Quora Moderation considered h̶a̶r̶m̶f̶u̶l̶ slapstick

10 min readApr 30, 2020

If you spend any time at all on Quora, you’re familiar with the baffling entity known as Moderation. Cue Quora Question: What is wrong with Quora Moderation? Oh, nothing — it’s a great idea, other than apparently being modeled on an old silent-film show.

If Quora Moderation were a police force, it’d arrest and imprison you for life, seize your car, and have it demolished for a slightly crooked taillight while ignoring the flaming rig assembled from a beat-up dumpster and lawnmower parts, piloted the wrong way down the highway by a naked redneck wielding dual shotguns and screaming obscenities at other drivers.

What I’m saying here, trying really hard not to exaggerate, is that Quora moderation is inconsistent.

Broad-brush complaints are easy, however. Just browse your Quora feed at any time to see what I mean. Also, people bitch about Moderation all the time because they do violate the rules and are resentful about it; complaining that Moderation is biased against a particular point of view is practically a sport on Quora.

No, let’s not be glib or just vent sour grapes but instead get to specifics.

Let’s look at the broad category of violations known as Be Nice, Be Respectful, or BNBR in Quora lingo.

“I wonder if it’s possible to read something so stupid on quora that your brain starts bleeding?”(1)
“There’s is no bigger waste of time on earth than when Europeans put on their swami turban and explain the thinking of Americans.”(2)
“Great stuff. Keep up the good work, lefties! Keep SCREAMING.”(3)
“LOL Have you no shame whatsoever?“(4)
“daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr”(5)
“Don’t let me bother you, Lorelei.
“I’m just one guy. Me writing some little pissy criticism of this caterwauling will never make even a tiny dent in how stupid and childish and pointless it is.
“In fact, whenever I criticize people for holding the pathetic world view that everyone they disagree with is evil, all that happens is it kicks off a barrage of insults from people like you.
“Your team has completely and totally won.
“People never get bored with reading or writing this drivel, no matter how shrill and stupid it is.”(6)
“grow up”(7)
“ohhhhh… aren’t you the edgelord!”(8)
“WOW! This unfortunate incident means that your childish and moronic hatred of the USA is completely justified! […] Not only do you have testosterone oozing from every pore, you are also a mighty intellectual.”(9)
“Whatever you say, oh airchair hero.”(10)
“And everyone who disagrees is just churlish and in denial.
“There, now you’re happy. Simple ideas for simple minds.
“Rich creamy endorphins released by rich creamy tribalism.”(11)
“Great stuff. Keep up the good work, lefties! Keep SCREAMING.”(12)
“There’s is no bigger waste of time on earth than when Europeans put on their swami turban and explain the thinking of Americans.
“[…]
“See? Jazz it up a little. Don’t just write the same tired out drivel that the british people write. Be original.”(13)

Now you’re thinking, well, congratulations, Sherlock — people shit post all the time. Have you seen Reddit or the YouTube comment threads?

Except this is one profile, and Quora specifically forbids exactly that kind of rude, confrontational language. This one profile’s edit log is a long string of missives just like those. Some are deleted, either by Moderation or the answer writer the profile was trolling, but there are plenty left standing. It’s as if the profile were teflon coated.

Others have been banned for lesser offenses, e.g. Said Bourrich and Michaelis Maus. And they didn’t spend their days trawling their feed for answers to leave sneering, shrill missives intended to rile people up.

Meanwhile, Moderation dinged one of my answers for including a photo (with attribution) of a bear shitting in the woods (you know, to illustrate that they do, in fact, shit in the woods):

Image source. Don’t worry, Quora bots — I blurred out the naughty bit this time.(14)

Another answer of mine was just collapsed for … reasons. Maybe because I linked to OP’s profile and said “your profile shows you’re a fan of Mr. Donald Trump”? Well, now, just because the profile’s feed is a long string of fervent defenses of Mr. Trump couldn’t possibly justify characterizing someone as a Trump fan, now would it? Per Jorgensen’s answer to Should Joe Biden withdraw his candidacy if he can’t prove he did not sexually assault Tera Reade?

I guess I should have just called him an “edgelord” instead. Or told him to “grow up”. I hear that’s fine (see above).

How about harassment? Quora cracks down on that, right?

Well, let’s see. At the moment, a conspiracy is floating around that names a U.S. Army Reservists as the source of Covid-19 in China, linking her to a “bioweapons” facility in the U.S. (in reality, the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick, Maryland). This particular conspiracy theory is literally leading to death threats for this woman: Exclusive: She’s been falsely accused of starting the pandemic. Her life has been turned upside down

It also happens that Ms. Benassi has a Quora account, so you’d think that spreading conspiracy theories throwing her under the bus for bringing Covid-19 to China is the definition of harassment according to Quora’s own Terms of Service, right? You’d think they would at least shield its users from this kind of stuff.

Not so. Check these two answers — I’m sure there are more, but these are the ones I’ve seen so far:

Multiple reports have had zero effect. They are still up, smearing another Quora user based on evidence no more solid than YouTube videos.

Inexcusable.

Insincere questions. Political influence operations’ favorite toy. Surely Quora cracks down on that.

Not so.

At last count, Quora was up to 19 different variations, excluding ones that have already been merged, on the theme “Why is the media not reporting the allegation of Joe Biden’s sexual assault?”

19 and counting. Full list here: Per Jorgensen’s answer to In September 2019, did the US mainstream media purposely try to reframe the Biden-Ukraine story as a Trump scandal? Why or why not?

The questions come loaded with a premise, in itself a red flag that they’re insincere, and the premise itself is demonstrably false — a quick Google search confirms that the story is in fact widely reported on.

Quora’s policy is to merge questions that are so similar the answer to one is also the answer to another. To that end, it provides a merge function, which allows users to help clean up the platform by merging questions that are similar enough to be interchangeable. That same function, however, makes it difficult to find the question to merge with, as the search in the merge dialog is different from the regular search and mysteriously fails to present questions that are virtually identical. It does, in a surprise move, present a bunch that aren’t similar at all. You can’t find most of the relevant questions in the merge function to merge them.

And Quora’s automated bots appear oblivious to the similarities; if they were working properly Quora Moderation should merge these questions itself, not leave de-cluttering to users and certainly not obstruct users’ ability to do it.

Worse yet: When users do merge these questions, Quora Moderation undoes the merges.

Quora Moderation policy actively supports near-identical questions, even ones obviously designed to push a political agenda.

Have any of those push-poll questions been marked as “needing improvement” in response to reporting as Insincere? No.

Plagiarism. Oh, boy.

Quora claims to be serious about plagiarism. Here is a diagram of its process:

Sorry, no — Quora is not seriously dealing with plagiarism. It takes a lot of reporting and a lot of noise to get Quora to take action on a plagiarized answer. See Per Jorgensen’s answer to How does it feel to be a victim of plagiarism?

Not just individual plagiarized answers, but profiles that contain nothing but stolen content. Many of these are obviously fake and automated, yet they keep ticking away despite report after report. Many of those reports include links to the original content, thereby serving Quora Moderation the evidence on a silver platter.

You cannot, on Quora, link to any of these profiles directly, however — because that would cause Moderation to descend on your answer faster than you can say collapse.

For some weeks, the Fighting Plagiarism space buzzed with activity as users did Quora’s job for it and ferreted out plagiarized content, posting links to the originals and copies. You can still go to it to see the extent of the for yourself. Start anywhere in the feed and you’ll see entire reams of stolen answers, posted by profiles that continue to tick away, consequence-free.

A couple of examples to whet your appetite:

Original: Frances Rivera’s answer to How has the coronavirus affected you?
Copy: Heather Marshall’s answer to How has the coronavirus affected you?
Original: Colin Zhou’s answer to What are the scariest real life pictures?
Copy: Lucille Gray’s answer to What are the scariest real life pictures?

Both of those plagiarizing profiles are nothing but copied answers. Several people have reported them. Nothing.

The Fighting Plagiarism space, however, was “deactivated” with no explanation. That means you can’t find it via search on Quora, and there are no links to it anywhere except what we pass around ourselves. Why? Your guess is as good as mine.

Fake names. Quora’s real name policy is a a cornerstone of its policies and part of the reason for its success. Surely it would enforce it, and some of these should be easy to spot.

Well …

Who knew there were this many Hugh Jardons in the world? https://www.quora.com/search?q=hugh+jardon&type=profile

This many Biggus Dickus? https://www.quora.com/search?q=biggus+dickus&type=profile

This many people whose names are listed in their birth certificates as Name, Fake?
https://www.quora.com/search?q=fake%20name&type=profile (Scroll down a bit.)

Even Batman — or is it Batmen? — has two profiles. Violating the multiple-accounts rule, there, Mr. Wayne? Per the usual, I can’t link directly to the Batmen, because that would be a violation, unlike using a fake name, apparently. Just do a search yourself.

You may ask yourself, why turn to one platform in order to complain about another platform — why not just post it to Quora itself? Well, I did. Odds are more than good, however, that that answer will be collapsed.

Why? Because Quora frowns upon answers and comments calling out other answers and comments. In fact, Quora Moderation is very efficient at cracking down on that. Quora, you see, wants policing its policies to be done using its reporting function, which is a great idea, except that Quora doesn’t consistently or even commonly take action on those reports.

The hilarious irony is, therefore, that pointing out plagiarism, fake names, and harassment is swiftly pounced upon while the actual plagiarism, fake names, and harassment are not.

So there you have it. It’s not bias. It’s not a conspiracy. It’s not systematic. It’s … this: