Stop Wasting Your Time on Quora

It’s Long Gone Downhill

Photo credit: Glenn Carstens-Peters

I started writing on Quora since 2020, and with close to 300 answers, 3k followers, and an overall 16M content views, I think I’m a bit qualified to talk about this.

If you know a bit about Quora, you may see all my stats as an accomplishment, but you know what I see it as? Wasted time, time I could have spent here instead.

To properly thrash this topic, I’m going to be looking at it from the two possible perspectives of most people planning on setting their anchor on that forum;

• If you came there to write and become an established writer
• If you came there to read and learn new things

1. If you came there to Write

The thing is; Quora does not reward good writers and good writing anymore. As a matter of fact, Quora has become increasingly profit centered. I know Quora’s a business but when the profit-centerdness becomes glaring, it starts to put people off.

Nothing further explains this than the scrapping of the top writer’s program. Quora used to reward it’s top writers (the equivalent of what medium is doing), it used to drive people to write more, it practically incentivised writing.

Scrapping the program further strengthens my point that Quora blatantly fails to reward good writing.

Another way it fails to reward writing, which was the main reason I quit the platform is it’s Algorithm:

Not only does it fail to reward good writing monetarily, it also fails to give quality writing the exposure it deserves. You can’t game the system, not because the secret ingredient is heavily guarded but because the whole thing is pure luck. Yupp, your level of exposure is determined by a figurative dice roll.

You don’t write quality articles and expect to get exposure and recognition, you write quality articles and pray to get lucky, is that the kind of life you’d want to be living?

There’s no “Quora curation”— there’s only luck

Take a good look at this post on Quora:

Photo credit: Screenshot by Me

Take a good look at that. I’m not here to judge anybody’s writing but would a human moderator allow that post get that collosal amount of views? This is because Quora’s moderation has been overrun by bots! That’s right, bots!

They’ve pushed almost every form of moderation to bots. A bot does not recognize fine writing. You could spend weeks doing research, only for your post to be seen by only 17 people, and on the other hand, a person can just post a meme and it could be seen by 1M persons.

That’s the truth, and I’m not even trying to exaggerate.

If you didn’t get all I said, just get this; The level of exposure your writing gets is determined by luck, not by your skills.
Another reason you might not have a good time writing there is due to the fact that you can’t write freely:

Let me explain. Here on medium, you can write just about anything you want, that’s not the case on Quora. You see, Quora is a question and answer forum; that means, if you want to write about something, you’d have to spend time looking for a question related to your topic of interest so you can answer it.

Did I forget to mention that quora has a lot of teenagers?

This isn’t really a bad thing except for the fact that your writing would lack real criticism. Most of them don’t know much about writing, they’re just there to read interesting stuff. A lot of them are unaware of the requirements for a great story, and all the boxes that writers need to tick.

Just tug on their heart strings and they’re content

This really affected my writing because I received a lot of praises from my readers, only to come here and realize that I really did not know what I was doing. So for how friendly the platform is to writers, I’d rate it a 3/10

The next point of discussion is;

If You Came There to Read

Quora used to be pool of knowledge, a place where people ask relevant question and get an equally relevant answer, you never left the same way you came.

Now the site is littered with questions like “How many screenshots can get you 2,445,367 views?” Those and a lot of other vulgar questions reign supreme. I even caught this abomination

Photo credit: Screenshot by Me

I kid you not. Somebody actually asked this question on Quora.

There are a lot of sensible questions on Quora though, and you could still learn a lot, glad the site hasn’t totally gone downhill in that area, but trust me; it’s getting there.

For reading and learning new things, I give the site a 6/10.

The truth is that Quora really has gone downhill and needs a complete overhaul. But if you’re a writer, and you’re looking for a place to express your talent, I’d advice you do it here instead.