It's funny, I'm more likely to fiddle about with chrome's inspector to try to remove just the right divs to get a quora page to be readable than to spend however long it takes to sign up. It's personally grating to me that they take such a boneheaded tack to content in the 21st century. Did they learn nothing from expertsexchange? It grates even more that they are putting crowd sourced content behind a wall.
Personally I don't do that. Unlike many technical people, I don't have AdBlock installed either.
Giving a service attention and eyeballs in this day and age is like giving them money. It's actually worse, because you're the product and so they don't treat you like you're the customer. Even if they don't get money from you, even if you're using AdBlock, even if you are totally immune to advertising or any other means of indirect monetization, they might get something from your friends, which is why Quora is insisting on logging in with your Facebook account and showing your activity to your friends. And even if you don't log in with your Facebook account by bypassing their wall, you might send links to your friends at some point. So the mere act of giving them eyeballs is helping them grow and is encouraging them (and others) to use the same tactics.
What I do is that I simply don't use Quora or any service or website that doesn't treat me well. Quora does have some interesting content in there, but it isn't valuable enough for me to do any sacrifice. Even if it's a free service, I'm not putting up with free services that don't respect me. If companies need to monetize and provide value worth paying, all they need to do is ask for it, as I've got money to spend on valuable things.
Otherwise I would rather focus my attention on things and products that actually deserve it.
I don't use Quora either but it's annoying when it comes up in a search when I need some help. I cannot wait for Google to fix their blacklist so I can add it to the list with experts exchange. (Before anyone mentions it, yes I know you can still get to the page to add urls to the list but it doesn't work, try it out.)
Or element hiding in adblockplus (on Firefox at least, I don't know about Chrome). And it's persistent, so it works again if you ever revisit the page.
login form. bam, you are being followed around the web. maybe Quora will even decide to tell your friends what articles you clicked on. who knows what new "feature" they've added today
Good point, by logging in you are consenting to their tracking. I must be honest though, I still think it's a fair trade off. I also suspect that making content public might make it worse - people know on HN and Reddit their comments are visible to a huge anonymous constituency and it biases the nature of responses.
Can you elaborate on that? I mean, how exactly does it bias people's response?
The "privacy" of a service can affect people's answer if it is that, private. But Quora is not a super exclusive club: anyone who's willing to spend some time signing up, and who's willing to risk having his posts revealed to his facebook friends because of a new "feature" can get into this club...
So I ask again, what peace of mind does it bring you to know that your answers are behind Quora's walls?
My general feeling is that a lot of content on HN, Reddit, etc. is superfluous and non-value adding. Things like buzzy blog posts, sensational headlines, etc. Believe it or not, lots of PR firms and businesses use HN as a way to promote their features. On a walled garden (as much as my gut reaction is to dislike it) you don't have that issue. There are other scenarios too, I'd imagine you can come up with as well.
I do exactly the same through Firebug in Firefox. :) I do actually have login for Quora, but when at times or on machines I'm not logged in, I just do that quickly to read the answers.
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It's funny, I'm more likely to fiddle about with chrome's inspector to try to remove just the right divs to get a quora page to be readable than to spend however long it takes to sign up. It's personally grating to me that they take such a boneheaded tack to content in the 21st century. Did they learn nothing from expertsexchange? It grates even more that they are putting crowd sourced content behind a wall.
Personally I don't do that. Unlike many technical people, I don't have AdBlock installed either.
Giving a service attention and eyeballs in this day and age is like giving them money. It's actually worse, because you're the product and so they don't treat you like you're the customer. Even if they don't get money from you, even if you're using AdBlock, even if you are totally immune to advertising or any other means of indirect monetization, they might get something from your friends, which is why Quora is insisting on logging in with your Facebook account and showing your activity to your friends. And even if you don't log in with your Facebook account by bypassing their wall, you might send links to your friends at some point. So the mere act of giving them eyeballs is helping them grow and is encouraging them (and others) to use the same tactics.
What I do is that I simply don't use Quora or any service or website that doesn't treat me well. Quora does have some interesting content in there, but it isn't valuable enough for me to do any sacrifice. Even if it's a free service, I'm not putting up with free services that don't respect me. If companies need to monetize and provide value worth paying, all they need to do is ask for it, as I've got money to spend on valuable things.
Otherwise I would rather focus my attention on things and products that actually deserve it.
I don't use Quora either but it's annoying when it comes up in a search when I need some help. I cannot wait for Google to fix their blacklist so I can add it to the list with experts exchange. (Before anyone mentions it, yes I know you can still get to the page to add urls to the list but it doesn't work, try it out.)
Yeah, w3schools is still showing up all the time -.-
You're by no means required to login with facebook, and whether you do or not, broadcasting your activity to them is an opt-in.
That's interesting because I recall hearing that FB is tracking non-FB users too.
Ah yes, firebug is also great for stuff like this. Click on firebug, click on the overlay, press delete. Bam, you have your page.
Doesn't work so well on mobiles though.
Or element hiding in adblockplus (on Firefox at least, I don't know about Chrome). And it's persistent, so it works again if you ever revisit the page.
Shouldn't be that hard to wrap it in a bookmarklet.
There you go (not mine): http://pastebin.com/zxzDMYKU
login form. bam, you have your page. edit. works just fine on a mobile phone.
login form. bam, you are being followed around the web. maybe Quora will even decide to tell your friends what articles you clicked on. who knows what new "feature" they've added today
Good point, by logging in you are consenting to their tracking. I must be honest though, I still think it's a fair trade off. I also suspect that making content public might make it worse - people know on HN and Reddit their comments are visible to a huge anonymous constituency and it biases the nature of responses.
Can you elaborate on that? I mean, how exactly does it bias people's response?
The "privacy" of a service can affect people's answer if it is that, private. But Quora is not a super exclusive club: anyone who's willing to spend some time signing up, and who's willing to risk having his posts revealed to his facebook friends because of a new "feature" can get into this club...
So I ask again, what peace of mind does it bring you to know that your answers are behind Quora's walls?
My general feeling is that a lot of content on HN, Reddit, etc. is superfluous and non-value adding. Things like buzzy blog posts, sensational headlines, etc. Believe it or not, lots of PR firms and businesses use HN as a way to promote their features. On a walled garden (as much as my gut reaction is to dislike it) you don't have that issue. There are other scenarios too, I'd imagine you can come up with as well.
We do not negotiate with terrorists.
I've thought about doing this. But, why bother? Most of the time the answer I'm looking for is just one or two more searches away.
I do exactly the same through Firebug in Firefox. :) I do actually have login for Quora, but when at times or on machines I'm not logged in, I just do that quickly to read the answers.