out to a Quora investor anyway and asked about this alleged billion dollar offer. His answer: “I don’t know about that. But it would be too low.”

From Worth of Web (and many others)

Estimated worth of Quora: (as of November 2011)
$ 982,000,000

1000 times? I just got a little overzealous with the zeroes… :)

@AGRSAV8R: Did you really think they were going to pay you? You didn’t answer questions from above (like mine).

Oh, geez, @AGRSAV8R, give it up. Nothing we can do here will ease your ire at Quora, and I’m pretty sure they don’t give a rat’s ass either. Join us and enjoy Fluther, or not, but we have a much greater range of interest than what another site is doing.

I agree with you that Quora is a very poorly moderated site. The moderators are biased and every mod has their own hidden agenda. They are so eager to ban their users that even for breathing, you might get banned. I believe that the trolls are allowed by the moderators to harass individuals to quit Quora. The popular Quorans are mostly teenagers and write fake answers just for popularity. Number of followers and answer views decides the credibility of a person there and not their quality of answers. It was pretty much a worse experience their, especially due to their real names policy. This made sure that I could not answer questions relating to any controversial issue as any of my known contacts would then know my views. I have joined Fluther just today and hope that all the negativities of Quora are devoid here.

Um, @PIN_24, did you read the thread? What they do at Quora is not our concern.

@canidmajor Yes, Its my first day and the OP had asked whether this site is better alternative to Quora or not? I know how bad Quora is and believe Fluther is much more professional than Quora and does not have the above stated cons (stated in my previous response). I have noticed this based on the type of interaction I came across via responses so far. I personally believe that Fluther is a better alternative to Quora due to a mature user base here (Jellies).

I actually found Fluther by accident, I’m still here and I don’t think I’ve pissed anybody off. Yes, I’m Conservative. But I also try to keep an open mind. I live by the rule: “LET PEOPLE BE DIFFERENT.” I was once banned on Quora myself, it didn’t last all that long. Of course, it was my Conservative views that pissed somebody off. I don’t have to agree with anybody, and they sure as hell don’t have to agree with me. But hey, WTH, I’ll still fight like hell for you or that anybody to have their opinion. Too many crybabies on some sites and that has lead me to not stay on those sites. I was once accused of being a racist because I said: “No, I won’t be voting for Obama.” Boy, the feedback was off the charts. I then pointed out that I voted Republican. Then I was branded as being a war mongrel and that I was guilty of being a hater. I left before I really lost my cool.

Seems like Quora makes everyone there act pretentious anyway.

I haven’t ever had a problem there.