This is a good question. I sometimes comment about and help others on the topic of travel on Reddit, often writing a lot of content. The incentive for me is that it's fun and intrinsically rewarding to help others do something that I find meaningful (which would fit into sibling commenter Gatsky's reason #2). So in a way it's kinda self-serving, but in a good way.
As for why authors don't just link to another webpage: I think it's because a) those pages often don't fit what is being asked, if it's more in-depth; b) the author might have a way to explain it that they want to use; or c) you might presume that writing your own content will get more upvotes.
Meta-funnily enough, in this thread we have both approaches: myself and others offering opinions, another guy linking to a Quora question.
1. They are excited by chip architecture
2. They achieved profound and ecstatic insight once they worked all this out for themselves, and want to share that feeling with other people.
3. They just like helping others, and in particular helping others to understand.
From the tone of the piece, I suspect it is mainly 2.
I found this a very helpful write up. I am glad this person exists and that they took the time and effort to achieve 2.
It's called gamification. You start counting points/upvotes etc and suddenly everyone wants to collect more of that. Quora has two more twists: It allows you to post to social networks so your friends know that you are helping people with your knowledge (oh - I'm sorry - it just does that by default). Quora also has ties to online versions of some known publications where they post popular answers. So suddenly you are "published" bonafide writer in likes of Business Insider, Info World etc. I know of people who perhaps spends ~2 hours a day writing beautiful answers to stupid questions like "why this actor is so popular" complete with screenshots, trailer videos, dialog transcripts and so on.
The same gamification strategy works on sites like StackOverflow, Reddit and HN. The most successful ones have some twists like Quora, like StackOverflow throws in bonus of putting your points in your resume. I once saw the top points earners on StackOverflow was Jon Skit who had earned 700k+ points. I looked at count of his answers, length of average answer and estimated that he must have spent 4hr per day each working day for past 4+ year to get that many points. This was on minimum side. If you convert this to hourly rate, it's same as he donated about half a million to StackOverflow.
Now if you can upvote this answer, that would be great ;).
It doesn't look zero-sum, looks more of a win-win game than a win-lose game, until we don't count the number of hours lost trying to assemble a long answer etc...But time/money/energy seems priceless when you seem to love/like what you do!So its poised to be a win-win for the source gets reputation/credits and publisher gets visits too!
So from another perspective , it seems ones likes and dislikes can be used in more ways than one!But guess transition from use to abuse occurs when priorities change!
I once saw the top points earners on StackOverflow was Jon Skit who had earned 700k+ points. I looked at count of his answers, length of average answer and estimated that he must have spent 4hr per day each working day for past 4+ year to get that many points.
That's interesting.Doesn't this defeat the very purpose of having reputation points mentioned in CV?
This was on minimum side. If you convert this to hourly rate, it's same as he donated about half a million to StackOverflow.
So that's how this so-called zero-sum-game looks but its more driven by priorities than perspective.We don't know how many people were saved from excess time and energy spent on understanding the same because of one persons generosity.
Now if you can upvote this answer, that would be great ;)
Further more, at the end the author say he has started a blog on Quora about chip architecture. No idea why anyone would post this stuff on anything other than their own domain is beyond me.
I had this idea after writing this answer: Subhasis Das' answer to Computer Science: How does a computer chip work? which gained quite a few upvotes. I realized a single answer was far too little to talk about all the ultra awesome machineries that are hidden inside a processor.
I think answering the Quora question was what inspired him to start his own blog, which means he didn't really have a blogpost to reference when he answered the Quora question.
Quite often, this kind of detailed reiteration can be an important part of maintaining one's own knowledge. And making the effort to explain a topic well keeps one aware of what is and is not well understood outside of one's own, narrow circle. This can be enormously advantageous when having to work with the larger group in some capacity that demands their trust in your ability and openness.
Comments
why would someone have so much of patience/energy/motivation to write it all over an answer to a question in Quora?
He/She has certainly done a wonderful job but just curios at alternatives and reasons for choices they made..
Why not just refer to an article in the series of ... 'What every programmer should know about ...'
This is a good question. I sometimes comment about and help others on the topic of travel on Reddit, often writing a lot of content. The incentive for me is that it's fun and intrinsically rewarding to help others do something that I find meaningful (which would fit into sibling commenter Gatsky's reason #2). So in a way it's kinda self-serving, but in a good way.
As for why authors don't just link to another webpage: I think it's because a) those pages often don't fit what is being asked, if it's more in-depth; b) the author might have a way to explain it that they want to use; or c) you might presume that writing your own content will get more upvotes.
Meta-funnily enough, in this thread we have both approaches: myself and others offering opinions, another guy linking to a Quora question.
As to why someone posts on quora:
http://www.quora.com/What-s-my-incentive-to-post-answers-on-...
I'm sure that some of that also applies to HN.
My guess would be:
1. They are excited by chip architecture 2. They achieved profound and ecstatic insight once they worked all this out for themselves, and want to share that feeling with other people. 3. They just like helping others, and in particular helping others to understand.
From the tone of the piece, I suspect it is mainly 2. I found this a very helpful write up. I am glad this person exists and that they took the time and effort to achieve 2.
It's called gamification. You start counting points/upvotes etc and suddenly everyone wants to collect more of that. Quora has two more twists: It allows you to post to social networks so your friends know that you are helping people with your knowledge (oh - I'm sorry - it just does that by default). Quora also has ties to online versions of some known publications where they post popular answers. So suddenly you are "published" bonafide writer in likes of Business Insider, Info World etc. I know of people who perhaps spends ~2 hours a day writing beautiful answers to stupid questions like "why this actor is so popular" complete with screenshots, trailer videos, dialog transcripts and so on.
The same gamification strategy works on sites like StackOverflow, Reddit and HN. The most successful ones have some twists like Quora, like StackOverflow throws in bonus of putting your points in your resume. I once saw the top points earners on StackOverflow was Jon Skit who had earned 700k+ points. I looked at count of his answers, length of average answer and estimated that he must have spent 4hr per day each working day for past 4+ year to get that many points. This was on minimum side. If you convert this to hourly rate, it's same as he donated about half a million to StackOverflow.
Now if you can upvote this answer, that would be great ;).
It doesn't look zero-sum, looks more of a win-win game than a win-lose game, until we don't count the number of hours lost trying to assemble a long answer etc...But time/money/energy seems priceless when you seem to love/like what you do!So its poised to be a win-win for the source gets reputation/credits and publisher gets visits too!
So from another perspective , it seems ones likes and dislikes can be used in more ways than one!But guess transition from use to abuse occurs when priorities change!
That's interesting.Doesn't this defeat the very purpose of having reputation points mentioned in CV?
So that's how this so-called zero-sum-game looks but its more driven by priorities than perspective.We don't know how many people were saved from excess time and energy spent on understanding the same because of one persons generosity.
wish i could do it twice :)
Further more, at the end the author say he has started a blog on Quora about chip architecture. No idea why anyone would post this stuff on anything other than their own domain is beyond me.
Maybe content marketing to the Quora community? If the goal was to drive traffic to his blog, he could have posted just an excerpt on Quora.
http://cpuarch.quora.com/Transistors-The-foot-soldiers-of-a-...:
I think answering the Quora question was what inspired him to start his own blog, which means he didn't really have a blogpost to reference when he answered the Quora question.
Quite often, this kind of detailed reiteration can be an important part of maintaining one's own knowledge. And making the effort to explain a topic well keeps one aware of what is and is not well understood outside of one's own, narrow circle. This can be enormously advantageous when having to work with the larger group in some capacity that demands their trust in your ability and openness.
Great example of the cynical HN echo chamber.
Why would anyone... whatever follows exemplifies how out of touch HN readers are with normal people. No wonder pg stopped posting.