I created a new Quora design which lets users write a policy-friendly answer so there is no User Oppression in the form of answer collapse later.
One of my answers with ~22k upvotes was collapsed a few months back on account of “needs attribution”- this answer. Writer relations team at Quora says this is the second time I made this mistake and hence they are reluctant to uncollapse the answer. Since past three months, I’m trying to get myself heard to their business team as to why a user may make multiple violations of Quora’s policies, but in vain. This is an attempt to call attention to some of the potential flaws in Quora’s design which attribute towards a user making policy violations over and again.
1. Policy violations are comprised of a number of pointers. A user has to jog his memory to recall them all. At times, she misses out on one. Here are a few that I keep in mind while writing an answer:
Be nice, be respectful (BNBR)
Attribute source for images
All images captioned
No text-as-image
No meme
No image-only answer
No image-heavy answer
Attribute the source for copied content
Use blockquotes for copied content
Make the page helpful
No joke
Proper English/Grammar
Clearly, there is a learning curve involved in writing answers on Quora that don’t violate a policy, since each policy includes quite some items under it. When there is a learning curve involved, people learn gradually. It’s undesirable to collapse an answer if they make these mistakes. Because they inadvertently will. What is important is that they should be given a chance to rectify their mistakes. Alternatively, and more importantly, Quora’s design should help a user write a policy-friendly answer, so no need to collapse an answer arises in the first place.
2. A user is forced to be familiar with policies only when one of his answer collapses. Otherwise, policies never appear on their own in Quora’s design to educate a user. For something as important as to collapse a highly upvoted answer, they must appear to guide a user when they are needed, i.e. when a user is writing an answer. Not later in the form of collapse.
3. Once a few answers of a user are collapsed, a sense of fear inhabits her. A sense of empowerment which comes from generating content (plus garnering upvotes) is replaced with a sense of oppression. Rather than making a user feel oppressed, a good design should empower the user. During the whole user experience journey, how users feel is of utmost importance. A website which provides the ease of use makes users feel pleasant, whereas a site with unkind surprises makes users feel unpleasant, and possibly even hostile. When I talk about ease of use, I am bringing home the point that a policy-based platform should make users aware of such guidelines upfront, and help them when they are needed i.e. during writing an answer, not later in the form of collapse. That design is clearly missing from Quora right now, and a user may not be the only one to blame for committing the mistake.
4. I also believe that by collapsing an answer, Quora’s aim is to make a user learn the importance of policies, rather than punishing her. I understand that sticking to plagiarism policy is important, but so is giving a user another chance to help her learn from her mistakes. Ideally, no mistake should be made again, but then no one is ideal.
5. Plus, I come across normal (uncollapsed or never collapsed) answers with similar violations for which my answer was collapsed. I can either report it or do nothing about it. What if I don’t want to go around reporting others answers and perhaps accumulate bad karma? What then? Just sit there and agonize silently? The absence of a streamlined system tears down a level playing field.
Here are some mockups that I created for this design improvement:
1. A user starts writing an answer.
2. There may be a policies icon (shown by a hammer) on the edit ribbon which shows a user the count of policy violations as she is writing the answer. When clicked, it opens up a Quora writing assistant towards right. This assistant mentions the violations in plain language in the form of cards. These cards layout is seen in quite a few designs these days, namely Microsoft Word Smart Lookup feature. For image policy violations, these card may show:
• This image needs source attribution
• This image lacks caption
• Text-heavy image
• Image-heavy answer
These cards are also capable of searching the web for any copied material.
3. When a user hovers upon one of these cards, the card gets highlighted and asks for source attribution for copied material. Once the user clicks on ‘attribute source,’ it automatically gets attributed.
4. More policy violations show up as a user keeps writing. Examples include text-heavy images, images that lack caption, copied material from web but not attributed. Violations like BNBR, English grammar can show up. A disclaimer option for user-created diagram with no source may also pop-up.
I also created an option for ‘Submit for Moderator Review’ besides ‘Submit’ button, which does as stated. Before submitting the answer for audience, a user gets it checked for policy violations by a moderator. This is to make sure that a user submits a policy-compliant answer, which won’t be collapsed by moderators later on.
If you’ve ever faced oppression in the form of an answer collapse, help spread the word so Quora does something about it. Share this post to let more people know that this user oppression has to stop.
This post first appeared on Quora.
Images credit: All the images/designs used in this post are created by me, and are not copied from anywhere.
